The kitchen is coming along if not exactly in leaps and bounds, then certainly in enthusiastic bounces.
Mark has now re-installed the floor and the units to a much nicer height, and generously agrees with me what a brilliant idea this has been.
Obviously this has taken some time, but it is done. He has built in some supporting bits to go alongside the cooker, and we are now ready to install the new stone work surfaces.
These have got to be cut, which is presenting some difficulties, mostly because you can’t do it with anything easy, like a knife or scissors. They are stone, and they are very, very heavy indeed.
Mark has had a sore knee ever since we moved them the first time. The joint inside it had already got steroid injections in it, and was a bit the worse for wear. When we loaded the work surfaces into the car his knee joint got squished flat just by the weight of the things, after which it swelled up. He has been limping and taking drugs ever since. It is so bad that we have made him an appointment to see the doctor, and rang my sister for some doctorly advice to tide us over in the meantime.
She said to rest it, which he isn’t going to do, and made disapproving noises when I explained that we had thought we might try the painkillers that the vet gave us for the dog, although she concurred that since the dog in question was a Yorkshire terrier, they were probably fairly low dosage.
She recommended an ice pack, a bandage and some human drugs, which we thought that we would try today, by way of making him well enough to manage the worktops. We do not want to wait until his knee is better before we do this, because that might be ages. In any case it will be very exciting to get them into place, and really have a real new kitchen.
The first part of the difficulty was how we might actually lift them off the ground and to get them into a place where they could be cut to the right size. They won’t be the right size, each work surface will be made up of several bits that are the wrong size, but Mark is optimistic about getting them to match, and with some decent worktop glue you will hardly notice at all.
This took ages, because the yard was still full of floorboards and firewood.
Mark had to cut and stack the firewood first to clear a space. Then he set up his saw horses and between us we heaved the first work surface on to them.
I thought my knees were going to buckle, and Mark swore quite a bit, so I knew that it wasn’t doing his already flat-but-swollen knee much good, but we got it up there.
After that he faffed about for ages, and in the end he was ready to cut it.
It turns out that circular saws are much better at cutting bits of hands than they are at bits of worktop.
Mark used the saw and I held the watering can and poured water over the blade as he was doing it. This was not done without some trepidation, because it might be a bit unfortunate accidentally to slosh lots of water into the motor of a circular saw whilst it is operating full tilt, and I am not naturally very talented at matters requiring precision.
He cut and cut and I poured as judiciously as I could, and by the end of the watering can he had managed to cut about two inches.
We examined this doubtfully.
Mark said that the circular saw would not do it, but that we could not do anything different today, because it was going dark.
This was because we did not start doing anything at all until lunchtime, after which the day raced away from us fairly quickly.
He is going to try again tomorrow with his grinder.
I have been painting leaves. The picture only shows a few of them because they go all the way round the post. It is very dull but am struggling on manfully. The flowers are not nearly right yet and I need to paint their leaves in properly as well, but it is coming on, a bit at a time.
We will have a beautiful kitchen in the end.
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