Mostly lemon based

Category: House

  • Spick and Span

    Tidying is never awesome fun; and the enormous job I’ve set myself is, quite honestly a little overwhelming; but it’ll be nice for me to have some sense of order in the house; and it’d be nice to be able to welcome Kathryn to her new home with it being in some sense vaguely clean and also faintly tidy. It’ll never hit staggeringly neat, not with limited storage, and huge amounts of renovation works going on; but there’s a lot of potential for tidying it to a greater extent than it’s at now.

    So; with that in mind, this weekend begins something akin to Tidy Quest; whilst I’m sure I’ll meet almost none of my targets, I at least hope that the house will be clean. Indeed, shall we examine what I wanted to achieve, and what I expect to?

    – Finish CD organisation.
    – Unpack Kathryn’s books.
    – Remove centre shelf from cupboard, allowing Kathryn’s light to stand on lower shelf.
    – Sort my clothes and clear drawers full of crud.
    – Unpack Kathryn’s clothes.
    – Sort & file paperwork. Write missing letter to NIContribs.
    – Continue work on bathroom (not in order): Mount wood for cistern, Fix sink to wall, Fix toilet to floor, Paint*, Clean floor of excess grout, Commence tiling*, Finish waste water plumbing, Paint bath feet, Fit shower*, Fit bath*, Fit cistern*, Trim base of door and refit*, Sort out lighting for shower*.

    Well, the three in the middle in italics I shall achieve, the bathroom, well, I may manage the two in italics; if I’m lucky. I’d go and check if the whatsitsface – part – had arrived, but I’m tied to the house at the moment, waiting for the garage to collect Brick.

    What I shall do though is start sorting through the paperwork that is classed as rubbish – so I can work out which can go straight in the recycling and which is confidential and needs to be shredded…. And I may start on the clothes issue. :)

  • The good, the bad and the faintly annoying.

    This morning I woke up late; fortunately yesyerday SSN (Senior Staff Nurse) switched my shift today from a middle to a late (Kathryn, I meant to tell you last night, but got so carried away with shiny links that I forgot; sorry hon. I won’t be in until my usual after-late-shift time). But it did mean I’ve been on a bit of a mission this morning. Because it was raining last night my bike gear had to go through the tumble drier (I just realised, I spent all winter struggling to dry this stuff – and I’ve got a fracking tumble drier, am I an idiot or what?!) which meant that I couldn’t wash my uniforms. So my plan was to get up moderately early and stick them through the wash. Thankfully I realised that I’d got up too late to reliably be able to wash my uniforms; so I kept yesterday’s aside because they’re still washing. Anyhow, I then had my list: Buy Food, Buy Stamps, B&Q (for the part that’ll be in on the 23rd), Eat. So, off I went on a mission – with only an hour between leaving the house and needing to be cooking lunch (start in 5 minutes) I shot off down the street, à pied.

    Somerfield, as usual only had second class stamps, which is seems to be the norm, and is faintly annoying but on the way…

    I’ve been looking for this seal for the toilet; being as it’s an old design the part I was after was slightly elusive. But then this morning I came across a pile of broken up bathroom bits; and there was a toilet and sat in the hole for the flush pipe was the seal I was after. Having knocked on the door and waited I decided that no; the person wasn’t in, but given the rubbish and smashed nature of nearly all the bits of the pile I decided that it was rubbish, and have taken it for my very own. It’s not in perfect condition; the rubber is a little dry, but I think it’s probably okay. Does need a clean though. I’ll either use it or take it and get a replacement now I know what the part actually *looks* like.

    I then went to B&Q. I hate when people say “it’ll be in on the X” – because it almost invariably never is, unless they mean ‘closing time on the X’ or ‘on the night of the X, when our delivery comes’. And the same was true today. I know it’s early, but I’m working – and that means I can only head over in the morning. I need one part to finish the waste water for the bathroom. One. All the other bits are complete (the flush pipe needs a seal too, but that’s clean-not-waste water ;) ). So far from B&Q I’ve had the “if it’s not on the shelf we don’t stock it” which is possibly true; but didn’t take account of the idea that this part (which is the same as the 32, 36 and 50 mm parts) is not actually on the shelves in the same place as them. I know I’m blind, but some help would have been nice. Then we’ve had the ‘not my department’ bit, and now we’ve done the “it’ll be in on the…”, and it’s not. But wickes definitely don’t stock it. I should go over to plumbworld, really. It’d be cheaper, but I have to drive there (I really should sort out my push bike, but it needs a new crank bearing (possibly two), and new tyres. Anyhow. Yeah. So that’s where we’re at.

  • Order of business

    So, the part I need from B&Q won’t be in until the 23rd. This is frustrating; however less frustrating because there’s still a billion other jobs that need doing… Having spent some time talking with Kathryn about it I think we need an ‘order of business’ – otherwise we’re not going to be able to progress on the house in a sensible way.

    This post is therefore dull and mostly for me (or us :) ).

    So; I think the plan goes thus:

    Prior to her arrival, *’d items are things I’d like to do…

    – Finish CD organisation.
    – Unpack Kathryn’s books.
    – Remove centre shelf from cupboard, allowing Kathryn’s light to stand on lower shelf.
    – Sort my clothes and clear drawers full of crud.
    – Unpack Kathryn’s clothes.
    – Sort & file paperwork. Write missing letter to NIContribs.
    – Continue work on bathroom (not in order): Mount wood for cistern, Fix sink to wall, Fix toilet to floor, Paint*, Clean floor of excess grout, Commence tiling*, Finish waste water plumbing, Paint bath feet, Fit shower*, Fit bath*, Fit cistern*, Trim base of door and refit*, Sort out lighting for shower*.

    Post her arrival:
    – Complete bathroom.
    – Complete upstairs heating plumbing (mount radiators on walls, connect up).
    – Commence kitchen works (In order, based on current thoughts): Lay cable for new sockets, fit new consumer unit, add plumbing for dishwasher, Replaster those areas, Paint internal (lounge / kitchen dividing wall) main wall (with fridge against it atm) and corner up to window, buy cupoards, fit those cupboards, remove internal kitchen / bathroom dividing wall (as far as possible) and have gas engineer come and fit gas pipes for cooker and also fit boiler [start using bathroom upstairs], remove rest of downstairs bathroom (take back as far as possible, and concrete up rest of old soil pipe), builder required to fit new french windows and brick up old door way, replaster and make good ceiling, paint ceiling and then paint remaining walls, fit new ceiling lights, tile, floor.
    – Back bedroom: New sockets, plaster, sand and paint.
    – Move into back bedroom; Front bedroom (strip wallpaper, etc)
    – Garden!

    …and we’re done. No problems ;-)
    It’s a bit scary when I look at it like that.

  • Holiday, Part 2; Photos and House, part whatever.

    So, yeah. I promised I’d write something about this. Anyhow, after the lakedistrict we headed down to Bristol. I have several fantastic friends in Bristol who I’m very bad at getting down to see – and also I wanted Kathryn to meet more of my friends. So, a plan was hatched (thanks to LizBuf who pointed out that the harbour festival was occurring) and we headed on down to the land of Bristol on the Friday night before all piling into Kate’s Prius for a journey to the city centre.

    On the way in we caught up with a little abandonment; the whole of that bit of the harbour is redevelopment prone – especially now they’re well underway with the waterfront developments further up. So the previously grotty and interesting end of the town is starting to be gentrified; but there’s still some interesting bits of fallingdownness. Impressively I largely failed to get any shots of the actual harbour festival; but some interesting shots of friends and some interesting shots of abandoned boats, or bits of ’em. Anyhow, shots of the weekend are located here…

    Next up we have another photoset; this is shots taken from London; mostly around Bankside powerstation / The Tate Modern. I’ve always meant to go to Tate Modern, and actually I still need to go, because we only really had time to look around an exhibit about urban life (which was ace) and then while Kathryn was busy I spent most of my London afternoon taking pictures outside or lounging on the grass, then we headed to St Pauls, and then off to Gay’s the Word (where I bought two books, despite knowing I shouldn’t, but one of them is called ‘The Wombat Strategy’ and therefore needed to come home with me). On my way home that evening I was treated to a gorgeous synchonised flying display from the local bird population. It was just *stunning*. Sadly the batteries on my camera were somewhere beyond flat, and lurking around in the micron thick range; I managed with much shuffling of batteries to loose two shots; one of which was in focus. It was just a glorious, glorious sunset and the birds were flocking and flying and… I just stood and watched for ages. So that photoset is here…

    And finally, in the name of updating you all; the fruits of mine and Kathryn’s labour. This is the bathroom as of today.

  • Building the future

    So, Kathryn came down 2 days ago; and we spent some time working on the bathroom. It’s cool; because thanks to the amount of progress we made I now have a faint hope that the bathroom will actually be finished by the time she moves in. Not actually working; but finished. Which is a step forward of awesome magnitude.

    In the mean time there’s quite a few jobs that still need doing. While Kathryn did nearly all of the hard bit (the careful measuring and locating on the wall bit) of putting up the boxing at the ‘bath’ end of the bathroom, there’s a whole other (rather simpler, but still) wall which needs doing, and there’s then the tile-a-thon. I realised that I was being a dizzy mare and also need to put the sink brackets up before the tiles. While I’m not great at cutting tiles, doing it the other way round is liable to lead to cracked tiles.

    The toilet has holes ready and waiting for the screws that’ll be holding it down now, thanks to a new very sharp drill bit. I’m really quite excited. It’s all heading towards the 4th, when Kathryn will be moving in. I’m trying to sort out my finances a bit before I do that; I went to the bank today for an account review (which is where they generally try and sell you stuff), the woman I talked to was very friendly, and then utterly appalled when she learned how much I’m paid. Perhaps I should print my pay per hour, and then put that up on a poster with ‘are nurses worth more than this?’. Heh.

    Kathryn moving down is alternately very exciting and rather scary. I love her, that much is very simple, and I’m very excited that she’s moving in. But we’ve spent only 10 days together at our longest, and we’ve never yet had an argument. But, I hope (and believe) that anything that crops up we can work through; and I ended up rambling on about her at great length to the financial advisor person; poor soul; who commented on how happy I seemed to be. Which is true; I am ridiculously happy. And I hope to keep it that way.
    Anyhow, plan for today is continue the wood-working fest; maybe collect the bath foot, if they’ve actually got around to recasting it, and paint the walls. I do need to check that there’s nothing I need to ‘do’ for the plaster weekend (I’m learning to plaster limbs this weekend), at least, nothing beforehand. So, uh, that’s my day.

  • Demonstrable progression

    So, I mentioned the oil leak, but I didn’t mention the coolant. The coolant in the Viva appears to be made by a careful process of combining iron oxide and stale water, and then leaving it standing for; say; 5 or 10 years.
    This is obviously less than ideal. i have, in fact, since I had the car, been intending to flush the cooling system with some coolant flush and then change it for nice fresh shiny coolant. I may even do it twice.

    However, doing so before the trip to the Lakes whilst it seems in many ways a great plan (big stressful journey) invites my paranoia gremlin to pop out. See, last time I took Rebecca to the lakes, and just prior to the trip I flushed the coolant. The car then developed a leak (presumably some shifting bit of rust free’d it) and then in desparation I threw rad-weld in. Rad weld combined the remaining rust to clog up an already knackered coolant line and I got a very dead engine.

    So, paranoia says ‘don’t fiddle with it, it’s working’. So I’ve decided not to. Who can say if it’s the right decision. But since the coolant will probably have to be drained for the oil-leak-solution then I may save it for then.

    Completely unrelated to that is the fact that I made Raspberry and Apple crumble. Well. We’ll see if I made it, if it’s hideous I’ve just wasted nearly 500g of Raspberries. Sadly since they were picked at the weekend, quite a lot of them had gone manky. I think actually it’s because a few of them were just beyond perfectly ripe; and having turned into moudlyberries they were in close contact with many other berries. In the end I think almost 1/4 were inedible. Or at least, I chose not to trust them. Hence it becoming Raspberry and Apple crumble.

    I’m just waiting on dinner coming out of the oven; then the oven needs to cool down a bit; and then I shall have pie!

    Well, crumble.

    It’s weird to cook after so long not cooking. And nice. I miss having a nice kitchen; but frankly I’ve got sod all to complain about really. In fact there’s been some good house news; the woodworm is apparently not active enough to be worth treating. He reckoned it’s an old infestation with some residual activity; basically. And that all houses this age will have that kind of level of activity; most of it where you can’t see. Given the doubled joists, it’s not worth treating it, apparently. I may treat the bits I can still get to,  anyhow.

    I’ve also started grouting. I’d forgotten that I really don’t enjoy grouting much. How I could forget this I’m not sure, but I had. Still, about 1/3rd of the floor is grouted, the last tile is cut and down… So, all is good.

  • There’s good news and uh, some bad.

    So, the good news is that I’ve started making, albeit small, inroads into the chaos in my endeavour to make the house bearable when Kathryn comes back. It’s hardly be welcoming if it still had a Kate-sized hole on the sofa where I’ve been sitting surrounded by bills. I’ve even cleaned the stairs – it was quite horrendous how much shite there was on them. Seriously, it was revolting. Granted it was mostly sawdust and plasterdust, but still.

    Obviously, in my posting frenzy you’ve had the ‘lookie, tiles’; but I have pictures (you’re all thrilled, I can tell)….

    See, tiles!

    I also have proof that there’s a shower door in my bathroom; or at least, a shower door in someone’s bathroom, but I maintain that this is mine and that I put it up. Believe me, no one else would want to claim that they put it up…

    Anyhow, because I took it, and also because it slightly freaked me out when I realised how badly worn it really was, here’s the Viva’s clutch cable (I imagine you’re all barely able to contain your excitement at this point)…

    Yes, it’s frayed. Really frayed. If that had snapped it could have lead to embarassing ‘crunch’ type noises; although I’ve been awfully careful the last week not to sit with my foot on the clutch, as I might be wont to do if I was expecting a light to change… I’m quite proud of that shot, actually, it’s a really nice bit of macro photography, if I do say so myself (and I do). And it stands out really rather well against the aluminium carpet strip. That, incidentally, is my pile of metal that’s waiting for me to make a run to the tip. That run is approaching with some enthusiasm now, as my entire front garden is full of woodworm eaten floorboards.

    So, continuing the good news; the hoover survived. The builders used my Aquavac/Goblin (with my permission), however they neglected to mention that they’d run it ’til the bag split and the entire filter inside gummed up. I’m hoping it’s not toast in motor terms, but it doesn’t smell of burned motor. The filter at least saved it from sucking an entire base full of crappy builder’s rubble through its motor. And in other good news, with substantial effort I managed to retrieve the box-of-filing from the pile of crap. Having cleaned the filing cabinet (it’s still somewhat oily inside), I then spent a “cheerful” hour transferring stuff from the box into the cabinet. The box contained everything that *was* in the cabinet from a looong time ago. I have become aware that I need a shredder, again. I can theoretically shred up to 2002, now; and I can dispose of lots of old utility bills. And looking at how much paperwork I’ve got, that would be really quite useful.

    Anyhow, I’ve not yet started making inroads into the evil that is the ‘to file pile’ (which is in two parts):

    It’s amazing how much paperwork I’ve accrued in 6 months. Obviously there’s buying a house, two jobs, moving, purchasing endless appliances and bits for the house…. Lexx is out, incidentally, because I did the tinyest bit of sorting while I was shifting boxes – and found Lexx 1.0,  which means I now have all the Lexx videos. I think I’m going to sell them because, quite frankly, I can’t be arsed with video anymore. I loved the first season of Lexx, but never really loved it as much after that first season; the original actress (Eva Habermann) was fantastic…and not that the second actress wasn’t good, she just wasn’t Zev.

    Anyhow, so, that’s the good news.

    There is however some bad news.

    The house has woodworm, live doing stuff woodworm. I’d kinda disregarded the woodworm upstairs on the basis of my monitoring station downstairs being, well, unaffected. See, I’d read (somewhere) in my research that the lifecycle was around 3 months – having repeated my check I now find ‘a year’ is more accurate. But anyhow, I’d assumed after 6 months of staring at my masking tape that there wasn’t any activity and I was now safe. Unfortunately, I’ve now found two dinky little round holes in it, so I shall be calling in a woodworm company forthwith to see about fumigating the house. This is, how shall we put it, rather upsetting. At least the joists upstairs were doubled, because I know some of them floorboards that came out were completely rotten, so one must presume some of the joists are infested badly too… Ach.

    And finally, on a rather smaller scale, things continue not to improve on the laptop front… it’s still doing pretty well, given that it’s 8 years old, but at some point I fear it is going to have to be replaced…

  • Less imagination now required

    With a substantial amount of effort there is now about 50% coverage of tiles. I remain terrified that they will crack and disintegrate as soon as I walk on ’em. But that won’t be ’til tomorrow.

    However, the result is that my back wants to kill me.

    It really does.

    I think it may have teamed up with my knees to take out a contract on my brain. When I’m a little less sore, I’m thinking I’ll start work on the tidying.

  • On the dangers of prevarication

    But first, some news. Wow, those US lesbians with their gangs, and their guns… soon there’ll be no men left…. what do you mean it’s entirely made up?

    Anyhow, on to the topic de jour, prevarication. I got Brick serviced by a very nice garage who I’m actually planning to use again to sort out the oil leak *and* sort out the wheel bearing, because, frankly I’m done doing car maintenance for a while. I have the house, the job and the bike all calling for more time than I have; so the car, the car can be done by someone now I’ve got a garage I trust. And I trust them more now.

    See, on the list of advisories it had ‘heavy oil leak’ (which is true), and ‘rear brakes low’ which is probably true, and ‘Clutch cable needs replacement – badly frayed’ (along with the wheel bearing being ‘slightly noisy’). So I ordered a wheel bearing and a clutch cable… And they sat in the lounge, then they sat in the corridor. And I prevaricated. Did I book it in *now* or next week? Should I do it myself? I prodded at the do it myself option and didn’t like it, so I left it…

    Today I finally decided I would do it myself. Remarkably there was no swearing, even when the circlip disappeared down behind the ‘carpet’ on the driver’s side. There were several utterances about how insane Vauxhall are. But 2.5 hours after I started the car has a new clutch cable. And not a moment too soon; I see now that they weren’t joking when they said ‘badly frayed’. Of what appear to be 8 or 9 strands (each made up of many smaller strands) only two were intact, and the cable looked terrifyingly thin. Next time they tell me something’s in need of replacement real soon now, then I shall believe them :-)

    So, maybe I should order some brake shoes, but that really *is* a job I could and should do myself. *sigh*.

    Not today though, because once I’ve had this cup of tea over here, I shall be commencing the tile-a-thon in earnest, brand spanking new RCD in hand (or at least, plugged in). And roll of kitchen paper for my nose which has either taken offence to the dust (I suspect, ‘cos it was lousy yesterday), or has rediscovered hayfever because today it’s hot-like-woah. Actually, that’s not *strictly* true, because it is in fact bearable outside. And inside almost pleasant. But the weather is being it’s usual inimitable and unpredictable self; having gone from cold-wet-torrential rain over the past few days to tarmac-meltingly-hot sun today.

    I’m hoping it’s dust, because new filters are en-route for the dyson (and actually looking at them, that might explain it’s lack of suck, but I still feel I should give it a once over) and a pack, an entire pack of bags for the Aquavac/Goblin. I never had this problem when I used the Hoover Junior all the time; it just worked… ‘cept when it needed a new belt… ‘course it did cover the room in dust, but hey.

  • Day 1000 of Seven Million

    Or at least, sometimes it feels that way as I plod on working on the house.

    Anyhow; status is thus:
    – Finally finish off internal bathroom plumbing….postponed until the floor’s down. Although I did attached the last of the pipes for the sink; so when the brackets are done I can pop that up and plumb it in.
    – Finish screwing down the floor boards.
    – Obtain and put up the last baton for the faux end wall in the shower.
    – Put up the Cement-board wall (Aquaboard) that makes up the faux wall.
    – Screw down the wood (on the floor) which marks out the section that’ll be boxed off (with plumbing inside it).
    – Start and hopefully finish putting up the shower door.
    – With a bit of luck I might even get to commence the tile-a-thon this weekend. That would be really nice… Because again, it’s an ‘end in sight’ moment. 

    I’ve started the tileathon, only insofar as to lay out the tiles, I need an RCD before plugging in the tile cutter but I’ve decided where the ‘full’ tiles go and where I’m cutting… Now, it’s been a while since I laid tiles so everyone wish me luck; but for now I am going to have a shower and try and wash some of the gunk off me. I spent some time today sweeping up – that room was so dusty. Even after three attempts I still had huge amounts of dirt to sweep up. I would have used the hoover but the builder’s split the bag and I’ve not got around to ordering a new one.

    Although I’m gonna get a bunch of bits; new bags for the aquavac and new filters for the venerable DC01; which I’ll also have a go at de-fluffing, because I suspect it’s full of crap.