A few weeks on...

The move to the coast has been an experience, to say the least. Just don't ask me to do it again. Since we have been here, all sorts of things have happened to slow us down. Finally today, four weeks after the official completion, we are starting to see the light, literally.

I was looking for a comfortable life. I had all sorts of illusions of moving in, unpacking a few boxes and getting on with living our new life. That turned out to be a fantasy that was just not going to become a reality. Apart from the fact we were moving from a large Victorian terrace in London to a smaller Victorian house that has been modernised, it is also a fair bit smaller than we are used to. Cupboard space is at a premium as the kitchen has far fewer units than we had, and we are a whole utility room short. This we knew about, but it has been much harder to fit it all in.

Logistics aside, there are all the niggly little things that need attending to. Our London home had been two flats when we bought it in the 1970s. Over the years we completely re-plumbed and re-wired it. We also installed the central heating system. If anything went wrong, I knew where the problem was likely to be. There was not a pipe or wire that I had not had a hand to over the years. Consequently, I knew where everything was, and if something stopped working, I could locate the source/cause quickly. Not so here.

A bit of a shaggy dog story...

Over the first few days, we were getting used to where the light switches are, and there was a light over the stairwell that was out, and we could not work out what switch was supposed to turn it on and off. We eventually worked out which switches were supposed to operate it and decided the lamps must have blown, one at a time, and as it is in an awkward position, over the stairwell, the previous owners had not got around to changing them. Removing the bulbs proved this to be wrong as all the lamps were in good condition. At this point, I decided to remove the fitting and fit a temporary pendant fitting and a new lamp. I could see nothing wrong with the original fitting, and it proved positive for all continuity checks.

By this time, a day had passed, and no satisfactory conclusion was within sight. The switches were the next suspect. At first glance, nothing untoward there. The next port of call is the wiring. One of the things I liked about this house when we viewed it, was the fully boarded loft. Standing in the attic looking at the tongue and grove flooring panels, I was now not so keen. To get to the wiring of this light, I was going to have to lift half a dozen boards. An hour later, I was looking at the wire coming through the ceiling from the light fitting. The wiring meandered all over the place with long loops of wire here and there, apparently intended for other fittings, put in by the first-fix electricians before all the ceilings had been boarded during the renovation. Following the wire around the loft, it eventually disappeared into the void over the back-extension, of which there is no access to.

Now, hot and somewhat bothered that such a trivial thing was causing so much grief, I retired to the kitchen for a cuppa and a think. Not wanting to get involved in cutting holes in the ceiling in the first week of occupancy, I was searching for another course of action. It was then I realised that the upstairs switch to this two-way circuit was in fact not wired as a two way, but it is a double-pole switch, wired as a crossover. For those not so versed in lighting circuits, that means it is not two way, but three. The search was on for the third switch.
Outside the bathroom is a downlighter that did not work either along with a dimmer switch on the wall. I had just assumed this was only a single light and switch. As this is in the back extension, maybe this is where the wires are running, and this downlighter is not independent, but on the same circuit as the fitting over the stairwell. Removing the switch-plate confirmed my suspicion. The switch and downlighter was indeed part of the circuit I was investigating.
What's more, there was a wire off in the back. Replacing the wire in its correct position still did not rectify the position. Before I committed myself to install a new loft hatch into the ceiling of the back extension. The dimmer switch was reading continuity on both positions when it should read open in one position.  I swapped out the dimmer for a conventional two-way switch-plate.

Not believing this would sort the problem, it could not be that easy, I closed the breaker in the consumer unit, and then there was light! It was the switch all along. Thirty-six plus hours after starting to tackle this problem, It was sorted, and all for the cost of a cheap switch-plate (45p on special offer from Homebase - two-pack for 90p). All I had to do then was to relay the loft floor!

Cooking - or not!

The saga of the light is just one example of how silly little things can escalate into significant upheaval, especially when the layout of the house is unfamiliar. The more irritating things are those that directly impact on our day-to-day living. The cooker in the kitchen looked cheap and nasty, but we assumed perfectly serviceable. Nothing was mentioned on either of our two visits to the house. If there is a cooker there, I expected it to at least work.

On the first day, I tried to light one of the hob burners. It lit, but as soon as the igniter was released, it went out. Even prolonged ignition did not allow the burner to stay alight. It was apparent to me that the thermocouple needed replacing.  Had it have been just the one at fault I might have considered having it replaced, for the time being. We had always intended to replace the cooker at some point, just not straight away. As it turned out only two of the five burners actually lit. One of those was the wok-burner, and the other was the fast-boil burner.

After a few days of sticking everything to the bottom of the pan, we decided to call it a day on the cooker and order a new one straight away. Two weeks later it arrived, that was Friday of last week. I know from experience, the cooker we bought was going to be heavy as I had fitted the older model twenty years ago to our kitchen in London, with the help of a qualified gas engineer. There is no way I could have done it these days, especially as I have pulled a muscle in my right arm while moving a steel plate that is part of a lathe I have just bought.

Now we can eat!

Now the cooker is in, we can start cooking again. We love cooking and having to eat out most of the time for the past few weeks has been a chore, aside from being expensive, even if it has only been lunchtime at the local cafe.

I could go on about all the unexpected niggles in and around the house, but that would probably give the wrong impression. I am really pleased, we did it. Moving out of London to the coast is something I though I would never do, that's for old people... Wait a minute, maybe I am old!

Due to all the things that have had to be fixed and the odd acquisition, work on the new workshop has been delayed. That is no bad thing as it has given us time to reflect on how we actually achieve our goal. Since moving here, we have had the opportunity to purchase a new (to us) lathe that came with a vast selection of tools and a vast selection of wood in the form of blanks and seasoned rough turnings.

Part of the plan was to buy a bigger lathe, I was thinking along the lines of a Record CL4. A nice lathe with electronic speed control, capable of handling larger pieces than the lathes we have at the moment.  That all went out of the window a couple of weeks ago, when I noticed a post on Facebook's Market Place for a "Complete woodturning setup" curious to find out more, I contacted the seller, who turned out to be an ex demonstrator/instructor who was now moving on to peruse art as health problems meant he did not want all the heavy work his type of turning and wood collecting entailed. To cut a long story short, we did a deal and I bought the lot, lock, stock and turned blanks.

As we drove away, Sue and I realised that this was going to change everything. The lathe is an Apollo Pro. This is a monster of a lathe with a huge bed and stand built from 4 x 2 inch, box-section steel.

Ralph.