Well, I’m not sure if it’s exactly a benefit. But hey. I’ve needed to tile the floor in the laundry / server room for a long time and avoided it for (at least) two reasons:
One of the many things I despise about allergy season is the tiredness. This is at least partially down to the fact that normally I’d have a lie-in after night-shifts. Not a long one, but a bit of one. And I’d usually sleep until about 8. Unfortunately, in allergy season, not only do I not sleep well, but I wake up around 6:30 feeling sickly. And can’t get back to sleep because I need to take drugs and get upright.
Beyond the irritation of, well, irritation to eyes and nasal passages, it’s irritating because whilst it doesn’t stop me doing things completely, it seems to erode my competence, it also really attacks my patience… and it leads me to want to just sit on the sofa going blurgh.
However, irritating allergies notwithstanding, I’ve managed a fair bit today.
First up I managed to head out and collect a package that turned out to be the HD ‘sports camera’ for our trip to Norway. Which has arrived much more rapidly than expected and looks to work except…the microSD? I’d not actually ordered that yet. So I ordered that today. I also, whilst I was out, picked up a new tip for my soldering iron. Well, technically I picked up tips for both soldering irons, the ‘precision’ one of my dad’s and the ‘not precision’ one of mine. I also did errands, for double plus adulting.
A few days back I managed to put the new socket surrounds on the wall in the kitchen:
I filled and masked it all, and today started hurling paint at the trim. Two more coats and that bit’ll be done… leaving only some little bits of trim in the main kitchen area. That wall looks like it should end up being much neater – the sockets have been hanging out of the wall quite long enough.
I need to move the fridge to get to some of left over bits of trim though, so that’ll be fun. But it may mean I finally get around to turning the door on the fridge ’round so it opens the right way. Heh.
Painting done I nipped out to collect my bike which had gone off to be repaired after the back brake broke. They’ve fixed the brake, but upsettingly, as I mentioned earlier the cable for the rear hub-gear is broken, meaning it’s currently sat out of gear, which makes it ‘tricky’ to use. I’ve ordered a Sturmey-Archer clone cable, which I then just have to work out how to make fit. I have an idea, but it’s not ideal…
I also spread slug pellets around the garden which is AWESOME. We currently have all the berries.
Which I should go out and pick, although I’m feeling a bit ropey right now (see: allergies).
I also rang the company that’s meant to be assessing my transcripts – I checked and they were delivered on the 8th of June – but it still showed the status as ‘waiting for required documents’. Having rung them it can take up to a month for items to start being processed. ARGH.
I am really worried that the potential job will have gone before I even get near a registration.
Anyhow. Lunch was a Hart’s affair, obviously, then I moved on to assembling John’s 7 segment LED display:
My soldering, even with the new iron which actually has a tip that’s tip-y and not chisel-y (I’ve been using the same tip that my dad had on there for…ever), is no-where near as neat as John’s. It’s not terrible, by any means. But it’s not beautiful, but I guess I don’t do it that much.
Anyhow:
Ta Da!
If it works, I’ll show you. Of course, to find out if it works will require the Arduino Uno that Kathryn gave me for Xmas, so I’ve opened up the packaging and… downloaded the software.
I also assembled the synthesizer kit that Kathryn gave me for Xmas and had a wee play with it. I think, however, it wants a new battery. As opposed to the one that came out of the garage smoke alarm because it was dead (note to self: buy more 9v batteries).
Anyhow, so I was sat with the Arduino in my lap, and the software on the mac, and, for reasons which remain elusive, my allergies kicked into overdrive and I had to give up. After a festival of sneezing and me finally giving in and throwing the eye-drops in before I eroded the surface of my eye through rubbing, I have given in to sitting because, in all honesty, I feel cack from the allergies and I think I’ve done enough for the day.
In other news, yesterday my Mac died and refused to come on until it’d had the battery removed. Its worrying decent into notworkitude appears to be continuing. My deal with myself is that I might, when I’ve paid off the credit card, consider buying a new (recon/B-grade) laptop. It will not be another apple. Irritating though it is to be the proud owner of Office-for-mac and Photoshop-for-mac, I’m just a bit done with the walled garden. Also, it’s not just-working anymore. If it’s not just-working, what’s the point in paying extra?
So we’ve had a busy few weeks, what with both Kathryn and I ageing another year, and Kathryn’s dad & partner visiting us from abroadland. We took them on a whistlestop tour of England, calling at Bath, Bristol, Stonehenge & Avebury stone circles and London – then we went for a brief sojurn in Kent (just two days, but it was nice to get away).
On top of which we’re doing battle with the forms of immigration. There are various curses placed upon these forms that mean that there are very small boxes into which you are required to put much information, which has led to (after some frustrated wailing and attempts to change things) the creation of a number of continuation sheets.
They also required information from our parents that needed checking with them; y’know, I thought I knew where my parents were born (as in which town), but I wasn’t absolutely 100% immigration form certain. I mean, most people probably think that I was born in the town where I grew up, but I wasn’t. No, I was born somewhere even less exotic.
So that’s been taking up a fair amount of our spare time recently, and when not spare time, our spare thought processes.
As a component of this, or perhaps an excuse to avoid it, we created a blackboard (of sorts) to live on the wall with a list of jobs to do for us to escape. This is one of my favourite recent creations – consisting of a £2.99 second hand picture frame with the trim sprayed matt grey and a piece of black card placed behind the glass.
It’s now hung on the wall and has an ‘inspiring’ list of things to do, along with a map (which really is meant to be a bit inspiring) that one of my friends has added to (with a handy ‘Here be dragons’ ‘SQUIDS!’ and ‘WHIRLPOOLS!’…all illustrated too). It also turns out that when I draw the UK from memory it looks rather like a cat. I grant this is to a large degree avoidance of things that actually need doing, but it gives us something to look at so I can go ‘ah’ and try to remind myself to actually do things.
We’ve also planted out the tomatoes… some in the ground and some in the greenshed… not that you can really see them in the photo, but the Greenshed is now complete!
Unfortunately, I didn’t realise before starting assembly but one of the hinges on one of the windows is bent, which means it’s not entirely enthusiastic about closing. But I have done my best with it – and it seems to be doing its job. But it’s well painted in there, and despite having spare hinges kicking around I’m somewhat loathe to change it. We’ll see.
The garden in general seems to be doing its spring/summer thing of waking up and looking pretty,
The apple tree is, as you can see, covered in blossom. The plum tree was. The other apple tree is leafed out, but not very blossomy (but it’s never been terribly happy). We made rhubarb cake yesterday with our own rhubarb… the peas are plodding upwards. It’s quite joyous to see. We need some more soil and some more compost – and I think I’ve worked out what to do with the two troughs that are looking somewhat tired. So progress there would be nice. But I think I should probably spend some time tomorrow on the house (Yay, more sanding and painting).
Still. Progress is progress.
Some of you may be wondering about baby progress, because I’ve said nothing about it for quite a while. We had three tries… or all of our tries on our pre-paid three cycle package. No luck, unfortunately… We’re going back to the clinic in a couple of weeks to see what we can sort out, but financially we’re entering the endgame on that one.
Gradual progress continues – I’ve been masking off and painting more of the stairs. Today I’ve started on the upstairs banister and the other side of the stairs’ trim; which continues the theme of attempting to drive me completely insane with a dip that I’ve carefully painted red and now have to even more carefully paint the white to meet it…
However, the overall effect is making me happy:
I am also slowly completing the greenshed. Really I need more of me. Or to not work quite so many agency nursing shifts. But having money is quite nice.
So when we decided on painting the trim… we decided to have a feature colour. Red, it is. ‘Kimono Red’. Or simply ‘Kimono’ I think. And I wandered round slathering random bits of the trim in red and we decided that this bit, or that bit, that would be red and the rest of it white.
And there was this section that I thought I could get away without masking off (I sort of stand by that judgement) when it came to painting the white which is going over the old white trim.
However, it turns out it’s a complete frigging nightmare.
I spent an awfully long time very carefully edging it today, and it’s not nearly as neat as when I use the posh masking tape because I am simply not that good (nor that patient) with a brush. The other side of the stairs, that’s masked off:
Which is kinda easier, although there will undoubtably be horrors when I remove it, which’ll require me cleaning paint off the stairs.
Painting this is distressingly traumatic if I’m brutally honest. Largely because it turns out that the house is entirely made of small, unreachable corners, difficult junctions and impossible to reach awkwardly placed bits. I don’t think I’ve ever had to paint staircase spindles before and it turns out I’m really not a fan. Of course there’s the deep joy of multiple corners, which are never my favourite thing, in addition to which there’s the endless game of what order to paint things in. The one nice thing is that the new just-off-white paint (‘Piano Key’, apparently) does look way, way whiter than the yellowing old paint. And it does look like it’ll make quite a difference to the stairs.
It is funny though. One of the things that makes this house stand out from our last one as being ‘better quality*’ is the trim. Our last house had very little in the way of wood trim, and that which it did have was a whole bundle less complicated. This house, the wood trim is a real feature (lamb’s tongue trim around the door frames, no less)… and it is one of the things I normally like. But at the moment it’s driving me a little bit spare.
But in the end, we’re slowly getting there.
* It really is way better built than our last house. Waaaay better.
Building continues apace, or if not apace, then reasonably rapidly. Today I stopped off at B&Q and grabbed some concrete and gravel; then quickly made a base for the Greenshed (or perhaps Greendrobe).
On the way back I also grabbed some more pallets. Unfortunately my favoured supplier of pallets has just had theirs collected to turn into whatever scrap pallets are turned into. Another one of the places from which I occasionally obtain pallets did, however, manage to get me a pallet fix. Having got them home I stripped them down for parts and then set to.
The other side was fairly quickly knocked up (having worked out how to construct the other side this one being a simple mirror image went much quicker). Then I started on the back. I quickly modified the bit I’d already made to fit with the altered design for the back required to fit with the sides I’d made.
Thankfully (and that might seem like an odd word), I ran out of pre-cut timber about half way up the back. I say thankfully because I then faffed about for a bit selecting bits of the nice, very long, timber that I’d picked up today to cut down… Before Kathryn rang to say she was on her way home and I decided not to cut stuff. Then I started moving the bits I’d built and realised I’d nearly created something I couldn’t move.
Anyhow, eventually I managed to lug them all up the garden and stacked them ready for the next assault. I need to cut some more bits, or grab another conveniently sized pallet to get the last few bits of wood. I also need to trim the corner that rests on that sticky-out bit of the neighbour’s foundations. Once that’s done it’s a ‘simple’ matter of screwing all the panels to each other… And fitting the two front windows. And making the roof-glass.
And then it’s done.
…course then I’ve got another one to make.
So I’ve made the first fixed glazed section. Both the end walls of the greenshed will have a fixed (non-opening) window. Today after much pondering of the how, the where and the why I put together the first of these. Unfortunately, being a bit of a twit I forgot I’d already made the back panel and needed to design the end panel I was creating with that in mind. So I didn’t. Which means I’ll have to tweak the structure of the back panel to make them meet the way I want. They will work together as is, but it’d be less pretty. Despite this I’m quite pleased with where I’m at. I’ve got enough wood to throw together the other end, and the only things I’ve bought are screws, a few* hinges, a hook-and-eye fastener and a handle. Oh and some glazier’s putty, because the windows were in danger of falling out. But to be honest I needed some of that for the door I painted on the server/laundry room anyway.
I trial-fitted the front and side bits together:
Which amazingly went very well.
The one minor irritation is I bought shorter screws than I meant to; then I ordered more of the short screws (as auto-feed screws) as well. Thankfully they just about work, but I do feel a little silly having done that.
The next step is a little tricky, however. My plan is to create a quick’n’dirty concrete base (oh postcrete, I feel another purchase coming), on which to stand the thing. Then I need to do some careful measuring before I make the other end of it, because it needs to be trimmed to go around the neighbour’s rather odd little foundation that juts out into our garden. It should all be quite entertaining.
At any rate, another solid couple of days of work should have it pretty much together, I think. Then I just need to grab some hessian sacks to line the raised bed component of it, and we can plant some things in there, and leave some pots of other things in there**.
It’s all quite exciting.
* well, okay, four hinges
** Err, I suppose I also need to finish the edging bit of the deck such that the chiminea, if it’s salvageable, will not be able to fall directly in to the greenhouse, which would be extreme badness I feel. I’m a bit wary of this because it’s wood in relatively close proximity to the fire, but I’m unsure how else to achieve any kind of safety net there. Unless I get some metal railings…
Uh, okay, so that doesn’t have quite such a good ring to it.
I’ve never worked out what it is that means that some days I get up with the energy of a thousand suns, burn through activities and feel totally positive and able to do anything; and why some days I get up and, well, the activity of getting up is bad enough, but then there’s the whole rest of the day to face. I spend most of my life fairly well centred between these two, but sometimes I swing off to one end of my enthusiasm spectrum.
I know at the end of the day its all neurotransmitters and biochemistry. But it’s fairly strange. Thankfully today was one of the super-enthusiastic-oh-I’ve-just-had-the-best-idea days. Which was aided by the fact the weather totally cooperated with my plan, unexpectedly. So I shot out of the house in the morning and went to our local department store that does the ColourTrends paint that we really (really) like and got the paint for the stair rails (and white trim… and doors…). I also came up with a (genius) plan to make pseudo-green-houses for the areas in front of the deck. Which meant that I really needed to get on with finishing the under-deck-doors.
So I whipped around and grabbed hinges and locks and such. Then nipped to Two Day Coffee to get the fuel for such activities, before dropping some coffee off at a friend’s house (she’s poorly at the mo’ with a miserable cold/cough). Then a flying visit to the bakery and then a extra flying visit to the garden centre (slug pellets). And finally a visit to the autoparts place, because I noticed the Prius has used some oil…
Anyhow, after a quick lunch (which was courtesy of Hart’s Bakery, another route to happiness there), I headed down to the garage, cleared up a tiny bit and threw the heater on. Thankfully I’d already stripped down a bunch of pallets so I didn’t even have to do the tedious bit and I had nice dry wood to work with. Not long later I emerged from the garage with two of these:
You’ll have to excuse this bit of the garden, it’s where all the crap’s landed. But under the deck there are now two doors. Yay:
So I only need to box in that final segment at the right hand end, and the stairs, and I’ll be ready to start building the planters that are going to live in front of it *and* be pseudogreenhouses. I hope. Assuming Kathryn likes my idea. Otherwise they’ll just be planters.
This, of course, means getting some more pallets. Again.
I love pallets though. I could never’ve afforded to build this much ‘stuff’ without free wood. In expectation of this I’ve ordered a new set of batteries for the autofeeding screwdriver (well, I’ve ordered a bunch of tagged SC cells so I can build a new pack for it).
The only problem with one of these moods is this is when I order 50 bajillion things, and they all arrive two weeks later by which time I’ve lost interest.
Ah well.
In related news, the dead 18v pack has arrived for my circular saw, which tempts me to buy knock-off Makita batteries and chargers, because I’m hoping I might be able to 3D print an adaptor. Especially now I’ve got the thing that is meant to fit. But I’m wondering if John might be able to charge it a bit with his desk supply, which would mean that I might have some hope of testing the saw before I go splashing out actual cash on it. If it works it’d be tempting to build an adaptor for the craptastic ‘Challenge’ 18v drill, because I suspect that thing has 1mAh cells in it given how long the bloody thing lasts. Fully charged (I assume, it’s hard to tell because it doesn’t come with an intelligent charger, you just have to unplug it after ‘a while’*) it didn’t even make it through screwing in all the screws on one of the doors before it was flat.
Le sigh.
Anyhow, it’s been a productive day, which makes me feel pretty good :)
Incidentally, today’s music is: Gwenno / Y Dydd Olaf which, given how much time I’ve spent in Wales the last few weeks seems very apt. Am quite upset that the vinyl sold out, though. I’ve been waiting to get it for ages… finally get paid and it’s gone :(
* Mind the cheeky sods have put a red and a green LED on the charger so it looks like it’s an intelligent charger. ‘course it’s pretty obvious when you turn it on and both lights come on, stay on, and do nothing different, ever, that it’s not. It’s just an 18….oh hang on my little chickens, perhaps I can charger the 18v battery myself. I have an 18v 23v** supply just kicking around.
** Obviously it needs to be a wee bit more than 18 volts to charge an 18v battery. Just checked and it’s 23V
Irritatingly*, I’ve managed to catch another cold just in time for another holiday. Last time I was so thoroughly ill I actually claimed back my holiday, this time it is, so far, just a tedious cold; but it kept me up half of last night (and by extension kept Kathryn awake) as I hacked and coughed and sneezed and woke-up repeatedly with my head filled with sinus-cement.
TMI?
Anyhow, whilst I have pretty much just dinked on the internet all day (interspersed with more episodes of A Chef’s Life**) I have also spent some time pondering the massive concept of ‘our house in the US lands’. See, whilst we don’t intend to rock up in our chosen town and go “Hey, I’m buyinig that”, instead opting for the more sensible rent for a bit, see if we like it, and see if we can survive running our business, and then buy plan.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t toy with ideas or try and fathom how things might work.
So I’ve found a US company that makes biodigestors, I’m quite fond of the idea of having a biodigestor having seen Kevin McCloud’s . Not for the purpose of making electricity, but for the purpose of making gas to cook on. Which is, interestingly, exactly what this biodigestor is for.
Mainly because I don’t like the idea of using fossil-fuel gas.
Secondly I’ve found a Washington based COOP that hopefully will reduce the cost of getting Solar panels…if we can get a few others on board at the same time. And there is an equivalent for what I call a Feed In tariff, and it turns out we can sell the carbon credits, too.
All of this is good stuff.
I’ve found books on building straw bale homes, at least one of which I will have to obtain (although I might leave that until we’re a bit further along)…
…and I’m really interested in the polystyrene / rebar / cement foundations system – although Kathryn’s not so fond, so we may be doing something else there.
Anyhow. It’s kept me from going insane with my cold.
* to put it mildly.
** So we were at Mockingbird cafe who were very nice, although we both agree that they’ve slightly overstated their southernness, and the experience of service from people who are clearly proper hipsters was interesting. But yes, it’s very nice food and we definitely enjoyed it and intend to go back. Anyhow, they mentioned A Chef’s Life, which it turns out is a pleasantly entertaining and interesting PBS show (particularly if you’re a food/cooking geek as we both are), and it also turns out (on the turning front) that there’s a blugin (which is how I’m saying ‘plugin’ at the moment. I actually typed that typo without thinking, which is a bit concerning) for XBMC (Kodi) that allows you to watch PBS’s archives. Ace.
Happily, I’ve continued painting my way around the corridor. After, essentially, 8 years of continuously decorating I must admit I’m feeling a little less enamoured with the process; although oddly, that hasn’t stopped me wanting to build a house when we get to the States.
Anyhow, moderate lack of enthusiasm notwithstanding, I am strongly aware that we can’t sell the house until we finish decorating. So I’m plodding along, and actually it’s starting to make me feel more positive again. It’s one of those ‘small things are more noticeable than you perhaps at first think’ things.
That and I spent a little time looking at the photo album, looking at where we started and the progress we’ve made. That made me feel quite a lot better about progress. Sadly, I don’t have any shots (that I can see) of the delightful ‘faux wood’ vinyl wallpaper that was on the space under the stairs (some of it’s still hidden under the hardboard, I think), but there’s a shot of the stairs with their fuzzy fluffy carpet…
I mean, they’re not a patch on the stairs at our old house, but they were certainly a little dated.
Of course, our new colour scheme occasionally makes me worry that we’re producing ‘house of the 1980s’ but, I’m still rather fond of it.
Anyhow, I applied the final coat of the feature colour on the stair rail, although there’re plenty of other areas that still need more:
And, in an attempt to progress further I spent a lot of time applying go faster stripes to the corridor:
Then threw the first coat of paint onto that trim, and also attacked the kitchen door frame (which was in appalling condition having clearly been through several variations of which direction the door opened. The the original door had been replaced in the 60s(?) and I think they changed the direction it opened, because it’s the only frame in the house that had lost its lamb’s tongue trim. When the builders pulled the trim off with the door (because we were switching the door for the dining room door and having it open the other way) it took off paint, and there were quite a few dings in the frame from their ‘careful’ removal of the trim.
So when I threw the (salvaged) lamb’s tongue trim on I knew it would take a fair bit of filler and tidying. I’d thrown (quite a lot of) filler on the frame, but never sanded it. Today I set to on the sanding, although only the filler’d bits, not the trim that’s in better condition. I also only did the side that’s going to be deep, deep red (the colour we’re using in the hall is called ‘Kimono’), and I also took the time to run a bead of caulk around the frame where the trim meets the frame. I’ve not started on the ‘kitchen’ side, but that I’m counting as part of the kitchen trim, rather than part of the hall trim. Still, the whole thing’s looking a hell of a lot more respectable, so I’m hoping that with a bit of liquid sanding that’ll be ready for me to progress. Over the next couple of weeks I’m hoping to finish the red on the trim, joining up with where I’d painted before downstairs and upstairs painting the high-up section that I’ve agreed not to paint until Kathryn’s home. At any rate, the hall seems to be coming together somewhat.
I also got the mortgage statement today, which puts us about where I thought we were in terms of paid off; I’m really tempted to get an estate agent around and say ‘look, we’re going to finish these bits, how much do you think it’s worth?’.
But that’s a little scary. Because then we get to do actual sums about how much money we’re going to have when we land in USAland, rather than our current finger in the air waffling.