Gracious Neighbours

Ok, so we are all doing a little better, and we are going to try to catch up on this thing in the next few days.

May 29 - June 1, The delays begin...

Thursday (the 29th) I had to go to work (maybe I should have got paid for this week too) to sign my contract, and the kids and Jodi and Mom came too. Jodi had to sign something too. Not sure what that was for. I guess she is an employee of the Klinik too. We had a decent leisurely morning, except for Mom - she and Jodi both had head colds. Mom's was bad. Jodi and Mom and Erika went downtown to get some more supplies, and I went to let the electricians in to hook up the stove and cooktop. Everything went smoothly and they even cut the hole in the stainless steel for the faucet for me. Of course, I was using the steel punch wrong. I suppose I should have kept the instructions. Well, we had spatzle and rotisserie chicken with cooked carrots. Yes, cooked and hot carrots. It was amazing. Our first cooked meal at home, and it was great, even if we couldn't wash the dishes in the kitchen sink (the bathroom sink was starting to build up a little residue unfortunately). So, we piled them up beside the kitchen sink, because, of course the faucet installation would be done relatively soon. We put the kids to bed and I promptly started to work on the sink. I really wanted to get the fresh water hooked up tonight so we could use the darn things. I ran a couple of measurements by Jodi, and I assured her we had about 12 inches of copper pipe to spare. Jodi assured me I could cut at least six off. So, I took the pipe cutter thing, and voila! off came the six inches on each pipe (one for hot, one for cold, of course). The faucet we bought, which was pretty cheap (10 euros, not bad), required that one of the pipes be smaller than the other or else the bolts would get in the way of each other and we would have to bend the pipes. Well, I knew we had 12 inches extra, and I already cut 6 inches off, so I could easily take off another two or three, and still have some left. Apparently not. I guess 12 minus 6 minus 2 works out to be about -4 because the stupid pipe wouldn't reach anymore. This was the defining moment of our relationship. After choice words, Jodi went and scrubbed the dishes in the toilet again, while I tried to make the pipes stretch to the friggen hole. It didn't work. Well, the Praktiker list just got a little longer. On Friday morning, to mend our relationship we decided to hang one of the 300 lb upper cabinets. They are really heavy. The concrete walls make drilling and putting screws in very difficult. I have to say, it was the hardest thing I have ever done physically trying to screw in the hangers (by hand, with pliers). Even though they were put into concrete hangers/plugs, the concrete leaves no room for the expansion of the plugs and makes it almost impossible. I couldn't use a drill either as the hangers had no grooves for a screwdriver bit. Anyways, one done, one more to go. We decided to start putting the second one together at 9 pm, and also drilling the holes into the wall around 10. Well, the neighbours below us told us in Germanese that they were trying to sleep. We sent Mom to the door to play dumb because we were being pansies hiding in our bedroom. "Can you get that Mom? Not sure what they would want..." That day we did finish most of the other projects including our bed. So, back to the sink. We solved the pipe issue, just to find out that we couldn't tighten the faucet down enough. It kept flopping around, which I am pretty sure isn't normal operation. I am sure ikea would say otherwise. We were past sanity, and Jodi was just giddy and laughing, and telling me to hook it up as is - we can at least wash the dishes. After about two more hours of trying to tighten, we decided to call a plumber. I tried to get to a plumber that night, but to no avail, and no one (we checked all of one place) was working on the weekend. Funny, we are laughing as we write this, but it was not a laughing matter at the time. I was mad. Here's a picture of one of my assistants helping me with the cabinets, and the actual placement in the kitchen. We were definately praying for the next couple of days that the thing would stay on the wall. Mom wouldn't even go near them. Can you believe we ate in this kitchen last night?

Saturday morning we finished up the second 1000 lbs cabinet and put it up. Jodi and Mom left for a little shopping excursion (actual shopping, not solely interested in household needs) while I sweated it out again trying to get the cabinet secured with those blasted hangers. After pounding the pavement for most of the day, Jodi decided to have a bath and Laveryne started to make a cup of tea. 'Started' is the operative word here. It took about 20 min. for the burner to heat up, and before it was done, we noticed smoke and the smell of an electrical fire. We vacated the kids by the time Jodi got out of the bath and opened all the windows. As it turns out, our nice cooktop was starting to burn (or something anyway) and it looked like it was burning the stainless steel top. About a two inch ring around the element was burned to a nice copper/almond color. This was exactly what Jodi wanted to hear. Well, we hit the breaker and went to bed in our disbelief. Remember, Saturday marked the two week point, and only two days ago we were certain that the sink and cooktop would be operational, and it seemed we were back to the beginning. Oh, except for the beautiful fridge. It was working. Here are a few pictures of how the place was coming along. In reality, everything else was progressing except for the non-functional kitchen.

As you can see (Figure A), there was a small hiccup with Erika's bed. Nothing a pipe wrench and some wood glue couldn't fix (the duct tape approach didn't work out). Handy Manny strikes again, and you can't even notice it. On Sunday, we went to the zoo for a little relaxation, and to get away from our place. The zoo is relatively close, and you can walk easily to it. It was actually pretty funny, you could see pretty much all the same animals at an Alberta farm. Except for the horsey thing (Mammoth crossed with a donkey) that they claimed was of North American descent. The zoo was pretty big, but only had about 10 different types of animals in it, so it turned out to be quite a haul to see everything. We stopped at the end for a ride on a spectacular carousel:

We hoped that Erika would get her euro's worth before the thing bucked her off and fell apart. After that, we started to walk back home in the 40°C weather. Needless to say, the 20-mile (probably about 10-15 km roundtrip) was a little much given the events in the last couple weeks. We started to see mirages on the way home, and considered curling up in a farmer's field. Thus ends another day on our German holiday. Sorry about the novel again. Stay tuned...

Jodi and Jeff