Tip Trip

One of the ways we are saving money on this house is by taking on the job of keeping the building site clean. That means emptying the rubbish bins (the contents of which either go in my bins at the unit, or are fed to a worm farm at the unit), and making occasional trips to the tip to get rid of waste materials. Today it was time for a tip run with the plastic from the floors, broken tiles, the plastic protective film from the windows, bits of wire off-cuts, and just general accumulated garbage. Here's the trailer loaded ready to go:

And here's the result at the "Waste Transfer Station" (as it is called now):

It's not like the tip was in my childhood (just a big landfill where everything was tossed in together). Now there are huge skips for the appropriate rubbish. One skip for metal, one for green waste, one for glass, and one for our sort of "general waste".

Before the tip trip, we had to go and collect the bathroom cabinet doors with their new mirrors. Drew the carpenter installed them while we were at the tip:

But that highlighted the fact that we will need the builder to fix the light above the cabinet. Not only is it crooked, it is actually meant to sit on top of that mirror cabinet. Fortunately when going through the rubbish for our last tip run, I found the mounting brackets which the electrician had discarded, and I put them aside. So although the job will have a price attached, we will be able to get the light re-positioned where it should be. And then the wall patched. And re-painted. Oh well!

In the afternoon I assembled some light fittings for the kitchen area. Another example of saving money which didn't quite work the way it should! I bought Ikea pendant cords for the electrician to install, planning to use some glass light shades we already own. But I found out too late that Ikea light fittings are 41mm across, which is significantly bigger than a standard Australian light fitting. So our glass shades won't fit on the pendants. These orange cardboard Joxtorp pendants will do as a temporary alternative until we can solve that problem.

In case you are wondering, the unpainted areas are where the kitchen cupboards will be installed some time soon.

I also intended to assemble two of these light shades for other rooms:

These were Bunnings mark-downs. When I started to read the instructions I discovered that I couldn't even do the first step, as both boxes were missing the special pins that hold the shade together. Perhaps that's why they were marked down? Anyway, I sent a message to the distributors, Rouge Living, asking if I could buy replacement pins, or if not, what they looked like so I could find an alternative. And amazingly I got a response at 8:14pm telling me they would send me new pins. That's service!

Added much later:
On the 21st of September I received an email saying they weren't going to send the pins after all, as they thought the shade could be assembled without them. I hope they are right!