This afternoon, we tried and failed to place an order for 10 sheets of 10mm thick full sized (1200mm by 2400mm) cement particle boards off the web. The online store says ‘buy here, spend more than £250 and get delivery free!’. We had an email back from them to refuse our order because our nearest depot didn’t have any in stock and they were unwilling to deliver from other depots what we needed .. .. unless we order a whole palette of 55 sheets!! Also we wanted to have one sheet of 18mm thick so we can see what it is like, how heavy it will be and so on. But they refused this as well, as they claim that it is a minimum order of 10 sheets!! Funny how they quickly changed their rules!!
We have now placed another order from another online supplier who are a little bit more expensive and fingers crossed, they won’t make a fuss!
The second trouble we are having is sourcing a few more lengths of our treated CLS 89mm timber and no one locally holds any full size 4.8 metres lengths. All seems to have plenty of the metric British sized timber (45mm by 95mm ? planed down from 2inch by 4inch) but not the American / Canadian CLS size of 38mm by 89mm. We had designed our house in this size from the beginning years ago and we had found plenty of suppliers of the CLS timber, so long it is ordered in pallet quantities! So we had to make sure that we could finish the job of putting rafters on the front porch and the side porch that needs single length greater than 2.4metres that needs the Bird’s Mouth and Eve sticking out, so it matches the rest of the house already done. We have got 6 lengths left from our old original palette and those will be used for those pieces, and the rest will come from a stock of 2.4metres lengths acquired from our local DIY stores. Well, our nearest branch (B&Q) didn’t have any in stock, nor did their Lowestoft branch either, so we went to Wickes also in Lowestoft, after checking on online to make sure that they had some in stock. We arrived to find the section on display empty of the timber we wanted!! We chased down a store assistant and they checked on their own computers and it also says ’54 in stock’ so they went hunting for the elusive lumber and found it outside in a pack still strapped together from some recent delivery. We had to wait while they get the guy with the fork lift truck to get it, undo it and finally .. we got our 10 lengths!! Phew! That was our afternoon gone!
P.S. We have a delivery Date for the Cement boards!