Tiles

When the builder recommended a tile place (Walls & Floors) a while back I looked it up online and was overwhelmed by the innumerable choices and by the impossibility of choosing without seeing and touching. I tried to locate the nearest showroom and found that the only UK showroom was in Kettering. But that's not so bad. My very own tile expert lives in Bedford, an easy train journey from Kettering, and she kindly agreed to help me.

We got to Kettering station, we walked to the showroom and I was puzzled by how small it was - mostly a shed with ends-of-lines*. Still, we made the most of it and managed to choose some very reasonably priced tiles that I liked and that my expert didn't tell me not to buy. The showroom staff were really helpful and seemed not to mind us spending ages and ages looking, measuring, discussing and doing sums. My budget is extremely stretched and I was pleased to be able to buy 54m2  of tiles at what worked out to be an average of about £10/m2. Problem was that although the company delivers tiles free from their warehouse (wherehouse?) they don't deliver cut-price tiles. We were on foot, neither of us owns a car and in any case a ton of tiles would be much too heavy for a car.

I looked up van hire, I tried to work out who I know who owned a van, I WhatsApped  my wonderful builder for advice. Yes, it was Saturday and I told him it was a family day and he could ignore me but he put me in touch with Shiply then the quotes started pouring in. Kettering to Oxford is not a cheap run but the more reasonable quotes still meant the tiles cost less than the equivalent would have done in Oxford.

Then showroom-person Zack, who'd been helping us all day, said he'd talk to the delivery people on Monday and see if he could wangle a free ride for my tiles.

Spoiler: he could! And I could choose my delivery day.

*It was three days later that I realised that my incomplete research meant that we'd gone to the end-of-lines showroom, not the main showroom 15 minutes' walk away. Probably just as well in terms of cost and not being overwhelmed by choice but I think my tile expert would have been in heaven. We'll have to go back.