I would not wish this EQ repair process on anyone. I knew it would be a major upheaval and in my mind I could easily cope with it (hey, we used to move house/county sometimes country every 18 months when my hubby was in the RAF). We were lucky in that we had an extremely good team of tradesmen, but unfortunately it was the organ grinder who didn't listen. Hence we are still waiting to have the chimney, fireplace and surrounding walls taken out in the kitchen. Heaven knows when this will happen.
Because of this we can't have the remaining parts of our new kitchen installed, but as it happens that's no problem as things went wrong yet again. The kitchen cabinets were ordered way back last year, when delivered in December 3 crucial cabinets were missing. One being the oven housing unit. Me being me, although feeling extremely annoyed, thought it's no biggie, worse things happen ~ I will just go buy a bench top oven and make do for a few months until the other cabinets arrive in February.
February turned to March and still no cabinets, I rang the shop and they said they had arrived but I would have to pay an outstanding invoice before they could deliver them. WHAT? We had paid in full for the entire kitchen on order day. I searched through bank statements and invoices to prove the payment had been made. After emailing copies of these to them I waited and waited. No apology, no confirmation, nothing. Zilch. I rang the shop to ask if they had clarified that it had been paid for. It had, which I knew anyway. It was like pulling teeth. Still no apology.
The delivery truck arrived last week and after unwrapping the cabinets I saw that the wrong oven housing unit had been ordered. I saw red. I rang and told them there was NO WAY I was willing to wait another 3 months for another replacement being ordered (from Germany). It seems they made a mistake on the latest order, even though I had confirmed twice with them that this one (showing them a picture) was the cabinet on order and was assured that it was. As it turned out they had the cabinet I was wanting in stock, unfortunately it was a shop model one. Did I get a discount? Don't be silly, refunds/discounts don't exist here. Once they have your money there's no way you would ever get a penny of it back. You have to think yourself lucky that they managed to get you the items you had ordered and paid over the odds for to start with!
Sorry if I'm sounding negative about New Zealand today, but the place really tests my patience sometimes. Life is not a bed of roses here as friends and family overseas like to think. It seems everything has to be put through the Kiwi Complicator machine at least once and sometimes twice. Sometimes I feel life here is just a big battle.
On the positive side, there are little things that are making me happy, such as food and flowers from my garden:
These colours tell me it's Spring, yet it's Autumn.
Easter approaching tells me it's Spring, but it's not.
A pre-loved Ashford Traveller wheel that I finally found the time to lavish with TLC, it's like new after a good rub down with furniture oil, a new drive band, tensioning system and a few tweaks here and there. It spins lovely ~ not that I've had the time to do much spinning:
We have a completely renovated, beautiful bathroom that's waiting for some new flooring laying tomorrow, (finally we have a 'finished' room, yay!) my organic vegetable garden has kept us in potatoes, salads, berries and vegetables over the past 6 months. I walk my dogs most days and as I turn to go back up the driveway and look over at the mountains I know I've got it good. The problem is life can stop you seeing it that way sometimes!
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