Deep in the snowy woods.

As promised, here are more pictures as I travelled deeper into the woods the other day. You can see others in my Wordpress Blog.  However, just so you don't think everything is always perfect in the cottage, we have had a disaster in the kitchen!

As some of you know, over the last few years I have been endeavouring to update the kitchen to a look that pleases me. It is expensive and takes time. Recently I got to the 3/4 stage and was feeling very pleased with myself that at last it was beginning to look how I wanted it to look.

Then disaster struck in the form of three leaks under the sink and behind the cupboard backing.  The first leak concerned the trap pipe under the sink, which kept working itself loose but wasn't bad enough to need a plumber. Next was a drip drip noise, which at first I thought was rain outside. When I opened the back door to have a look, no rain! I realised there was a problem. Water was dripping at the back of the cupboard and when I looked under the sink, having first removed all the bottles in there, I found I could not access the problem and worse still I couldn't turn off the water tap.

I texted my friend, who shares my house and asked him to come home (he'd just gone out) and see if he could fix it. He didn't reply. I phoned - no answer. I waited up for him and at 12.15 a.m. we were both back in the kitchen trying to sort out the problem, but it soon became apparent that we needed a plumber.

Sunday morning and J phoned three plumbers. All advertised a 24/7 service. The first one didn't answer his phone, the second one didn't reply but the third one came round within the hour and took the back off the cupboard to fix the leak.

The leak was coming from a valve which leads to the outside tap in the garden. He stopped the leak but it needed a new part. Since it was Sunday and we were paying double time per hour, he said he would come back with the part the following Tuesday, which he did. That all cost £100 plus.

For some time the new linoleum in the kitchen had been coming up and losing its stick. I wondered why. Now I know - the floor underneath was saturated.

We called out the insurance assessor who said they would pay for the damage that the leak had caused, but not the repair to the leak itself. Fair enough. I was grateful. He said the floor underneath the lino. was 80% saturated with water. OMG no wonder the lino. wasn't sticking.

We weren't out of trouble yet though.

When the builder came to see what the job would entail a few days later, he noticed that we still had a leak! This time is was the tap to turn off the mains water.

We had to have the plumber back before the builders would touch the floor.

When the plumber came he said we needed a new tap and he would try to get one. He was gone for two hours. Trouble was the tap was new when the house was built and that sort of tap was no longer available so he had to get a new tap with an adaptor on it.

Apparently when the cottage was built, they used taps which conformed to European standard sizing, which was different to English imperial measurements. After two years, that idea was abandoned because too many English plumbing firms were going bust owing to the new sizings not being compatible with their machinery.

So much for complying with Europe.  More about that in another post!

So now we have the three leaks fixed and the builders are coming back next Tuesday to replace the floor. Help! I'm not looking forward to that visit, but it will be great when it's done.

Oh the joys of winter!

Star