After a week off in Austria - it was back to business on the kitchen. The first order of business was to grout the tiles; cause white tiles by themselves are well .. a bit dull. We elected to go with a grey "smoke" colour. This was more of a medium grey as opposed to the brownish/yellow "smoking" colour from the rest of the house.
The fun part was to get all of the excess tile adhesive outside of the joints between the tiles. Good practice is to use an adhesive similar in colour to the grout you plan on using. Lazy practice is to use the adhesive you have left over, in this case white, and scrape out any excess.
Then came the grout, one of my more favorite activities. Right behind smashing things. Grout was mixed into a peanut butter consistency and smeared on the wall working it well into the joints with my trusty float.
And then off it came. After many a wipe down with a builders sponge, it was looking rather sharp. Now to just let it dry and focus on a few other things ...
And once it was dry, finally time for the cooker hood (and a long story).
So the cooker hood was originally ordered in April of 2016 with the cooker. We chose a Belling 90cm stainless steel hood to match the cooker. It was supposed to arrive in June last o=year just after the cooker .. unfortunately it didn't and I got a call from Curry's that it was delayed by the manufacturer Belling and would be refunded. So I then ordered from another outlet who said they could deliver in 2 months time. And after 2 months I got a call saying it would be delayed another 2 month, followed by another phone call and another 2 months. By the time I got a 3rd call from this outfit, I told them where to go. I managed to find another supplier that had it "in stock" only to find out a week later that it was, you guessed it, about 2 months away ..
Now it was Christmas time, and I was in Canada and elected to go with the 100cm version, normally much more expensive, but on sale for Boxng Day. And it was in stock!!! The box arrived just after we got back to the UK and I really couldn't believe my eyes when the thing actually arrived. So yes, it's a 100cm hood over a 90cm cooker but my research shows that this isn't a bad thing because smoke doesn't just go straight upwards anyway, a bigger hood is actually better if you can fit it.
And all I need to mount it was a bracket and 3 screws - these things don't actually weigh that much. So far so good.
And finally the hood was mounted. After initially struggling to get the 150mm piping routed out of the house, and then having to figure out how to conceal it (see here), and finally having all the issues with delivery .. the hood was up. And it looks nice and works a treat (i.e. it sucks, but in a productive kind of way)
Except of course there had to be an issue .. the cover for the tubing was not very forgiving. Apparently, though it's a 150mm extractor, Belling must not think many people are going to be fitting 150mm ducting because there was no give to the front. The ducting would have been mounted perfectly flush to the wall in order for it to work. And I had about 2cm of gap. Not the end of the world, but definitely a bit more customization in the near future.
That aside, I'm still glad that we went with the full size ducting. The fan works much better without the constriction and is a whole lot quieter. Only to get this surround figured out now.
