July 31, 2009 Opal Mining Update - No 96 Hells Kitchen is all but Finished, at Last.

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Still at it as you can see, now the plastering has been finished, I have cut the holes in the roof for the down lights and pulled the cable through, so everything is looking good so far.

Steve is now sanding down the plastering of the joints and nail heads, after this it will be the laying of the tiles, then we will be getting somewhere when they are laid.

I have just laid a few tiles down on the floor so Pat can choose what kind of pattern she would like in MY kitchen, either the offset or straight lines all the way across the floor, me I like the off set pattern, just have to wait for her to come home and choose, tomorrow we start laying them.

This is the back corner next to the bathroom and the wall that the big work top is going against, so here I am just checking how square the corner is on the floor, its not bad at all and also pretty good where the top of the work top is going as well, worked hard on the back wall, there was one timber that had a huge bend in it and we had to cut some off with the power saw to get it vertical (5th tile to the right) bit of grinding here and there and we got the wall pretty level right across the face so the bench top should sit pretty flat against the wall when it is finished or at least I hope it will anyway as I do not have a plainer to trip any off it.

Here is day one on the tile laying and as you can see Pat choose the off set pattern which I also liked, it is starting to look like something now and has to be better than what was here before, which was a very bad job.

Day two and finished laying the tiles and a early finish this morning, cannot walk on this corner until the morning, I could have done this but for my knees they would not let me do this now, cannot kneel down now if I wanted to which is a pity, not good having to pay someone to do what you could have done before, but the job has to be done so have to pay for it, now to put a piece of 3x2 wood across the corner of both the spare room and the bathroom and then lay a timber across so we can get access to the spare room as that is where we make our drinks and food until we can get our kitchen back.

Day three and the grouting has been done and the job finished, now we can use the floor but have to tip toe on the tiles so we do not walk on the grout until it has dried properly which will be by the morning.

Now Steve is cutting and fitting the door way surround, not as good as he said he was at this, but then this is not his first mistake.

Job done, now to knock the nail heads in with a punch and then fill the small hole in with wood filler, have a lot more to do than this then I can begin to sand it all down as soon as it is dried, in a couple of hours time.

Job done and all the sanding has been finished, now its ready for the undercoat paint, still have some cornice to finish but cannot do it until some of the cabinets have been put in place so we will know just how long to cut them, I will paint them white before we put them up when ever that will be.

I am not painting where some of the cabinets are going as all cabinets top and bottom have backs so cannot see what is behind, but will put the undercoat on most of it.

The undercoat has been finished and now for me to put the two finish coats on the doorways which will be white and then tomorrow I will be ready for the paint on the wall's and doors with is called Brasso, Pat chose this color to go with the color of the cabinets and cupboards, will have to see how that turns out.

So now its Saturday and as I will do the paining on the doors and walls, I first have to cover up the doorframes with tape and paper so I do not catch them accidentally with the roller.

Now the doors, this is the easiest part of all the painting in here.

Now for the trimming around the edges, there is part of the cornice that has not been fitted and so I cannot do until the cabinets have been installed on the wall as I do not know the exact measurement that will be required until it is in place.

This is the tedious part and the part that takes the most time, not that I am a professional at this, so I will do the best I can and will take me a bit longer to get done.

I am only painting the walls where they will show, where the cabinets top & bottom go I will just overlap where they end up, also I will be putting tiles on the top of the bench top as backing tiles, which should look very good when finished.

Pats home and checking out what I have done she does not like the fact that I have not painted the walls all over, she cannot understand why should I waste time and paint when it is going to be covered over with cabinets and tiles and so I will continue on my way and she can complain when it is finished.

So far so good for my part in here, tomorrow its the lights being fitted and then we can see properly I hope anyway, as when they are fitted I can then see if I have done good with the choice of lights and the placement of them, but its too bad now if they are wrong, no turning back from this point.

The lighting is perfect, will know better when the cabinets are in place, but there are mistakes in the roof and the main wall (right in front) Steve did not do a good job with the plastering, well the finishing I should say, lumps and marks all over the place that I could not see before, he told me that he could do a good job on this and he lied, but right now I have to push on with the job as I am behind schedule, way behind.

Now for the first cabinet which is the corner pantry, big job and the heaviest, I will have to cut 20mm off the bottom of all these panels as the roof is still bowed towards the middle of the room which is where the middle panel is on the left, the floor is still not dead level but at this point is not bad, the light above the pantry will be fitted later as it is going to be on the inside, just inside the door.

Here we are assembling the pantry, its very heavy and will be more so when the colored outing gets put on, but it will be in the upright position and in place before that happens.

Just about finished and I did a good job in cutting the 20 mm off the bottom of all the pieces, clamped a piece of gray board with a nice straight edge on it to them,. then measured so that the power saw just took off the 20 mm and that way I had a straight line, worked perfectly and I did 2 white pieces at a time that were the same width then the other two, then cut the colored board one at time. So now all of the carcass is together I have to take it apart and stand it up piece by piece and screw it together again in place as there is no room to stand it up as it is, that is why I had to cut the 20 mm off the bottom, took a lot longer but had no choice.

Now we have got it apart I have marked and cut the hole where I want it with a jigsaw, 90 mm in diameter for putting the light in, trouble is that the first hole I cut in the roof is now out of place by about half of this hole, did not allow for the width of the timber nor the lean on the wall as this pantry is leaning away for the wall where the power point is in the photo, but no problems no one is going to see it. (I hope)

Up and in place, like I said cannot see the hole in the roof and it was out by half a hole so had to take a bit more out of the roof to line it up so the light could go up in the roof without catching on anything, worked out good, now on to the next job.

And that is putting up the cupboard that go over the fridge and then we have to put the side panel on and it is finished, for now anyway till I get round to putting the doors on later.

Ready for putting the fridge in, but have decided to put the doors on first, if you look at the top of the cupboard you can see the ceiling slop to the left and right on that left hand corner of the cupboard is the lowest point of the dip, thanks to this guy Steve who I got in to do the job did not tell me that the timbers were bent, if he had I would have replaced them, only four of them and would have cost another $100 plus a couple of hours to fix, now its too late to do anything and I am finding out by the day that this guy does not know what he said he did, so looks like I got conned, hate that when they say they can do a job and they cant, the actual finish on the ceiling is also shit thanks to his expertise in plastering/sanding, serves me right I should have got rid of him in the first week, but now he is just helping me.

Doors on and looking good, one thing that was wrong is that when I went to open the left hand door it caught on the roof as it dipping in towards the center of the roof, so had to put the hinges down as far as it would go and match it with the other one, just misses the ceiling by 1 mm, now to try the fridge, will have to pull it back out later and level it up and cut a mouse hole in the panel on the left hand side for a electric lead to go through for Pats microwave, she wants to have a small cupboard there for it, if it will fit, cannot try it yet, its in the cutting room, that's the door on the left in the photo.

Now we are putting the top cupboards together that will go on the wall to the left of photo on the stove/oven side.

This one will be over the stove and hold the range hood in place, it has got the holes already machined in it for the flue pipe that will go up into the ceiling and through the roof and had to be sent up to me as plus one other shelf that they forgot to put with the pack when I picked it up, having a hard time on all sides right now.

This is the three that will go up on this wall, will get joined together as we put them up, one at a time.

Now the corner cabinet, this is next to the sink cabinet and goes against the wall in the background where the water pipes are.

Starting to look like something at last, had to bring the cabinet on the right out off the wall with a 32mm block of wood and screw on a piece of white timber so I can glue a piece of the colored outing onto it, they supplied a piece like a door that I have to cut a 30mm piece off and glue onto this white piece to fill the gap in so it blends in with the cupboards doors when finished.

Now I have finished the corner shelves and screwed it onto the cupboards, it does not screw onto the wall behind, now to cut the hole in the ceiling for the flue pipe, at a later time we will have to mark the roof and get a hole through it for the pipe and then fit it, that will be interesting on how to mark it exactly right through this hole looking up at the roof for me to drill a hole where it has to be.

Now we can use this big cabinet as a bench top to work on, making things somewhat easier on the backs, this large cupboard will be going on the wall next to the front room.

I have put the pantry shelves in, but as this is a free standing unit and the floor is pretty level at this point (another job that did not go well with this guy) I will have to make the bottom shelf a fixture, as the bottom of the panels just spread out a touch, so I have to go and buy some small angle brackets that I can screw on the bottom shelf and pull the bottom of this pantry in and make it a real solid structure and as you can see the fridge fits good, my measurements work out perfectly, as I had cut off that 20mm so I worked out that I had 15mm left for clearance from the top of the fridge to the bottom of the cupboards and I did, so all was well.

You can see how much the wall leans back, not much I could do about this as it would have required ripping out all of the four walls and building new ones and that was not possible in this old house, so I had to work with what I had, the ceiling was different it would not have required much to put that straight, still we can cover this up later with cornice  as that still has to be finished off in this area now this pantry etc is in.

Again you can see the gaps that the uneven ceiling has caused and the wall on the right slants in and not out, most of this at the top will be hidden by the cupboard that will go up here but I expect that some space will still be present and seen, will have to worry about that later.

This is the kitchen sink cabinet as you can see, I am now working by myself putting the rest of the cabinets together as I do not need a hand to do this and have to save some money where I can, better for me to be on my own for while had enough of this guy for a while, when I need a hand again I will get him back, but only to help me I will do all of the measuring and marking and drilling from now on, don't trust him and cannot afford any more mistakes from now on, if I make one than I have to live with it or pay for it, either way it will be mine.

Got the hole in the ceiling done, still have to make a mark on the inside of the corrugated iron roof where I want to drill a hole some 165 mm in diameter for this flue pipe.

I had to finished this cabinet myself, it required me to cut the pieces of chipboard that they supplied me for making the rails as they call them, I have also fitted the small plastic fitting that will hold down the top by putting screws through them when the time comes, now I can turn this over and use it as a work bench and save the back, will speed things up a bit.

Starting to get there, have put the doors on three of the cupboards, but cannot do the middle cupboard yet until I get the range hood fitted and for that I will need a hand so that will be a next weeks job.

Starting to get some things back in operation, no stove as yet and no sink, but Pat has cleaned out a couple of cupboards that were using and started to fill the pantry, so far its looks pretty good and better than what we had before and at least the fridge/freezer is out of the laundry now so Pat has that back as well, was  taking up a lot of room in there and making it hard to do the laundry etc, so slowly getting back to normal.

Now I am measuring where the feet are going to be on the bottom of this cabinet, then I have to pre-drill and then screw the leg bases to it.

At the front they have to be a certain distance in from the edge for the kick boards to run along and later I have to mark and also drill holes straight though the bottom for this kick board to be screwed onto.

This is a small side cabinet that will fit along side the cabinet above, it has a 45 degree front to it, small but part of the design and I did not ask for this but as they could not make a full cabinet in the space that I have this makes up what space was left so will have to do, pretty easy working like this by yourself when you can use a clamp now and again to hold a piece while you do the screwing or drilling, worked out good anyway as you can see.

So here are the two together, but not joined together as yet, that will come later when I put the screw legs on and level up the tops.

Just put the top on to see how far out of level it is for a trial run, will take it off later and put it back in the room for a day or so until I need it.

Now to put the drawers together, this lot is for one cabinet which has a set of four drawers in it and is going on the side of the sink cabinet.

This is the two side's of the drawer cabinet completed, now onto the drawers themselves.

Did all the drawers while I was at it, there is three deep in one cabinet and four normal one's in the other, now to finish putting the cabinet itself  together.

This cabinet is now finished will have to adjust the drawers later when the cabinet is in place and joined with the other next to it, which is the next job, putting it together.

This is another small corner cabinet, smaller than the other and there is a bigger problem with this one then the other, that one only had the bottom and middle shelf a bit to wide, by 4mm and 2mm, but this is way out, the side on the right is supposed to sit on the bottom (back) panel and as it is it sits next to it, I know what thy have done but rang the boos and sent him this photos showing him what the problem was, he rang back saying that they had worked out that the machining was wrong (hello did I not know that) and that they had left 16mm on the width, I already knew that also, so asked me if I could machine this amount off other wise they would have to make two new ones and send them up to me (again) another 5 days, so I cut the 16mm off with the power saw and got the job done, another mistake from them.

Here is the job done, this is so narrow I cannot think of what it will be good for, still have to put the colored panels on the outside yet to finish it off, it goes next to the drawer cabinet at the back on the left when finished and screwed to it making it one and topped with a working bench top.

What a pain this cabinet was, as I do not have the special tools that these fitters have in the factory, I had to take half of it apart again to drill and get the screws in from the inside to screw on the colored panel and then put the rest back on again, took twice as long to do, as it is now it is not finished, the top is not fixed on, but the two cabinets are screwed together as one, but cannot finish this one until the sink cabinet is finished and fixed to the wall and the stove/oven in place so I know the distance between this one and the stove.

Now I am putting together one of the corner shelves that goes onto the end of the top cupboards, this one is next to the sliding door leading into the front room, Pat is giving me a hand with this as I have to mark, line up, get it dead square and then drill the pilot holes for the screws, this cannot be done at the factory as it is up to me as to where I want the shelves, but I just put them all even, top and bottom has to be exactly that to put it together, so just put the other two shelves evenly spaced out like the other unit, so we have a matching pair.

Job done, thanks to Pat hard to everything by yourself at times, now to put this in the front room out of the way until next week when this Steve is back to give me a hand finishing some things off.

At last all of the cabinets are finished being assembled, now I can get onto putting the adjustable legs on and standing the cabinets right side up, ready for screwing together.

First I will join these tow together, just lined them up and made sure they are level then clamped them together, now to drill pilot holes 30mm in with a drill bit smaller in diameter than the screw and then change drill bits and drill a hole a bit bigger in diameter than the screw into the white wood only so the screw head can be countersunk, this is the same procedure on all of the screws that have been put in the cabinets and cupboards, then white plastic caps are put on the screw heads.

Now for me to do the plumbing, do not trust this Steve with any measurements anymore, every thing now had to be spot on, so I have measured and drill the hole for the water pipes in the back of the cabinet and also drilled the hole for the sink plumbing pipes, which I also got ready a few days ago.

Could not affords any mistakes here as the old pipe had to be cut 30mm off the floor so the ninety degree elbow fitted, with the two elbows fitted together and no gap in between the two just fitted underneath the cabinet with about 5mm spare, but I do not like the way this guy brought out thee water pipes form the wall, I asked why he did this and forget the stupid answer he gave me, but hope it does not give me any trouble when I get round to fitting then to the mixer tap, the water pipes should have come straight out from the wall, anyway will have to see what happens here later.

Just trying the sink, it will sit about where it is but a bit higher, so I am just figuring out what connections I will have to use to connect all of this plumbing to the bottom outlet elbow, have to try and line things up so I can cut a nice neat and as narrow as possible slot in the middle shelve, which I cannot do until it is all finished under here, now I will join then all up together and the outlet elbow underneath is in perfect place, so I can now continue with the assembly.

I have got this side done and almost finished, the bottom cabinet is finished, top is fixed on and ready for the doors to be put on, same with the top cupboard, had some trouble in making to level had to put a 10mm spacer behind the bottom of the cupboard to square everything up, so have a gap on the side to fix up later, but getting there.

Now this Steve is back giving me a hand, we turned off the water undid the mixer tap and got the water pipes thought the cabinet and connected the mixer again, but what a frigging job with the pipes being at right angles, the are going to be a problem I am sure like that, how do I get conned into things when I know they do not look right.

The weather has been bad this last few days, but today it has turned out good, no wind and somewhat warmer so we went up on the roof and cut a hole in it for this flue pipe, I had borrowed a long drill bit from a friend of mine, but was still not long enough so I got a six inch long piece of round steel and welded it onto the end and I used it as a center punch, did try a piece of mild steel but it just bent the pointed end over and a drill bit was the ideal choice for hardness, it was a bit hard try to pin point the center of this hole but managed to do it with a tape measure and sprit level, all I had to do then was hit the end of this drill bit with the hammer a couple of times to put a dent in the roof, so when we went up top I could see where to start cutting the 127mm hole, worked out perfect, put some silicone around it and put the witches hat on the pipe and the job was done. Was also very lucky with power point in here as I had told this guy at the beginning that he had not put it where it should be and his answer was that we did not want it behind the pipe but on the side, but again he had measured wrong and the bracket that was fixed to the timber behind the wall was well out of position and the end of the cupboard had missed it by about two inches, we had to cut a bit of the Gyprock board away to let electric cable get between the back of the cupboard and the Gyprock so I could screw on the power point, so I just got away with it and I mean just.

So this is the space between the stove and the bench top as the stove is now center on the flue pipe and the gap is 50mm (2 inches) so now I know what I need on the cabinet on the other side and I also now know the overhang of the bench top on the stove side so now I can measure and fix the bench top on this left cabinet.

Today was a big day for me (Saturday) as today was the day we or I as it turned out was going to cut the hole in the bench top and fit the sink, this had to be done dead right first time, so I had to mark the top from underneath where the left hand side of the cabinet met the top with a straight pencil line, then I knew where the big sink bowl was going to be, then we took the top off and placed it upside down on two milk crates. They has supplied a template which was part of the packaging it came in, they said to use it or the sink and I found that I did not like the template so I used the sink itself and turned it upside down and marked round it with a pencil, then they instructed that I mark inside that line by 12 mm and cut the hole to that, which is what I did, I marked the lines and drew the straight lies with my sprit level (used for all of my line marking) and then rubbed out the outside lines so I did not get confused then I used a small plastic bowl I was using for keeping screws in for the round corners and it work out perfectly. Then I used the power saw for cutting the outline, lowered it slowly onto the top and the saw slowly cut into the chipboard and did a perfect job, after cutting all of the straight lines, I then used the jigsaw for cutting round the corners and out came the piece, very nice and neat job, then it was time to put the top back on fasten it down and get to the job of fixing the sink in with the clips that they provided with the sink, problem was that the three clips that went on either side of the sink would not fit as they would be going where the cabinets joined together, so would have to make holes for then to sit in and large enough so that they would fit in when the sink was lowered with then fitted to it. And this is where we had a problem, not with the sink or clips but with the Steve, was so much stuff this guy was supposed to know when I got him and showed him the job, said he could do it all, what a crock of shit that was, sucked me in for sure but as we had started I had to put up with him, but did not realized that he was that bad until he had done some real bad work turned out I trusted him to much before I found out and this was the final straw was also the last morning that I would have required him, but he did not really know how to fit this sink in and was standing around and thinking too much so I told him straight that why he was here as he was supposed to know about putting this in, now there was two dummies standing around and he was getting paid or so he thought, pity I had paid him by the week another mistake on my part, anyway we argued and he walked out which did me fine as he did not get paid for this weeks work, but I was keeping some anyway for me to do the repainting etc on the ceiling and the wall above the sink. What he had done that really pissed me off was that he said the clips would fit and had fitted them all to the sink then I had to run some sealing tape around the outside edge of the sink (the underneath part) and on top of that I had to run a thick bead of silicone to make the seal water prove as per instructions, then we went to fit it and the sink would not go in because the holes me made for the clips were not deep enough, so the clips would not fit though, bit different then trying one by hand, so now the sink is back out and back on the crates, we now have to clean off the silicone sealant off the bench top as it is going off and also clean it off the tape that is stuck to the sink, course it does not want to come off the tape unless we take the tape of as well, so I went out to buy some more while I left him to do the cleaning, turns out that it cannot be bought here in Coober Pedy, why did I know that, so when I got back I went off again at him and that was it, gone he was, friggin dick head, what a waste of my time and money. So here I am by myself and wondering what to do to get out of this shit, so I did clean off the silicone the best I could without ripping off any of the tape, took off the three clips on the right hand side and the three from the front, left them on the back and the left hand side and tried to fit it, turns out there was four  holes, two on each side that needed to be open up some, so did that and tired to fit it again and still had a bit more to open up, after that it went in good and as I could now get the remaining clips on from underneath (he said he could not be done) so with the clips on the left hand side and on the back of the sink I put plenty of the silicone on again and fitted the sink into the bench top and in it went with no problems, then got on the floor and fitted the rest of the clips and screwed then in place and the job was done, could have done it all by myself as it turned out in the first place, what a disaster this guy was, did not know him at all until this job but I know his brother, my wife works with his wife and he told me about him and said he had just finished another house and knew what he was doing, wait until I see this Wayne again, tell him what I think about him and his brother. Anyway this photo is taken the day after, was so upset doing the job with him there that I forgot about the photos, so here it is all done and the plumbing is also finished and I am happy with what I have done, the plumbing is in a straight line and will be say to fit the shelve when I measure and cut a hole then cut the gap out with the power saw, will also have to drill another 3 x 5mm holes across the back of the cabinet for some more support lugs, they have only got two on each side and for me that is not enough support for anything heavy on such a big and long shelf now it is a lot stronger, I have to do this to the cabinet next to the pantry, same size cabinet and shelf.

Now I have to fit the handles onto the drawers, not a big job just have to careful with the measuring and marking, the rest is easy.

So now I am fitting the doors on the sink cabinet and doors are the wrong size as much as I try I cannot get any clearance as you can see here, so I measured them and each door measures 508 mm, then I measured the carcass which is what they call the cabinet without the doors, and it measured 1016mm, so they cut the doors exactly the same width as the cabinet, no wonder I was having trouble, so on the phone, man I am getting shit from everybody, talk about Hells Kitchen.

This is the last cabinet to have to doors fitted and guess what, Yep the doors are wrong again, what a Mob of Dickheads, they must have put an apprentice on this job and nobody checked his work or is it because we live up here in Coober Pedy, don't rightly know but it is costing them as they have to redo all this work and pay for the freight to get it up to me here on the bus, the down side is that it takes five days to get to me, so another is on the way. Turned out that the advice I was given by this salesman on how to fix this gap was totally wrong the hinge cannot be adjusted to take out this 5mm gap to 2mm, so I told him that he would also have to make another right had door to go with the left one, so he said that he would tell the guy in the workshop to go out to the bus depot and bring back the two doors off the sink cabinet and the left door they have just made for this cabinet, but turned out that this guy did not go and bring them back as I got three doors up here four days later, the sink cabinet doors fitted good if not a couple of millimeters to wide but got them fitted alright and adjusted good. But the door that they sent to replace the left hand side to the corner cabinet was machined 10mm to wide, from one extreme to the other, first it was machined out by 5mm where the hinges go, so the door sat to low and could not be adjusted out now it will not fit on at all, so he has asked me to send all of the doors back as they are running out of this colored material, the door they have just sent can have the 10mm machine off it and the plastic outside strip put back on and now they can make another one out of one of these bigger doors, but by the time they get there and then get back here it will be almost 2 weeks so will not be done this month as it is the 27th now and will be sent on the bus tonight, they may get then on Friday may not and they do not work over the weekend, oh well, can manage with out doors at least.

I recon these doors are also machined wrong where the hinges go, but I cannot pick where even though I have measured them all over, but one door on the left is at its maximum adjustment down and the right hand is at it maximum adjustment up and they just line up, but as the bench top has a slight bend in as well in the middle I could not raise the left hand door if I wanted to as it would just catch the middle of the bench top, looks good as long as you do not look underneath like this.

Here I am fixing up this wall, the only bloody wall that you can see a lot of and he had to stuff it up, but then the ceiling is just as bad if not worse, but one coat of special paint will fix that and not such a big job, tape the cupboards up with paper, then drop the lights and tape paper around them and give it coat of paint, when I get it and nobody will be the wiser and as I have to use this special paint in the front room I will not be buying as an extra, have to use it on the ceiling and the walls, so here I am just sanding the lumps off, one small area where the undercoat paint ran a bit and a small dent in the material, should be alright after I have done this.

Came out alright, one small area where I took a lump off and it feathered the paint back and was leaving the marks so had to touch it up with the paint brush, took 3 coats to make it good, but happy with the finish now, more than Pat was when she realized that I was going to make some dust again, but the sander caught most of it so not a lot escaped around the kitchen and I cleaned most of it up before she got home, so what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve or so the saying goes.

Now all of this area is finished and looks aright, we now have more cupboard space then we know what to do with, but I suppose that eventually it will all get filled, you can see on the far right hand side the 32mm piece that I had to cut of a special piece they sent me for this, then I had to sand it etc to make it fit in against the wall and next to the cupboard, I had to think about this as there was going to be a slight gap here and there along the length of it as the wall is not perfectly level in this area and if I used this white gap filler it would stick out and if I used the Gyprock glue as this idiot that was here suggested it would have looked a bluely-green in color. Then I remembered that we have a product called No Nails, a glue that I have not used before but have seen it at friends places and I remembered that it was brown in color, so I went and bought a tube of it and applied this the ends and fitted it, did not quite put enough is a couple of places on the right hand side so went to take it off to put some more on and it was stuck on, so looks like I was lucky that I put it in the right place the first time, then I used a little bit of it like a filler and the job came out perfect, the color blends in with the cupboard, not quite the same color but cannot pick it unless you get real close up to have a look and nobody is going to do that, so that was a win for me.

I have had to come back into this spare room and take this panel off again, not that it took much doing, only had small nails down the right hand side, none had gone into the timber on the left, there was no timber in the wall for me to anchor this cabinet to, was just in the wrong place and two low for the ones that was there going across and the brown hard wood timber next to the light switch was also in the wrong position as the two cabinets were joined at that point so could not get any screws in there, so had to put another small noggin in here, used some of that No Nails Glue on it and used a couple of Tec Screws as I do not have that nail gun anymore, got the job done as was very solid when finished. But I have also realized after I have fixed the cabinet to this timber from the kitchen side that he did not leave enough play in the electric lead to the double power point on the other side for me to get it through the tile when I cut the hole in it for this power point, so will have to leave this panel off until the tiling is finished, then I can put it back on again, I cannot understand what he has done here, should have watched him all he had to do was connect this lead to an existing power point at the far left of this wall connect the electric lead to another new double power point to the left and then down to this one at the end of the line, three connections, but I see that the lead has come down to where I have put the noggin in and then it doubles back, why I have no idea, again this guy did not know that much, could and should have done this myself, I could have done a lot more by myself, but as I got him in to the most of the job I just left him to it while I was on other things, bad mistake by the looks of it, but everything works as we have been using all of the power points just a waste of electric lead that I had to get and pay for.

This cabinet is now finished completely and screwed into that noggin behind the wall panel, it is very solid now, the gaps on either side of the oven as the same, but will have to pull the oven out again later, may even have to disconnect the gas line again as I have to screw a temporary piece of timber to the wall behind it so I can have something to sit the tiles on while I put the tiles across that gap, to make sure they do not sag out of line while I do the job, then after I can  take it off and nobody will see the screw holes in the wall.

So I have a very hard time in transforming this old kitchen into the new one, been screwed from both ends I can tell you, with a Idiot that said he could do everything and could very little well no pride or interest in the finished job, the guy that I was going to get before this idiot did very nice work as I had been to his house and a dugout that he was working on, but he told me straight out that he could not hang doors and I had four of them to put in, he was very honest, not like this Idiot that I finally ended up with, never said he could not do anything lead me to believe that he was the man, but ended up doing very little real good, very disappointing and when we had started the job I was stuck with him at that point too late to try and get someone else as most were busy that were able to come and do it. This last couple of day I have been relaxing and I managed to get rid of most of the rubbish that came out of the old kitchen, just a bit more to get rid of and its all gone, as for the kitchen I still have to do the tiling for the backing on tops and the kick boards at the bottom of the cabinets, now that I have never done, so we are going down to Port Augusta to do some shopping again, will have to buy a tile cutter and a tool that I can use with my power saw for cutting miters and angles as these kick boards at 5 inches wide or high depends on how you look at them. The main reason we are going down to Port Augusta is to purchase some tiles and paint for the front room as Pat and I have decided to continue into that room and we are done, puts value on the house and we have done nothing to it since we bought it 12 years ago, so its time, we also would like a new AC for it, so while Pat is still working and earning the money we will do it, she has already saved the money up, but needs to keep working to replace it, never seem to keep much saving in the bank, like everybody I suppose always something to spend it on. So next month I will be finishing the kitchen not a big job now, and I will also have to do some cleaning up along side the house where the work bench is as everything as been disrupted by the renovation, then I can slowly get back to finishing off the pipe sleeve clamps and get the pipes ready, not sure when we will start on the front room, will need a hand for the walls there and it would be this last idiot I can tell you, the tiling I may do or may not as my knees are shot and its hard for me to knee down I may not be able to do it, so will see, may do a try on on my knees to see how they go and that will tell me if I can do the job or not. Would like to get back mining ASAP but my web sire has also suffered and I have a lot of items that have to be replaced, not that I have sold much this last few months but the shops still are selling there own items and need to be replaced, so I also have that to do as well, so I will be busy doing a bit of everything, only thing is that when we start on the front room its going to belike the kitchen, once started it has get done ASAP and it will not be 4 hours per day like the kitchen, that one of the reasons it took so long, should have been half the time if working a normal day and as it turned out I can and did work longer hours, thought my knee would have really bothered me but it came good, it was the left foot that was the main trouble but only after I took the boots off for the day. So next month you should see me doing something to do with mining, even if its only doing repairs of modifications, still have to find a new spot to put the machine down and that may take a while, cannot hurry that have to travel around looking and checking till I find what I think will make some opal and till have to work on the front room as well, not that I am in a hurry to get that job started I can tell you and will have to find a better person that the last to help me with the walls I can tell you. Again I Hope you have enjoyed this issue and look forward to the next one, hopefully I will have some more good photos to show you in the next issue and maybe some of Good Looking Opal and lots of it, I am still hoping that this will be a good year for us, but only time will tell, so stay with us over the next few months and find out what goes on in our part of the world as far as Opal Mining goes. Stay Tuned for the next Issue, who knows what I will have to report. Until the next issue......... and wish me lots of LUCK. Cya Later, Stuart Bird. To return back to the Archived Page for more Updates click, Here!

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