Mostly lemon based

Category: House

  • The oddness of the bathrooom

    So, for the past 2 years we’ve not really had a full bathroom. Yes, technically, it has met the criteria for being a bathroom. It has a bath, a toilet, and a sink. Indeed, I think that bar maybe the odd day, it’s been fully functioning.

    However, it’s not had a floor for most of the time that we’ve lived here, and nor, since the plastering was done, has it had wall coverings. Indeed, it’s generally been a bit unpleasant to be in.

    Since completing the bathroom, it’s had this odd ‘does that belong here’ sensation that it brings up in my head. When I get to the top of the stairs (and it doesn’t help that the upstairs hall is entirely filled with tools) the bathroom feels finished, and very nice, and the top of the stairs is…although it’s actually more or less finished (minus the skirting) it’s just got that ‘unfinished’ feel. It feels strange. It does, in my head at least, feel like the bathroom is an entirely separate entity from the house. Of course, it will settle down and mentally merge. I’m getting more used to it. I’m getting used to the toilet paper being on a holder on the wall. I’m happily used to getting into the shower (oh, showers, how I’ve missed thee).

    But it still feels quite odd to have a finished bathroom.

    In other news, the GT550 is sold and awaiting a trip to its new owner.

  • The Clock (aka this is not how you do it part 1)

    So, after we moved in we saw a few nice bakelite (and related) clocks, and rather fancied one. Eventually we located one on e-bay that was ‘cheap’. It’s a Ferranti model, and the person selling it claimed* that they’d not had the nerve to wire it up to test it, but it probably worked.

    Well, it didn’t.

    It was very pretty, however:

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    And we hadn’t paid that much for it, so I thought to myself… “Either it’ll go with a quick service, or I’ll get a new clock mechanism, pop it in, and Bob** shall be your uncle”.

    Only it’s (obviously) not quite worked that way.

    First up, the original clock’s bearings were shot. It was so stiff, even after a little dobble of oil, that it couldn’t start. And anyway, who wants cables trailing all over their mantlepiece. We’ve gone lot a lot of bother to hide the cables, so really, having one trailing about the place is not really the plan. Instead I ordered a new ‘silent’ clock mechanism from the ‘bay****. And then over the past few weeks have dinked with fitting it. Having disassembled the clock I found that, well, the new mechanism fouled the ring which appeared to be moulded to the inside of the clock face for the purpose of supporting the mechanism. I pondered this for several days, contemplating how to make a sheath to extend the clock mechanism through the clock face.

    Having decided that this was going to be

    a) Very difficult
    and
    b) Unlikely to be a raging success

    I decided instead to trim the clock face. Hence today’s purchase of the ‘high quality battery rotary tool*****’. I then set about carefully trimming the carefully marked sections from the back of the clock face. In a moment of absolute folly, I decided that since the clock mechanism has a great wodge of empty space in one corner it’d make more sense to chop a chunk of that corner off than my precious clock’s face. Err, not so much. I ended up trimming both.

    I then carefully (and I do actually mean carefully) drilled the centre of the clock face to allow the new mechanism to pass through.

    Yesterday, before I did all of this I pondered the matter of attaching the hands. See, the hands are not actually the right size. The clock’s hour hand is just bigger than the spindle for the minute hand on the mechanism. The minute hand is just bigger than the spindle for the second hand on the new mechanism, and the clock doesn’t (as you can see) have a second hand. Dismantling and removing the second hand spindle (well, shortening it sufficiently) was fairly easy, as was reassembly (which, in this case, really was the reverse of assembly). I came up with the concept that if I trimmed off the hands that came with the clock mechanism (hideous and cheap as they were) and attached the original hands to them, this would yeild the desired effect. And so it would.

    I pondered it for a bit and decided glue would be an option. So I glued it. Now I don’t have any araldite or JB Weld, but I had some other stuff that claimed to glue metal. It doesn’t.

    I left it a full 24 hours, being the generous soul I am, and tried it today, and no. No it does not. I didn’t think it would, but despite saying ‘glues metal’ on the packaging, it doesn’t. Then I had a brainwave. Well, I thought it was a brainwave. I could solder it. I’m not too worried about the joint being strong, Solder would work perfectly…

    Only, no. It would work perfectly if the material the new hands were made from was in any way solderable. Having cleaned up the back faces of the original hands, they happily took a coat of solder. The new hands not so much. Not at all. Not even slightly. Not with a great deal of patience, flux, and waiting.

    So we’re trying a silicone based thing (which is what I have around). I was going to use another impact adhesive I have, but it appears to have gone strange having got (probably) frozen. Feh.

    If not then it’ll be a hardware store trip, and some JB Weld. Which will be insane for the tiny, tiny drop of adhesive I need. Feh (again).

    * As so many like to claim for things that don’t work
    ** Or Kate, although that would be confusing. If Kate was my uncle…we’d just have to call Kate, Bob. Err, anyway***.
    *** Well, Bob…
    **** Which appears to be where everything comes from.
    ***** It should be noted that the main quality in which it is high is cheapness.

  • Onward

    So, today’s progress report from the house…

    Sealant in around bathroom window; it’s not as neat as I would like in a couple of patches, but I’ve definitely got better at it (also, this is way nicer sealant than the grot I’ve got previously from B&Q. Much smoother to use, but dries hella-fast).

    I’ve managed to break the new toilet seat, however, standing on it to reach the window. This is upsetting, and means I’ll have to fix it tomorrow :(

    In other news, the roof has (hopefully) been fixed. The company said that while long-term it’ll need the zinc replacing, the repair should last a good while. There are some slightly sad tiles up there, but nothing else needs immediate attention, which is good news.

    I’ve also been ripping music like a good’un – I’ve got through in the region of 50 CDs. I’ve also been ‘tidying’ in the video and film directories, coming up with something like a naming scheme. I’ve also added a specific username for the media equipment to use (Herbert Shuffle*). I’ve also started moving media around to have one disk full of Audio and the other full of Video. Obviously it’d be nice to have a nice shiny RAID system with backup on it… But not yet, eh.

    I’ve also registered for assessment of and organised sending of transcripts for both my Bachelor’s degrees to Nova Scotia, for to have them decide that I can take the exam which will hopefully lead to us exiting this country. Ironic, really, because we’re trying to work out if Kathryn can get Citizenship here, so that we can come back later. Maybe. For a bit :)

    And finally, I’ve ordered an FD to Micro 4/3rds lens mount for my Lumix G1. Because**. If anyone wants to give me decent or fish-eye or ultra-wide-angle FD lens (or spots them realllllllly cheaply somewhere, or better still, free), let me know.

    Uh, so I think that’s it for today. I was hoping to put up the light in the bathroom, but I was informed by Kathryn that I wasn’t doing that because I was yelping and having great difficulty moving my left arm. She was, of course, right. Although I think I could do it now, it’s probably worth letting my arm have the rest of the day off, especially because lying in bed last night and trying to turn over, I kind of looked like a beached fish as I flapped my body trying to avoid using my arm. Abduction is a bugger, adduction less so. Circumduction isn’t happening. I’m just praying I don’t have to do CPR at work because I may end up in worse shape than the patient… :-/

    In other, other news, I need to sort out putting DD-WRT on the other WAP54G; this is because the WAP54G’s feeble wireless output isn’t quite enough to reach our garage (our old Belkin 802.11b router could just, just reach the garage, but was painfully unreliable and only did WEP encryption***). So I might as well sort the other power supply for it… which is something to do tomorrow.

    * Bonus points if you can name the source of the username. But not many bonus points, because… obviously.
    ** Because I have a few FD lenses, and there’s no way I can afford any new Micro 4/3s lenses at the moment. Yes, I know this makes the pretty/shiny/small argument for buying the G1 invalid. Yes. Shut up and go away.
    *** And whilst I do support the concept of open WiFi, our ADSL is so sick that sharing out the weedy connection we’ve got seems foolish.

  • The Lino Has Landed

    Well, technically it’s vinyl, not lino. But it’s close enough.

    Anyhow, yesterday was spent planing the bottom edge from the door (yes, Kathryn and I really did plane the door rather than me just hack the bottom off it with a saw) and then I spent a large chunk of the day laying the lino. All of the day really. It’s a small room with a fiddly-bastard toilet in it. And having tested my theory I found that I was correct – the toilet is on what turns out to be a small pedestal which is, I think, glued to the floorboards. So we opted for laying the floor around it, which meant that I had to cut the vinyl to fit. I’m aware that this is not the ideal solution, but it’s the one we chose on the basis that I really, really didn’t want to move the toilet and by extension the cistern (because moving the pedestal on which the toilet’s base is sitting would probably have resulted in its destruction, lowering the toilet, and then requiring the cistern to be lowered).

    This was an experience which was almost as much fun as I’d imagined. Only the bit behind the toilet where I was dangling arms outstretched across the toilet seat, and my chest crushed, and my head wedged under the cistern / against the back of the toilet trying to trim the lino to fit against the wall, was more fun than I’d imagined. As the faint smell of 70 year old toilet* worked its way into my nose I decided that, like wallpapering, this was a task I wasn’t planning to repeat.

    At any rate, having got the lino down…
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    …I cleaned up the tiles under the sink and switched the old, grey, plastic plumbing for some chromed metal (and a 90 degree joint of plastic-chrome effect). Having scraped the tiles clean and wiped some bits down with meths I spent an inordinate amount of time putting masking tape around the room…

    Several miles of Frogtape** later:

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    And then came the sealant. The miles and ever-loving miles of sealant.

    So we’ve gone from this:

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    To this:
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    I’ve got a bit more to do, there’s the bit around the window, and lamp needs to be put up. And the doorframe painted. And I’m going to paint that black plinth under the toilet white. And we want to put some mirrors up. Oh, and I’m thinking I should paint the copper pipe white. Otherwise it’s done.

    We’ve decided to leave the existing flush pipe and flush (because it’s white and innocuous), and the flush kinda-sorta-works.

    Unfortunately, in the process I’ve really, really, really hurt my shoulder. I don’t know how, or why, but lifting it up or abducting it in any way causes me quite a lot of pain. I can do it, but I think I’ve sprained something. This is not good, not good at all.

    * no matter how often you clean it, if you get that close to a toilet that old, it smells.
    ** Kathryn suggested trying Frogtape in the last house, I think. It’s vastly better than any of the other masking tapes we’ve tried and I’m a convert. I was very cynical at the time, and didn’t really want to fork out the extra for a 4-quid roll instead of a 50p roll, but the difference in finish and in lack-of-damage to paint has been worth it.

  • Sometimes it’s the little things

    Now, for those of you who are sick of the house updates… here’s another one.
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  • Apparently, today I am a hunter gatherer of sorts

    I’ve been hunting for bathroom stuff today. This is because I realised that I forgot to run the strip of glue between the two bits of MDF that make up the bath’s side panel. I’d realised this after I’d primed and whilst I was filling, but thought, hell, I’m sure it’ll be okay. It’s not okay. So today I scraped out some of the filler and attempted to get some glue into the joint. I’m hoping it’ll do, otherwise the other option is to find some method of getting the glue further into the gap. I have ideas about that, but not convenient/easy ideas.

    Anyhow, so, having done that and put a fresh tube on my bike*, I headed out. As you may’ve gathered, I went to the record store. But first I battled the terror of SALE DAY IKEA. Not, obviously, the first day of sales, but given it’s a wednesday at lunch time I’d rather imagined I’d be able to park fairly easily. No. The carpark was almost full, and I got to do a lot of meandering up and down aisles before I could deposit Chester and head in.

    Having found the shower curtains** I started working my way through them trying to find the specific plain white curtain I wanted. They didn’t have it. Pink, yes. Blue, yes. Teal, yes. Black, yes. Patterned with child-friendly-animals, yes. Plain White? No. Having studied the many and various options I went with swirly-white-rings on a clear backing. I haven’t unpacked it yet, because I’m not sure what Kathryn will make of them. I’m not 100% certain I like them, but I’d quite like to use the shower so that I could get up 10 minutes later… :)

    That battle done I returned home. This is because Gardiner Haskins were yet to receive the flooring for the bathroom which was due in today. Having been reminded that we needed some extra odds and sods for dinner tonight, I managed to make it round Sainsburys without getting too many non-list items, and then rang Gardiner Haskins on spec. And y’know what, there was the elusive flooring.

    Another trundle down the river and I’d gathered the final components needed to finish the bathroom***. Shower curtain hooks, black and white sealant… and as you might guess I’d want at this point, whilst not for the bathroom, a puncture repair kit.

    So now the bathroom can actually be finished****. As in completed. As in a room which needs nothing else doing. We have white paint for the little bit of wood trim. We have metal primer for the two short sections of copper pipe… we have black and white sealant to seal the window frame and the top edge of the tiles. And we have flooring and adhesive for flooring, and hardboard to put flooring on. It’s quite exciting.

    * Yes, my lovely gift on the first day back at work after our ‘Christmas’ was a flat tyre as some cheery soul had spread broken glass across the pavement. Le sigh.
    ** I’d gone to Ikea because on their site they list PEVA plain white shower curtains at a stellar £4 each. Gardiner Haskins are still selling PVC, and John Lewis indicate that they sell plenty of PEVA curtains, but they’re all patterned.
    *** Apart from the replacement light, which we need to decide upon.
    **** God damn it, I just remembered, I need a compression fitting 32mm 90 degree waste pipe connector, too. And ideally a new flush mechanism.

  • Steady, if not stellar, progress

    So, I’m still not back to pre-course levels of productivity, and some mornings spin by without so much as a by-your-leave (mostly with me either dinking on the laptop, watching some TV series or other* or disappearing into a book) but I’m maintaining a level of progress on the house which, whilst it’s not quite what I’d like is sufficient to keep me reasonably happy.

    Today I’ve panelled in the side of the bath. For much of the last year and a half (since the heating was installed) we’ve not had any panelling on the bath, allowing open access to the crap underneath it. Giving rise to a gentle breeze through the hole in the wall where the waste water pipe exits into the roof space above the laundry/server room**. There’s still a breeze where the pipe for the waste water exits for the sink, but the bath one is now, finally, behind some panelling.

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    Yes, it’s scrap MDF which is about the least appropriate wood to put in a bathroom, but it’s what I’ve got lying around and I’m hoping that the application of sufficient sealant and paint will protect it well enough.

    There’s quite a bit of filling to do (because I’ve screwed it in all over the place. I’ve left a nice little panel so you can access the waste water connections and the valves for the taps… And I’ve even primed it today. Tomorrow, despite being on nights, I’ll endeavour to get the sealant on around the edges and slap some filler on it. That’s about all I’m scheduling for tomorrow.

    Handily, under the bath was lurking a multipack of blades for a razor which I’ve kept the handle for, which saves buying more blades for the current one for a while****. Also a lot of packaging for decorating bits which has now gone into the recycling…

    I also spent some time fixing the clothes airer. A while ago it broke on one side and became rather a floppy object. I attempted to fix it with a bit of a metal sheath, but it kept coming apart and fairly quickly we got fed up of pushing it back together, and just used it with it flopping about. Now, I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise to anyone that of course this massively increased the stress on the other side of the airer, and yesterday it snapped on the other side dropping our laundry.

    So today I set to with some of the spare pipework from the bathroom:

    Fixed(ish)

    Which seems to have done the job. At least, it’s now standing up. Although it looks like the design was reliant on the flexing of the plastic (*shudder*) which means that some of the other clips that were previously fixed in place with lugs are now sliding clips. Which….well, it’s working for the minute. As it’s the third time it’s been repaired (if you count the lousy fix before) I think I’m being pretty generous to it. It falls into the ‘I don’t want to replace it before we leave’ category, because we have no need of more things that we need to ship.

    I’ve also given the stairs a quick hoover, done my uniforms for work on Monday night, and had a quick hoover/pick up in the lounge… And now I’m relaxing to Blondie (Parallel Lines, on yummy yummy vinyl) whilst testing a theory about the VMP74 (which seems not to like streaming files more than 4Gb over UPnP*****). So that’s not so bad.

    * Recent fixations: Community and MASH, although I’ll fairly frequently watch the Rachel Maddow Show, which is why I’m much more up on USian politics than our own. I think this is partly because Rachel Maddow is awesome, and presents a new show of a variety that just doesn’t exist here. And partly because it’s easier to cope with watching the insanity in the US than watching the painful horror going on here, as our government gut protections for those with long term illness or disability, as they’ve privatised the NHS (they really have, go look at who’s supplying NHS ‘services’ (even writing that makes me want to wash myself, it makes me feel dirty), and endeavoured to turn the lucky people with jobs against the many who are not so fortunate.
    ** Yes, I’m aware that this is a less than desirable combination. But it puts the server well out of the way, where the fact it’s an old machine with many, many fans is not a problem. It’s set up to shut down on all sorts of heat related errors, and has a virtually brand new power supply ***.
    *** Unfortunately the PC in the garage appears to have died. I’ve not looked into this to see if this is the power supply dying or something else. But at any rate, I noticed it wasn’t running the camera software when I went down there, and on rebooting it’s not managing to restart. Indeed, it’s not even managing to POST. Which is probably bad.
    **** Ever since realising that making the razor pink had little effect on it’s ability to produce smooth legs I’ve used whatever razor meets a complex mix of price/shape/number of blades criteria, and the winner for a long time was one which was sold for a long time by all the big supermarket chains in the UK. Slim, triple bladed and really, really cheap it was my fave. Unfortunately, they all stopped selling them – Tesco being the last to stock the blades. I bought several packs of the blades towards the end of production, but eventually ran out… only, apparently not.
    ***** It seems that it does work playing the file over the network not using UPnP.

  • A faint irritant

    So, when I plumbed in the shower, I didn’t quite manage to get the pipework parallel.

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    It was quietly niggling at me, and since I still had some weeping joints I decided to recut the pipe…

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    Whilst it’s not perfect, it’s way better, and I’m pretty much happy with it. Also, having replaced the PTFE tape in the joints with a smidge more, and having replace the olives with fresh ones, the joints are now sealed.

    I also finally hung the toilet roll holder we bought in Wales 2 years ago…

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    It’s quite amazing how nice it is to have a toilet roll holder, and not to have to scrabble round on the back of the toilet, or on the floor to find it.

    We’re just waiting for the lino to arrive, for us to hang the curtain rail (and buy a curtain) and I need to hack a couple of bits of wood into being side panels for the bath, and we’ll actually have a more-or-less finished bathroom*.

    Also yesterday, I finally cured the record deck of it’s hum. I switched the ground point inside the deck, removing an earth loop it appears I’d created when I was replacing the wiring. It’s odd, because I’m pretty sure that’s the original cable routing (because I don’t recall adding in a bloody great link made out of bare copper), but hey. I’ve fiddled with it and that seems to have improved things. There’s still some rumble on there, but I think that’s just the way it is with old bearings – I could replace them, but I’m not convinced it’s worth it. Although looking at Lenco Heaven it seems someone’s come up with a hodge to get a 240v/50Hz deck working on a 120v/60Hz supply, such as will be around in Canada. Indeed, that would mean that I could take my rather nice Rotel deck too. Shiny, shiny. As they say.

    Anyway, I have plans for today. At least vaguely. So I think, maybe, it’s time to get on with them.

    * I also need to trim the waste water pipe and I should, really, replace the flush in the toilet. Although I’ve been putting that off.

  • Retirement should be fine.

    So, despite cramming in many hours of working on the house, I’ve spent the past few days catching up on some reading. You may recall that I spent some time at Mr. B’s Emporium, having what they term a ‘book spa’. It was a delightful*, and the charming chap who spent time talking to me about my tastes, and even coped with my complete mental block on names of authors I like (not uncommon) turned up with a massive stack of books. I’ve read my way through some of them, others lurking on a list of ‘buy when you see them’ have popped up in second hand shops and thus been added to the pile.

    He / It have added some new awesome authors to my ‘to buy when seen’ list, too**. Indeed, with some effort on my part I’ve managed to squash the urge which says “I MUST WORK MORE”, and have actually sat last night and this morning with Zoo City (finished it in the very long bath I took), and have relaxed a teensy tiny bit.

    It’s weird trying to crush the ‘BUT I SHOULD BE DOING SOMETHING’ urge which hides behind me, leaping out. Yes, we need to get the house ready to flog for when we go to Canada. Yes, I need to prep for the exam***. But none of it needs to be done right this instant. Although I’m quite keen to get the bathroom fully in service for Christmas.

    Anyway, I have delighted this morning in not doing anything that could be construed as work (watched ‘The West Wing’ over breakfast, read Zoo City, had bath (and read more Zoo City), made lunch and ate it watching MASH), and now I’m going to go the garage (in the rain, no less), and do some present making. Just like Santa.

    Yay.

    * The only very minor discomfiture about the whole experience was that it was a bit chilly. It’s always a bit chilly in there, and I forgot to take warm socks.
    ** Dorothy B Hughes and Lauren Beukes for example.
    *** The book arrived today full of Canadian Exam Prep questions.

  • It’s been a dog of a job

    Having spent days and days painting and prepping the walls, stripping off the old silicone and regrouting tiles, the bathroom is starting to come together:

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    And the bathroom now has a shower. It has been a bit hellish, really. So, when I plumbed in the sink I made two errors. The first was that I forgot that the shower would need a pressure limiter, which would need to be hidden away somewhere. The second was I didn’t think to check which way round the shower pipes needed to be. Largely, because in my head I assumed it didn’t matter.

    It does, of course, matter. We have exposed pipework, and it’s chrome pipework, which makes it quite difficult to negotiate the matter of crossing pipes.

    In the end, I hacked the plumbing apart under the sink, abused a flexible tap attachment, and made a gentle S shape which allowed the pipes to cross underneath the sink and emerge the right way up. The pressure limiter sits, in a somewhat ugly manner, behind the waste water outlet (large lump of grey plastic that it is). But, at the end of the day, the shower is in and working.

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    Today, though, was spent on the taps. These rather fetching Victorian / Edwardian mixer taps that we got to replace the cruddy plastic / chrome ones that were in the bathroom when we moved in. However, having got the old ones out (a hellish job in itself, the access is incredibly limited), I discovered that the new tap attachments didn’t fit the period mixer taps. Whilst the thread gauge, and the external diameter were right, for whatever reason, the internal diameter of the taps was too small to take the modern tap adaptors. They’re meant to fit. But they don’t.

    Eventually, after much cursing I went to the local plumbers merchant*, who didn’t have the flexible DIY pipes that people seem to love so much. So, having not had a shower since yesterday, grovelled in the dirt under the bath and on the bathroom floor, and having reached a level of tiredness from holding my arms in an incredibly uncomfortable position for a couple of hours, I headed to B&Q, who did have the hideous plastic flexy adaptors.

    One of them went on perfectly. The other one was either faulty when it went on, or was broken by me as it went on. Turning it on (gingerly, as I do anyhow) lead to me being sprayed with cold water. The rubber seal it turned out was broken. I wailed a little and contemplated heading to B&Q again, before (thankfully) recalling that lurking in the garage was another QuikPlumb joint that the plumbers had used to give us temporary plumbing. I sorted through the fleets of plumbing stuff and found the requisite object. Having taken the broken one to bits, reassembled it and installed it, I finally got to have my bath….

    After a lousy morning, the taps are in

    I can’t shower yet because the shower curtain rail is not yet attached to the ceiling. Also, it’d be nice to get the flooring down. I originally wanted to tile the bathroom, but the pain of taking the door off it’s hinges, trimming it and putting it back has put me off. So we’ll go with lino. I know, I hate lino. But it’s not so bad in the tiny area of the bathroom. It also means there won’t be a huge step from the corridor into the bathroom. What’s that? I’m rationalising? Yes, yes I am.

    * Who are apparently under the impression that I’m pro or semi-pro. Odd.