Of Holidays & Cupboards

I had a day off work yesterday (Monday). The amazingly good thing about it was that it doesn't come out of my holiday entitlement for this year. Even better, it didn't come out of last years either.

Last week my boss said to me that as it was a little quiet I ought to take the two days holiday entitlement I have left over from last year (it was all supposed to used up by x-mas). I remember saying to him back then that as it was busy I may have to defer one or two days over to this year and he agreed that was okay. Now I'm pretty sure that despite being busy I eventually managed to use up all of my holiday in December, although I never told him this. So he has it in his head that I still have two days left over - well, one day now, I guess. Naturally I tried to come clean and inform him of his inaccuracy however something was sticking in my throat whenever I went to say the words.

Sadly the weather was cold and wet and yet again I decided that going out on a bike was the folly of fools and numpty's. However even that would have been better than what my wife had in store for me. If I had but known that she was plotting for us to go out to B&Q to look at kitchen wall units for the utility room. Bugger! That bike ride was beginning to look quite good now. In fact as the afternoon wore on a miserable ride in the cold and wet was looking decidedly superb.

I hadn't quite realised how expensive a wall carcass (sans doors) for a standard kitchen unit was going to be until I looked at some of the prices. Add that to the fact that we wanted More than one of them, plus doors and it was looking at being well over £100. Now I don't begrudge the fact that we need cupboards in the utility room, Ive thought the same myself before, but its not like they're going to be on display to landed gentry or anything. In fact after a week we wont even look at them in awe. Besides, all you see are the flipping doors, and they're probably the cheapest part! I hate spending money on stuff you never see or that performs a mundane task which when alls said and done, you can do without.

After making sure my wallet was even deeper in my pocket than usual, I was considering making a run for it when I spotted some bookcases on racking. There were singles or banks of 2, 3 or 4 units and they came with separate doors or drawers. The oak veneered bank of 3 were only £19 and at £4.99 a door leaf, if we bought three sets this would work out cheaper than kitchen cupboards and we'd have bigger shelves too. More bang for your buck! So we loaded these onto our trolley and paid for them. My wife kept cheerily saying to me "I've saved you some money dear" every five minutes. My reply to this was "Well no you haven't dear. We've spent money whichever way you look at it, so that's not saving anything, and besides I was the one who saved money if either of us could be construed to have done so because it was me who saw the bookcases, not you"

On opening a box to assemble one of the units it transpired that you have to fit the doors at the same time. Not a problem you may think! But you'd be wrong! You see the bookcase is sold on the assumption that you wont want doors on the fronts, so there are no holes for hinges, magnets, etc and all these needed to be drilled. Suffice to say that it took me almost all afternoon just to assemble one of them. Even then I didn't get around to hanging it on the wall, so it looks like I know what I'll be doing next weekend; building the other two units and hanging all three of them up - once Ive located where the studs are in the plasterboard drywall.

I guess the moral of the weekend is this; Don't put off something shitty because it's shitty, because something even shittier will in all probability come along that you'll have to do.