I’ve turned my hand to building of late – I’m half-way through the refurbishment of our flat, having gutted and remodelled the bedroom and bathroom already. I’ve also done all of the decoration in the kitchen-cum-sitting-room, which entailed ripping out the old kitchen, making good on the walls and putting down more parquet flooring where I’m changing the layout to provide a better kitchen and a dining area. Now all that remains (or so I thought until a few days ago) is the fitting of the kitchen units, which arrived here on 20th December so it’s my first week of the New Year working on it.

Yesterday I spent the day assembling flat-pack units and assessing my layout for the final time. Today I needed to call in a helper to fit the wall units because I can’t hold them in place and drill etc on my own. So DM has been drafted in. The first thing that happened was we had an argument – that’s fairly typical when we work together. The second thing that happened was I got sent off to do other stuff while he was putting up the fixings. That’s because I sit around watching his progress fidgeting and fretting so I’m banished for being a pain in his bum.

There was some “collateral damage” to the walls from his work so I now have to make good and redecorate those bits again. Pah! That’s going to put me back two days while I fill and paint. Anyway, at least the unit can now simply be lifted onto its fixings and then there are only shelves and doors to complete that bit.

However, since I “signed off” on the refurbished bedroom, I’ve now discovered I’ve got to pull down a partition wall in there to sort out the subject of today’s shot. After a month of the water being turned off at the main, we switched it back on again because we had guests staying and discovered that the overflow pipe was running. Grrrrrr. Not only that but the pipe services two things, the toilet (easy to access and fix) and the cold water header tank for the hot water system (behind a partition wall). Guess which ball-cock is the one that’s faulty and causing the overflow? Yep – you’ve guessed it – the header tank.

This means I have to rip out the wall, replace the valve and then fit a doorframe and door so in future if it goes it’s not a demolition job to sort it out. BTW – I didn’t put the bloody thing behind a partition wall, that’s how it was built by some cowboy builder many moons ago. Of course if I’m being hard on myself, I can tell myself that I did realise when I was doing the refurb that it was a potential problem and I could have sorted it then, but the truth is I was hoping it wouldn’t prove to be a problem. Ah well, the benefit of hindsight.

So, what all of this is leading up to is that at least my kitchen fitting is indoors – as you can see the offending overflow has frozen and at –2 deg all day today, it’s not thawed all day, imagine doing out-door building work today? For anyone thinking I’m running a risk of a serious problem with a frozen overflow, I’ve now turned the water back off at the main………huurgh.