Bathrooms, noggings and trailer trash

The Masters continue to labour away at the house, and away from the house.

It took a week, eight revisions and much messing around but the Master's finally pinned the bathroom/kitchen supplier down and got a quote out of them. I'm amazed these clowns stay in business (they should open a Clown College). Case in point, despite providing them the exact product numbers of the shower mixers and in-wall units the 'Corporate Consultant' still ordered the wrong part! But the Masters are diligent and saved the day, the correct part successfully arrived Friday. Well, 5 of 6 parts, still waiting for the shower divertor.

But it is quite awesome finally seeing the boxes and the products (right). Ooooh shiny!

Side story: several years ago The Shadow and I were travelling through Germany and spent a few nights in the Black Forrest in a gorgeous town called Schiltach. Schiltach is around 1,100 years old, supposedly built on an old Roman road. It also has an excellent witch-burning story that is told each Walpurgisnacht to keep young kids in line. It is also home to Hansgrohe. The large factory in town sports a Bathroom Museum, where you can follow a chronological history of bathrooms through the ages. It was excellent! And it ended with a range of Hansgrohe's modern bathroom technology. Needless, when we were finally able to buy our own stuff it had to be Hansgrohe.

In typical Australian fashion much of the awesome Hansgrohe stuff is not available here. This is true not just of Hansgrohe but other companies too. For example, at pretty much every hotel in Europe The Shadow and I have lodged in the shower taps are not taps in the traditional sense, nor divertors. It is a long bar with two dials. The first dial sets the temperature, in degrees centigrade, the other dial sets the pressure. That is, I can have a shower at exactly 38oC at the exact pressure I want it at, every single day. No fiddling, no messing around, no scalding. I've never seen one of these devices available in Australia.

And when you compare the price between here and, lets say the Mother Land, we pay a very large premium for a smaller range and terrible customer services. Go us!

Saturday afternoon we loaded more crap into the trailer and filled it up good. Sunday morning we strained, push, cajoled, threatened, kicked and abused the heavily loaded trailer out of the backyard, down the right of way and left it in the ROW for the truck to back into and haul away. Stupid trailer. Stupid ROW. Stupid giant bruise on The Shadow's leg.

The Master's continued their assault on the noggings. 'WTF is a nogging?' I hear you say. Well, let me explain firstly with what nogging is not.

Nogging (adjective): a poorly crafted, essentially meaningless insult, typically used in an outer-suburb, or maybe the Hills. As in, 'You stupid nogging [bro].' Bro may be excluded.

Nogging (verb): a violent downward-arcing motion. As in, 'I'll nogging you good, [bro]!' See above re bro.

What a noggin is:
Nogging (noun): the piece of wood nailed in horizontally between studs that does something something.

It was about that time I tuned out to the explanation, I preferred the first two options, you stupid noggings!

A good house needs loads of noggings. And each nogging needs to be measured, cut and nailed individually, as each is as unique as snowflake (I expect). It is long, tedious work, nogginging.

Nogging.

Great word. Reminds me of Enid Blyton, somehow. Big Ears and Noggins great adventure in Story Land! Only three more sleeps until the Great Nogging Hunt. Jane and Harry ate all the noggings put before them.

During the week we received a telegram from the Master's advising us that the new bathroom was being delivered this week. We were very excited, as you could understand: it's not everyday you get a telegram! And the bathroom news! Sadly, the bathroom did not quite live up to expectation :(

The Master's have a sick sense of humour. They'll get their noggings!