A Time of Magic

We all know that electronic things have been going down in price for a long time and that house prices have been going down for a year or two but what about everything else?

You might not think of books as something that would go down. After all, they need authors to write them and their salaries aren’t going down, plus they need seemingly perpetually increasing amounts of paper to print them on. Yet, whilst way back in 1981 the Encyclopaedia Britannica retailed for £600, you can buy the latest one (if you look around) for £450.

Houses might be dropping in price but surely house improvements would be more expensive? Well, we’re in the process of updating our kitchen and bathroom. Both are around the same price as the original cost some 30 years ago. And the new one will be much higher quality too.

It seems almost a case of looking around for things that aren’t decreasing in price.

One of the annoying things about getting back into DIY is that you need to rebuild the toolkit and at the start you always seem to need a tool that you used to have.

I find that in practice I end up needing three trips to the local DIY shop for a lot of the jobs coming up these days. Once gets everything that you think you needed, the second to get the things that you realised later that you needed and the final time to pick up a couple of things that you hadn’t thought of but which you find you need once you start the job. It’s the trivial things that seem the most annoying, of course. Who’d have remembered to pick up a box cutter for instance?

Oh well, at least at this point the tools to deal with the majority of small jobs are already in the toolbox.

Actually, we seem to be finally seem to be on the home run with the kitchen.

Not only do we have a solid roof on the extension but the plasterer is set to come tomorrow morning to sort out the new ceiling. The new oven is even sitting on the floor though it may be a while before that actually gets installed going by the discussions with the builders on Friday.

Still, that near completion means that it’s time to start serious thinking about the new bathroom. Things like Grohe faucets,corner baths, even corner cisterns. Featuring large in this is the “wet room” concept which seems to make cleaning a whole bunch simpler.