Olives. Not avocados, as I have repeatedly called them today!
These tricky little blighters turned out to be the problem! Despite stating confidently, last night, that the job was finished, it turned out that they were still leaking every so slightly. So today, after getting a couple of hours sleep following my night shift, I decided to attack the problem and get it sorted, hopefully once and for all. Stripping the pipes down again was a lot easier today having had the experience from yesterday. I managed to cut the offending olives off fairly easily and replace them. Add some new nuts to the compression joint and I hoped we were ready to go. Fingers crossed. Turn the water back on again.....Success! No leaking anymore. Another 20 minutes saw me fit the new plug-plunger thingy (edit: apparently called Pop-Up Waste) and we now have a functioning sink once more. Do I dare attack the bath tomorrow and attempt to change those taps too? I'm not sure...
Our latest foray in to the world of home improvement has led us down the path of tap replacement. This wasn't so much a choice, as a decision made for us. Two nights ago, the taps in the bathroom decided that they had served their time and that they were no longer required to hold the water back. So, on returning home, we found the taps running and impossible to turn off without isolating the water pipes leading to the taps. This has meant that the last two days have been spent trying to buy/change the taps. I have absolutely no plumbing experience, which will become quite evident later! We decided on some nice, clean-cut taps from Screwfix, thinking that we would replace both the sink and bath taps so that everything matched. Yesterday was mostly spent removing the old tap...
...and figuring out what I needed to do to install the new one...
...which was completed today...(ish!). Unfortunately, my wonderful plumbing skills ended just shy of a proper job. Having connected everything up correctly (I thought), I turned on the water supply again and, to my joy, watched water leaking from the compression joint in the pipe! Time had run out though, so I had to isolate the water, get changed, have dinner and run off to work, thinking that I could return to the job tomorrow. WRONG! As if destined by some annoying little quirk of fate (the one that states "as soon as you can't do anything about the problem, that's when it'll rear it's ugly little head"), I got the phone call from home almost as soon as I got to work. "There's water dripping through the ceiling in the kitchen".... Great!. Annoyed, stressed and stuck at work, the job fell to the lady of the house to try and fix it. Which she did with apparent ease, with the help of our friend, Daz (Cheers dude!). Apparently, it was a simple case of tightening the compression joint. Makes me wonder how I managed to make the job last for most of the day! Anyway, either which way, I think we now have a working, non-leaking and presentable sink tap. Not bad for a days work. At this rate, the house might be finished before I retire (in 3 decades time!).
Here's a quick attempt to start to bring you up-to-date with what's already happened with the house.
We completed on the house 6 weeks ago. We turned up to find out that the vendors hadn't moved out yet, despite us having the keys. Interesting (thanks for that estate agents)! After an hour spent at a friends' house, we were finally able to get into the house.
We had always planned to have an overlap with our rented house so that we could try and get the ready before we moved in. "The best laid plans..." and all that!
We got on with decorating the kitchen as we were having our brand new "dream" cooker and a washing machine delivered four days after completetion. It was all going so well and then the "fun" started when they came to deliver and install the cooker. But before that, here's the quick catch-up video of the kitchen decoration...
The men from Currys arrived with the cooker and, after struggling for 15 minutes or so, managed to get it as far as the lounge. They came into the kitchen to check what needed to be done to install the cooker and almost burst out laughing when they saw the electric cable lying on the floor behind the cooker cavity. A quick look proved that this had evidently been installed by a complete cowboy who had elected to try and run a further 3 double sockets and a light off the cooker ring. We were swiftly told that they "wouldn't touch it with a barge pole" and that it needed to be sorted before they would come back and install the cooker.
Long story short (because it is pretty long!) it took just over 3 weeks to get the issue sorted. A quick run-down of the identified problems included:
A dodgy spur being run from the cooker switch, far exceeding the fuse rating;
No earthing to the water supply at all;
Wires running under the cabinets, through a damp puddle to the washing machine;
We found approximately 5 junction boxes under the floorboards of one bedroom, resembling something like spaghetti junction!
Overloaded consumer unit;
Most of the sockets in the house weren't earthed;
There weren't any proper "rings" in the house, just a series of long and randomly winding spurs.
So, the electrics are sorted for the moment (well they're legal and safe now at least). The next project is to rewire the lounge/dining room, once we have managed to move out of it!
And we have finally managed to get our cooker installed...
...so at least we can cook now!
We're still living pretty much in the lounge, but we're slowly getting out!
So. Six weeks ago (ish), we bought our first house. 'Citing times..and somewhat challenging it would appear!
We thought we'd been pretty savvy in our approach. We spent about 6 months researching all aspects of buying a house, finding solicitors, surveyors etc. After two failed attempts, we finally found our house. A lovely little terrace, perfect for our first place and (so we thought) not too much work to be done.
Unfortunately, we let ourselves be sweet talked out of certain aspects of the purchase such as electrical and plumbing checks. Oops. NEVER let yourself be talked out of these things if you're really determined to do them. We did, and we're slowly dealing with the consequences.
Which leads us to here. This is our attempt to find some kind of cathartic release for the stress and frustrations. So try to keep up, I'm sure there will be plenty more surprises yet!
