Post nights. Sleep deprived. That must mean it’s time for me to write a post.
So, tomorrow is ‘car day’. Hopefully between tomorrow and wednesday Rebecca can be returned to a roadworthy state (if not an MOT’d state, and she may still need a new battery, I’m not quite sure what state that battery is in). She also needs a wash and a polish.
Jobs for the next couple of days are:
2 Person, tomorrow jobs:
– Install the new diff (& simultaneously replace bearings in axle)
– Install the headlining
1 Person tomorrow or day after jobs:
– Respring the seats
– Install radio speakers and trim panels.
It should all be doable in the two days, and the speedo will actually read correctly again (I never got as far as installing the one corrected for the 3.7 diff).
Once the car’s out of the garage we can return to regularly scheduled house renovations – first up – make and install a set of shelves to go under the stairs. Then painting the trim (including the newly installed shelves) can go ahead. That and trimming the door to fit. That will actually lead to a second finished area in the house, which is pretty good. To be fair, apart from about 8″ of sealant, the lounge is finished. Although given the simplicity of taking the hardboard off the doors, and how much better they look without it, and the fact that we’ve not attacked any of the doors, it might come to pass that we take the door off and remove the hardboard. But ignoring that, this room is done*.
I’m quite looking forward to having more finished bits.
The other thing I’m starting to contemplate more forcefully is building our deck. We’ve had a few nice days (quite a few actually) and each time we have one and I go potter in the garden, I wish we had the deck for us to relax on afterwards. The plan remains to build the majority of it out of reclaimed pallets, so I need to get the pallet stripping bar. Having tried various methods of stripping pallets, this looks to be the most quick and effective. Most designs seem to rely on having the deck built on a layer of pallets, which I wasn’t sure about…but it would be nice to raise the deck up to roughly the same level as the floor in the house. Having checked things out, it looks like that would be a reasonable plan as it’d raise the deck up to a height that would clear the airbricks, and I’d just need to leave a gap running along the wall where the damp proof course is (I assume) with some sort of nicely tweaked finish to that edge. Mmm. I’m seeing a plan forming in my head. A plan. Yes indeed.
Also, given that we’re staying in the UK for at least a year now (see how I didn’t say ‘stuck in this benighted awful country**’) I am, I fear, going to have to insulate underneath the floors. Our heating bills for this past year were flipping terrifying, and it also wasn’t actually that warm in here, given the amount of heat poured in.
I’ve found a fairly cheap source of sheep’s wool insulation which, as we’ve discussed is not ‘nice and soft and fluffy’ but is, apparently, less itchy than rockwool. At least I won’t be grovelling under the floor mid-winter, which was the previous plan. So I shall schedule that in for the next couple of months.
And so, my dears, that is where we stand.
* Although, we’ve been talking about small people. Well, a small person. And this has brought to light the horrible realisation of just how un-child friendly our house is. It’s an “Oh, just off white walls. Gramophone records sat on the floor. My, that’s a lot of cables. Those shelves…they’re exactly the right height for someone learning to crawl to use to pull-then-climb-up” type experience. Anyhow, that’s a little while off, at any rate.
** And yes, I know other countries have problems, but if you work for and care about the NHS the way I do then watching this foul government rip it to shreds so it can hand the tattered remains to it’s rich and powerful friends to make money off is astonishingly painful. I hate it, it actually makes me cry.
