A Bad Week

...for a number of reasons. On the non-house front (for me) these included going back to work and getting a cold - which at least put a stop to the going to work lark for a couple of days. Unfortunately this coincided with two rather major problems with the house.

No prizes for guessing problem No.1 - the kitchen. To ensure its delivery was not missed I ended up sitting in the house from 8am, shivering with cold, until it turned up at around 9:15am. All well and good I thought. As the Wickes delivery guys were checking off all the items one remarked "They've told you it's not all come on this delivery haven't they?", to which I told him that they most certainly hadn't! Missing from the delivery was our fridge freezer, all the door and drawer fronts and some end panels for the wall units. As I waited for the bus to get me to work I got a call from Wickes to say they were out of stock and the new stock would be with them by 9th September, shipping out to us soon after.

This wouldn't be so bad if it were actually true. An endless number of conversations with different Wickes employees has actually revealed some parts won't reach us until 23rd September. As Rachel is often heard to say these days; "Bastards!" What really annoys us is that they've known they were out of stock months ago and never told us.

This left us in a real bind. Technically there is enough of the kitchen there to assemble the base units and install most of the appliances, but the missing end panels mean the wall units can't go up. Mr Builder let us know he is not too keen on the idea of getting a joiner in twice, and frankly he doesn't trust Wickes as far as he could spit them. We are joining that camp also. I enlisted the help of the wonderful Paula from Wickes who, true to form, did all she could to find a way round things, but ultimately she couldn't do anything more.

In the mean time Mr Builder has run off to Magnet with a list of our kitchen components and had the manager there find us a replacement for about the same cost which can be delivered within the week. But having not even seen the suggested kitchen we decided we had to do that at least before making a decision. So, on Saturday we drove to Banbury to talk to the only Magnet kitchen designer available in a 50 mile radius before driving to High Wycombe to look at their range at a (bigger) showroom. Although a real drag this did have some advantages in that we found a kitchen we liked, called Malmo, and saw it with a black granite breakfast bar. This was cut off square and with a much smaller overhang than we'd planned, but it worked a treat! Bad news is that the cost is 25% higher than our old Wickes kitchen, but we're going to look at changing some appliance specs to see how far we can bring it down. Frankly, we're getting so sick of the whole kitchen fiasco that we just want to order something we know will come and that we like. It will be nice telling Wickes to take their stinking kitchen back and give us some compensation for the appalling way they've dealt with this.

Problem No.2 resulted from a quick inspection of the area of the (old) roof that we found had a leak just before the project started. Mr Builder quickly ascertained that the whole thing was dodgy and the slates would all need re-fitting on the rear pitch. The cost? Another £1,400! A call to Mr Architect's side-kick confirmed the job needed doing, and that the price was pretty good, so we're stuck with it.

Site meeting tomorrow evening should sort out the kitchen decision, and we may see the bathroom taking shape.