New Floor

Last week dad came over a laid this excellent new floor (with a bit of help from me).

It's Kahrs 7mm engineered wood, in other words it's proper oak on top but slots together like laminate. We bought it from 1926 Wood Flooring. They were nice and cheap and the service was better than you usually get from an on-line company.

So, the "exciting" bits are:

• My speaker cables for the back speakers are now tucked tidily under the floor
• Nice matching skirting board to hide the gaps
• The Roomba works even better on the new floor
• We had to take the stairs down to lay the floor underneath, they're really heavy
• Check out my new rug, made from real sheep

Now I'm off to Maplin to find a way to attach speaker terminals to the top of the skirting.

The Beast

On Tuesday I bought a giant Sony STR-DA1200ES surround receiver from richer sounds.

I found an advert in What Hifi Sound & Vision which listed it at £100 below the list price. Maybe a misprint? Anyways, the chap in richer sounds knocked £100 off!

Just one or two tiny problems with my fantastic impulse buy:

1. It's huge! It weighs 17kg and I bought it from the richer sounds next to work. So I had to carry it home. My arms still hurt.
2. It's huge! It doesn't fit on any of our furniture. So I've bought a nice AV unit from eBay to put it on.
3. I don't have any speakers. Now this is a big one. Why did I buy a surround amp without any speakers? Off to buy a set of these at the weekend.
4. One more. I don't have any cables either. Need to pop into Maplin at the weekend.

I haven't plugged it in yet (not much point until I get some speakers) so I can't really tell you if it sounds any good. Looks top quality though, can't wait to set it up at the weekend. I'll keep you posted.