Finito!

Some businesses seem to be booming, largely those dealing with the things people have done whilst stuck at home during a pandemic.

The kick-boards for our kitchen units have been languishing in the garage for a month or two waiting for our flooring to get sorted out. Over the somewhat protracted wait, our trusty Fitter Men apparently got themselves booked up until Christmas. However, not liking loose ends [i.e. us], they managed to fit us in on a truly revolting day of rain to fit the long-awaited kick-boards.

There’s a lot more work involved in fitting kick-boards than some might imagine, not only cutting to length but scribing into the floor, too, and you can’t go cutting lengths of kick-boards outside in pouring rain. So, to help both their cause and our cause along, I cleared what I could out of the garage to turn it into a workshop. Sure enough, Fitter Men pitched up a little after 09:00 having loaded their van with tools and a few replacement cupboard doors, which segues smartly into an interesting little side snippet.

We have two glasses cupboards with glazed doors. (We declined the lights option because it shows the dust.) Soon after they were initially fitted, hawk-eyed Francine noticed that one door appeared not to have been glued together; the tongue [the tenon, if you want to be technical] of the bottom rail could be pulled out of the slot [a.k.a. mortice] in the side rail. Naturally we reported this, complete with photographic evidence, and a replacement door was ordered by Ultrawood from the supplier.

The replacement glazed door duly arrived but eagle-eyed Ultrawood, this time, noticed that it, too, would pull apart. Was there a common manufacturing glitch? A second replacement door was ordered which – wait for it – yes, also separated. Hmmm.

A confused Ultrawood, who are not unfamiliar with these products, contacted the supplier again to explain the problem and investigate.

Oh, that’s how we make the glazed doors to enable customers to change to frosted glass should they want to.

¿QUE?

So why, pray tell, would they keep sending replacements if the original was as it should be?

Bizarre. It seems that nobody before has managed to separate a joint partially or, even worse, fully.

The upshot is that not only do we at long last have kick-boards with all but invisible joins – Fitter Man #1 is meticulous – but we also have two spare glazed cupboard doors.

At last, on day #72 [workday, that is; I’m discounting weekends] of our 2020 Covid-19 Knockdown project:

I declare this kitchen-diner finished!

Darwin bless here and all who eat in her.

Now for the side projects.