IT'S HELL'S KITCHEN !!!!!!

7th March 2007

Why did I employ an English kitchen fitter?

I'm not really sure that he was a kitchen fitter at all. You will remember I had some misgivings, but that was his age and the fact that he had difficulty getting up the stairs, let alone lifting the units up from the basement.

He started work on the Monday and arrived with a flat tyre. OK , so that can happen to anybody but his jack didn't work and I offered my trolley jack which was immersed somewhere back at the rented house. Amazingly I only had to shift 25 boxes before I could see it at the back of the garage. After an hour we had fixed his spare and then he started on the kitchen!.

He had the plans and instructions and I had spent some time over the weekend reconciling the boxes of bits with the schedule and the plans and marked them up accordingly. All present and correct !!!

By the end of the day he had screwed some of the units to the wall and it looked sort of OK. He was always coming up to me to ask whether this was right or that was right and would I contact the manufacturer to check the installation instructions. I did this twice and by the end of the second day, he was complaining that there was a gap of 670mm to accomodate a 600mm unit. He asked me to check. He went home and left me to check....

I spent the next hour checking and re-checking the plans and what he had put together. Nothing matched !!!! This guy obviously didn't follow plans, he just put the units against the wall and screwed !!!!

I met him at 8.30am this morning and explained he had done everything wrong.

'Oh, I'll take that down and start again if you like' he said

'Oh, I don't think so' I said ' I want it done properly and I would like you to leave everything just as it is, and go'

He did, he packed his tools up and went, leaving me with a bundle of half opened cartons and a pile of wood.

He claimed he was a carpenter...he was around 75 years of age and seemed OK. Hey readers, if you are having a kitchen done by an independant fitter, watch out for this one. He's dangerous!!!!!

Anyway he's gone and I'm back in control, which is fine.

The second oven arrived today, it was missed off the delivery last week, because, according to the delivery man, they thought it was a mistake. There were two ovens on the order!!!!

' Oh,' I said, 'You don't know my wife, yes there are two ovens, identical'

Handy if you're cooking for a banquet, or for the local rugby team, but neither of which we have done recentlyor likely to be doing in the near future!.

The other things that happened since last week, the Germans came and delivered the GREY carpet, and one hour later the German carpet fitter came and fitted it. took two days ......Perfect !!!!!!

Must go.....I have some kitchen units to fit.....and make a call to defer the stone worktop templating which was due on Monday!!!!