Mostly lemon based

Category: House

Oh hai, it’s January

So, it is traditional this time of year to look back on the past year and think ‘what did I achieve’ and discern whether it was ‘a good year’ or not. My vague notions about last year is that I didn’t really make much progress on the house, and that it was a quiet but not unpleasant year, for the most part. However, as with my friend’s recollections, thousands of miles away my general opinion wasn’t exactly the whole story.

It started well enough, with the discovery of Rise, the music store in Bristol, where I make infrequent pilgrimages and fawn hopelessly over the ranks and ranks of records. The fresh stacks of vinyl make me want to spend all the money. Every time I head in there I find my bank account substantially lighter on leaving, and frequently seem to pass from not knowing of a thing’s existence, to utter total desire without pause. It’s both terrible and wonderful simultaneously.

Not only that but I took my aged BBC Master around to my friend John’s, and he applied his L337 soldering skills and replaced the dodgy capacitors before they could expire. It functioned exactly as it should, lending hope to the possibility that I can inflict it on our child, when s/he is old enough to want a computer. Heh. Actually, I think our child will get something akin to the Pi. When I got my computer the deal was “here are some basic games, if you want more you’ll have to write ’em” which I think is a fair way to do things :)

Anyhow, so it was an auspicious start. Flicking through blog entries made me finally take stock of what I’d achieved on the house over the year, and perhaps I’d been unduly harsh on myself. Perhaps, when you look at it, I’ve actually achieved a fair amount. In the last year I:

– Finished decorating the bathroom (which was essentially decorating the bathroom and plumbing in the new shower)
– Painted the downstairs half of the hallway
– Built and installed the understairs storage
– Insulated under the house
– Designed and made the kitchen lighting
– Built the top surface of the deck, including sinking 4 posts in to the ground
– Completely decorated Kathryn’s office

Amongst that there were a number of smaller jobs like installing the telephone, adding a radiator to the central heating, adding in bits of trim, repairing other bits and bobs that broke throughout the house.

Y’know, given that I’m working full time and had various other projects ongoing last year, I don’t think that’s a bad list.

As I say I had a number of other projects ongoing, my beloved Minor’s disintegrated differential was finally replaced after months sat at the front of the house being sad. I’m still working on the Electric Minor Project, and have a potential sponsor to contact, which has led me to fawn hopelessly over Adobe In-Design. My background with Ovation Pro (which, assuming it still works in modern versions of Windows I highly recommend to anyone needing a cheaper DTP package for Windows) came in handy because it had many of the features of In-Design and works in fundamentally the same way. Playing with layout and design is quite delightful, and one of the few things in IT that I think I could get quite into if my career in nursing ever went south.

Anyhow, so the Minor is [touch wood] back on the road.

However, it wasn’t all sunshine and bunnies. Last year witnessed the death of our plan to move to Canada. Nova Scotia telling me in the politest way possible that I would need to spend thousands of Canadian Dollars if we wanted to land up there. The difference between UK and Canadian nursing registration was simply too great. However, the good news is that we plan to move to the States, which will put us closer to Kathryn’s family and some of the awesome people (Kathryn’s friends that I’ve met too) over in the USA. We’re maybe looking at San Francisco, although it’ll be a while.

We also found out that we can’t have the free solar panels installed. A fact which makes me very sad, because in all honesty, if the UK was like Germany our roof would be well within the benefit side of the cost-benefit analysis; solar panels in the UK being way more expensive than in Germany. This is because UK has decided that we’d like to pollute the planet and our local environment as rapidly and depressingly as possible, by fracking every last bit of this once green and pleasant land. Indeed, politically this has been one of the most heartrendingly awful periods I can recall. The Conservatives and their political lackeys, the Lib Dems, for whom, shamefully, I voted, have destroyed the few bits of Britain of which I was proud. The’ve pushed our xenophobic streak and also made this country hateful for it’s treatment of the poor, those with disabilities, the sick. They’ve divisively separated every minority group and demonised everyone who’s not rich.

I recently saw a quote from Aneurin Bevan, the awesome angry Welshman who rounded up the Doctors and Nurses and said ‘Fix the people’.

“Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community.”

Which I think is a perfect way of describing illness. Mr Bevan rocked. Incidentally, he also said of the tories, this, which seems pretty accurate at the moment:

So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. (1945)

Anyhow, enough depressing, because all in all it was actually a pretty good year.

So, other projects are the ongoing attempt to re-rip music and video. That’s sort of fallen into stasis, but I really should get that going again. There are still massively large stacks of stuff that need to be re-ripped. All the DVDs/Blu-Rays, and still stacks and stacks of music. Actually, that’s pretty depressing to think about. It was a good starter project but maybe I need one of those lego diskchangers. Unfortunately so many of our disks fail to pull down art, or fail to get listings… which completely screws up the rapid disk ripping.

Oh, actually, whilst we’re on depressing, I sold my motorbike. I, for the first time in many years, am without motorcycle for the long term. The thing is though, I’ve no excuse to ride them. And not enough money to just ‘have’ a motorbike kicking around. Nor the space. So… Yeah. But I do miss it. It’s like not having a bit of me. One day I’ll have a Zero or somesuch.

We also, on a more cheery note, sold Chester. We ran all over France, toured the place, and having pushed him really hard travelling down to the base of the Alps and back we sold him and switched to our much loved iMiEV. You gotta love an electric car, they’re just flipping awesome. Not only that, but it’s also managed to get me a little bit of fame writing as a guest writer on the Transport Evolved website. I need to have a ponder about more things to write about because I’ve enjoyed writing them. I also got featured, briefly, on the Kyocera blog. Not my writing, but a brief bit about our aged Kyocera FS-1030D which continues to provide sterling service and provides endless glee when it prints wirelessly.

And on the writing front, I also did NaNoWriMo. Didn’t finish it, but I’m still working on the book, which is interesting. I’ve never written a novel before, it may be awful, but it’ll be my bit of awful. I need to find some people to look at it, so if anyone wants to read a not very good first-half of a detective novel (be my Beta testers!) then let me know :)

I also, for the first year ever (I think) managed to push out a full year of Dead Bug Jumping. Something I’m quite proud of, because it’s actually a fair amount of work to produce new episodes.

Oh, and there were a few other minor achievements. I finished and passed my MSc. And I got a permanent Senior Staff Nurse position… so, job wise, that’s pretty good.

I think all in all I achieved a fair bit in 2013. Some things didn’t go at all the way I’d hoped. Some things went very well, and y’know, screw my sense of ‘I didn’t work hard enough’. I clearly bloody did. Stupid brain.

So here’s to 2014. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

3/1/2014
Stop: Tea break.

I continue to maintain my feeling of pride.

My mum’s coming to visit tomorrow; so I’ve spent today tidying and cleaning the office/library/spare-room in which our spare double bed* is located. I’ve emptied, sorted, and prep’d for disposal the contents of our first aid box, which largely consisted of tablets that expired in 2010. I’ve hoovered, recycled, and sorted some books for charity-shop-homes. I’ve finally given in and accepted that I’m unlikely ever to actually read the Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister trilogy, despite having picked it up in hardback years ago. I’ve actually been harsher than I’ve been for a while.

I sense I could get rid of more books if I really tried. Indeed, I think Long Way Round and Long Way Down will go, while I loved the show, the books weren’t that well written.

I even gave in and chopped the cable off my alarm clock that I bought aged 15, and put it in to be recycled. It still worked, but the cassette player door’s been broken for years, and frankly, I don’t use it. I’ve not used it for years. I had it plugged in for a few months occupying space on my bedside table, but I never actually used it as an alarm clock, and eventually decided it was just sucking power for no good reason.

Anyhow, that aside I’ve also moved all the tools back to the garage (±a few odds and sods). I’ve painted the bit of the doorframe to Kathryn’s office that needed painting – so that’s now had two coats and looks pretty respectable. Washed the brush’n all. And removed that final bit of masking tape. There’s a couple of spots up on the ceiling that want touching up, where I managed to get blue over the white (grr).

Kathryn is pleased with the office, which feels much bigger than it did, ‘n I think it’s looking pretty nice, so yay, generally on that front.

I also ran the strip of caulking under the shelves in the hall:

The trim there’s nearly ready to be painted too, so that should come together pretty well. It now matches the rest of the wall (in terms of paint colour) and the whole house is starting to feel more whole. I wasn’t originally planning to caulk under it, but it turned out that there was a fair breeze coming in from under the house (despite being insulated under there); so I decided to throw a strip of caulk down and make it look pretty at the same time.

I also did something which isn’t on the list (well, it is now, just so I could enjoy crossing it off) – I hung the lamp shade in the entryway. Granted it makes the house look a bit like a brothel (it’s red and yellow, to go with the stained glass) but hey, we barely ever switch it on.

I do, at some point, need to install an earth on it, because it’s actually a candle-holder that I’ve modified somewhat. I’d actually like it to have three-core cable, with an earth to the metal of the shade, but I’ve not got any appropriate cable kicking around, so for the moment it’ll have to wait.

Whilst I’ve been dinking at lunch time, I also discovered something I didn’t know existed, and decided I want it. Sadly, I can’t find it for sale anywhere:

Meh, so that’s my news. Now I’m going to go hide in the kitchen and washup.

* A fold-out twin-single-mattress double. I’m amazed it works, but it does :)

10/12/2013
Pride comes after a reasonable degree of success in decorating

So, it’s not quite finished. As usual, time has got the better of me, and my mother’s coming to visit on Wednesday, which means that Tuesday is to be spent tidying. It also meant that we needed to clear out the library-cum-my-office-cum-spare-bedroom (not ‘beadroom’, as I first wrote. Awesomely over-spec though our house is for our needs, it does not have a specific room entirely devoted to beads).

This meant that for the past few days every waking moment not at work has been spent toiling in Kathryn’s office. I kind of wanted it to be finished before Christmas, anyway, as a kind of mini-Christmas present. It’s been left ’til last, just by dint of being full of stuff, and me thinking ‘it won’t take long’. And in all honesty, it hasn’t really. I’d’ve liked to have done some stuff to a better standard. The filling of the gap between the floorboards and the skirting is not terribly neat, but it’s ‘okay’. There are bits of wall I’d’ve liked to have spent much longer on. There’s the hole by the window which I’d love to have filled better, but which just kept disintegrating, so ended up being stabilised with ‘smoothover’ and just left, because I’d run out of filler.

But incredibly, the smoothover did work. It took a lot of sanding, and I was awesomely thankful that I’d bought more sanding sheets for the electric sander which did most of the grunt work. I was also very thankful that I’d bought a massive roll of cheap-ass wide masking tape which I used to tape the plastic sheeting back down multiple times, and which I used to seal around the door. Anyway, after several tedious hours of sanding, it was done. The wall was smooth, or at least, acceptably close to smooth. Good enough that after several coats of paint I reckoned it’d look okay.

Granted, afterwards, I was a mere ghost of my former self. Mainly because I was entirely covered in filler dust.

Whilst the room was a state I also took the opportunity to uncover the original panel door. Thankfully, the 1950’s hardboard’s just nailed, not glued, so a few deft slices with the stanley knife, some brute force, and ten minutes with a claw hammer, and the door was nail-free and, err, brown, in this case.

It also revealed how awesome the original doorhandles were.

If only someone’d saved them.

They were probably bakelite. I wish I could lay my hands on a set to fit to the entire house. But I’ve never seen more than the odd random one, and I’d rather like them all to match. They now make a chrome version but at 25 quid a handle I’m inclined to think that’s a bit much (with 6 doors to rehandle).

Err, I digress.

So, anyhow, I slathered layer after layer of paint on. Two coats of ‘white’* on the walls, two coats of basecoat on the sections above the picture rail where the artex hides under many layers of evil. Then two coats of lumitec white over that and the ceiling, two coats of the ‘eco’ paint on the walls. And finally, today, three coats of paint on the trim.

We headed down to see if our local independent department store had shelving timber, but they did not. Which is a shame, because if they had it would have meant that I wouldn’t have had to, essentially, hurl the un-unpacked boxes of stuff back into Kathryn’s office. We’ve also had to put the bookcase back in to her office to hold things that should have been unpacked on to the new shelves that aren’t there yet.

But I’ve mounted Kathryn’s EmergenTea case on the wall:

And the room is looking pretty lovely, if I do say so myself:

All in all, I’m quite happy with progress on that front. I also finally connected the radiator up, bled it, and lo, the room has heating for the first time ever.

Beyond the shelves, I still need to paint some of the door frame, attach the sockets to the walls (but the screws seem to have gone walkies), hodge the wires back up into the ceiling and screw the light-fitting to the ceiling, cut-and-fit the blanking plate for the air-brick that opens directly into the room (which was blanked off rather crudely when we moved in).

Anyhow, it means that I can cross some stuff off the jobs list. Which is good. And I feel a damn sight better about the house progressing.

* We had some of a ‘value pack’ of Dulux white, which looks nothing like the Dulux ‘lumitec white’ topcoat we use on the ceilings. It sort of looked vaguely brown. Although, to be fair, it was pretty old.

8/12/2013
(Lack of) Motivation

So, I’ve been trying to get motivated to restart work on the house. It doesn’t help that it’s that time of year when there are fun things to do, like making cider, or making membrillo (QUINCE!)

Also, it doesn’t help that I’ve a really strong desire to get the garden into some-kind-of-shape before the winter, so that next spring we can actually do something with it, rather than watching the weeds grow and staring sadly at it. One of the things that really kind of requires our attention is the absence of any kind of path down the garden. We ripped out the concrete one when we arrived, with the intention of replacing it with a more windy gravel path.

Only we’ve not managed to do that. And with both of us tramping up and down the garden most days, we are rapidly reaching slippery mud status, instead of grass path. So really, we need to get some gravel in there. The only teensy tiny problem with that is there’s a chunk of pitched roof that’s leaking and needs replacing, and there’s not really the money for hundreds of pounds of gravel. Although having just had the genius idea of checking ebay I’ve found a few places supplying cheaper gravel.

Anyhow.

So, there’s stuff that needs doing outside, but there’s also stuff that needs doing inside. I’m trying to coax myself back into tackling ‘the list‘. However, I’m also trying to decide if my desire to start work on Kathryn’s office is a ‘I want to do something that feels like I’m achieving something as opposed to lots of fiddly little jobs that need doing but aren’t going to have such a huge impact’*. Whether it’s my almost ridiculous lack of patience that’s impacting this. But honestly, it’d be nice to tackle Kathryn’s office. It’s a space that needs doing, it’s also a relatively small space that I could actually finish, and it’d mean we could finally have the heating on in there, which I should think Kathryn would enjoy.

Meh. I dunno why I’m sharing this, really. Since it’s mainly just rambling.

But hey, sometimes rambling is what you need…

Maybe I just need to overcome inertia and get going again.

* Which is dumb, because honestly, nicely painted trim in the hall – which includes a bloody great wall of what is currently hardboard – would make an enormous difference.

26/10/2013
End of days (off)

So my little three week non-departing-vacation is over. It’s time to look back at what has been achieved at chez us. I have finally, after nearly 2 years of prevarication, wired up the security lights and alarm repeater on the garage. The garage was alarmed (heh) but had no alarm box on it, so you couldn’t tell when you’d triggered it from inside the garage. Inside the house it was clear enough, but since 2/3rds of the aim is to persuade anyone breaking and entering to leave, ideally rapidly, then having a dirty great siren going off on the building is probably helpful.

I also finally put up the ‘security’ lights. They’re more ‘access’ lights, really, given the feeble light output from the 30 LED arrays inside the security light casing. But rather than wasting 100s of watts, they waste only a watt or two, which makes me much happier. And they also make finding the keyholes in the padlocks and gate somewhat easier.

I have also completed insulating under the sections of the house I can reach with the Innotherm recycled denim insulation. I am unutterably grateful that I used that, not glassfibre, considering how hideous a job it was even with that. I miscalculated staggeringly, ending up with 4 extra rolls that are currently looking for a home (just waiting to see if our local house renovating friends need them, otherwise if anyone on here wants them, lemmie know*). The actual job was made worse by the plastic coated wire I was using to retain them not coming on a spool (it’s actually garden wire) – and becoming one of those special tangled knots of wire. In daylight, sat outside, it’d be naught to untangle. Irritating, but that’s all. As I struggled in the narrowest space, tangled between the incoming water supply, gas lines, the main run of our ethernet and phone cables, covered in a layer of filth, a mixture of too hot and too cold, I ended up swearing a blue streak. With only 3 sections left to insulate I couldn’t even get enough wire out in one go to fix up one section. Eventually, I managed to get the frustration out of my head and slowly pick the wire apart. After that it went fairly smoothly.

The other persistent irritant was the staples I started off using which kept jamming. So I’d manage a few staples and then be picking the staples out of the gun, the strip having disintegrated into five sections of a few staples each. Each of those would then disintegrate into single staples… I’m not sure if it’s the age of the staples (they were my dad’s, actually, I suspect bought for a similar purpose many years ago). But changing to much longer staples (better for retaining the wire anyhow) seemed to fix that problem.

Anyhow. It’s done now, and the floor is definitely warmer. The house also actually seems to stay warm with the heating on. The lounge is still drafty, though, so we’ve smothered that in rugs. Many rugs. More to come.

Outside I’ve cleared the overgrowth in my yearly purge of the area between our land and our neighbour’s, the brambles and lyme trees felled and ready to go through the shredder. They’d be in the shredder now if it wasn’t raining. Although I really should get a new blade for the shredder. Hopefully it’ll cope with this… I’m also considering adding a chainsaw to our collection of rarely used power tools. I was going to get a hedge trimmer, but actually, a chainsaw would probably be better given the thickness of some of the things we want to take down.

It would also allow us to trim down our neighbour’s hedge, before she sells the house, thus making our garden have light again. She’s fine with us doing that… so… however, it does rely on the weather being a little less inclement.

What I have done, albeit not finished, is the deck. I need a few more pallets to take it to completion, and a few days without rain, and to sort out my circular saw’s battery pack. Oh, and to spray it with the deck oil that I just ordered. But otherwise, ‘s all good. And I’m quite pleased with the way it’s looking now:

Although I have been wandering around humming “Sittin’ on the Dock (of the bay)”, and occasionally going for ‘Aye Aye, Captain’ comments. Incidentally, the edging strips aren’t actually attached yet. They’re waiting on me finishing the vertical sections, which is waiting on a few more pallets.

The autofeeding screwdriver was a mixture of ace and terrible. I don’t think it’s meant to be used pointing downwards vertically (since it does say it’s a drywall autofeeding screwdriver) but it kind worked. And the autofeed screws largely did their stuff, but I think a combination of the cheap driver and the cheap screws led to sufficient misfeeds that it probably didn’t take much less time than doing it by hand. It felt like less time though, when the battery was working. However, the battery took 3 hours to charge and about 20 minutes to die. I think I’ll keep it though, because whenever we decide we want to do something again, the autofeeder shall be given a new shiny battery and better quality screws and it shall probably be way more useful. Ironically, the cheap/crappy Argos battery ‘drill’ proved it’s worth as the screwdriver for when the autofeeder quit – even though it irritates me that they had a picture of it that bore no relation to the object I actually picked up (specification subject to change. Feh).

Anyhow. So that was all good, in the end. Oh, and for those who might have noticed, I straightened up the stairs. I knew they were wonky (level, but off straight) due to the fact the ground, old stairs, the deck, everything has its own version of level. I’d tied the stairs into the deck at a point where it’s definitely not level, because it fouls some randomly poured concrete that’s insanely hard to get up. Having realised that it was going to irritate me forever that whilst the stairs were level, they looked crooked, I unscrewed a few bits, and had great fun putting them back in ‘by eye’ so they look straight. Yay.

I have also picked 47 billion apples (and 3 pears (some bugger had already raided the pear tree)) for the making of both English and American cider:

On Friday we’ll have the rental cider press, so expect howls of anguish. Especially if works out as badly as the slow-cooked tomato sauce, the recipe for which produced something I’d describe as ‘burned flavour’. Sufficient sugar makes it sort of edible, but I’m largely inclined to throw the whole lot away. Thankfully they were shop-bought tomatoes as we never had a glut. We’ve got a small batch of our own tomatoes to make into chutney with our green beans tho’, which should be good. :)

Finally, I set up The Electric Minor Project website. The main aim of the website is to drag in some sponsorship for the conversion (to fund the purchase of batteries) and promote the conversion. I’ll be on the Transport Evolved podcast tonight to talk about it… (1900 BST). Assuming our Net Connection plays ball.

Uh, so that’s it.

* They’re 4m x 400mm x 70mm with a rating of 0.037WmK.

13/10/2013
A deck post

Or, more accurately, a post about the deck.

Mostly.

Sorta.
(more…)

26/9/2013
Technique B

So, as is traditional, having had a bit of a whinge about the world I went down to the garage yesterday morning and managed to locate the second tube. I also fixed the long-missing-a-washer roofrack bar, tightened up a loose retaining screw and popped the roofrack on the car.

Then, considering the weight of the hefty objects that’d be going on top of poor old Rebecca I broke out a pair of scrap socks to cushion and protect the roof… then nipped off to the garden centre and bought some tomato food. Plan was, on the way back, to check out a few potential pallet sources, then stop at the place I’d agreed to nab pallets from before. Unfortunately, on arriving there I found that some other bugger’s been in and thieved ’em. In the end I found some disposed of pallets in a public area which I grabbed, and some more that I’m going to go and ask about later today, maybe.

Having got my little selection pack home I set to in the garden clearing the bricks, disintegrated mortar, panes of glass, all sorts of random stuff that was left over from the building work. The bricks are meant to be turned into path edging (which is another of the pre-winter tasks, since both Kathryn and I will be trailing up and down the garden, having a path to wander down is wise. Last year it turned into a mud track fairly quickly with just me doing it). Having cleared the concrete deck, I grabbed the pallets I’d retrieved and lugged them up the garden.

Handily, the pallets fit nicely into the space left over, meaning that there’s a neat gap around the house walls, big enough to prevent damp sitting against the house, small enough to not look ridiculous. I need more though… Lots more. I need about 5-6 more to complete the structural layer, then ‘lots’ more to strip down for surfacing. At least the ‘strip down to surface it’ ones don’t have to come back complete, I can strip them in situ. Anyhow, having got them in to position I plonked my chair down, made a cup of tea, and enjoyed the view.

Lush.

This morning the new radiator arrived..so I can get on with fitting that. The only slight crimp in that plan is that I’ve not yet heard back from the insulation company – and until that arrives I don’t really want to do the under-house grovelling. I’m hoping (against hope) that I can get the under house grovelling over and done with in one day. Although I suspect not since the jobs are:

– Plumb in new radiator
– Fix joint in floor where tiles have cracked so that it doesn’t move
– Insulate under kitchen and hallway
– Poke wire up for network point that could, theoretically, sit by the front door

Which is all potentially doable in a day. Just a long day. In the filth. Ah well, we’ll see how it goes.

2/9/2013
In which we demonstrate that things are fixed into the ground

So today was a big day for the deck. Also, we had polar network come around and install our free EV charger. Fun fun fun, really.

It didn’t entirely start positively, though. One of the things I sold on ebay came back. My beloved AE-1 which served me perfectly came back as faulty. And it is, or at least, it seems to have been and I don’t trust it enough to sell it again (quite a lot of fiddling has made it work again, but I think it needs servicing). However, having nipped out to collect that parcel I finally made it to Hart’s Bakery. I’ve wanted to visit Hart’s Bakery since seeing it on Bristol Culture back in December last year. Last time we went shopping we tried to stop there and missed the last loaf of bread by seconds. Seriously, had I parked quicker, we’d’ve had it. And having thought about it some more (and having watched this…)

I decided that I was entirely going to get some bread there. See, normally we get our bread from ‘The Olive Shed’ on Gloucester Road, but they don’t actually bake it there, and though it is very nice, the idea of fresh bread from the baker…well… Nummy.

Anyhow, I knew they opened at 0700 and given the Polar Man was coming to install the free charger at 0900 I reckoned I could nip over, get the package, and get some really fresh bread. As I pootled there I thought…maybe I could get croissants too.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this is a tale that ends in disaster. But no! No, I actually did go and get some bread and some croissants, and y’know what, they were bloody delicious. I could eat the whole damn loaf if you put it in front of me, and the croissants? Like being in France. Yum.

Breakfast done in a most satisfactory way, the Polar Man arrived and started work down in the garage on the new charger. Now originally I’d planned to put the free charger on the side we traditionally park Imey, but I’d rethought that and concluded that, until Imey sports a new charger, there’s little-to-no point faffing around with the charging system. And since I didn’t know if it would get unhappy with the charging doohickey being on a timer, well, then I thought it made more sense to stick it next to the Minor, in the way of I damn well will convert my minor soon, yes kind of positive thinking. So I shuffled Rebecca out and left him to it. And lo:

Lovely.

Less lovely was the abuse given to our garage’s consumer unit. They changed the RCD for a 20A one, which apparently is required to stop the thing ‘nuisance tripping’. Now I’d managed (with some effort) to get my timer switch in, albeit upside-down, and done so without damaging the box.

Yeah. That appears to be the work of a Stanley-type-knife hacking an ill-fitting hole in the box. I’ve not looked to see why the RCD is at such a jaunty angle yet, because I fear looking. It took me bloody ages to get the timer switch in and get it all correctly together again. I suspect that he’s not managed to get it to clip in right – or that the dirty great copper bar connecting everything except the timer switch doesn’t fit properly in that RCD. At any rate, it’s not good and I’m a bit unimpressed. My ‘magic’ cable also doesn’t quite work. I suspect I need a better 880 ohm resistor. It does kick in and start the charger, and I can turn it off, but if I switch it from ‘off’ to ‘on’ it doesn’t work. It only works when first plugged in.

Anyhow, you all don’t care about that…Whist he was working down in the garage I proceeded to working on the deck. Before the sun attacked the back porch area. A plan with no flaws…

No really, no flaws.

See a couple of days ago I took off the strange little ‘alignment’ bits of wood I’d used.

Which meant that today I could move straight on to attaching the beam. Which reminds me, I should take out the little screws I used to hold the beam up whilst I was attaching that first set of bolts. It all went remarkably smoothly really. The posts are indeed beautifully in line, and they’re all vertical (which of course doesn’t look exactly right near anything around our house which is jauntily non-Euclidian in nature). And in the end having carefully lined it up, made the two first holes in one of the centre posts, attached that, and then worked my way from the stairs-end back to the other end making holes and bolting it all together I ended up with something which was horizontal and at the right level. I am stunned.

I immediately flailed about in a horribly unfit woman attempting to use her arms but with no upper body strength to haul herself up onto the bar kind of way, which after sufficient flailing, waving my legs around, and use of the piles of crap surrounding the new posts led to me balancing somewhat precariously on the beam and going “Ha! I’m HIGH”*, much to my amusement**. Now, earlier in the day I’d pondered whether the size of pallet I originally intended to use would fit in Imey. The answer, when I investigated with a tape measure, was a resounding NO. It might be possible to brute-force one in, but I’m not doing that to the poor car. Frankly putting the postcrete in the car was a bit upsetting, the idea of hodging a pallet in where it barely fits doesn’t bear thinking about.

So I messaged Nikki and asked if she could (a) help and (b) whether they’d fit in one of her fleet.

But now I’d reached the end of what I could do on that for the day, which saddened me, but meant I actually got on with other things I should be doing… like, for example, trying to source an 18 volt battery for our circular saw (got a bid on an 18 Volt drill). And more importantly, preparing my little talk for my job interview. My temporary ‘Senior Staff Nurse’ job has finished – and I’ve just applied for a permanent Senior Staff Nurse job – and got an interview for which I have to give a brief talk (5-10 minutes). So I’ve prepped the slides. I also rang and confirmed the interview (I’d left them a message before, but I’m glad I rang because they’d not done anything with the message). I also rang the solar company who got back to me to tell me they’d get back to me on Friday (a marked improvement on previous phonecalls and e-mails which have gone unanswered). Then I e-mailed the insulation people, who are getting back to me with a price, and then… well, then I had a genius idea.

I could just carry the pallets back

I mean, they’re not far away. Not really far. I’m sure I could do that. I could, couldn’t I?

So I nipped around to the industrial estate behind our house, wandered into the first place that seemed to be treating their pallets as scrap and asked. And was very cheerfully informed that I could help myself. So I carried three of them back (one at a time, obviously). I am now sporting some very fetching bruises on my shoulders… Probably on my back too.

But it was worth it.

They’re a bit thinner than the pallets I really wanted to use, so I’m not fixing them in place yet, in case I can find some with chunkier sections. But my intention is to layer a solid layer of stripped-pallet-bits-of-wood across the top anyhow, which should add a goodly quantity of strength. But I got to stand on my ‘deck’ and go ‘wow, it’s quite high up here’. And got to see a bit of what I’m heading for, and y’know what, it was damn good.

So far the costs of the deck have been:

Four pillars – about £12
Postcrete – four bags at £5 each – £20
Dirty great pressure treated Beam – £15
Pre-cut stair riser (could have done with out, but I was feeling lazy) £13 each – £26
Bolts – £10

Of course, we should probably include the cost of the pallet stripping bar, because I’m going to need that to get the wood to make the actual surface of the deck… And possibly to make some ‘special size pallets’ that fill in the gaps… (£45). Anyhow. Not bad so far…

I also need a bunch of deck screws/nails/etc – but that should be the final expense. Well, that and the circular saw battery. Oh and also, I could do with finding the charger for the 12v drill (cost free, if it charges) and possibly some new drill-screw-bits (because I’ve munged most of mine).

I’m quite excited though – it’s beginning to look and feel more like an actual deck!

* Not like that.
** This relates to me being like a child.

27/8/2013
I think our router may be melting

So after the excitement of the garden yesterday, today I went and worked on clearing out/up in the garage so that we can get the new car (hopefully Thursday) in to charge. Otherwise we’ll be a bit shafted, really.

After a good few hours work, I turned this:

into this:

Actually, the shelves went up (rather rapidly) as part of the tidying. You can deduce this from the fact they’re

(a) Not strictly level
(b) Made from crappy old offcuts
(c) Put up using really surprisingly poor quality London brackets.

I need to whip the stuff back off the shelves at some point because as you might have gathered I’ve not actually painted that section of wall yet. But with the car coming, as I may have mentioned, on Tuesday, I felt today was not the day to invest time in painting.

I want to get some better quality London Brackets and put up some more shelving on that side, and possibly a bit on this side. I’d also like to spend some ‘quality time’ down there and see if I can’t actually produce something more like organisation (as opposed to randomly hurled on the shelves). Also, I should see if I can’t e-bay some of it, because there’s a lot of stuff there which is just waiting to leave.

I have this horrible feeling I should get rid of the table saw, which would make it the most pointless purchase ever. I thought we’d do much more with it, but in all honestly it wasn’t really the tool that we actually required in the end. Getting rid of it would make a lot of space in there. The chop saw is also out on loan at the moment, which helps.

I could also, realistically, get rid of all the chargers bar the ‘RAC’ one. I’m pained at the thought of getting rid of my ABBSAR charger – because I actually paid for that one – the others all came with the EV conversion stuff for my Minor. But the RAC one is actually probably the best of the bunch. Either that or one of the 12A Fast/Trickle chargers. They could all go on e-bay at 99p…

It was hideously hot down there, not as hot as it was outside though… which made me doubly (or possibly tripley) grateful that I’d organised collecting the hardcore as an evening job. However, in the awesome coolness of Freecycle the hardcore turned out to be a mixture of stone and mortar from a probably 18th century free-stone wall built in Fishponds. Originally it would have been all stone but had been patched up with mortar over the years – the section of wall fell down in a winter storm and the owner, when it was rebuilt, had it done as a modern wall – with lots of mortar. Leaving an awful lot of stone left over. Originally the gap between the garage and the (one and only section of) lawn was to be filled with gravel, and the hardcore was just to make it cheaper, but having seen what we’ve got, it looks like we might well just leave it as it is, because the stone looks like it’ll be quite nice once it’s washed off :)

In other news, with much effort and the use of a Mac app or two, the salvaged section of the car’s service timelapse is now here:

For an experiment with timelapse it was quite painful (should have just got John in) – but despite ending rather abruptly (take it up with Lapse It which doesn’t recognise the camera orientation), and not having sound (because I was too cheap to buy a time lapse application which would add sound having had Lapse It fail, and O Snap also is not looking too clever at the moment).

Unfortunately, whist the heat has led to lots of garden progress, swimming in the sea, and clearing the garage up it’s also coincided with our internet connection getting worse. We’re planning to switch provider anyway, because Be have been bought by Sky, it’s merely a case of getting enough tuits to make a round one. I may reset the router in the morning but for tonight it’s been painfully slow. The poor media server is also running in a very warm laundry room. I’ve opened the door for a bit this evening to give it a bit of a break!

8/7/2013
In which Kate spends a lot of money, services her Minor and wonders WTF is up with charging points

So, the sums were in. The unbiased non-car-o’phile had been presented with raw facts and come to her conclusion. The answer came back the same as Kathryn’s. Basically – the new car – is a good idea although can we afford it?

The bank was rung, and they gave their loan costing. The change from the current payment ended up being 60 quid.

60 quid extra a month on the loan but no petrol spend (or at least very little), no servicing, and hopefully much more painless MOTs.

We should break even on our spend just before 2 years. Just as we’re leaving… Although, obviously, at that point we can consider whether we’re taking the EV with Rebecca, or selling it on.

Because, that’s what we’ve done. We’ve bought an EV. Well, we’ve had an offer accepted on a second hand EV which is currently approximately 3 times it’s normal driving range from our house. Ye-es. I blame Nikki. Having faintly floated the concept to her she instantly pointed out the one which we’ve kind of ended up buying (we’ve bought it’s twin, actually, the guy had two).

We’ve also applied for a free charging point from Polar Network, which will look quite lovely in the garage, I feel. Of course, this also means that I need to get my act together and tidy the garage, because at the moment it’s a one-car-and-shed-loads-of-crap car garage, rather than a two car garage.

Of course, at the moment, it’s likely that we’ll still take Rebecca Mog down to my mum’s because of the absence of charging points in convenient locations. Ironically, we can get 100 of the 130 miles to my mum’s house, because there’s a rapid charger 30 miles from our house. Driving really carefully we could probably just about make it there, but just around Exeter there seems to be a bit of a dearth of rapid chargers. Also, winding up the already 3 hour journey to 4 hours is not ideal…

But the rest of our existence, which is powered by sunlight and bought locally will continue to be revoltingly green.

To counteract this, I spent the ~~morning~~day servicing Rebecca. It turns out that I’m way out of practice, and that I am completely incapable of turning the engine over without the starting handle (so I had to cut the hole in the glass fibre bumper valance for the starting handle), and that I am quite slow, therefore, at servicing her. She has, however, got greased nipples & fresh lubrication ;)

I’ve also changed the fuel sender for a new fuel sender, which means that the fuel gauge now shows an actual quantity of fuel. I did try the ‘LED Indicator Relay’ which it turns out is a lie. I’m quite pissed because I bought it off e-bay a while ago, and it turns out now that it does not, in fact, work.

It is a standard relay, so far as I can tell, and thus goes absolutely spare when connected to LED indicators. However, the act did allow me to change the rear light lens which had cracked in so many places I thought it was going to drop off. A trip to a classic carboot sale is probably in order. I was going to delight your visual senses with a timelapse courtesy of ‘Lapse It’. But it doesn’t seem to render large time-lapse files. Or at least, it’s so far failed 5 times to render it – just quitting with no explanation having ‘Processed’ the final image. This is, as you might guess, quite annoying. Especially since I paid for it after my playing with it yesterday.

I also spent a little time attaching pieces of metal to my freshly varnished driftwood and spraying the brass-bits-of-stuff which I bought accidentally (but it turns out I require) black, so as they’ll blend with the plastic bits of stuff (which I bought on purpose and do require) and not stand out as being brass against the chrome bits (which I also bought and which I thought would go okay with the black bit).

I may offer up photos at some point :)

2/7/2013