Living with Tools

For several years now my wife and I have been unsatisfied with the size of our kitchen. When we first bought our house we were won over by the beautiful views over the cliffs and out towards the sea so we overlooked the size and shape of the interior of the house. Now we have lived in therefore a few years the walls have started to close in and we are overcome with a need for more space. With two teenage daughters, two cats and a dog the house is often a very busy place and when the girls have friends over for dinner (which seems to be almost every night) the kitchen is inevitably the busiest room.

We have managed to fit some lovely features into the kitchen despite the size but I can’t help feeling that the blue Smeg fridge and the lovely Aga would be better displayed in more majestic surroundings.

Considering the current market I have come to the decision that it would be unwise to move house and also regrettable to lose the fantastic view. We have therefore decided on the compromise of a conservatory. I have purchased the relevant power tools to make a start on the foundations myself (as I used to build as a trade many years ago) and I have got an architect from a well known conservatory company to design something suitable for my home. Only thing left to do now is apply for the planning permission and away we go! Time to recycle the rubbish.

A building tools graveyard is what you could call my Grandpas garage. I have never ever before seen anyone with as much stuff as there is in my grandpa’s garage. He is one of those people who never ever throws anything away, ever. You will see him at Christmas or on his birthday carefully peeling off tape from cheap wrapping paper before carefully folding it into a neat square and popping it into a paper bag to store ‘in case we ever need it.’

I don’t think he has an obsessive hoarding disorder or anything; it just may seem like that to me because we live in a generation of ‘throwaway’ culture. My grandpa came from an era of rations and war, a time before mass plastic and polystyrene. The days when milk came in glass bottles that were collected and disposed to be cleaned and used again has almost become extinct.

My grandparents have just put their house in Yorkshire on the market so that they can come down to Cornwall and be closer to us in case they get to old or to ill to look after themselves. At the moment they are still reasonably fit and healthy for their age but after we finish packing the contents of their grandpa stocked house, I am not so sure that they will be quite as bouncy.

I went for a quick tour round the well stocked car shed to asses the time it was going to take and I am not joking, he has everything from flattened cereal boxes to a Hammer Drill in that place. I even found a five year old Jigsaw amongst the well organised debris.

I deduced that it was going to take a while…