So, despite the hideous weather and a real inclination to light the fire, sit inside and let the rain fall all day I’ve not done that. I’ll grant I was slow to get going, but once I was moving I’ve been productive, useful and frankly, good.
Having done a little favour for my friends I stopped en-route home to buy some more smoke-free logs for the fire (these are made of compressed wood waste). While they appear to produce an awful lot of carbon low down (the fireplace is really black), I have to say, looking at the top of our chimney, you’d be hard pressed to tell that the fire was going. While it’s a bit of a bugger having a fire going and the upstairs does start to smell a bit smokey, it’s very nice to be heating the house with a CO2 neutral form of heating. Although it’s only really the lounge that it affects…
Then I got home and inertia set in. I sat and planned an afternoon of activity whilst watching the world go by (in the wet). I poked at my dissertation and e-mailed a person at work that I think is the right person to pass audit requests to. I sat some more. Thankfully, then, Kathryn rang with a task. A sad task, but a task none-the-less. Our 1950s iron has been, forever, tripping the breaker. My response to this having checked it over was to decide to slap a trip-switch in the way of the main RCD which meant at least, in general, it wasn’t throwing the house circuits off.
I also hunted for a new baseplate, on the basis that the rest of it is adequately insulated, and I suspected that it was the heating element that was on its way out. Well, this morning it passed from on its way, to out. It didn’t collect £200.
Plugging it in now leads reliably to instant trippage, and a brief examination of it (having stripped it down) shows nothing untoward that’s visible. I was going to dig out my multimeter and test it more, but then realised it doesn’t really matter which bit is faulty. The only spare you can get for it is the thermostat (it astonishes me that you can still get that), and so pretty as it is, the iron is dead.
I texted my beloved with this sad truth, ate lunch and wandered to the garage to continue progress on the desk. The desktop has been sat irritatingly close to finished for ages. The difficulty being that I needed to sand it some more and hadn’t, well, found the energy to do so. And I was wary of sanding it so far as to lose the “story” of the bits that make it. They are ex-scaffold planks, and despite the weird looks I got for saying I wanted to keep the reinforcing metal strips on them, I wanted to keep the metal strips on them, and the end tags that state the max loading / distance of supports. All of that was stuff I wanted, and I didn’t want to clean them up so far that they just looked like hunks of wood. What’d be the point?
So with some trepidation, and having measured the rough size of the record deck that’s got to sit on top of the desk, I headed down to the garage (in the rain), stuck on the gas heater, and started work. Having attached the three scaffold planks together I then hacked most of the third one off (really, I needed about 2 inches of it). I then set to with the various sanders, before finally cleaning and varnishing the beast:
That’s just after the first coat, I’ve popped a second coat of varnish on now…. but first, the good.
See, we needed a new iron. That much was clear, normally this would be the cue for me to hop into the car and burn rubber. Well, okay, gently warm some rubber. Instead, since the rain had stopped (for the minute at least), I adjusted the brakes on Molly, grabbed my bag and helmet and headed off to Gardiner Haskins. Now, I was debating getting a second hand iron, but I’m not that fit and riding to the second hand places was a bit more of a treck than I really wanted. But I did cycle to the store, fought (thankfully successfully) with the box of the new iron and rode back.
I’m quite proud of myself. I know it’s only a little thing, but I’m hoping it’s the start of me being more healthy.
I also managed to squeeze in 2 loads of laundry, so I’m really feeling like I’ve been very, very good. Sadly the sun’s now gone in, but I think I’ve done my bit for today :)
