Did you call? Were you looking for me? It’s possible that I was in a kitchen or bathroom showroom. Last weekend we spent several hours in The Bathroom Store while bathrooms were designed from our plans and then we went to the bathroom section of Miles of Tiles and then BPS. I liked the selection of each store more than the previous one. Then Marianna pointed out that each store was more expensive than the previous one. Yesterday, we visited Magnet, Wickes and B&Q. Having spent an hour with her last Saturday yesterday we spent a further three hours with Liz. Yes, you read correctly, that’s three hours. My patience was wearing thinner than Sarah Ferguson’s excuses. The eventual price of the kitchen Liz designed was double the price I had in mind. I already knew we were heading there when Marianna told a little anecdote an hour earlier about an ex-display kitchen she’d seen at an exhibition and its extortionate price tag. Liz’s failure to express shock told me she thought it was a reasonable price and I was in trouble. I should point out that Liz didn’t really design the kitchen since all of the ideas were ours. She just knows how to use the computer designing programme but it was her that suggested the dozens of cupboards and drawers that ended up in it. Why do we need all of these when everything required to keep me satiated currently is in a four drawer filing cabinet? We came away with very little since until we pay a deposit we aren’t allowed to have a copy of the design. Giving a fine performance of imbecility Marianna asked Liz many questions and furiously made a note of all of the units and their dimensions and made a sketch. Liz’s face was a mass of indecision, watching the rules being bent but clearly unable to protest.
I was thoroughly fed up by the time we left. I know it sounds awful but I was really tiring of all of the chit chat and niceties. I don’t go to these places to make friends. I just want some nice, functional stuff to put in our house. I recently assessed a bank robber who has gained some little fame. Prior to robbery he had been involved in fraud. He found that he tired of all of the effort it took to con someone out of their money and it was much easier to just go into a bank with a big gun and a smattering of friends. I empathise.
Then we went into Moben to ask what had become of Danny since we’d heard nothing from him. A woman who seemed to have some sort of early onset dementia began looking through the diary to see when he met with us. I kept saying it was the 16th but she kept looking at different dates. She finally found our details on the 16th of May. She said someone would call us. Fifteen minutes later I got a phone call from the area/national/global chief of Moben kitchen designers. Danny had told them that he made a design for us and gave us a quote but we weren’t interested. Of course he did, he wanted to steal us to keep for himself but then didn’t bother for some reason. The global chief was very apologetic and said this was not the way they expect their designers to behave. As well as being global chief she was also a designer and if we sent her our plans she would do our design herself.
Then we drove to Coventry to Wickes. We wandered around their displays but the staff seemed indifferent to us and were busy chatting amongst themselves. The female staff, additionally, seemed to be holding an informal ‘Who can expose the most cleavage?’ competition. I didn’t know if I should announce a winner or just leave them all to it but Marianna gained the attention of Rachel and her tongue-piercing-induced-speech-impediment. She took our details and handed us over to Mark who I found instantly annoying. He conducted himself like a consultant neurologist about to save my life instead of someone about to arrange a cooker and some cabinets. His quick estimate was a quarter of the Magnet price. We made an appointment for 12th June so he could make a design and I could become irritable.
Then we went to B&Q. The quality of their kitchens seemed somewhat suspect when we went in and made the appointment last week. We spent two and half hours with Monica going through the same things we had with Liz. Even though we gave her the design it was the ‘what sort of …’ that took time. Their price was very close to the figure I’ve had in mind. So, we could go with B&Q but our best bet seems to bewww.usedkitchens.com and similar sites selling ex-display kitchens at a fraction of their real cost. The scratches and finger prints are free. We’d then have to find a clever carpenter/kitchen fitter to fit our bargain square peg ex-display kitchen units into our round hole kitchen.
Also, Martin has bought a new car. It’s a whole year newer than his old one. He now has three cars in his driveway, one of which has a For Sale sign on it. In our weaker moments we suspect he’s done this to fill the driveway so there isn’t room for scaffolding.
Monday, 7 June 2010
Kitchens & Caravans
I feel I should make it clear that we don’t have anything you would recognise as a kitchen in this house and never have had. Most of our utensils have never been unpacked, we don’t have an oven and all of our food and crockery is in a filing cabinet I used to use for work related papers. Over the past year we’ve eaten a lot of salads. So, with regards to the kitchen in the new version of this house we will be starting from scratch. It’s time that we had a plan for the kitchen so that Max’s team know where pipes and wires should emerge. It’s highly likely that that’s all they will do for some time because we’ll probably have run out of money by the time they leave and we’ll move back into a new version of the house that still doesn’t have a kitchen. We’ve wandered around the showrooms over recent months but it’s time to be more focused. There was no point in going to Mark Wilkinson’s showroom since their ex-display kitchens are around £29000 so we called into Moben and Magnet in Leamington. In Magnet yesterday we briefly spoke to Liz, who was wearing so much makeup it must have been years since her skin saw daylight, and made an appointment with her for next weekend.
In Moben we were able to get an appointment with the kitchen designer for this afternoon. Danny joined us a couple of hours ago loaded down with samples. When did kitchen designer become a proper job? Isn’t it like calling yourself a hair comber? Surely people can manage these tasks for themselves. When did people become unable to arrange a couple of cupboards, some drawers, a sink and an oven in a reasonable way? It’s not the Rubic’s cube. There can’t be millions of combinations. Is this a complex task? Well, apparently it is because he didn’t do any actual designing but took notes on our tastes and requirements. Marianna went through her collection of magazine cuttings which, apparently, is a mood board. My mood board would just be a blackboard with “IRRITABLE” chalked on it or a picture of the face of a cat getting out of a bath. Danny gave himself away quite early on by saying that he was an independent designer subcontracting for Moben and we didn’t have to use them to supply the kitchen. They clearly don’t know this is his strategy. He also said that cash payments would keep some costs down. I realised that his early enquiry about what we did for a living wasn’t about what we did but what we didn’t do, like work for the Inland Revenue.
I had a good look at him since I wouldn’t be required to comment until someone was asking me to choose between option A and B or wanting a cheque. He didn’t look like any sort of designer. I expect them to better turned out. I noticed how dirty his fingernails were, that he gave off an odour that was a curious mixture of tobacco and plasticine, that he was overweight but only from the hipbone up and that his shirt was unironed. It looked like he’d chosen it, not from the wardrobe, but from the bottom of the laundry basket. Perhaps it had been washed without detergent or he’d merely photographed the shirt and washed the photograph. It wasn’t really that it was dirty, just crumpled. Much like his face. The lines and bags beneath his eyes were a like roadmap leading you to a town called Debauchery. He was slightly camp but not in the same way that David Cameron is slightly oily (not so much a man, more a shiver looking for a spine to run up) but, and forgive the generalisation, his appearance would have been neater if he’d been gay so I wondered, given the sizeable wedding ring, if the campness was an affectation. Perhaps, like a doorman being macho or an English footballer being illiterate Kitchen designers have to be camp. Perhaps he was intentionally channelling Laurence Llewellyn Bowen when at work.
The discussion moved through colours, styles, cookers and hobs and reached extractor fans. Marianna’s attendance at exhibitions and consumption of magazines have helped her conclude that she wants a very expensive extractor fan that looks more like a chandelier than what it actually is. She told Danny, with regard to this, “I want a statement piece”. “Is the statement ‘I have more money than I know what to do with’?” I asked, clearly amusing only myself since the two of them united in giving me an old fashioned look. I’d declared how uncultured I was. Possibly until that point he thought I was the host or co-host of this party. But no, there I was with a glass of wine in one hand and a vaul-au-vent in the other, a definite guest. I don’t want to sound like something out of the ark but I recall when the main two things you needed in life cost the same amount. A 7” single = 65p. A cinema ticket = 65p. That’s my bench mark. The phrase most likely to fill my head in shops, regardless of what I’m buying, is “HOW MUCH!?!” and wanting to say “No no, my good man I wanted to purchase this single item not your shop and all of its stock”.
Danny left us promising to email some designs by Friday.
Max and his team should be starting within the month, possibly as early as the 24th, so we need to find somewhere else to live. We will need to embrace a new Kerouac existence. We have a few options; rent a house, rent a room in a shared house (I'm much too unsociable), rent student accommodation(you get a cleaner!), rent a static caravan on a holiday park or stay with friends for a few days at a time in the hope they don’t notice we’re homeless. I’m certainly not keen on student accommodation since this would be in Coventry and I have an allergy to Coventry. I’m also not keen on holiday parks since they’re out in the countryside. As much as I love to be in the middle of nowhere it would make getting to the train station and the gym (my only non-work activity) difficult. Marianna’s best idea is that we could buy a caravan or camper van. The logic being that rental money is lost whereas if we buy something we can live in it for a few months and then sell it when the house is finished at a minimal loss. I’ve never been in a caravan and never been on a caravanning holiday. I didn’t know it was something people did by choice. I thought it might be part of community service. And where would we park it? We’ve been living like squatters so a caravan must be the next step. What’s next? A park bench? Selling The Big Issue?
In Moben we were able to get an appointment with the kitchen designer for this afternoon. Danny joined us a couple of hours ago loaded down with samples. When did kitchen designer become a proper job? Isn’t it like calling yourself a hair comber? Surely people can manage these tasks for themselves. When did people become unable to arrange a couple of cupboards, some drawers, a sink and an oven in a reasonable way? It’s not the Rubic’s cube. There can’t be millions of combinations. Is this a complex task? Well, apparently it is because he didn’t do any actual designing but took notes on our tastes and requirements. Marianna went through her collection of magazine cuttings which, apparently, is a mood board. My mood board would just be a blackboard with “IRRITABLE” chalked on it or a picture of the face of a cat getting out of a bath. Danny gave himself away quite early on by saying that he was an independent designer subcontracting for Moben and we didn’t have to use them to supply the kitchen. They clearly don’t know this is his strategy. He also said that cash payments would keep some costs down. I realised that his early enquiry about what we did for a living wasn’t about what we did but what we didn’t do, like work for the Inland Revenue.
I had a good look at him since I wouldn’t be required to comment until someone was asking me to choose between option A and B or wanting a cheque. He didn’t look like any sort of designer. I expect them to better turned out. I noticed how dirty his fingernails were, that he gave off an odour that was a curious mixture of tobacco and plasticine, that he was overweight but only from the hipbone up and that his shirt was unironed. It looked like he’d chosen it, not from the wardrobe, but from the bottom of the laundry basket. Perhaps it had been washed without detergent or he’d merely photographed the shirt and washed the photograph. It wasn’t really that it was dirty, just crumpled. Much like his face. The lines and bags beneath his eyes were a like roadmap leading you to a town called Debauchery. He was slightly camp but not in the same way that David Cameron is slightly oily (not so much a man, more a shiver looking for a spine to run up) but, and forgive the generalisation, his appearance would have been neater if he’d been gay so I wondered, given the sizeable wedding ring, if the campness was an affectation. Perhaps, like a doorman being macho or an English footballer being illiterate Kitchen designers have to be camp. Perhaps he was intentionally channelling Laurence Llewellyn Bowen when at work.
The discussion moved through colours, styles, cookers and hobs and reached extractor fans. Marianna’s attendance at exhibitions and consumption of magazines have helped her conclude that she wants a very expensive extractor fan that looks more like a chandelier than what it actually is. She told Danny, with regard to this, “I want a statement piece”. “Is the statement ‘I have more money than I know what to do with’?” I asked, clearly amusing only myself since the two of them united in giving me an old fashioned look. I’d declared how uncultured I was. Possibly until that point he thought I was the host or co-host of this party. But no, there I was with a glass of wine in one hand and a vaul-au-vent in the other, a definite guest. I don’t want to sound like something out of the ark but I recall when the main two things you needed in life cost the same amount. A 7” single = 65p. A cinema ticket = 65p. That’s my bench mark. The phrase most likely to fill my head in shops, regardless of what I’m buying, is “HOW MUCH!?!” and wanting to say “No no, my good man I wanted to purchase this single item not your shop and all of its stock”.
Danny left us promising to email some designs by Friday.
Max and his team should be starting within the month, possibly as early as the 24th, so we need to find somewhere else to live. We will need to embrace a new Kerouac existence. We have a few options; rent a house, rent a room in a shared house (I'm much too unsociable), rent student accommodation(you get a cleaner!), rent a static caravan on a holiday park or stay with friends for a few days at a time in the hope they don’t notice we’re homeless. I’m certainly not keen on student accommodation since this would be in Coventry and I have an allergy to Coventry. I’m also not keen on holiday parks since they’re out in the countryside. As much as I love to be in the middle of nowhere it would make getting to the train station and the gym (my only non-work activity) difficult. Marianna’s best idea is that we could buy a caravan or camper van. The logic being that rental money is lost whereas if we buy something we can live in it for a few months and then sell it when the house is finished at a minimal loss. I’ve never been in a caravan and never been on a caravanning holiday. I didn’t know it was something people did by choice. I thought it might be part of community service. And where would we park it? We’ve been living like squatters so a caravan must be the next step. What’s next? A park bench? Selling The Big Issue?
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