another little step

Not that much progress on the work today by the time we got home though the ceiling is now entirely re-battened ready for the installation of the insulation (now sitting in a roll on the floor) and some plasterboard. Nicky popped to the shop at lunchtime for a filtering cooker hood thing seeing as we've nowhere for any cooking-gases to be extracted to but says she might go and swap it for another one which is an inch narrower. Some appear to be unsuitable for either electric or gas hobs which one would hope to be some sort of fail on behalf on the website information-inputting entity rather than a limitation of a device surely intended to only have a function when installed above either an electric or gas hob (unless such hoods are designed merely for coal or oil-powered Agas or ranges (which they evidently aren't (given their unAgate cheapyprice))).

More importantly, there is now no longer the end of a pipe sticking out of the wall requiring some sort of boxing-in. The original plan had been to get someone with a blowtorch and no fear of working with watery-pipes to come and seal it off, though when being questioned by phone (where they revealed that it would be tomorrow evening before they could help) they appeared to be suggesting that compression caps with olives were the way such things were done rather than with the soldered-on cap I had imagined to be the best thing to contain mains-pressure water. The protruding end of the pipe was compression-capped but also closed with a tap; I wasn't convinced that a compression fitting would be strong enough and that something soldered would be best for what would be a permanent closure. It wasn't until another dead spur of the inlet turned out to also be closed off with a compression cap that it seemed the norm and confirmation from a parent sealed the decision to pop to the shop, spend £3 on the cap and fit it ourselves rather than get someone in to do what eventually only really took about half an hour (excluding faff-time and a short break to try and get a picture of the fitting) which would otherwise have been spent feeling extremely useless watching someone else do something really simple without being all scaredy about it just because it's a pipe full of an almost unlimited supply of water at a respectable spurting pressure. After watching the fitted cap for an hour after installation and un-stop-cocking of the water it seemed fine, though it does wobble a bit when cold water demand is suddenly shut off which will have to be limited at some point for peace of mind.

With the pipe fixed I could get on with what I regarded as the more important task of working out where the hell I'd managed to conceal my camera battery charger, sensibly boxed-away on Saturday and since not thought about until I dropped below 50% charge yesterday. It turned out to be in exactly the box I suspected it to be in although the box was at the bottom of the pile against the wall next to the bed and took another half-hour of careful rearrangement to get at.