Supply and Demand
We’re making progress!
Our electrician extraordinaire has put in what looks like a thousand miles of cables which will power up our little house. (The ground floor will have a light switch panel operating so many parts of the house I can already foresee my daily confusion).
The plumbing is pretty much in place, the boiler is on site, and plasterboard is starting to go up on the walls and ceiling to cover up the madness of the buildings innards.
The gas is due to be connected tomorrow, with electricity and water to follow soon after. All in all, some really satisfying progress.
However, I realise that I haven’t complained about lead times for a while, so let me fix that for you ; )
The back and forth with one of the window suppliers to ensure we get the sizing of our kitchen skylight and sliding front doors exactly right has been very tedious. Once the technical drawings are confirmed, only then does the clock start ticking on the 8-12 week lead-time to get our order made at a factory in Amersham, and delivered to our site. This, however, does not factor in any curveballs the pandemic and/or government guidelines may throw at us - oh joy.
Our kitchen has been redesigned so it now fits the space we have, and we’ve placed the order in time so we should get the cabinets delivered before Christmas - hurrah! Mmm... not quite. While we may receive the cabinets on time, the appliances are a WHOLE other ball game.
The pandemic has created a run on appliances (similar to the mind-boggling toilet roll shortage we faced in March). With kids at home, families have had no option but to put their ‘white goods’ to work. We stocked up on frozen food staples - I’m assuming fish fingers - and filled our fridges with the tonnes of snacks kids seem able to consume in mere minutes.
Not to mention the constant oven use to cook the fish fingers, bake questionable tasting sourdough bread and slightly better tasting banana bread, and the endless kettle usage to keep up with the demand for much needed caffeinated beverages.
It’s no wonder so many people opted to replace their appliances. This is clearly not the time to put up with your janky microwave, fridge, kettle, or cooker. ‘The world may be ending, but I will get that microwave with the steam function’, is how I imagine the thought process went.
On the supply side, manufacturing hubs like China, the US and Mexico have been slammed by the pandemic, factories have faced significant downtime and it's been a real battle to keep up with our demand - not ideal.
All this to say... Without the sliding doors, a fridge, a cooker and a washing machine... it’s unlikely we’ll be moving in this year.
I’m strangely cool with that. I mean, with all the madness this year has served up, missing arbitrary dates is the absolute least of my woes.
