Tag Archives: tile cutter

Monday 10th February 2014 – I WISH I KNEW …

… where my tile cutter is. I could have finished the window surround today.

window surround stairs les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs you can see, I’ve done three of the sides with the offcuts of tongue-and-grooving from the ceiling. That meant fitting battens to the walls and routing the anenometer cable underneath. And then each piece of tongue-and-groowing had to be cut and shaped individually, and that took a while – until lunchtime in fact.

After lunch I put the first coat of varnish on all of the wood that I’ve fitted so far, and then we started the “hunt the tile cutter”.

Last time I had it, it was in Brussels and as you might remember, we fled Brussels in such haste that stuff was packed any old how. I spent all afternoon until long after knocking-off time looking through the barn and the lean-to and I’ve no idea where it might be.

But apart from that, I was on the move again during the night but I can’t for the life of me remember where I was and who I was with. And today, to give you some idea of howdark and depressing it all was, we had 12mm of rain and by 16:30 it was sleeting.

So tomorrow I’ll put the second coat of varnish on the wood and then play round two of “hunt the tile cutter”. It has to be here somewhere.

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Friday 4th March 2011 – We had a lovely lunch too.

There’s more than enough food in an Indian meal, even for a gannet like me, and so we had a tapas-kind of affair with a table groaning under the weight of Indian leftovers and so on. Absolutely gorgeous.

But the highlight of the day was Terry’s new toy. It really is superb and cut the terrace tiles with no effort at all. Terry also had a play with it and found that he could even cut strips of tile just 5mm wide. That is impressive. And if you work out how much you lose on broken tiles and how much you lose because you can’t cut slivers of tile, then this machine will pay for itself in a matter of months in the hands of a regular tile fitter, simply on the grounds of reduced wastage.

So while Terry was tiling the balcony (with an occasional hand from youts truly) Liz carried on wallpapering the living room and I got stuck into the cupboard under the stairs. The aforementioned living room is now wallpapered and has had the first coat of paint, and the cupboard has been repainted and the filthy paint-stained floor has been scrubbed.

The two  most time-consuming parts of the work are the living room and the terraces and they should be finished early next week. All that then remains is to tidy up and touch up the rest.

MInd you, I’ve said things like this before.

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Thursday 3rd March 2011 – I’ve just had a gorgeous tea ;-)

A vegetable massala with rice and garlic naam. Terry had a chickem korma and liz had a vegetable biryani. Poppadoms, other naams, all kinds of stuff as well. A real Indian banquet from the takeaway in … errr … Folkestone. No point in letting a flying (or tunneling, even) visit to the UK go to waste.

caliburn eurotunnel channel shuttle calais france folkestone UKSo a nice early start to the Eurotunnel depot, blagging my way onto an earlier shuttle and I was in the Sainsbury’s with a plate of beans and chips before 09:00 UK time.

As soon as Screwfix opened, I was there. Only half of the mastic we needed, one of the saws wasn’t in stock, most of everything else was there, but “the tile saw is only available on 7-day order. Come back next week”

And so a frantic call to Terry back in Belgium and he tracked down an even more powerful tile cutter for just £20 more – in Crawley! So seeing as I was halfway there, what’s another 80 miles between friends?

It took three of us (me and the two guys in the shop) to load this machine into Caliburn.

hastings sea front derelict pier burnt down sussex UKOnce I’d organised that, I went to the seaside for lunch. A nice bag of chips (and malt vinegar) on the seafront at Hastings overlooking the ruins of the pier.

After lunch, back to Ashford and the Tesco’s there for the pile of food shopping (you didn’t REALLY think that I had just come all this way for an industrial tile cutter and nothing else, did you?) and then to the Sainsbury’s at Folkestone again for whatever I couldn’t get at Tesco.

Final job was the Indian takeaway and it’s a good job that the staff arrived early, otherwise I would have been pushing it to catch my train back. They cooked while I babysat their kids (the things I have to do to keep my staff happy) and then a thrash through the traffic onto the train, and a thrash back home.

708 kilometres, a mere trifle you might think. It’s about the same distance as going back home again. But it was a lovely day out though, and the meal put the icing on the cake as it were.

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Wednesday 2nd March 2011 – I’m off to bed in a minute

And it’s only 20:31 too!

I’ve had a hectic few days, as I said yesterday, and it’s going to be continuing tomorrow too.

I managed about 5 hours or so at the side of the road and after yet another uneventful drive I ended up being back here in time for lunch.

This afternoon we carried on working but we have hit a logistics issue. Our little tile cutter isn’t good enough to cut the tiles for the terraces. We need a professional one and to hire one for three days, it’s €250!!! Exactly the same machine is on offer at Screwfix for £199.99 and the Eurotunnel have day trips for €90 just at the moment.

Hence yours truly is up at 07:00 tomorrow and he’s booked on the 10:45 crossing to Folkestone, where there is a Screwfix depot.

I’m not half getting about these days. Rather like the sailor who joined the navy to see the world. Except that in my case, I joined the navy to let the world see me.

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