So, we managed with a lot of effort to get the kitchen to nearly finished; yes, I know it was nearly finished when we started, but now it’s nearlier.
We’ve painted the ceiling, the walls and the woodwork. There are a couple of areas around and about that need touching up, and around one window needs painting with basecoat, probably a few times, to try and cover the crappy state of the paint, on the top of the window-frame before we do a final few colour coats.
The woodwork around the doorframes has been stripped, primed, undercoated and painted with two coats of super-cheap oil-based gloss paint which is working on destroying the planet as we speak, but is also fairly hard-wearing and was, as I said before, really, really cheap. Given the amount of woodwork that needs painting in the house, price was a significant factor.
Yesterday we finally put up the kitchen light, it’s really pretty… but… does not work.
Since we bought it a long time ago, on sale, from B&Q, this is somewhat frustrating. The receipt is almost certainly missing believed permanently lost, and it’s not an ordinary lamp. No. This is one of those evil lamps which contain a powersupply in the ceiling rose (a 240V AC -> 12V ?AC or DC) and which, I suspect, is tripping an over-current device as soon as you switch it on. It did work for about 30 seconds, twice. But since then has managed only to occasionally flick-on and then instantly switch off.
I am rather miffed by this, and am not hugely looking forward to taking it down, and I suspect discovering that I don’t have the skills or equipment to fix it. I have to admit I am well out of practice with repairing electronics, and unless it’s a glaringly obvious charred wreckage fault will probably not be able to spot it :(
I’ll have a look though, at some point in the not too distant future. I suppose, theoretically, I could go and find my oscilliscope too, and poke at it with that (if I can remember how to work the damn thing, and the valves are still working after 3 years in my mum’s attic).
It looks like it’s one of these evil modern power supplies, rather than just a chunky transformer and a diode pack*, but I guess when I take the cover off I’ll find out :-/
Anyhow, the majority of the last two days hasn’t been spent on the house, oh no. We have, with the help of my mum and her husband, transformed the back garden. From dump to delight, I would say. There’s still some more work to do; we even did some more today despite promising that today would mostly be relaxing (we had vague intentions to look at the pulling brakes on the DAF and the exhaust on the minor (which is apparently 2 inches too short)).
Anyhow, yesterday we spent a fair sum of money on plants, bark chips, soil improver, compost and seeds. With much work from everyone we dug over the soil (which Big Steve gave us free**) with lots and lots of soil improver and compost, we laid bricks, we planted plants, we planted herbs, we planted onion thingies, garlic, raspberry canes, a goosebury bush, two blackberry bushes… So hopefully we’ll have some fruit, possibly, this year. We planted beans and peas. We planted flowers. The whole garden got a work over.
And it looks gorgeous.
I would show you a picture, but it’s dark.
We’ve got a herb and vegetable garden near the house, yesterday we ate fresh basil in home-made pesto; to be fair, it was a basil plant that we put outside, and it’s now somewhat short on leaves, but may survive and the act was somewhat enjoyable. One hopes that it’ is indicative of a future of growing some of our own veg.
Kathryn spent much of the afternoon laying bricks for the new ‘patio’ type area near the shed… We have all but eradicated grass from our garden. Maybe a 6′ by 5′ area remains, near the house. We just need to get more bark chip (So far we’ve put down 240 litres of bark chip), get the wild flowers into the wild flower bed and put netting over it, and decide what we’re going to do with the rockery (now it’s got sort-of-soil on it).
Oh, and we put up a bird feeder, so the birds can nibble on seeds :)
Woot.
Pictures tomorrow….
* Which I have a hope in hell of fixing.
** (1) I didn’t know we knew someone called, ‘Big Steve’; the fact we do unnerves me somewhat. (2) I’m slightly worried as to why he gave us the soil free. Yes it was very poor quality clay soil, but still.
