Mas o menos an important measurement in Galicia

Oven in the main kitchen lots of spaceWhen you renovate or refurbish a house or apartment here in Galicia sooner or later you will come across “mas o menos” / more or less.

This can prove to be challenging when you try to fit mas o menos 90 cm into a gap of 90 cm.

We had bought these ubiquitous standard cooking ovens, which have the gas bottle inside and thus fit everywhere without thinking about running gas pipes.

They are not the most beautiful, but practical and reasonable in price. We have two different makes but you would expect these to be mas o menos the same measurement.

So far so good, this was all fine until my wife decided that the oven of the cooker in the rental was of a slightly better performance than the oven we had in our kitchen.

Who am I to argue. I thought well they are both pretty much standard and mas o menos 90 cm so a straight swap will do.

I do love procastinating, but not, when food or baking is involved, so my wife and I retrived the oven from the rental, they are not heavy, just bulky and swapped it with the one in our kitchen.  Except we didn’t schlep the the exchange upstairs to the rental – what are friends for. As we were awaiting friends, we thought-  ah well lugging the oven upstairs to the rental we can do with a bit of help as it is not need immediately- . Oops .5 cm - well mas o menos

Coming back from a nice day out with our friends I thought  before we open the wine and get intoxicated, lets just move the oven upstairs into the rental kitchen and put it in.

Great – It doesn’t fit! These ovens are mas o menos 90 cm. Fitting 90.4 cm into a 89.8 cm gap proved to be – yup –  impossible.

Florian was taken by surprise when, upon asking me to get some “solvente” to detach a well siliconed in unit, I had to tell him that this is one material we rarely use and thus don’t have. “Everyone has solvente!” – Nope ,not everyone. So we left it.

Days later we got round to buy some “solvente” and it only took me two days to detach the well siliconed in unit. Now everything is back to normal.

Just shows – be ware of the mas o menos  measurements – make sure you don’t depend on mas o menos – otherwise you may be in for a surprise. Not everyone has the space to move things a little to accommodate such small variations.

Expat