Old vs New

IB hadn’t even unpacked after our holiday before he was rummaging in the cupboard for his toolbelt and foraging in the garage for his power tools. There wasn’t any particular DIY emergency just a very big, clunky 1950’s radiator that needed to be evicted from our spare room.  Taking it out is not as easy as it might seem given its cast iron! Still it gave IB an opportunity to use some of his more manly DIY tools and after an hour or two of sweating, swearing and sawing, out it came!

 

 

 

 

So I have yet another item for ebay.  IB’s starting to get concerned about the size of the ebay pile now and I think I might be in trouble if I don’t start listing stuff soon

Anyway as part of my research on the value of cast iron radiators, I found this website – castironradiators.biz.  Some of these radiators are fab, not right for our house, but still fab!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trade Talk

Why do builders/plumbers/tradesmen of any sort think that I’m going to know the answers to their ‘technical’ questions? So, for example just now I’ve had to deal with our (quite good looking!) plumber (one of the tallest men I have ever encountered in real life, his legs end around my shoulder level and I’m 5 foot 2 so I feel like I’ve been talking to his belly button for most of the week!) who wanted to consult me on how I would like our bathroom radiator plumbed in. He said something about it currently being plumbed into the hot water tank, so when the water in the tank gets hot enough the radiator will cut out. He wanted to know if instead, we would like it plumbed into the same central system that the rest of the house uses. A simple question like that I could have handled. However,  hunky plumber man felt obliged to take me through the detail of what the replumbing would involve.  To be fair to him, I do complain loudly to IB when tradesmen address all their conversation to him (and in a similar vein I hate when you buy paint/wallpaper/bathrooms/furniture, salespeople address all the conversation to me) and so it’s kind of refreshing to find one that is equally willing to talk to the woman of the house about the details of the job he is doing. But, I have to admit, I got lost half way through, and after the bit where he said something about taking the pipes down into the garage, in spite of concentrating really hard, all I heard was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I did try to look interested. Then I started to panic because I know IB will grill me later on what exactly the hunky plumber said. Then my panic increased massively when I ended up saying yes to reconfiguring the system in the way he suggested, because what if IB knows ten reasons why we shouldn’t do it like that?!  Anyway I’ve said yes now and I can hear him banging away in the bathroom, so it’s too late to change my mind. I might just have to google ‘replumbing radiators into hot water tanks’ before IB comes home!

Although even if I have made a mistake, IB hopefully will still be riding the wave of excitement that his asbestos removal kit triggered when it arrived yesterday. Not since our eldest child donned his first Liverpool kit have I seen such joy! IB needs the suit because we have to remove the six large asbestos tiles on the roof of the utility room (a freezing brick construction that was added on to the kitchen years ago and which you have to go out the back door to reach) before British Gas will do the cavity wall insulation for us. IB has to extract a sample from the tiles and send it off to be tested so we know whether or not it’s ‘landfill’ asbestos i.e. the kind that you can bag and take to the tip! Here’s hoping!

Our 'utility' room!