A Project Management Led Approach To A New Kitchen
I said in this post which I called Reflections on Surviving Another Year, that 2015 will be the Year of the Kitchen.
I should say that I’ve only once done any real project management, but I did spent much of a working life reasonably successfully providing software solutions for project managers to use.
So let’s look at my kitchen today.
It’s a bit of a mess, but I know where everything is.
The problems are in addition to those highlighted in the pictures..
1. There is not enough space to put everything.
2. Where is my frying pan? It’s actually in one of the cupboards.
3. There are not enough electrical sockets.
4. The light is terrible.
5. I have only one sink with cheap and nasty taps.
6. The cooker hood is broken.
7. I don’t use the dishwasher, but it doesn’t work well.
8. My style of cooking uses a lot of spices and they get everywhere.
9. There is no freezer in the kitchen
I can also lay down a set of objectives about the design and installation of the new kitchen.
1. It must be capable of accepting a new AGA City60, after completion, if I should so desire. As all this requires is a flat floor, a 600 mm. wide space and a 32 amp connection, I could buy and fit one tomorrow.
2. Everything must use standard size cabinets.
3. There needs to be a button I can press, that activates a force field to chase unwanted visitors out.
4. I’m not without a sink, cooker or work surface for food preparation for more than a few days.
5. It would be nice if the freezer problem could be fixed early.
These inevitable lead to a series of work modules.
1. The area in the living room, where I would effectively create a workshop extension on the other side of the hole in the wall. This section would have a small under counter freezer, a set of drawers and some storage space. It would also cover up the central heating manifold.
2. The upper part of the wall behind the cooker, where I would replace the broken cooker hood and the two wall cabinets. A subsidiary objective here, would be to create more space to keep things out of the way of future modules.
3. The wall containing the sink by the window.
4. The side of the kitchen facing the living room.
5. The worktops and what I do to join the two halves of the back-to-back in-the-hole shared worktop. I have a very different idea for this.
The whole sequence might change, but if I do Module 1 first, it does tidy up the living room and allow me to finish it, get me a freezer and more space in the kitchen. I also don’t lose the cooker or the sink.
My Front Garden
I now have a front garden.
Note the berberis. People regularly sit on my front walls and drink rubbish beer and eat disgusting takeaways late at night. As none of it is gluten-free I worry about their helth.
Hopefully, a few pricks up the backside will make them think twice about their diet and they will sit somewhere else!
The First Two Shelves For My Vertical Garden
They might not look like that as they sit amongst the builders rubbish in my garage, but I’m getting ready to start assembling my vertical garden.
The pictures show the steel beams in their primed state, some of the beams in my house with their dark chocolate paint and brass bolts, and the large expanse of wall with the glazed roof above.
I’ve put the lights in the pictures, as I have masses of lights in this house I don’t like.
Ever since I moved here, I’ve searched for something better, but all I see is expensive crap more suitable for an Algerian brothel or an Arab’s palace in Mayfair.
So what if I got a length of steel beam about 600 mm long, painted it chocolate and bolted it to the wall with brass bolts. On top could be some LED ropelights and their driver. I could also put ornaments or flowers at each end of the light. I would use IP65 components, so that it didn’t matter if they got wet.
Someone actually pointed out to me that orchids don’t need watering.
I reckon each light would cost about a hundred quid and if I didn’t like the colour, I’d just change the flowers.,
Isn’t designing gardens in the air fun?
Sorting Out My Staircase
I live on the top floor of a two story house in the sun. This is my staircase.
It needs a handrail capping off the glass. The glass is 20 mm thick.
The level bit at the top is 880 mm.
The top slope is 2640 mm long and the bottom is 1310 mm.
As everything is at all sorts of angles, I think it’ll be a nightmare to fit.
I also need a handrail on the wall.
I know that brass will be expensive, but this London mongrel doesn’t want to meet the devil through falling down the stairs. She threw me back once, so she’d probably reject me again!
My Crazy Electricity Meter
My electricity meter is baffling me.
These are my dates and readings.
20-Oct – 37108
14-Oct – 37049
18-Sep – 38777
08-Sep – 38843
15-Aug – 38331
16-Jul – 36764
17-Jun – 35353
I can explain all of the figures until September the 8th, when because of the heat in July and August, I was using the air-conditioning a lot.
But the last few readings indicate to me, that something has gone wrong.
I have phoned my supplier; OVO, and they seem to be worried too. After my previous billing experience with nPower, I’m glad I’ve changed.
Was Jerry’s Junk Poisoning Me?
This afternoon the cause of the temperature rise I noticed here, has hopefully been resolved.
Richard from RC Electrics has removed the old transformers from the roof and replaced them with modern units.
Have you ever seen junk like this? They were running really hot and all the Bakelite cases were in bits.
I asked if there were any health hazards with what I thought was Bakelite and I found this page. It says this.
Bakelite is made in a process that uses Phenol and formaldehyde both of which are toxic. Bakelite is safe to handle, but may deteriorate over time releasing the toxins in small quantities.
Only time will tell, if there is any improvement in the air in this house.
But after sitting here with the windows closed and the lights off for half-an-hour, the temperature has stabilised at 24.6°C, as opposed to 25.3°C last time. The difference is accounted for by different temperatures outside and the updated roof. I’ve now switched the lights on and we’ll see what happens.
After half-an-hour it’s risen to 24.7°C with a humidity of 44%. Three hours later it was 24.1°C and 43%.
How Does Switching On My LED Lights Warm The Room?
At about 17:30 with the lights off in my living room the temperature was 25.5°C with a humidity of 41%. I switched on the LED lights and by 19:00 the temperature has risen to 25.8°C with a humidity of 42%.
I thought it might have been some external factor, like the weather.
So I then switched the lights off and now the temperature has dropped to 25.3°C with a humidity of 42%.
I suspect Jerry used drivers that are little better than radiant heaters.
Easing London’s Housing Crisis
It’s now four years since I bought this house.
It had been built rather badly by a company called Back Street Developments about ten years ago and there seemed to be no NHBRC registration for it. In the intervening years the previous owners had put tenants in, and they had done there best to wreck it. The owner obviously skimped on maintenance, but then all these facts were reflected in the price I paid.
Some time ago, I started to get the house straight. Finding a builder has been a nightmare!
The first builder walked away from the job after personality clashes between the owner and his work-force, leaving me without a bathroom.
I’ve got one coming in fom outside London, things seem a bit better.
An illustration of the problem is that people locally are always asking, if I know a good builder. I also want to sort my dreadful kitchen. I have asked several companies to look at it and not one has ever made a fixed appointment or even turned up.
I suspect that kitchen companies would prefer to fit out some multi-millionaire’s house in Mayfair, rather than my small kitchen.
I do wonder how many properties are not lived in, as the owners are waiting for a builder to sort it out. And how many people are put off downsizing, as theycan’t be bothered to go through all the hassle of finding a builder.
So if we sorted out the refurbishment of small and medium sized properties, would we release more properties for occupation?
The first thing we should do is to seriously analyse the homes market and identify why properties are empty or under-occupied!
Any soutions we propose should of course be nationwide, as I don’t believe this is just a London problem.
I Want One Of These!
I saw this tap in John Lewis today.
I Want One Of These!
I’m going to have one in my kitchen. It’s a Franke Belfast.
Does My Roof Make Me Ill?
Read this article on the BBC web site and then look at the pictures of the roof that Jerry built.
The BBC article says this.
He said there were simple measures anyone could take – whether living in a well-insulated home or not – to keep heat levels down, such as keeping windows closed during the day to trap cool air and opening them at night.
Fitting shutters to windows and painting exterior walls white – both common sights in Mediterranean countries – would also help, but were unlikely to be widely adopted in the UK due to the relative rarity of heatwaves.
Couple this advice with the actions of a friend, who lives in her house with a flat roof and gets it painted silver every few years.
My roof, is virtually matt black and is therefore a wonderful heat absorber, which it then just radiates into the house.
I will be doing two things.
In the first place, I’ll be getting the roof fixed and then painted in a reflective colour.
But the most radical thing I’ve going to do is put up a sunshade over all of the flat roofs. One roof is probably about 4 x 7 metres and the other is about 4 x 5 metres.
They will of course help to pay for their own installation, as they will be solar panels.
As the roof is flat and they will be invisible to everybody except the police helicopter or the Air Ambulance, I don’t think anyone has any grounds to object.
If the roof is making me ill, it should at least help to solve the problem.
The Anonymous Widower 