So, over the deck so far has been constructed from pallets obtained from a nice business just a street away from us (although we have to wander around a fair bit to get to it, because there’s a bloody great spikey fence betwixt us and them). I popped in and said “can I have ’em?” and their response was a ‘quite definitely, please help yourself’ type response.
And slowly we’ve robbed them of their pile of pallets, but having done the lighter, crappier ones, and with the help of the very nice Nikki who came around today we got two of the ultralong ones (we got one of them a couple of days ago by a process of Kathryn and I carrying the thing).
The problem is that at this point I still need complete pallets. And they don’t fit in any of our vehicles. I’ve now managed to find the 4 attachments that allow the roofrack to fit the car. Now, if I could find either
- the roofrack
- the twin chrome roof-bars I made because I’ve never managed to locate the whole roof-rack at once
Then it would all be good. The minor is, despite its diminutive size an awesome load carrier. The dirty great leafsprings at the back will handle a surprising amount of weight (I believe I once carried 10 bags of gravel and 3 people back from B&Q, she’s travelled down the motorway with a 26″ CRT tv on the roof, and carried a office grade laser printer, more computers and monitors than you can shake a stick at tens of miles). So loading up the roofrack with a couple of pallets and running back and forth is definitely a possibility. But I can’t find one of the frigging tubes, and nor can I find the actual roofrack. Given that it’s miles of clippy black metal tubes and four alloy corners, that’s not wholly surprising. But the fact I can find one, but not the other 4 foot long chrome pole is quite upsetting. I mean, it’s a four foot long chrome pole. One would think it wouldn’t be that easy to hide.
But apparently it’s quite happy hiding where it is. It’s more annoying because I thought I knew where it was (with the other one, ha). Whereas I thought I didn’t know where the four roof attachments were, but it turns out that I had that backwards.
Meh.
Ironically, once I’ve got a few more pallets home I can stop bringing back complete ones, and taking the Imey and stripping the pallets down first becomes a quite reasonable approach.
On the plus side I’ve just discovered the autofeeding screwdriver. This is a tool I wasn’t really wholly aware of. Now I am, and have one winging its way to me. Not only do I have one but I have an 18 volt cordless one, which means that, with luck I can use the battery with a bit of work producing an adaptor, on the Makita circular saw (which replaces the stolen one).
Also, I’ve managed to procure a heater to go in the kitchen and two pipe-freezing kits so I don’t have to drain the central heating to fit the new pipe work (although I’ll be cheating and using plastic pipework for speed and ease of fitment whilst lying under the floor. Yes, I’m weak and lazy).
And that’s it.
