Somehow Not The Same

Until recently I owned a Bodum Cafetière and it worked fine. I mean it’s just a French Press coffee maker and there’s not a lot that it could do wrong. As an aside I just went over to the Bodum website to see if I could grab a picture of what the cafetière looked like and it turns out there are far more variations on these devices than I thought possible, what a rabbit hole! Then one day while washing the cafetière the glass cracked. I’m not sure how and I didn’t hear anything but it broke. Now, I like my morning coffee and so I wanted to get another French press as soon as I could.

Imagine me now walking down the “home stuff” aisle in Sainsbury’s and I spot a cafetière. It’s not made by Bodum and is branded as Sainsbury’s. Should be OK I tell myself, there’s not a lot you can do wrong with a device like this, and if I’m being honest they seem far more expensive than need be. So, I bought the Sainsbury’s cafetière.

That turns out to have been a mistake. Apparently not all French presses are the same. With this new one there is no way to remove the glass from the surround and so I can’t clean the outside of the glass properly. The gaps between the surround and the glass mean that stuff gets in-between and looks horrible from the inside of the cafetière. I guess that’s liveable with but then the bigger issue is that the lid design has less rim and does not align well so when pouring the coffee it regularly spills down the side of the cafetière and ends up on the kitchen counter.

When this leakage of the nectar first occurred I could hear something in the recesses of my brain from before, when I owned a not-Bodum and it just wasn’t as good. I had flashbacks to another time thinking that I should have spent the extra on the Bodum because the one I bought at half the price was shit.

So, the moral is sometimes the better brands are better.

Oh, and I ‘m still searching for a decent can opener. The latest one works, as in it opens cans, but I’ve got cuts on my fingers because it uses the outside of the rim rather than the safer inside part. Ho hum.

Even The Kitchen Sink

I’ve decided that the life of things in a house is around ten years. Things apparently wear out after that length of time or at least the high use things do. Given my hatred of decorating in now comes to the point in the house when I need to make some decisions and get myself prepared to reboot the rooms. I recently noticed that my kitchen sink was dripping water into the void underneath and I found it was the tap causing the issues. The tap was also rusted to the sink quite completely. This necessitated a new sink and tap which I was OK with. I found a sink that was the same size so that hopefully removed the necessity to cut the counter top and with luck the waste pipes would line up well to avoid plumbing issues.

Old Kitchen Sink
Old Kitchen Sink

The old sink also had a fresh water tap that I had removed and so it was possibly time to rejig it anyway. All the limescale is me just not having cleaned the sink for a while but there is a lot around the tap and it leaked into the basin but also through into the pipe system. The limescale in this area of the country is pretty harsh and things die after a short time. A friend bought one of those clear kettles to see the water boiling but every week it would need descaling, it’s best not to be able to see these things.

Kitchen Sink - Halfway
Kitchen Sink – Halfway

This level of piping is quite frustrating I think. Most of it isn’t used anymore. I used to have a water softener but after a while I noticed that it wasn’t plumbed in correctly so I removed it. There are also spare pipes for cold water access to the bathroom as the hot water pipes to the bathroom were replaced a few years ago. I kind of know what all the pipes do and the ones that aren’t needed are clearly shut off. Oh, and two stop-cocks because apparently you need one before the water meter.

The new sink fitted snugly and that pleased me. There would be less hassle and no cutting of the counter top. The waste pipe could be aligned with a tiny amount of force so officially I have a pre-stressed pipe system, but that stress is low. I did have to cut some of the support wood to get the sink screwed in properly but I’ve been gluing that back and have a plan to secure it more. The new sink feels smaller but I don’t have a huge amount of washing up to do.

New Kitchen Sink
New Kitchen Sink

Overall this all went well and I will have to start planning the next thing in the house which needs sorting. There’s also the loft and I’ll have to tidy and sort that at some point.