HiveComb

To do justice to this story, I need to take you back way back in the mists of time when we first bought our house. As you do, we did a heck of a lot of DIY. One of the projects I completed was the cupboard space under the stairs, which was originally just an open space, and then laid the tiled floor you can see in this picture. (By the way, that was our first dog, Archie. I still miss him now. 😞 )

Fast forward to last year and the wife decided to have a company called Sharps come and replace the cupboard under the stairs. TBH I wasn't best pleased as I knew it would be expensive (Little did I know just how expensive!). Sharps is reasonably well known in the UK if not for their adverts whereby people sit in their house looking at wasted space and then miraculously pulling, pushing lifting all manner of cupboards, bookshelves and wardrobes into recesses and corners, thus making the best of supposed dead spaces in the home. You get three visits from Sharps. First off, the salesperson comes and sells you the dream, in our case £1500.00 worth of dream! The second visit is from the individual who will measure up the job and finalise your requirements. For me, this is the point whereby it all started to go horribly wrong.

Me: "Hang on, you're not measuring from the edge of the staircase?"

Sharps: "I have to measure from 3cm inside the stairs."

Me: "But that means I will have a 4cm gap between the floor and the cupboard?"

Sharps: "Oh, we don't come out to the floor."

Me: "WHAT!?"

Sharps: "Didn't they say?"

Me: "No, they didn't! OK, OK. What about the facia board on the staircase?"

Sharps: "Oh, we don't do that."

Me: "WHAT?"

Sharps: "You'll need to buy some board and edging to sort that out."

Me: "Seriously? £1500.00, and you're basically shoving two cupboards under the stairs? Unbelievable!"

Now, dear reader, the wife had her heart set on it and, as most married men know, better to go with the flow. So with the third visit, the fitting job was completed, and yes, it looks nice, but we lived with a 4cm gap along the tiled floor for a year.

Three weeks ago

The time had come to replace the floor in the hallway (I should point out that the front door in the photo is no longer there either, it's a very old photo.) the wife and I visited one of those wooden click flooring outlets. At these sorts of gigs, I try to look enthusiastic and pray to The Pond Gods that I nod and smile at the right points when asked, "What about this one?" The wife decided on a White Oak flooring which I liked if truth be told. We coughed up the £600 odd including fitting and arranged the date for fitters to come to our house.

What a week last week was!

Sadly, one of my daughters has Crohn's and had been taken into hospital the previous Friday, so after a pretty draining weekend, we were looking forward to the fitters arriving bright and early on the Monday morning. I should point out that I had taken three days' holiday for this floor project. I had to get the old tiled floor up which, to be fair, went remarkably well so that everything was ready for the fitters.

Fitter: "Ermm? We can't do the job, mate.

Me: "Why? What's the problem?"

Fitter: "Your boards are too thick The front door won't open or shut.

I mean, who thinks to measure under doors? I thought these floorboards were standard?

Fitter: "Also mate, your floor needs screeding, it's not level."

Me: "Oh, for ......"

The poor wife had just completed a twelve-hour night shift and needed to get to bed, but obviously, we needed to get down the floor shop and sort this mess out. After a few choice words on my part, we agreed on the fitters coming back and screeding the floor for £100 and then returning again the day after to fit the new, thinner floor we'd chosen.

"That's strange; the wife hasn't called yet to tell me the floor is done?" it was now around midday, and the fitters came at 8 am, so they should have finished ages ago? Around 2 pm my mobile rang, it was the wife.

Me: "Hello Bubb."
Deathly Silence

Me: "Don't tell me. You don't like it?"

Wife: "It's horrible! It doesn't go with the carpets or the kitchen floor."

Me: "Well that's six hundred quid down the drain."

Wife: "I'm so fed up, everything is going wrong this week, the floor, my car, our daughter............."

Me: "OK Bubb, there's no point in having something you hate. You'll have to go and choose another one."

The wife has chosen Mocha Oak. I'm not overly keen, but I'm not telling the missus that. There are now some packs in the dining room, and the fitters are coming back yet again next Tuesday. So that's two lots of fitting to be paid for along with two lots of floor. 😭

My actual name is Pete. Here is why I have the username dickturpin.

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