Mostly lemon based

Category: House

  • Great weekend, sucks to be home.

    So, we’ve had a really awesome weekend. We were planning to go to Bristol Friday night for a slightly belated birthday meal with Kate (of Nikki and Kate) – but handily, Kathryn got an interview just around lunchtime. This meant that there was no point her going to work (she’d arrive – and need to leave to get to Brizzle, and then if she went back to work after the interview she’d arrive in time to go home).

    So instead we piled straight into the car after tidying the house for viewings – and drove down there. A lateish lunch with Nikki and Kate after the interview and then off to look at houses. We revisted our favourite and were disconcerted to learn that other people are ‘seriously considering an offer’; we visited another which – I’m pleased to note – is a good second choice (and has a cellar, which is pretty nifty, although we didn’t get to see it because there’s lino over the entrance (in the floor of the kitchen). Annoyingly it’s not much cheaper than our favourite, it’s only semi-detached instead of detached, and some git has popped around with the magnolia paint doing a quick tart-up job (pushing the price up, but leaving us to still need to do proper decorative work).

    It’s also being sold as ‘with a garage’ the only problem being the garage currently backs out onto a lane that’s completely overgrown, the door to it is plated over with a big welded sheet of metal and it’s got an asbestos roof. A few small details to fix there, but otherwise it’s quite interesting.

    So, we’ll see. We then had a very nice curry from a very busy curry house with N & K. After sleeping in the hottest hotel known to man, woman or child, we headed with Nikki and Kids down to the Organic Food festival. This was excellent. Lots of yummy food, lots of interesting stalls, we witnessed an explanation of sheep shearing which surprisingly kept the kids entertained and managed to teach those non-farm-girl adults of our group a thing or two.

    Unfortunately, we didn’t get to make it to Doors Open day, which I’ve still not managed to get to (seriously, I’ve never made it. Shift work != social life). But instead piled back into the car and headed down to see my mum. She’s feeling a lot better than she has been, and on Sunday I got to cuddle a chicken.

    That’s not some strange euphemism, my mum keeps chickens and because we put them out to have a bit more space they needed their wings clipped (she’d been keeping them in a chicken-arena made from an old cat run). We’d never done this before – but a local chap came and showed us how it’s done, and wings clipped*, new fence erected (not of the greatest quality, but it’s just to stop them roaming into the upper bit of the garden) and they were let loose. They immediately disproved my theory that the larger area would reduce the damage they did by attempting to dig up one of the plants. Not intentionally mind, I think there were just bugs they wanted in the soil around it… Then, in a job involving vast amounts of chicken shite we moved their coop down to the new area. Despite the poo, the scratching and the hastle it’s made me more keen to keep chikens because, frankly, they’re very cute. When you pick one up and give it a cuddle and it settles into your arms going ‘coo-coo’ it’s quite sweet.

    Then we headed home and found that contrary to our hopes there have been no viewings on the house this weekend. We’re contemplating dropping the price and a few other little changes :(

    Anyway, I should get on.

    * Unfortunately, during this process a bird became a wee bit agitated, and left my mum’s grasp. In doing so it scratched Kathryn’s face with the newly clipped feathers :(

  • Today is…

    I dropped off Kathryn’s DAF (Vixy) at the garage this morning, which went fine. I’m praying that I’m right and that the clutch shoes are worn out… Anyhow.

    One of the cooler things about owning a classic, or one of the things I enjoy anyway, is getting packages through the post that have fallen through a hole in time. Such was my experience today when a ‘Cords’ brand 1970s package popped through our postbox. I’ve recorded the ‘unboxing’…

    the cords box

    There’s something terribly cool about opening things that have sat for decades. Something fun about encountering design intended for a different generation (and they got the swoosh!*). Anyhow, so they arrived; sadly the ring compressor doesn’t appear to have arrived. Hopefully it’ll arrive tomorrow. However, what did arrive was the clutch shoes. I am so unutterably impressed by Jim Jack Services – they had the shoes arrive yesterday – called me to check on the details – and had sent them back by the evening. They arrived today – and look like they did when I last got new shoes.

    Despite not having a manual I guessed my way through replacing the drum (it looked easy) – and eventually got it right (it was about 3mm out when I first did it) – and got the clutch back together. Then I made the mistake of having lunch.

    Well, technically the lunch wasn’t the mistake – no – it was sitting on the rug in the lounge. I’ve done this every day, but I’ve not been dealing with something quite as dirty as the contents of the clutch. And I was silly enough to clean out the flywheel too. So there was a lot of dirt.

    It was on my jeans. Now it’s on the rug.

    Then I made the mistake of starting on the bike. I started in quite a good mood, despite the fact that the manual (and therefore my notes on how to wire the rev-counter to the old-style wiring, the circuit diagrams, and the explanantion of where the clutch should be adjusted to) remained elusive. I started stripping down Cherry Red ‘zed, carefully working my way through noting where the wires went from the switchgear – and then it dawned on me…

    I’ve got three partial looms from three bikes with three separate wiring and connection schemes. Seriously.

    MZ changed their wiring for the later bikes, with their electronic ignition and electronic regulator; Kanuni changed the wiring again when they started building bikes, because they didn’t do with the nice clicky MZ connectors. Oh no. They went back to the good solid DDR connection blocks with 55 wires going in and out of each one.

    After a while it dawned on me that I had an impending disaster on my hands.

    I needed a diagram, or something, to give me some idea of where I should be looking. The front end is more or less wired, the alternator is partially reconnected to the rectifier and regulator. I plodded through assembling it – discovered in the process that I really do need some obstruction wrenches because I can’t actually get the Bing Carb (better, faster, more efficient) off Cherry, so Charlie’s stuck with my old BvF (proper DDR, and has covered 120k miles). I sprayed the side panel (badly, I didn’t have any primer, so it went straight over the blue paint. Fluo-Pink as it’s called is not big on coverage). I also found a patch where the paint’s flaked off the frame – I couldn’t afford shot-blasting when I did it – so I wirebrushed and sanded the old paint, but perhaps I should have stripped it all off – because there’s a small patch where it’s flaked off.

    When I spray the DAF I’ll touch up the frame :(

    Anyhow.

    Poor Kathryn arrived home as I stood in a rotten mood contemplating how in hell I was going to work out the wiring on the bike. Feeling like I’d taken 2 potential runners and made one impossible to fix vehicle.

    But then I remembered this website – and a bit of dinking – and here we are with simplified diagrams and what each of the connectors actually is. Thank fuck.

    Death and Rebirth

    And in a totally unrelated to motorbikes, cars, or anything else I normally ramble about, I’d been contemplating writing something about Barack “Change we can’t believe in” Obama’s release regarding the DoMA. The problem is it’s likely to come out as an depressed rant. I’ve been unimpressed with Obama for a while; his stance on abuse photos, on individual privacy, on illegal wiretaps; it’s all been bad. So I guess the DoMA announcement seems like more of the same. Anyhow, so it was going to be a rant, but then I read this over Kathryn’s shoulder, and it was articulate; intelligent; and it said everything I could have considered wanting to say, were I feeling anywhere near as good at expressing myself as this writer. So go read.

    In final other news, after much work I’ve finally found a builder who has at least actually turned up, and quoted for the work on the driveway, and moreso has actually agreed to come and do the work. So next week for a day or two we’ll have to get the fleet off the drive. Once it’s done though, we should be able to get two cars on the drive. Which will assist in making-other-people-happy. :)

    * I remember, years ago, when Amazon’s swoosh was new and shiny there was a website snarking about everyone having swooshes which enabled you to design your new e-logo for your new e-business. It was swooshtastic.

  • Maths, lies, thrills and unthrills.

    1) Kathryn drives much more economically than me.
    2) It took me much longer than it should to work out the DAF’s MPG. Given that I think she’s still not running quite right (mixture wise), and am pondering whether there’s some clutch slippage going on, we should be able to get better fuel economy from ’em.

    The result of the pondering is that a 1974 DAF 44 returns, with an economical driver, 38mpg (which equates to approximately a CO2 rating of 194g/km (or, adjusting for how optimistic auto manufacturers are, about 155g/km). That latter ‘adjusted’ value is disconcertingly close to a Mini One.

    But the government in their pseudo-green drive are scrapping cars that are just as green as the modern ones, discounting the energy required to build cars, and essentially are propping up companies that failed to adapt to changing market conditions with more environmental destruction. Thanks Labour. Don’t think you’ll be having my vote. You’ve actually driven me to voting for the Greens. Seriously. I never thought I’d do that.

    Sadly, incidentally, there’ve been some classics which were casualties of the destructiveness of this government… Anyone who said Classics wouldn’t be affected want to reconsider that answer.

    Anyhow.

    In other news, I’ve been continuing to ponder the construction of an EV-DAF. Slightly prompted by Mr Clarkson’s annoying take on the (probably awful, but his whining about all EVs and his belief that climate change is all in everyone-elses heads make me want to recommend it anyhow) Honda Insight Mk II*. I knew it’d been done before, albeit somewhat badly – Nikki B, of the a minor journey EV blog & appearances on EV cast waved it at me a while ago – essentially, this conversion consisted of a Milkfloat motor dropped into a DAF with some scaffold board to support it. That the owner claimed it moved at all was no mean feat.

    What I didn’t realise is that it’d been done somewhat more thoroughly somewhat earlier; twice. Shell used the cute little DAF to build a Fuel Cell Hybrid (yes, seriously) in the 60s.

    I wonder if the technology of producing an extremely poor energy carrier for nothing is close to maturation yet ;)

    Apparently it wasn’t great – but what do you expect from 60’s fuel cell and electric motor technology? The colour choice was good though :)

    What was more interesting still (although the photo was very cool) was that there were two independent companies that built DAF 44 EVs in the states (in the 70s). CHW, in Athol, MA. (who later became ‘ElectriCar’ – and seem to have disappeared) and a company called EV Propulsion. Although the DCA chap has figures for CHW’s cars (around 60 produced) he didn’t mention how many EV Propulsion converted… But that, lack of money, time, space, and plans to do it in a vague and hazy future haven’t stopped me mailing them.

    Still, there’s plenty to keep me entertained on them as it is. Vixy’s off to an actual factual garage to have the brakes done, although I’m going to have a little go at mixture again tomorrow, having invested in a colortune. I’m also going to give her actual new spark-plugs. We’ll see how that whole thing goes. Her new door should arrive in a couple of days time too, just a case of spraying it to, uh, match and fitting it. I’m looking forward to her having a window winder that works :)

    Jejy’s new wheel bearing is sat in the lounge too, all ready to be fitted, and I’ve got a ‘source’ hopefully tracking down a silencer (or two), wheels and some clutch shoes to re-con. The new drum and inlet manifold have arrived, so that’s all shiny. Lots of work to do there…

    I’ve got a quote for fetching the ‘zed from my mum’s to here. I think I’ll go make it accessible, and then get the couriers to bring it over.

    Unrelated but very, very good: We were sat in the garden and one of the birds (?sparrow) decided it didn’t want to wait until we vacated the area – and hopped around a few feet from us (literally, 2-3 feet), fairly much disregarding us. It was really just incredible.

    Unrelated but very, very bad: Change we can’t believe in.

    * I always rather liked the look of the Mark I, although tbh I want an EV that looks all futuristic and modern, not a Hybrid. Basically I want an EV1. Yes, I’m still whining.

  • An update from the mines

    Work’s been suprisingly pleasant of late; perhaps everyone’e scared of Swine Flu and haven’t been coming in? Can we please keep it that way? I’ve had some odd ones though, in triage. People who’ve broken things days/weeks ago, not really in pain, slight, possible, deforimities and off to Xray they go, then we find out they’ve completely broken their humerus or fractured radius/ulnas… Also sick people who’ve actually been sick. It’s been quite like actually working in an emergency department.

    Then, to make things even more strange I was working in the Resus area; normally when I’m there it’s like there’s a neon sign that goes up outside and we get overdoses, cardiac arrests, infections-gone-septic and the odd bit of major trauma (at least potentially). I am like a magnet for the very sick and accident prone to go and be ill and fall off something. But on this occasion I had one person who was very sick who was there when I arrived – and some potentially sick kiddies who improved (one of whom kindly vomitted on my top).

    I was quite confused. Why wasn’t the red phone ringing constantly? Why was I stood there doing regular obs on people instead of running past going ‘oh crap! His BP is 60 systolic! It was 120 before!’ en-route to administer some drug to prop some other patient up for a bit.

    Not that I’m complaining mind; I’ve quite enjoyed it. I’ve been riding my little red bike to work and bike, slow as it is, and now it’s got a brake light working again I’ll be much happier* (so it is, of course, raining today). Ironically, the MOT and Tax run out next month, so I’m contemplating using it as a spares bike to build up Charlie. I looked on e-bay and MZs aren’t worth anything anymore. It’s rather sad. They’re on there really rarely, and now the company has gone, completely, as opposed to just being bought by new people every 3 weeks, they seem to have disappeared.

    I’ve also wired the exhaust back on to the DAF – there’s only about a foot between the missing exhaust hanger and the next one, but really… I’ve ordered bits of Morris Minor to use to hang it all back together properly(ish) – and will hopefully get a chance to do that this weekend. I need to get Vixy up on ramps and check the belt tension on her… but… the weather forecast looks attrocious. Which does not bode well :(

    Vixy’s booked into my local garage for the rear brakes to be done, too. I just need to actually source the parts. My local place can get them but they’re more expensive than getting them shipped from Holland, although he’s having a look through his personal stock and will give me a ring back with a price for that… apparently. Although he’s yet to ever actually ring me back about anything.

    I’m hoping, also, that the bits of car for Jejy will arrive before too long and Jejy will get a new clutch drum and new shoes, and an inlet manifold without a huge crack in it.

    The garden continues to progress; lots of things are flowering and producing a great deal of pretty, we’ve got more Swiss Chard than we can eat, the beans are growing into great tall bean-stalks; we picked up some more plants when my mum was here (some more dogwood, and some other things which I’ll journal about later) – which have gone in. I’ve clearly found an effective way of making it rain though, which is to remember to water the new plants. Then it pours with rain for the rest of the week :(

    Anyhow, Lunch and then Work.

    * My initial assumption was that the contacts were dirty &/or sticking, and would clean with a few uses. That has occured before, but having ridden to work it wasn’t working. Riding it home, I presumed the bulb had blown; but no. I checked that and it was fine. Finally, in a fit of enthusiasm (and desire to not be squished, and having got fed up of doing hand signals) I dug around the foot brake switch on which both wires had broken. This made me happy because 10 minutes later they were resoldered and the bike has a brake light again :)

  • ‘m okay!

    So, my good friend Nikki rang me up after the last post, concerned that I sounded very down and wanting to check I was okay. She’s kind and thoughtful like that.

    So I thought I’d just say, I’m okay. It’s perhaps a healthy dose of realism time. I’ve been sticking solidly to the “the house will sell for enough and we’ll go to Canada” belief because of the options we’ve got it’s my favourite. To use the house metaphore, it’s the one I’ve built foundations for, I’d been looking at the plans and preparing to get contractors. It worked thusly:

    Buy house
    Fix house
    Sell house, use funds thus obtained to enable us to
    1) Go to Canada
    2) Me to pay off *all* my debts
    3) Have some savings to live off in Canada if it all goes pearshaped
    And I’d added:
    4) Hopefully have enough that some of those savings can be scooped off for our notional world trip in a few years time.

    There wasn’t really a plan B. I knew that the housing market was going to plummet in just the way that bricks do, I just hoped it did it after I’d (now) we’d sold. Unfortunately, my hopes lacked the strong foundations of reality.

    The new ‘plan’, for want of a better word, is to finish the house (because whether we’re living in it, or selling it, I’d rather like it not to niggle like a splinter. The unfinished floor in the lounge, the dirty old door* in our shiny new kitchen), get it valued and make the rest of the plan based on the outcome of that.

    – Sell and get to Canada ASAP
    – Sell and move somewhere else in the UK (I don’t need to clear my debts to do that**)
    – Enjoy the lovely environs of Slough.

    I’m rooting for A, hoping that at worst B comes off and trying to think about ways to make C more bearable. Ironically, the house is coming together to be a really lovely place. The garden should be beautiful this year, and even more so next; there should be fruit and fresh veg, herbs and gorgeous flowers…

    If it weren’t for the builder’s yard right behind it would be glorious*** .

    Anyway, so I’m okay. I’m just…. disappointed.

    In other news, I just realised that I’ve owned Rebecca 17 years. That was quite a shock. And in another quirky thing I’ve never noticed before; she was first registered on my mum’s birthday. How bizzare is that? It’s funny how coincidence pops up on you.

    Now, What shall I do with this last hour before I go to work? I’ve swept the bedroom (and put clothes away), and looked depressingly at my Student Loan deferment thing (I think I may finally have to actually start paying back the loans****). Hrm, maybe I’ll watch some Holmes on Holmes.

    Tomorrow is another day, and I’m hoping a day when bits of DAF might turn up.

    * Needs the 1960s hardboard overcoat taking off, then it needs stripping and painting.
    ** I don’t, I suppose, technically need to clear my debts to move to Canada, but it really makes everything a lot more complicated if I don’t. And it makes living much harder to do. It’s bad enough here where I can go and chat and shuffle my lack of money around. There… well…
    *** It *was*, when I moved in, a wild untended lot. It was pretty.
    **** Confusingly my loans are owned by two separate companies. I’m not sure if I’ll get two separate student-loan-deferment letters, and need to make payments to two separate companies. That would be distressing. But only one of them has been flagged as ‘needing payment’ in this letter. It appears I won’t make my dream of never paying them back by remaining a poorly paid wage-slave.

  • Another day in the dirt

    Not all car stuff today; to skip the car stuff just scroll down to where it proclaims that car stuff endeth. :)

    So, today I shuffled the cars to get the Minor on the drive, and whipped off the ill-fitting exhaust, separated the 45 degree segment at the base of the downpipe (which I spent about 40 minutes attacking last time with ‘penetrating oil’, this time I got the Plus-Gas on it, and the thing just came apart. Simple as that). Then, with Kathryn’s help, we reattached the exhaust.

    Only took from 11am to 3pm. I’m not very good at exhaust fitting, and having done it we drove into town and… it’s rattling against something at the back. Usually this is the exhaust hitting the fuel tank; not a soothing noise at the best of times; so that’s something to attack later.

    Then I spent about half an hour adjusting the mixture. She’s been running rich and idling too high. A bit of a tweak to that and she’s now idling at a much more sensible speed and lord knows what the mixture’s doing. I suck at setting carbs up, I keep meaning to buy a colortune to aid in my attrociousness. The DAFs have a much more ‘relaxed’ carb than the HiF44 in the Minor, which is slightly worn (not terribly so, she doesn’t hunt horribly at idle) and which has proper mixture adjustment.

    Still, she’s running okay, so I’m going to presume it’s alright for the minute.

    Next week will be more car stuff, hopefully, in so far as I’m hoping that the brake bits will arrive for Jejy and Vixy and we can get them assembled.

    Then comes the difficult decision, which of the cars to take on holiday with us. We’re looking at around 1000 miles plus whatever motoring we do while we’re there. The minor’s swivel pins are worn, but I don’t know how badly. Jejy’s a big no-no, without the new clutch drum she’s not going anywhere far (so that’s easy), but Vixy? Vixy’s kind of an unknown quantity. Unknown quantities aren’t good for holiday relaxing, I find, but on the other hand she’s been recently serviced by a garage, she’ll have new brakes, she’s got a spare pair of belts in the boot…

    …and only 21k on the clock.

    We’ll see.

    Anyway, hopefully we’ll have less car-posts for y’all once this is done. Then we can return to the ‘house posts’

    car stuff endeth here

    Mind you, I ought to do a garden post because the garden is *awesome*. Kathryn spent time today breaking up soil and prepping it, then planted some of our wild-flower seeds; she’s hacked down pruned the buddleia, out the front, which officially needs to be dug up and moved into the raised bed at the front, but since the builders haven’t quoted (or contacted me) then, uh, that’s not quite happening yet. The back garden is looking really very nice; when she takes the photos off her camera and flickr’s them I’ll linky.

    It is just amazing to look at the ground and go ‘my god, they’re beans. They are our beans, that we planted and they’re growing. I could get quite into gardening, I fear. It’s really lovely though, to go out there, in the nice weather we’ve been having and see plants we planted growing, and indeed growing well. It’s not like either of us is particularly ‘green fingered’, but we’ve got good soil, and my mum’s around to help and advise us (and Kathryn’s mom is available for advice too :) ) and it’s come together to be a really restful place, potentially.

    And the lie and deception which is the gravel-over-concrete path appears to be working.

    Anyhow, now it’s time to make dinner. So I shall scoot.

  • The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day

    And I’m lying on the sofa. In a bit I’m going to take Vixy (the other DAF) out for a little jaunt to check out the new fuel mixture and brakes. They’re still pulling to the right (odd, since the left is the new cylinder). Hopefully it’ll settle down as the brakes bed in. The tyres on the front are knackered though.

    The tyres on the back are, well, as old. So frankly it needs…guess what… four new tyres. But this time, just for fun, even the Minor suppliers don’t have any budget tyres. And frankly, the DAF can cope with budget tyres. The minor’s a bit more perky with 65bhp (not a great deal by modern means, but with cart-suspension at the back and lighter than a light thing on light-day she’s a lot of fun) – and the grotty old 155 Nankangs are feeling their cheapitude. Particularly at speed on the motorway.

    The DAF shod with Camacs though is acceptable. Not brilliant, certainly, but acceptable.

    I don’t really want to spend 40 quid plus per tyre, and so I’ve had to hunt around a lot, and have managed to come up with a company that says they have Nankang 145/80R14s in stock. If they do, once I’ve ordered, I’ll share then name with everyone. But first we’re going for a little drive-ette, see if all is well.

    Plan for today is have a fairly chilled out day, probably poke at the lounge and give it a bit of a clean, paint the window-whatsit in the kitchen; tomorrow is probably going to be fairly full-on-car stuff because the DAF…that doesn’t work any more does it… Jejy’s sucky tubes should be arriving. So Jejy will get ramp’d and have a going over – fiddling with the mixture, installing miles* of new vacuum hoses and whatever. Hopefully new sucky tubes and a tweak to the carb and we’ll be back to running well. I’m wondering if I should have ordered some new pipe to go between the manifold and the intake pipe (oddly DAFs have a flexible bit of tube on one side of the inlet manifold which, presumably, rots like all other rubber.

    I’ve got a dinky bit of painting to do today, and I might, just might, have a go at making the steps in the back garden. Could all go horribly wrong, really. At any rate I ought to move off this sofa, because its graviational pull has worked its magic. I have to admit I watched BSG yesterday – fracking brilliant – need to see the next episode (this seems to happen every episode at the moment, it’s all so tense, building to the end. Only it’s not the end, there’s that 2 hour special that’s been shot. So…), the L Word (ack, need to see E09), this morning I watched the Tyre Ecohouse in Grand Designs. It’s awesome.

    I would love to build something like that. I’m still more of a straw bale person, but I’m wondering if you could combine the building techniques – do earth sheltered homes have to be all earth-sheltered? Mind you, I wanted (want) to build the tile arch thingie too. I’m so fickle. If I built everything I wanted I’d have tile-arched, timber-frame-and-straw-bale, earth sheltered, recycled tyre & recovered materials eco-house. It’d be a mess. So it really needs to be one or two of those technologies, probably :)

    Oh, and I watched house.

    I really need to get off my arse and actually do something, really**.

    Links for the day:
    – Bad minister. Stole a biscuit. If you don’t believe in the evidence for evolution and Darwin then you should not be a science minister. Away with you.
    – If only I wanted to live in Detroit
    – This music is teh good.

    Side point: Mac Still Shiny. Have a fun day folks.

    * Well, feet. Technically, I’m told, there’s about 18′ of vacuum hose (split across two sizes) in a DAF44, so that’s what I’ve ordered. In blue silicone tubing. I’ve not had the shipping conformation yet though.
    ** I did actually patch up my pj’s while I’ve been sat here. Yes, Kate sewed. It’s rare, and not good when you look at the quality, but my PJ’s had a hole in approximately the size of my hand, and were destined for the bin otherwise…

  • Visitation

    So, Lauren and Chrissy are coming down today, we’ve given the place a little bit of a once over (bathroom needs doing, and that’ll do us); bizzarely this has prompted me to finally (finally’s a bit extreme really, it’s only been a week or two); get around to replacing the light switch in the kitchen. Not that there was anything wrong with it, apart from being manky. And the 1970s decision to replace screws with plastic? Not so hot.

    We’d taken it off the wall while we painted and for the last couple of weeks it’s been held loosely in place by one of the plastic screws which, while I attempted to undo it, snapped in half.

    Still, a pair of pliers and some patience had it out of the wall, and the kitchen light switch replaced with a more modern looking one. I then wandered upstairs and did the two bedrooms, but, annoyingly can’t do the stair-one (which really needs replacing because the rocker’s awful on it) because while I stood in B&Q and thought about the number of lightswitches that need replacing (7) and therefore opted to buy a multipack (5) I didn’t think that the stair ones (2, but one’s a double and was going to wait anyway) are two-way. Well, one of ’em is.

    Still, it’s handy that I didn’t get all 6 because I actually have enough places to use the lights up, it’s just annoying I couldn’t do that one at the top of the stairs while the power was off.

    I also spent 5 minutes throwing the plastic ducting onto the wall (ducting? pipe-things, y’know, for wire) by the extractor fan – thus making it look marginally neater than the wire trailing across the wall. This is, one presumes, one of the few benefits of waking up at 6:30 every day.

    In other news: this is making me want to live in Vancouver (community market! zines! cool bookstores!). It’s funny, because the house is finally getting to the stage where it’s honestly just a pleasant place to spend time. It’s light and airy, and warm (most of the time) and clean, (much of it). And if it were in Canada I’d actually really like it. I do really like the house. Just it’s in the wrong place. And we need a garage.

  • Progressing towards completion

    So, we managed with a lot of effort to get the kitchen to nearly finished; yes, I know it was nearly finished when we started, but now it’s nearlier.

    We’ve painted the ceiling, the walls and the woodwork. There are a couple of areas around and about that need touching up, and around one window needs painting with basecoat, probably a few times, to try and cover the crappy state of the paint, on the top of the window-frame before we do a final few colour coats.

    The woodwork around the doorframes has been stripped, primed, undercoated and painted with two coats of super-cheap oil-based gloss paint which is working on destroying the planet as we speak, but is also fairly hard-wearing and was, as I said before, really, really cheap. Given the amount of woodwork that needs painting in the house, price was a significant factor.

    Yesterday we finally put up the kitchen light, it’s really pretty… but… does not work.

    Since we bought it a long time ago, on sale, from B&Q, this is somewhat frustrating. The receipt is almost certainly missing believed permanently lost, and it’s not an ordinary lamp. No. This is one of those evil lamps which contain a powersupply in the ceiling rose (a 240V AC -> 12V ?AC or DC) and which, I suspect, is tripping an over-current device as soon as you switch it on. It did work for about 30 seconds, twice. But since then has managed only to occasionally flick-on and then instantly switch off.

    I am rather miffed by this, and am not hugely looking forward to taking it down, and I suspect discovering that I don’t have the skills or equipment to fix it. I have to admit I am well out of practice with repairing electronics, and unless it’s a glaringly obvious charred wreckage fault will probably not be able to spot it :(

    I’ll have a look though, at some point in the not too distant future. I suppose, theoretically, I could go and find my oscilliscope too, and poke at it with that (if I can remember how to work the damn thing, and the valves are still working after 3 years in my mum’s attic).

    It looks like it’s one of these evil modern power supplies, rather than just a chunky transformer and a diode pack*, but I guess when I take the cover off I’ll find out :-/

    Anyhow, the majority of the last two days hasn’t been spent on the house, oh no. We have, with the help of my mum and her husband, transformed the back garden. From dump to delight, I would say. There’s still some more work to do; we even did some more today despite promising that today would mostly be relaxing (we had vague intentions to look at the pulling brakes on the DAF and the exhaust on the minor (which is apparently 2 inches too short)).

    Anyhow, yesterday we spent a fair sum of money on plants, bark chips, soil improver, compost and seeds. With much work from everyone we dug over the soil (which Big Steve gave us free**) with lots and lots of soil improver and compost, we laid bricks, we planted plants, we planted herbs, we planted onion thingies, garlic, raspberry canes, a goosebury bush, two blackberry bushes… So hopefully we’ll have some fruit, possibly, this year. We planted beans and peas. We planted flowers. The whole garden got a work over.

    And it looks gorgeous.

    I would show you a picture, but it’s dark.

    We’ve got a herb and vegetable garden near the house, yesterday we ate fresh basil in home-made pesto; to be fair, it was a basil plant that we put outside, and it’s now somewhat short on leaves, but may survive and the act was somewhat enjoyable. One hopes that it’ is indicative of a future of growing some of our own veg.

    Kathryn spent much of the afternoon laying bricks for the new ‘patio’ type area near the shed… We have all but eradicated grass from our garden. Maybe a 6′ by 5′ area remains, near the house. We just need to get more bark chip (So far we’ve put down 240 litres of bark chip), get the wild flowers into the wild flower bed and put netting over it, and decide what we’re going to do with the rockery (now it’s got sort-of-soil on it).

    Oh, and we put up a bird feeder, so the birds can nibble on seeds :)

    Woot.

    Pictures tomorrow….

    * Which I have a hope in hell of fixing.
    ** (1) I didn’t know we knew someone called, ‘Big Steve’; the fact we do unnerves me somewhat. (2) I’m slightly worried as to why he gave us the soil free. Yes it was very poor quality clay soil, but still.

  • It’s a rockery

    Or, possibly a breeze-blockery. One or other.

    Before I get started on this update, can I share a moment? We were expecting (to use a very loose term, I think faintly hoping is more what I was doing) that we would have a delivery of top-soil today. Our local top-soil merchant having given us a price which is much better than one of the national companies (but also means it’s almost certainly not screened, graded soil). Yesterday they didn’t turn up, and I had a little book running in my head regarding today’s excuse.

    Sorry, we…
    a) had problems with equipment
    b) over-ran on the previous job
    c) got stuck in traffic coming back from our previous job
    d) had to close early due to a sudden onset of bubonic plague
    e) were overrun on site by a horde of marauding miniature nuns (skateboarding nuns, no less) demanding all our topsoil for a new convent garden they were building

    It was of course e, uh, I mean, a, today. But it did make me wonder, do builders have a magic-8 ball which they shake when a customer rings? Or do they have an excuse of the day message e-mailed to them?

    Apparently he will ‘personally’ deliver the topsoil tomorrow. I will believe it when the annoyingly large pile of dirt is on our driveway.

    Anyway, we went to Tummies for lunch, the service was somewhat lackadaisical, not dreadful, but not brilliant. I was slightly less than impressed that they pulled the panini from the chiller (and Kathryn’s sandwich) – at the price they’re charging I’d expect a bit better’n that (given that for much less in a similarly nice cafe in Brizzy you pull things from the fridge and they toast ’em). But the food was good, and it’s a pleasant (and less paint-y) environment. And we needed to celebrate Kathryn’s test-passitude.

    Anyhow, after shopping and a somewhat lax period of web-browsing, I headed out to the garden to move rubble. I’ve moved a slightly distressingly small amount of rubble, although I did create the basis for the breeze-blockery (aka rockery, aka good-way-to-disguise-a-pile-of-rubble). It includes, at the moment, an impressively large lump of concrete which I have no means of getting to the tip. Once the earth arrives, we shall pile it all over the damn thing, and then wedge some nicer stones in it, and some of those rockery-type-plants and no-one shall know the evil lying beneath; at least, not until they go forth and attempt to move it.

    Plan is to put a fence segment up behind it (between it and the compost bin) and thus hide the big-black compost bin from the view out of the windows. Of course, the big plain brick wall will still be there.

    Oooh, there’s a lot of fumes in here now, I may have to move.

    Anyway, the undercoat’s gone on the door frame, Kathryn’s working on my anniversary prezzie, (I cheated and bought her something, but it must be said I just looked at it and wanted to give it to her right there and then, so ordering it and waiting was pretty good). Rebecca’s booked in to have her exhaust sorted on Friday*, and the oven’s on to cook dinner.

    Today has been a day where much has been accomplished. Ra :)

    ETA: The laptop, incredibly, has a bid on it. i.e. it has sold. Even despite the description.

    *I should ring the gearbox reconning company about the gearbox but can’t pay for it until I’ve been paid anyhow. And there’s still no signs of the king/swivelpins; a somewhat significant component in the front suspension which have now been on back-order with most MM companies for over a year. A situation which borders on the ludicrous.