h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nicely done.

Our dining set (buffet, hutch, table up to 8 people, 4 common chairs and 2 with arms) are now about 27 years old - and moved around the country through 4 homes. And still as solid as the day we bought them.

We got a new worktop fitted in our kitchen yesterday. When the kitchen was fitted out five years ago we bought an oak worktop, but the constant splashing of water around the sink has caused it to look awful.

So we replaced it yesterday with a "quartz" worktop. This is not real quartz but is a synthetic material made from ground up stone and resin. It's very hard-wearing.

The worktop was fitted by professionals, but I had to do a lot of preparatory work:

Disconnecting the three taps from the water supply (while leaving water working in the rest of the house).

Disconnecting the electric hob.

Removing two sinks which were very solidly glued to the old wooden worktop.

Taking everything off the old worktop and out of the presses underneath it.

The hardest of these was the removal of the sinks, which took me about 3 hours - I had to cut the glue joining the sinks to the worktop with a Stanley knife, then insert a thin metal spatula into the gap and put is around like a saw to break up all the rest of the glue. Finally any remaining glue had to be scraped off the sinks to make them ready to be glued into the new worktop.

After the new worktop was fitted, I had to reconnect all the taps and the electric hob, and put everything back in the presses.

If I wasn't handy, I'd have to had hired a handyman to do the preparation, and again to sort things out afterwards.

We have a badly discoloured wooden worktop around our kitchen sink. It just goes black in patches. The professionals who sold it and installed it were unbelievably clueless not to have sealed the wood properly. We like wood, but are considering changing it. Let us know how the quartz turns out in use.

[Is too clueless to have anything to offer, but hopes for an interesting idea or two....]

The fitter said that they sometimes cut a short section out of a wooden worktop around a sink and replace it with quartz. Doesn't sound like a good idea - the wood is usually a different thickness from the quartz so it would look awful.

It is a possibility though. We could rebate the wood around the sink to the thickness of the quartz. The rest of the top, away from the sink, is fine, and the look of quartz or stone, and its coldness and hardness, don't appeal to us.

I'd prefer wood myself.

The synthetic stuff comes in a lot of bright colours. It's certainly hard, but the one we chose is a sort of yellowy beige, with little flecks of reflective, prismatic material that catch the light and reflect it in sparkles of rainbow colours, so it is quite nice.

You can come and look at it any time.

Thanks, I may take you up on that! I'll bring a bottle of something nice to welcome you to the older generation.

For work-bench and butcher-block tops, several days of deep rubbing with a vegatable based oil is common here. Depending on wear and use, perhaps repeated every now and then. Seals the natural wood-grain for inner moisture and repelling external wets.

The only DIY job I did over the weekend was to turn a road sign around. The 'Cul de Sac' sign at the entrance to our estate had somehow got turned around so that drivers couldn't see it.

Even facing the right way, it doesn't serve much of a useful function, but it's completely pointless if not visible. It just took one spanner to loosen the nuts and turn the sign.

'Cul de Sac' (or perhaps Cules d'Essaques) would make a great name for a villain in a French farce.

His worst crime: mispronouncing things.

When M. Cules d'Essaques of Petite Impasse announced that he would shortly be celebrating his 'anniversaire cent-onze' with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbitville-sur-l'Eau.

Then Beelbeau was discovered face-down in his tenth bowl of Hobbitte Cassoulet.

Naturellement!

Qui a coupé le fromage?

Source and translation for the above.
http://youtu.be/yGqxb3vLL1A

Now that is curious.

That was far too long.