Frelling tiles
It’s already late and I’m only just starting tonight’s entry. I’ve spent the evening looking at wall tiles on the internet. I haven’t even begun looking for Non Standard Sized Kitchen Cabinet Fronts.
It’s not bad enough that the nice retired lady who bought Third House before me and lovingly did it all up likes ceramic duckies and chickies on her kitchen walls: her cabinets are weird sizes. Which I would never have been compelled to apprehend if I hadn’t had a helpful builder. Sigh. I’ve decided I hate helpful builders. The proper schedule for a builder is, show up,* shut up, do the job, present bill, go away. I think I told you that I was moaning–to my nice friendly helpful sympathetic builder–about the traumatic hideousness of both bath and kitchen and how they’re next on my list for elemental revision, of the razing and sowing with salt variety, supposing I can ever afford to have a next thing on my list.** And the builder said, attentively and considerately, that changing the tiles in both rooms and the cabinet fronts in the kitchen would be comparatively*** inexpensive and make about 96% difference. Tiles. Yes. Oh . . . you can change just the fronts? I said. I thought you had to rip the whole thing out and start over. No, no, he said. Just the fronts. Here, have a catalogue.
So I took the catalogue away and chose something.† And the builder came back with the interesting news that my cabinets are a nonstandard size and that in fact I can’t just change the fronts. But–! But–! The thing is, if he hadn’t said anything I’d've remained resigned to Plastic Woodgrain from Hell . . . and now I’ve got used to the idea that I’m going to get RID of it†† and I’m spraining all my morale muscles trying to revert to my previous position. So the nice helpful builder said he’d look around for other options. . . .
. . . . And the option he came up with was . . . ripping the whole thing out and starting over. He even had someone come out and give an estimate to have this done. A builder with initiative. An awful prospect. Well, I will leave it to your vivid imaginations what the estimate on a whole new kitchen was, except to remark that I’m sure they mixed the paperwork up with the design for the catering facilities for 5000 that are being built in an old airplane hangar with structural issues.
You know, all I wanted was a weight-bearing attic floor.††† I know I’ve said this before. I will undoubtedly say it again. But from where I’m standing/sitting/screaming/lying on the floor drumming my heels‡ I haven’t said it nearly often enough. I think I shrank from the duty to describe to you my last interview with the builder, concerning, as it did, tiles and cabinet fronts–oh yes, and the estimate for decorator/painter/finisher-offer. You know, when you take an estimate on a job, don’t you kind of assume this includes the decorator/painter/finisher-offer? Isn’t making the building site livable again part of the, you know, job? But . . . apparently not. I will be taking out a second mortgage presently on the cottage to pay for redecorating Third House. The new attic of course, but filling in the cracks, gluing bits of paper over them and painting the paper downstairs is almost as monumental as a new kitchen . . . But I digress.
This latest conference has left me several years older, and the starting at small noises is completely out of control, especially for someone who lives with hellhounds. It has also left me with the responsibility to find tiles. The tiles in the (downstairs) bathroom have to be changed anyway, because the new boiler means they had to rip out the shower too.‡‡ I am ravished and rhapsodic at the prospect of being legitimately rid of the cheap-soap florals in the bathroom‡‡‡ . . . but that still means I have to find desirable replacements. Er. Desirable replacements I can afford. It’s the squiggly Victorian cast-iron radiator for £1,000,000 scene all over again. Sigh.
* * *
* A major feat in builders, of course, as many of us know: showing up. They tend to be much more skilled at not showing up.
** Now that menopause has rendered food not mere superfluous but ill-advised I’m saving probably two accent tiles a week on grocery bills.
*** Note the ‘comparatively’. I’m putting in the ‘comparatively.’ The builder did not add ‘comparatively.’
† Plain. White. Rather Shakery. My years in northern New England are showing.
†† It being plastic, I wasn’t even going to have the joy of hacking the cupboard doors and the quaint balconied railing round the ventilation hood over the cooker into pieces, piling them in a heap in the driveway, setting fire to said heap, and dancing around it chanting loudly and shaking my rattles until the neighbours rang the cops. I would have treasured the Dark Stain in the driveway the fire would have left. However, the mere absence of the doors and especially the railing would be treasure enough.
††† Occasionally I still have demented little fantasies of the simple weight-bearing attic floor. It would have gone in, and I would have had some kind of hard-wearing, tennis-court, indoor-track carpeting put in, and Atlas would have helped me move all the boxes of Peter’s and my backlist books up there again, passing them to me up the ladder like a nice normal attic. I would also still have a second bedroom rather than a stairwell and a large closet. The large closet would sound good, except that I’m in the process of deciding I’m going to turn it into a Very Small Library. Lined with bookshelves, you know. Floor to ceiling. Since the walls go all the way up on the ground floor, as they do not in the attic, where the one dormer is spoken for.
As it is the builders are sawing off one corner of the new little half-bath’s door and gluing it to the doorframe so the door will open across the slant of the ceiling and I don’t have to have a sliding door, which I was having conniptions about.^ I’ll put the double bed which I think will no longer fit in the ex-bedroom anyway^^ upstairs at one end of the attic: you don’t need to sit up very far in bed. You can kind of slouch.
Maybe I’ll put a hatrack in the middle of the floor downstairs in the ex-bedroom. A sort of symbolic gesture toward the closet I still won’t have.
^ I am so out of my depth with this house-remodel thing. I never know when having conniptions is worthwhile, and when I’m merely denying the laws of physics and rebelling against hundreds of years of builder tradition. On the whole I’d rather tackle the laws of physics.
^^ According to the architect’s plans, it will. According to my eyeball, it will not. Furthermore my old friends are weary of leaping into guest beds from doorways. It was like that in the sitting-room in Maine, where your feet, once you had successfully attained the bed, were under my old baby grand piano. It is like that here at the cottage, where your feet are in the fireplace. Your feet in the ex-bedroom at Third House wouldn’t even be anywhere interesting.
‡ And attempting to deflect hellhounds, who will instantly identify this performance as a thrilling new game created for their delight.
‡‡ It’s the house that Jack built in reverse.
‡‡‡ As opposed to having only aesthetic agony to offer as excuse for the kitchen.
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