| September |
|
3 - Disturbed broken sleep then up around 7:30am.
.
2 - Up around 7am again. . pottered around
sorting out and tidying up just a little of the piles of stuff
filling the conservatory . . Mum called to say Sis1 had come down
to visit . . Sis1 called in to see the changes and for chats etc,
joined by Mum a little later. . as soon as they'd gone I chopped
up defrosted beef and added it to a tin of beef curry and then
ate a huge platefull with rice and four pieces of bread and
butter, leaving plenty for another big feed . . napped until
woken around 6:30pm by Mum calling to touch base . . TVd the
whole evening away . . ate the rest of the beef curry and rice
with crisps and then some chocolate after 11pm. .a part of the
sole of my left foot has been causing me some real problems of
late. There's been something going on with it for at least the
last year or two, but it seems to have got progressively worse.
Near a thick area of toughness (in itself, natural enough after
all the walking I did with Sally), there was one particular
little spot which seems to cause a real 'burning' pain sensation.
It's got so bad, it'll just start up that pain almost at random
even when I'm not putting any weight on it - and it REALLY has
become so painful I can no longer ignore it. Put my glasses on,
did contortions and had a damn good look to try to figure out
what was going on. Couldn't really see any reason for it at all.
Figured I'd 'operate' nonetheless, in the hope of improving
things. Used a sharp new stanley-knife blade to carefully cut as
much of my foot off as I reasonably could without making blood.
lololol I dare to hope I HAVE improved the problem. . to bed
around 1am.
1 - Up around 7am . . PCd and ended up surfing
LED light bulbs again (exciting life I lead huh?). SO confusing -
and expensive! Eventually in desperation after having gone round
and round and round in conflicting circles, just went ahead on e-bay
and ordered a 5 pack (one for each spot and one spare) of 48 LED
'warm white' GU10 bulbs for £17.99 including postage. Although
every advert seems to promise different results and slightly
different performance characteristics, as far as I can make out,
these 'should' be something approaching a 35w halogen equivalent
- ish - maybe!? . . headachey and feeling a bit down . . washed a
few more carpet tiles and eventually painted the heavily textured
diner ceiling - by hand with a brush! Tedious but good to finally
see white, rather than the disgusting filthy yellow it was. .ate
ham, mayo and lettuce rolls, crisps and chocolate. . napped until
around 6:30pm . . TVd . . Mum called and then popped down to see
the spotlights in the dark and for chats etc. . TVd, guitarred
and ate cake . . ended up TVing until gone 2am watching another
of the Richard Dawkins films, a series of which are being shown
by channel4/More4. This one was examining 'alternative' medicine.("If
alternative medicine was scientifically proven to actually work -
it would be just called medicine". lolol ) Excellent stuff
as ever with that guy. SUCH a rare joy to hear someone with real
intelligence talking such sense on TV for a change. . intrigued
by how warm it felt, I dug out my inside/outside thermometer, and
temporarily draped the sensor wire out through the rubber
surround of one of the closed double glazed bay windows. Around
or 'just' below 20C inside, 13C outside. Those new windows really
have made a hell of a difference in here. I think the higher
inside temperature is down to the residual heat given off by the
fridges and TV equipment, and the black painted lower brickwork
of the front wall of the house acting as 'heat store' from the
hours of sunshine earlier. I'm under no illusions - I'm sure in
the winter it'll still end up being really cold in here without
central heating (I AM intending to see through at least another
winter without) - but already I'm pretty sure, not AS cold. a
August
31
- Up around 7:15am
. PCd surfing microwaves and bulbs and this and that . . washed a
particularly dreadfuly stained carpet tile (I may yet do more)
and left it in the garden to dry . . sanded and fixed the little
piece of skirting to the wall by the back door. . around 10:30am
or soon after, the postman delivered my brass eyeball spot lights.
I'm not sure you could notice, but they ARE just 'slightly'
different to the ones I had from Focus for the living room (for
which I have a spare), and are definitely a little cheaper in
feel - but not much! They'll do. . so, that was the whole rest of
the day - moving furniture and lifting bedroom floorboards (again),
cutting holes in the ceiling, and eventually getting them
successfully wired in via a junction box under the bedroom floor
- to come on at the same time as the fireplace light. 
As a temporary
measure I fitted the old spare 50w bulbs I've had laying around
since I put in lower wattage energy-saver ones in the living-room
spots. Once I've made an assessment of how much they are too
bright, I guess I'll have to take a chance and order a bunch of
new-fangled LED ones. Never having had any of those before, I
really have no idea what to order or expect! They aren't cheap,
so it's gonna be a real gamble.
Somewhere during the work I abruptly fired up the computer and
ordered a dining table and four chairs from Argos, which I'd long
ago decided on getting, 'sooner or later'!!! I just can't bear to
delay it any more. A 'Winslow Walnut Table and 4 Chocolate
Leather Effect Chairs' for £166.24, plus £8.95 for delivery
(although that is liable to be upto a month away apparantly!! :o(
) Jeeze - all this money I'm burning - just imagine the big new
TV I could (should?) have bought with it instead!!! :o(
.. put all the bedroom floorboards back down, put the furniture
back in and finished up for the day well after 7pm . . Oh dear -
those spotlights sure magnify all the roughness and patching of
the walls! Even the firebreast looks atrocious with them on - and
I really thought I'd cracked that! That's really bad news. I WILL
need to experiment with where they are pointing, but quite simply
I think they are far too bright for the effect I'm after. I've
got 35w equivalent (allegedly) energy savers in the living room
spots, and once they've warmed up (!!) that's MUCH more suitable.
. PCd this (and rejigged the last couple of photos. I MUST be
running out of webspace by now, surely!). .
touched base briefly with Mum . .
ate Mum donated pizza and a little chocolate . . touched base
with BB . . TVd until bed around midnight.
30 - Up around 7:30am . .PCd a bit of this . .
washed another (same disappointing innefectual results) and put
the couple of damp carpet tiles in the sun in the garden to dry .
. tidied up the mess in the diner and eventually put all the
scraps of carpet tile back down. Vacuumed. Cut some carpet tile
scraps to fit in the bottom of the fireplace - because it was
easy. Until I decide what should go in there as a base, I reckon
a bit of carpet will do. In fact, if it was trimmed with a bit of
gold carpet edge to kinda match all the brass stuff, maybe that
is all I 'should' put in there? 
Put the Buddha in its new home (actually now
I have, I'm not sure I'm keen. Maybe it should be a plant or
something else in there? I haven't, but it 'should' be possible
to put a power socket on one side for something, without 'too'
much work if I so chose - just by 'punching through' with a long
drill through the back of one of those I've put in on the sides
of the firebreast?) and pretty much called it quits on the
fireplace, and in fact, apart from 'dinging' all the
imperfections in the walls with some filler and 'just decorating',
that's pretty much 'it' for that whole side of the room. Just
need to get those spotlights (already on their way, apparantly)
into the ceiling, to go along with the background/'mood' lighting
from the fireplace. It's all gradually coming together - and I
seem less able to find the energy, and more inclined to do less
and less each day as it does so! (The apparantly bendy lines on
the photo I've included here, IS a trick of the camera! Believe
me - I know!) . . PCd this and just sat around doing nothing for
ages . . . pottered in the garden just a little, filling the nut
feeder and washing the bird bath. . put in a bit of time cutting
up a small bit of skirting board, and eventually knocked up a
small 'L' shaped corner piece to fit on the kitchen side of the
wall next to the back door. Just big enough to fill the gap and
disappear behind the kitchen unit, to make it look as though
there is a full compliment of skirting behind there. Roughly butt
jointed, nailed and glued the two pieces and left them setting in
the sun while I sat in the garden drinking a glass of wine . .
ate three ham and lettuce rolls, crisps and chocolate . . napped
until the alarm at 7:15pm . . used the disc cutter and sandpaper
to carve the edge of the skirting into the correct curved profile,
drilled the recessed holes and the wall and got the plugs in all
ready to fit it. Applied a few dabs of filler in the old screw
holes and here and there, and then just came to a grinding halt
and left it for tomorrow. . guitarred/TVd . .touched base briefly
with Mum. . ate a spam roll, crisps, banana, half a battenburg
cake and chocolate . . to bed around 2am. ds
29 - Up around 7:50am . .sanded down the inside
walls of the fireplace and then somehow spent most of the day (how
sad am I!) trying to make it look as though it had that 'round
edge detailing' around the face of it, that is found throughout
the house (and up either side of the firebreast nearby), .
Measured and drew the lines and then meticulously quite literally
carved and scraped away at the plaster with a stanley knife,
sandpaper and occasional use of a hacksaw blade, trying to
reasonably accurately duplicate the look of all the original
timber edges elswhere! Utterly absurd amount of time to spend on
such a small overlooked detail, but it WAS what I'd had in mind
for the finished look, it DID look a bit plain without it, and of
course once I'd started having a go at it, I HAD to carry on and
make it work, or face the prospect of having to try and re-plaster
over it all!! Suffice it to say, at the end of the day, I was
pretty happy with how it turned out. It just makes it look more 'original'.
Funnily enough, during these long hours of kneeling, wearing my
glasses and carefully 'carving'the wall - I suddenly realised
that the same sort of detail was completely missing from the
plasterboarded/plastered-over reveals all around the back door (one
of those walls I'd even re-plastered to create a straighter edge
to the corner!!) How on earth did I overlook that when I was
working on it all?! Now I've spotted it, it's gonna bug me, but I
have absolutely NO intention of spending THAT many hours again
trying to carve one around it! (Anyway, at some distant point in
the future, that awful (broken) double glazed back door, designed
WITHOUT a handle on the outside (so you can't actually go OUT
that way!!!?) IS going to have to be replaced, so any such
attention can wait until then - if ever.) . . ate a couple of
mini pork pies and crisps. . sanded down all the skirtings around
the firebreast up to the back door and got an undercoat on them
all. Considering how bad they WERE, they don't look bad at all. :o)
. . kept the windows open and the fan running much of the day,
pointing into the fireplace helping dry stuff out. Noticeably
very much cooler today. . retrieved my stone Buddha from up the
garden where it's been sat for the last few years, and gave it a
good scrub down and a wash, attempting to get all the muck and
green algae off it, prior to it eventually coming back into the
house. . TVd/PCd a bit . . well after 9pm I eventually sanded
down a few bits of filler and got a first coat of emulsion paint
on everything up inside the fireplace. Wow - I need a lower
wattage bulb up in there now. With the paint on, it's absolutely
blinding! Maybe I should just put a pillow in there and lay on
the dining room floor with my head in there for half an hour
every day, and use it as my own 'seasonal affective disorder
lightbox'? lolol . kept the fan running to speed up the drying
and ate three spam rolls, crisps and a mini cheesecake . . got
another coat of paint on later . . had a bit of an experimental
go at washing one of the carpet tiles. They were all worn and
disgustingly blackened and needing replacement when I moved in
here. The recent building work has also taken its toll, although
to be honest, not 'that' much in comparison to the filth they
came with. Bizarrely and suprisingly, despite scrubbing away at
one with a scrubbing brush in hot detergent, the original dark
filth wouldn't budge!?? What on earth did the previous occupants
get up to in here, to get them all covered like that?! Sadly,
that does mean I'm gonna just have to put up with them as they
are for the forseeable future. Blowing scarce money on replacing
carpets is the absolute LAST thing I would ever do! . eventually
to bed around 1am.
28 - Poor night of broken sleep and then up
around 9am . . put the fan on in the diner again before PCing
this for a bit . .did laundry . . mowed the lawns . .pottered
around tidying up all the junk in the conservatory just a little.
That fan really does seem to be doing the trick - much of that
plaster is drying out pretty quick . . Mum called in with the
paper and food donations for chats etc . . cooked and ate ham
ring, half a tin of beans, four eggs and mushrooms followed by
some chocolate . . napped until the alarm at 7:15pm. . .TVd/guitarred/TVd
the evening away . . ate Mum donated mini pork pies with packs of
mini cheddars and chocolate. . to bed around 1am. s
27 - Up around 7:30am . . PCd and somehow
casually ordered a couple of spots for the dining room on e-bay.
'2 x GU10 Brass Eyeball Downlight Spot Lights' for £4.29
including postage. Getting a couple of those fitted in the
ceiling, really is the last awkward thing I have to do in my 'master
plan'. I'd rather have 'seen' what I was buying, but I imagine
they're all about the same. The local Focus store sells them (where
I bought the ones for the living room) but they only sell them in
packs of three (!?) and they are pretty expensive, and I didn't
want to end up with another one spare
and bought for nothing. . .intending to head out to the DIY store
near the council tip, I tackled the depressing pile of junk I've
had just dumped outside the back door for ages (bricks, rubble,
radiators, pipes, fire and back boiler). Dismantled as much of
the back boiler as I reasonably could and made it possible to 'just'
about carry it all up to load into the back of the car. Dumped
the heavy long radiators up alongside the garage for the
foreseeable future. Not quite sure how I'm gonna be able to get
rid of those! . . drove to the tip. They've altered the tip and
moved everything around since I was last there. All the junk
appears to now have to be loaded by the public directly into the
huge metal containers that go straight onto the back of a lorry.
Trouble with that is - you have to carry everything up a big
flight of stairs to be able to throw it in - and you have to
throw it because the stairs aren't RIGHT next to the bin!!! That
is not good, especially when you are struggling with the heavy
cast-iron innards of an old back boiler! Health and safety out to
lunch - and plenty of the population down here probably couldn't
even manage the stairs!! . . drove to the Focus DIY store to buy
a small bag of plaster (and maybe a curtain track and a couple of
other things). Every single thing I'd wanted to look at or get,
they were out of stock! I DO HATE that store. Always seems to
have such issues and it's SO aggravating to struggle through all
the heavy holiday traffic all that way for nothing so often. .
popped into a nearby builders merchant on the offchance, and
succeeded in at least getting a small bag of one-coat plaster, to
enable me to push on and finish off the inside of the fireplace.
. . stopped at Sainsburys on the return for a few supplies and
tobacco . .cooked and at a ham ring, baked beans, four fried eggs,
mushrooms and four buttered bread rolls! BIG food. . inevitably
had to go lay down to nap soon after. .woken soon after 5:30pm by
the sound of aircraft noise. (I think I had been kinda expecting
it and half listening out in my sleep). Sat in the chair in the
bedroom bay window and watched the Red Arrows displaying in the
distance over the Dartmouth regatta. Blue skies and big fluffy
clouds. Their first 'full display' in days, because of the bad
weather apparantly (the Torquay one WAS completely cancelled the
other day). Moving and impressive as ever..sat around for ages
just feeling blah - and actually strangely kinda 'swollen in my
hands'? . not wanting to completely waste the day not having done
anything on the diner, I eventually succeeded in forcing myself
to have a go at hand-sanding down the new rough plaster on the
back wall inside the fireplace. As ever with that marvellous one-coat
plaster, with a bit of sanding, my awful plastering started to
look ok. The new plaster/cement in that fireplace has/is taking
an age to dry out, now there is no ventilation in there -
although of course the recent atmosphere has been so full of
water, that hasn't helped. Despite all the recent HEAVY rain,
there was no hint of ANY damp from that, so as I'd thought, when
it eventually dries, it WILL remain so. Mixed up a couple of
loads more plaster and eventually succesfully plastered the two
side walls and the base, slightly 'trueing' everything up as I
did so, by using the spirit level as an edge to plaster to. Went
pretty well. Cleared up and vacuumed by around 11pm. . brought
the big old oscillating table fan I have, down from a cupboard
and set it up in the middle of the diner, pointing in the
direction of the fireplace, and put it on for half an hour or so.
Should help a bit with stirring the air in there and getting
things drying a bit better without overdoing it (like I think it
would be if I put the fan-heater on it like Mum had suggested lol).
. . guitarred briefly watching plaster dry. . eventually ended up
PCing on e-bay, looking at led bulbs for spotlights and all
manner of stuff I don't have any need for, before eventually to
bed in the early hours. Someone had donated me £10 via the site.
Coooel - and thank you. :o) Guess I should write their name on
the spotlights? lol :o)
26 - Up late somewhere around 9am . . slow 'coming
to' before eventually heading to the garage to measure up one of
the spare kitchen units I'd removed from the diner alcove. A thin
base cupboard complete with a shelf and door. Ooooh yes - with a
few adjustments and bits cut out, I could put that between the
washing machine and the new fridge, rather than the ugly bit of
narrow open boxing that has always been there. Oooh, oooh. .
Measured up the huge old microwave and went on-line to look at
possible replacements, starting off of course by looking at the
cheapest. . oh wow - for lots less than a hundred pounds I could
get a new replacement, even WITH a grill!! Not only that, but if
I was lucky it would fit straight into the tall 'oven' kitchen
unit, where there is currently a 'hinged/lift-up drawer front'
type compartment above the oven. A bit high for hot liquids - but
I could manage - I'm pretty tall. I'd probably just remove the
hinged door/drawer front bit and have it just sat there, but I
have a feeling although it'd be a bit tight to get it in, most
would actually fit INSIDE that space behind the existing door! Oh
wow. That'd be SUCH a neat use of all the available space. It IS
all evolving into a bit of a strange squeeze by 'normal'
standards, but boy would it work SO well! I've already lost some
storage with putting the freezer where I have - and would lose
yet more if I did this with the microwave, and yet I have almost
entire cupboards in that kitchen full of never-used tupperwares,
oven cookware, spare pots and pans and the like. If I got serious
with sorting out and getting rid of all the junk, I really would
be no worse off at all than I've already been living - in fact,
much better off! . . Mum called in to see the new fridge and
freezer, for a cuppa and chats etc. She really does seem to be
excited by all the changes I'm making. lolol Dare I say, I guess
I am too - kinda. Everything really has been the most
extraordinary amount of work - but the end result (tantalizingly
now very much in sight) is potentially gonna be VERY cool. That
whole 'open plan' type space has TOTALLY transformed the feel of
the house. It makes ME feel different too (even my 'twiddling'
seems to have improved and become more elaborate at times as a
result! lol) Far more content - ish (except for wanting to do SO
much more to the place!) I'm VERY glad I had the balls to do it.
My savings have taken a hell of a battering, but there's enough
left to do a lot more before I'm proper broke. On an evening is
when I like it most - when watching TV, with all the doors closed,
with the bats circling just outside the bay window (often with
the rising moon and some drifting chinese lanterns as a backdrop),
with the owl in the tree opposite to-wit to-wooing, - and just
getting up and 'popping through' to make a coffee. And now with
the kitchen also starting to take shape and be what and where it
should be (within financial constraints and given what I have to
work with), I like it a bunch. I've hardly been out of the house
(except for 'building supplies') for weeks - but right now, with
it starting to feel like this, that is VERY ok by me. :o) . . as
soon as Mum had left (around 2pm!!) I dragged the fridge out and
swapped the door around so it now hinges on the left. Didn't go
so well. I didn't like the look of the way the seal sat once I'd
changed it. Nothing I did wrong. Just
the way it HAD to be as it was. The slots for the screws in the
adjustable hinge bracket, didn't allow the required amount of
adjustment to have the seal do its job near the hinge (I could
get a cigarette paper freely into the gap - AND the empty hinge
position plug on the other side of the top of the door, fouled
the lid trim!). Just what you get with a cheap (Chinese) fridge I
guess. I dared to file the slots a little longer and remedied the
problem. . 
dared to drag the old 'came with the house,
and due to break at any moment' washing machine out of its
position for the first time since I've lived here and set about
having a go at removing the junk boxing between it and the fridge
and installing the spare unit in its place. (The complication
there is the bit of stub wall that protrudes out supporting a
structural lintel inside the arch above - the cupboard had to be
cut to fit around it - and of course the floor isn't level - and
the work surface is lower than the one the unit WAS under, so I
had to trim it all off - etc, etc, etc..)It took ALL day until
around 7pm, but I eventually succeeded - and also had the
opportunity to ditch the temporary surface mounted sockets that
have been screwed to the side of the boxing since I did the
alterations to the wall and wiring in the nearby corner ready for
central heating etc. Glad to finally see the back of that! . with
the spare cupboard and door in position, the fridge/kitchen looks
even better and like it was meant to be - and it means I've
actually clawed back some useable cupboard space, rather than the
boxing which was used as a dumping ground for my trays, and which
had a bizarre, old fashioned, broken extendable, totally
unuseable towel rail thing in it!! In fact that worked out SO
well, I am seriously tempted to have a go at totally dismantling
the 'stack' where I've got my freezer and oven, in order to
modify the cabinet so there is no base to it, so the freezer
would sit on the floor like it should and look less 'stuffed in a
spare slot' like I think it rather does (because it IS). That
would mean dismantling half of the kitchen though! lol there's no
end to it!!!!!! NOT now I think!. . PCd this . .TVd . . ate
corned beef and mayo sandwiches, two packs of mini cheddars, a
banana, half a battenburg cake and some chocolate. . to bed
around 1am. s
25 - Up at 5am woken by some noise or other. .
ooops. Just as well I was up before light. Spotted light coming
up through the cracks in the floor! I'd left the lights in the
underfloor area turned on all night! . . went on-line and checked
my four hour delivery slot for the new fridge and freezer.
Between 2 and 6pm. The weather forecast is for torrential rain
about then - and pretty much the same for the next several days!
It was supposed to be the Torquay Red Arrows display today around
6pm I think. That seems unlikely. . PCd this. . did laundry and
dish washing chores and some general cleaning and de-dusting of
much of the kitchen. Eventually moved stuff around, dismantled a
part of one of the cabinets, cut and layed a couple of carpet
tiles, vacuumed and generally made preparations for where the new
fridge and freezer will go. . Big rain all day, including some
absolutely torrential stuff at times. Not seen this much rain for
quite a while! . . ate a microwaved chicken curry, four bread
rolls and then a tub of muller rice. . just after 2:15pm I turned
the fridge freezer off, dutifully defrosted it, and transferred
everything into the bath in Mums coolbag and wrapped it all in
multiple duvets and an old sleeping bag . . TVd, uptight, feeling
unable to get on and do anything else
other than just wait for the delivery. Actually fell asleep in
the chair for half an hour or so at one point, only to then wake
feeling absolutely awful! . around 5:30pm Mum called to say the
delivery guys had just called her. (So I HAD put her number in by
mistake when I did the order, as I'd suspected and warned her!
Why didn't she just give them my number?!!) They'd allegedly
broken down somewhere so they wouldn't be here until 'later - but
it would be today'! FFS! :o( So what do I do? Put the old freezer
back on, unwrap everything from its cocoon in the bath and move
everything back into it? I decided to just wait it out for a
while longer - but I just BET they call again later to say it won't
be today. We'll see. All that food is gonna end up ruined. Ruined
or not, there's too much invested in it to be thrown away, so it
WILL all be re-frozen and eaten eventually, likely food
poisioning or not! FFS! :o( .
. at 8:15pm I called mum and asked for the mobile number of the
delivery guy who'd called her earlier. It just rang and rang and
there was no answer. The store helpline had closed at 8pm. I
plugged the fridge back in and waited for it to get cold before
intending to start putting all the surely ruined food back in it!
Just for once - just for f***in' once it would be nice not to be
f***ed around and treated like this whenever I'm reluctantly
forced to 'engage with the world'!! . .PC'd this. dug out all the
food from the 'duvet bath nest' and loaded it all back into the
freezer. Amazingly much of it was still frozen - everything in
Mums coolbag in particular. That's cool. :o) Literally minutes
after I'd finished doing that, Mum called to say they'd just
called and would be here within 5 minutes!! WOULD YOU F****N'well
believe it!. BB called only to hear me rant and rave and soon be
dismissed! . . the poor delivery guys finally turned up around 9:15pm.
Been working since early this morning - broke down driving
through a flood on their way to Dartmouth - plenty of deliveries
STILL to do!!! They very quickly brought in what one said was the
freezer. Plugged it straight in temporarily on one of my new
firebreast sockets to get it cooling right away. The delivery
guys eventually succcessfully manoeuvred the old beast of a
fridge freezer out and away to their (rental?/plain) van,
blocking the road somewhere down below in the picth black. (I SO
need do a path light down there - like next door!) Those poor
guys. The old fridge freezer had absolutely covered one of them
in white plaster/filler/cement dust - from a distinct horizontal
line just below his waist, all the way down - and now fixing in
nicely with some rain!!!! Sadly it had also dumped a load of
water onto a bunch of dusty carpet tiles as it left (recent
evidence suggests, that now makes a permanent stain!) Ouch - that's
just like when Sally left for the last time too! :o| . . quickly
stripped off the few bits of sticky tape and the sheet of
cellophane just over the top, which was suprisingly the ONLY
packing they wore, checked there was no exterior damage and
quickly tried to get them both into the positions I'd planned.
Yayyy - they both fit ok and appear to be working (although I
WILL need to turn the door around on the fridge). Oh my god -
aren't new ones just SO quiet! What joy after what I've been
enduring! The freezer does without doubt look a bit silly where I've
put it, but I can more than live with THAT to have it all within
arms reach and free up the diner! More of an issue is the huge
old microwave, now filling a good half of the useable counter top.
I DEFINITELY have to get a smaller new microwave as I'd planned!
The fridge I AM a little worried about because it doesn't seem to
feel very cold. Having said that, I really can't tell how cold it
'should' feel anymore because I've been living with a fridge that
would freeze a lettuce in the salad drawer! Actually took the
living-room thermometer off its hook and put it in the fridge to
make sure it was the right temperature according to the manual. .
Immediately crammed all the mass of frozen food I've accumulated,
into the freezer. Only just fits! I need to start eating some of
it!! . . touched base with Mum and then sat down and read through
the brief manuals. Finally - FINALLY calmed down and felt a bit
happier about how it all worked out in the end. I guess I got a
bit um - 'ragged' today! (Hysterical more like!!!!!) I'm SO not
good at having to wait around on stuff like that. :o| . . .
needed to sit around and recover from my day long uptightness.
TVd/Pcd/touched base with BB until early. . ate spam sandwiches,
a pack of mini cheddars and a whole packet of Mum donated mini
chocolate logs around 3am before eventually to bed soon after! s
24 - Woke earlier, then up just before 6am . .
sanded here and there before getting some paint on the firebreast
walls, concentrating on the areas around the new socket boxes,
intending to hopefully wire them up later. . wearing goggles and
working on my back again, eventually succeeded in getting a
decent coat of plaster all over my 'flue plug' in the fireplace -
and all over my face and goggles of course! I think that's worked
out quite nicely in the end. . had just mixed a load of plaster,
and was starting to attempt to plaster the awkward back wall IN
the fireplace when Mum called in! Poor Mum - I made her sit
quietly until I was done! Actually made a bit of a hash of that
bit of plastering. SUCH an awkward place to try to plaster. The
bad news about intending to put a light up there is that when it's
on, it will greatly magnify any uneveness and imperfections in
those very rough interior walls. :o( I have yet to have a go at
the two side walls and level off the base. It's such a small part
of all that I've done, and yet it is irritatingly liable to end
up being the most time consuming and fiddly! I AM gonna have to
go buy more plaster. :o( . Mum had come down to let me borrow a
small insulated 'cool bag' she had laying around, for when I
defrost my fridge tomorrow and have all that food thawing out. .
. suddenly occurred to me that Mum being here could be really
useful when I attempt to alter the ring main under the floor to
wire up the three new power sockets in the sides of the
firebreast (the other one of the four is currently blanked - my
master plan being it 'could' be useful as a phone socket some
time). Despite it likely taking a while, she willingly agreed. .
gathered up necessary tools and my spool of mains cable, cut the
power and headed off squirming deep under the floor by torchlight.
Measured up and cut the existing ring main cable in half before
eventualy feeding one of the ends across the rafters and spaces
under the floor and up through my conduit into one of the new
sockets on the side of the firebreast. Mum helped by grabbing the
wire as it emerged and making sure it didn't slip back down.
Pushed up a short loop to the next socket, with Mum helping
getting it through by 'jiggling' the wire, a run down to the
socket on the other side of the firebreast, and then finally
pushed up the other end of the cut off ring. Who'd have imagined
Mum at her age would be helping re-wire a house? lololol With all
the cables succesfully in place, it was now just a matter of the
time consuming careful wiring up of the socket face plates. Mum
left me to it. Took me about an hour before I had them all wired
up and the power back on. (A dodgy faceplate screw thread on one
of those new socket boxes!! After all that work! Grrrr. I've
learned from painful experience that I SHOULD ALWAYS check those
before fitting them but I always forget!. . Damn - making use of
Mum and rushing things, I forgot to drill the wall and put the
retaining screws through the back of the socket boxes! Oh well -
never mind - they're secure enough the way I do them.) As ever
with hooking up new power sockets - 'instant gratifiction'. VERY
satisfying. . . with a spare one laying around, and suffering a
bit of 'tunnel vision' as a result, I'd very nearly gone ahead
and fitted a whole 'bulkhead' light up inside the fireplace. With
it all now taking pretty good shape, that suddenly seemed like
completely unecessary overkill. All it needed was a simple old
fashioned 'surface mount' bulb-holder on the wall in there - but
I didn't have one. I really didn't want to have to waste hours
going around in the car trying to find somewhere that would sell
such a thing. In a eurika moment, I recalled that I 'maybe' had a
couple of those providing the seldom-used light in the attic. .
dug out the loft ladder, climbed into the attic and yayyy - sure
enough, there were two up there. Cut the power again and working
by torchlight, successfully removed one, and swiftly managed to
replace it with the old strip light from the bathroom, which has
been sat rusting unused in the garage since I removed it. Good to
're-cycle' that old light and not have it still cluttering up the
garage in danger of being smashed. That worked out nicely. :o) .
. pushed on with the bit of drilling/wiring work up inside the
fireplace and eventually had the lamp holder all neatly mounted
to the inside face of the firebreast just above the lintel, all
nicely out of sight and ready to go with an energy saver low
wattge bulb in it. . . moved all the furniture and pulled up the
floorboards in the spare bedroom and after cutting the power YET
again for quite a long time, I eventually had the fireplace light
all hooked up to the ring (via a spare ceiling 'rose' left loose
under the floorboards adjacent to where the main diner light rose
is fixed to the ceiling below) and connected to my spare switch
on the new four gang diner switchplate. At the same time, I
replaced the main diner ceiling rose with the new 'polished brass
effect' one I'd recently impulse bought at the DIY store, because
it was 'half price', reduced to just £3.04. That's NOT the sort
of thing I would normally contemplate having, but at that price
and with that ornate glass and brass diner lampshade, (and
ultimately intending to also put a couple of brass spotlights in
the ceiling by the alcoves) I figured it would be maybe a 'matching
touch'. (I HAD hoped to have just screwed on the new brass effect
cover to the existing rose, but infuriatingly after having wasted
my time taking down the lampshade and pendant and trying it the
other day, it'd turned out to be a 'slightly' different sized
thread, so I HAD to go to all the hassle of disconnecting all the
wires and swapping out the WHOLE rose!) . eventually had it all
done, had the power back on and everything was working fine. Wow
- hadn't expected to have got all THAT done today. That's pretty
much everything in place and working and all the diner wiring
done-with now (until I finally buy some spotlights and hook them
up to come on with the fireplace light). EXCELLENT! :o) . Screwed
all the floorboards back down and put all the furniture back in
the bedroom. . cleared up some of the mess, vacuumed, and even
finally returned some of my tools to the garage for the first
time in weeks, and called a halt for the day around 9pm! . raced
straight up the store for some sugar. I'd run out completely. .
ate a microwaved beef curry with two rolls and four pieces of
bread and butter, a couple of bananas and some chocolate. .TVd .
. very exhausted! I got a lot done today. Literally went through
the house from top to toe, from under the floor to the attic!
Things are really taking shape AT LAST! :o) . to bed at 11pm.
23 - Up at 5:15am !! . . despite all that
painful scrubbing at myself in the shower with a scrubbing brush,
I've STILL ended up with a soot coloured pilowcase! :o( Evil
stuff - you just can't seem to get it off! . . PCd this for hours
. . back in the fireplace, the 'plaster over it' idea DOES appear
to be viable, although it's gonna be awkward and may have to be
built up in successive time consuming layers to make it strong
enough. If I'd known I was gonna be using so much plaster all of
a sudden, I WOULD have gone and bought a full bag rather than
that small one! I've a horrible feeling I'm gonna have to go buy
another! . . mixed up a couple of loads of cement and at length
with MUCH difficulty, working on my back with my head in the
fireplace, managed to point, firm up and render over all the
loose bricks around the mouth of the chimney flue. . . with the
damp atmosphere and everything noticeably taking much longer to
dry out, and all the remaining things that need sorting being
held up as a result, I ended up spening the WHOLE rest of the day
messing around with replacing skirting boards around the
firebreast and up to the back door! The few lengths of useable
skirting I have left are in a hell of a state, and it was a real
battle to remove all the old nails and sand them all down and
find pieces long enough that weren't all split or rotten. What I
hadn't realised until it was too late and they were fixed to the
walls, was that they weren't even straight or a regular depth
along their lengths!! Ended up with them touching the floor in
places, and a big gap elsewhere (actually just like everywhere
else around the house - so I guess at least it looks 'original'.
lolol) . Oh well - I guess a decent carpet would hide all that
anyway. . quickly ate a pastry slice and some crisps around 4pm .
.Doing (so many) proper mitred joints on all the outside corners
of those skirtings was way beyond my appalling carpentry skills,
so I actually just 'butt jointed' the oversized lengths, before
using the grinder and a sanding block to then carve away the
small overlap into the appropriate multiple curved profile -
which after a touch of filler and some paint, 'should' end up
looking like it was done properly. . meticulously filled all the
gaps to the uneven walls, over the heads of the recessed fixing
screws, all the old nail holes, etc, etc with a strong PVA/filler
mix applied with my favourite old bent butter knife. They are in
SUCH poor shape, they are all gonna need lots of sanding down and
more filler before I can go anywhere near painting them - but
that's just kinda 'decorating' work, which IS a good sign of
progress I think. lol. I've never had decent skirtings, and it
hasn't bothered me, so I'm not 'too' fussed about spending too
much time on them. Too much old chipped paint on them to try to
make them look like new. At least they won't be the noticeably
botched patchwork of uneven and missing pieces, that were there (or
not) before I started!(Both sides of the walls around the new
opening between the rooms still don't have skirtings, but I can't
replace those until I either fit doors or decide not to, so they
will remain without for the forseeable future. I WILL have to buy
some plain timber and attempt to make up some matching new
lengths for those walls when I do them!!) . . briefly trimmed the
handful of carpet tiles to fit up to the new skirtings before
calling it quits around 8:30pm . . With all the work I've been
doing for the last couple of months mixing up loads of cement and
plaster, using power tools, vacuum etc, and with showering and
getting clean afterwards, there IS definitely going to be a
noticeable 'spike' in both my water and electric bills!! :o( . .
TVd . ate a pizza and Mum donated sponge chunk . .TVd until to
bed around 11:30pm.
22 - Woke earlier, snoozed on then up at 6:15am
. . PCd this . . spent the whole morning and into the afternoon
JUST roughing in the two single socket boxes on the side of the
diner firebreast. Very awkward because of the obstructing floor
joists beneath the floor where the conduit had to drop down. Didn't
go smoothly at all, with MUCH horrendous drilling noise for the
poor neighbours, but got there in the end and had them rough
plastered in place. . . returned to the new access hole under the
diner floor and manged to drill through and hack out the few
remaining obstructing bricks. It 'could' do with some tidying up
and a little more cementing, but there's no real need, and that
can certainly wait for some other time if at all. That whole
newly opened up underfloor space is full of rubble that could do
with clearing out, and there's no light in that part etc etc, so
I could do a bunch more work down there to make it 'decent' and
match the rest - but the way I'm feeling, I may never bother! . .
so - the NEXT piece of the puzzle - it's now all about the
fireplace!!!!! Ugggh. :o( . . spent ages just laying down on my
back on the floor of the diner, with my head in the fireplace
looking up at the inside of the flue with a torch, trying to
figure out what to do with it. Plenty of the brickwork is loose
and requires a bit of cementing to beef it up, and the big metal
liner packed all around the outside up the flue with old soot
covered fibreglass insulation, protrudes into the fireplace. I'd
always imagined those liners were like a big consertina and that
I'd be able to just shove it back up a bit. No way! The damn
thing really was quite stiff and solid, and any attempt at
pushing it back up at all, resulted in huge amounts of debris and
soot falling down on me and it not moving hardly at all! .
searched through my tools in the garage and eventually found the
old rubber diving mask I'd once found on a beach somewhere, which
I'd kept for JUST such an occasion. There was no escaping it - I
WAS going to have to work face-up in the
fireplace, with all the soot and debris falling down directly
onto my head and face! . . measured up as best I could in the
diner before returning to the bedroom above with the drill. I'd
deliberately not replaced one of the floorboards the other day,
because I knew I was going to have a go at this pretty soon. It
may sound easy, but I'd had a huge amount of trouble figuring out
in my mind where the flue from the downstairs fireplace actually
went up the wall in the bedroom. The bedroom firebreast (presumably
long ago bricked up by someone else) was tiny in comparison to
the one below. I just couldn't work out how there was enough room
in its width to take the old fireplace that must have once been
there, AND have the flue from the one beneath pass up alongside!
. Carefully drilled through beneath the floor into the bedroom
firebreast, in the soft dusty grout between a couple of bricks -
and drilled and drilled and - nothing! Damn - that must have been
the hearth bricks for the old bedroom fireplace. Moved the drill
over to the next most likely soft spot and had another go.
Without hardly even neeeding to turn the drill on, the drill bit
pretty soon pushed through into a void. Had a good look through
the small hole with a torch, and gently prodded with a very long
drill bit, and YAYYYyyy! I could hear, and see the metal flue-liner
from the fireplace beneath. Found a suitable length of two core
cable (strimmer extension lead?) in the garage and fed it through
the hole into the flue. . wearing my diving mask and dust mask, I
'faced up' to the challenge of pulling down all the fibre glass
packing and soot and rubble, and eventually successfully had the
cable down into the fireplace. YAYYYYyyyyyyyy! :o) There we go
then - in principal, fitting a light in there IS gonna be a go'er.
Excellent. :o) . . the forecast heavy rain moved in and poured
down for the next several hours. . spent a LOT more time just
trying to figure out what to do. Not wanting to burn any bridges,
and wanting to ensure that at some point in the future it 'could'
be possible to 'relatively' easily open that fireplace back up
for actual use with a fire again (like SO much of what I've done
- not so much for me, but with some other future owner of the
house in mind?) I eventually decided to trim off just a few
inches of the metal liner (I REALLY didn't want to but had no
choice), so that I could just jam its end against a protruding
brick and leave it more or less untouched, in-situ in the mouth
of the flue. Used a long piece of wood to replace all the old
fibreglass up the flue around the liner as it had been, and added
lots more to pack everything in tight, and make a 'level' face
with the jammed end of the liner. . Totally unorthodox, but it
suddenly became apparant, that if I was able to just skim over
the tightly packed fibreglass and around the slightly protruding
metal liner onto the surrounding brickwork with some plaster,
that would likely be more than sufficient to actually have the
thing 'blocked', and yet visibly a potentially viable, already
lined, working fireplace, with the 'block' easily removed with a
good punch if desired! (Not interested in draughty air vents.
Everything was fully dry - there is a dog leg in the flue at
attic level so no damp can get down any further than that, and
the metal flu liner is capped with a cowl at the chimney anyway).
Mixed up a small amount of plaster and got some on as an
experiment to see if it would work. Ended up with my face covered
in the stuff, mixed in with all the soot and fibreglass! I really
got in a hell of a mess! IF that plastering idea works, that's
gonna make cementing and 'tidying up' the inside of the fireplace,
and then getting a light up there, a whole lot less work. Fingers
very crossed. . called it quits around 8pm and vacuumed some of
the soot from around the place! . . showered - much - with a
scrubbing brush! . . TVd . .just a freakish concidence due to the
heavy rain I'm sure, but it was VERY unnerving to suddenly hear a
small amount of mortar/debris fall down the flue behind the
fireplace in the FRONT froom!!! That whole chimney stack needs
work! :o( . . ate microwaved curry with four bread and butter
rolls and some chocolate . . TVd until to bed at 11pm.
21 - Up at 7:45am . . slow getting going before
eventually jumping in the car and driving to the builders yard
for a short lintel, two bags of sand and a couple of single
switched sockets. The next piece of my 'thousand piece puzzle'
really has to be open up an access hole to that last bit of area
underneath the floor, and get a lintel in over the hole. Knowing
me, I'd probably be itching to give that a go tomorrow (when the
builders yard is closed), so figured I'd best get the lintel and
sand to hand, for whenever I want to do it. . . pottered around
before doing a bit of hand sanding here and there and then got
some paint on the walls, including a coat on that last,
firebreast side wall. I could (should?) have put more work into
that one and maybe plastered some more, but I came to the
conclusion it was all banana like and not straight before I
started, and since it is in that narrow back alcove and can
hardly ever be seen, it just wasn't worth any more time. It DOESN'T
leap out at you to 'offend the eye', so I guess it's more than ok.
. SO - that's the bulk of the actual 'construction' work on all
the walls in the diner pretty much done with (with the exception
of the two sockets on the other firebreast wall, once I can get
in under the floor - and all the skirting boards yet to renovate
and replace - and of course lots of dusty awkward work yet to do
up inside the fireplace/chimney! I'm really not looking forward
to THAT!!!). It does actually look quite acceptable as it is, but
there ARE plenty of areas of roughness I missed, and a handful of
areas that DO draw the eye, so I will, over time, be wandering
around putting more filler on all over the place, and hand-sanding
those little areas down to improve things prior to a proper bit
of mere painting/decorating. Just 'dinging' I call that. And as
for that 'yellow staining' thing I'm plagued with here and there
, I HAVE figured out how to deal with it. Experiments over the
last couple of days have proved that attempting to seal it in and
stop it with a sealing coat of PVA does NOT work. What DOES work
is to put on a coat of oil based 'undercoat' just over the stain,
and when that is dry, cover over with the final coats of emulsion
- so plenty of little areas that will have to come in for that
treatment. . .ate a couple of sausage rolls with spring onions .
. Mum called in for chats with the paper and some cakes and
chocolate etc. PCd a bit with her and showed her the Argos dining
table and chairs I think I may soon end up going for. She seemed
to be approving of my choice. Given she just pops in once a week
and sees the latest progress, she seems more able to appreciate
how things have changed than I am, and actually seems really
quite excited by it! Doing it all and living in it, trying to fit
the pieces of the puzzle together in the right order, and just
having a mental picture of all the things that STILL need to be
done, it's hard for me to step back and see how far I've come. It
seems as though it's taken a lifetime, and yet if I read my own
journal back a couple of days, it's hard to believe I've reached
this point already. . . the minute Mum had left I couldn't resist
getting back into my dust covered work clothes intending to start
work under the floor!! . BB called to touch base . . worked under
the floor at drilling out bricks (that 'grouting' cement slurry
thing I did on the walls down there prior to painting them white,
is suprisingly firm and hard to drill through! Snapped a drill
bit!) and FINALLY managed to make a hole through the bit of wall
under the diner floor and gain access to the last bit of
underfloor space I've yet to explore. The slope of the ground
under there means the access hole is going to be smallest yet!
Only about four brick courses high! The new opened up area
through the hole includes the base of the firebreast and is a
really tight squeeze to get round. Huge amounts of rubble and
debris in there, trails of dusty cobwebs hanging down everywhere,
together with the seemingly obligatory long-dead, mummified rat
carcass! It's an incredibly confined space, and overheating in
thick overalls (necessary padding/protection from laying on the
painful rubble/concrete floor) and gasping for breath inside my
dust mask, I DID actually have a bit of a bout of claustraphobia/panic
at one point, but managed to overcome it. No point in getting all
panicky - cause there was no getting out quick! I managed to
wriggle flat on my stomach into the back alcove corner to have a
look with the torch to see what the problem was and why the floor
in that corner of the diner was moving so much. Actually with
some surprise and relief, it turned out that I couldn't really
see any problem with anything!? I think maybe just a bit of slate
and re-grouting around the end of the one last joist where it
enters the wall is all that is needed to firm it all up. That's
good news for a change. . There was no turning around in SUCH a
confined space - I had to squirm and wriggle and back myself out
around the corners of the firebreast base!! REALLY unpleasant and
actually a bit scary! . .eventually managed to do the work to
cement the lintel in place over the half finished new opening.
Used the car jack and some pieces of wood to jack the lintel up
solid against the floor rafters above (with a bit of plastic damp
proof course in between) before bricking up to it, to make things
about as firm and solid as they could possibly be. (Impossible to
trowel in such a confined space - used Mum-donated extra-strong 'Marigold'
gloves to push, smear and hand-feed the cement into place!) A
couple of protruding bricks still need to be cut off to open that
hole up proper once it's all gone solid, so I'll have to return
to it with the disc cutter and drill at some point, but that's
the hardest part done. YET another 'I'm SO glad to have finally
got THAT sorted' piece of the puzzle! . called it quits,
exhausted (even found myself laying on the rough concrete under
the floor with my eyes closed for a bit!) around 7:45pm and got
clean . . drank a glass of red wine and guitarred/TVd . . ate a
defrosted pizza and piece of Mum donated sponge cake . . to bed
at midnight. d
20 - Up at 5:15am . . still got dust in my eye!!!!!!
:o( All that involunatry rubbing of my eye with rough hands has
made my eyelid and surrounding area all sore as hell. With such
rough hands, it's like I've had part of my face sandpapered!!!
That's another thing about having failing eyesight and needing
glasses to see close up like I now suddenly do. How the hell do
you have a close look in a magnifying bathroom mirror into your
own eye????!! No longer possible! :o( . . PCd this at length. .
rain and drizzle for most of the day. The damp climate has a very
noticeable effect on how quick everything is drying out - or not!
The plaster on the side wall of the firebreast was still quite
damp in places, so there was no chance of being able to get on
with any of that last remaining bit of wall. Ended up just
pottering around doing some filler, a bit of sanding, some
painting etc etc and just 'playing' with little bits and pieces
and pretty much more or less having a a'day off'. . . VERY
carefully and accurately measured up spaces and units in the
kitchen (and measured again!) and drew plans of the spaces on a
bit of paper, and then went on-line getting serious about
replacing my horrendous old, 'came with the house' faulty fridge
freezer, with two seperates to be actually sited within
the galley-kitchen area. With that horrendous great huge, noisy
monstrosity currently sat in the middle of the dining room, it
being gone is now absolutely fundamental to actually being able
to use the diner AS a diner. . pretty quickly came to the
conclusion that I really didn't care too much what I replaced it
with, as long as they did the job. Far more critical to me was
that they fitted in the (weird) spaces I have in mind, to make
everything more compact and hopefully work so much better. The
fridge under the counter top below where I envisage one day
having a central heating boiler on the wall (with the door hinge
on the left, and enough gap behind to eventually get the central
heating pipes down the wall unobstructed) - the freezer sat IN
the 'modified' unit beneath the oven !! (with the door hinge on
the right)! Those critical dimensions immediately limited my
choice (no bad thing). With almost no shopping around at all, I
eventually ended up on the Currys website and ordered an ESSENTIALS
- CUL50W10 Undercounter Fridge - White for £ 119.99 and an ESSENTIALS
- CUF50W10 Undercounter Freezer - White for £ 119.99. A
total of £239.98 which includes delivery AND removal of the old
appliance. (Considering the distance to the road and all the
steps etc etc - removal of that old monster must be worth at
least £50 to me in itself!) Unless something goes wrong, should
happen on Wednesday apparantly. Trouble I've got with this plan
is the fact that my freezer is currently full to bursting with
frozen stuff that could feed me for weeks. The old appliance has
to be defrosted before it's picked up, and I gather that on the
day, you get a 4 hour delivery slot. In effect - I'm gonna have a
huge pile of frozen stuff all defrosting somewhere (in the bath
covered in duvets?) while I wait for them to arrive and before I
can get the new freezer plugged in and working! Also - the new
freezer will be a bit smaller than the old, so it's all probably
not going to fit back in anyway. So - after the last few weeks of
a very meagre diet, over the next few days, I need to suddenly
start eating LOTS out of the freezer!!! lolol . . ate a couple of
de-frosted meat and pastry slices . . touched base with Mum and
told her about developments and asked her NOT to bring any food
donations with her when she visits on Saturday. She told me about
an advert in the local free paper (which I only ever seem to get
intermitantly) for a dog needing re-homing. I DID try calling the
number, but only got a mobile ansaphone and no call back. I
imagine someone snapped that one up pretty quick, based on the 'enticing'
wording of the advert. Just as well at the moment. I've still a
lot of work I need to do around the place, and it really would be
difficult with a dog around. All this work I've been doing and
the mess I've gotten into - it's no concidence I DIDN'T do it all
when Sally was around. . lay down for an hour or so but didn't
actually get to sleep . . finally cut power, pushed the kitchen
light cables back down the conduit and connected up the new four
gang (one as yet unused) switch plate in the diner (although not
screwed back to the wall yet because I want to get another coat
of paint on). Replaced the landing floorboard etc. . cleaned and
vacuumed a little . . TVd/guitarred the evening away. . ate a
microwave curry with four pieces of bread and butter, chocolate
and biscuits . . my 'gritty' eye does NOT appear to be rectifying
itself! That's BAD news. I hate to admit it (I can't believe I've
done it to myself - again!) but if it doesn't get any better soon,
I may have to consider seeking 'professional assistance' with it!
Really bad news. Aside from anything else - down here, I have no
idea who to go to or where! . .eventually to bed around 12:30am. s
19 - Back up at 6:15am . . PCd and sat around in
the mess for hours before finally managing to get going again.
Stuck the dust sheet back up and sanded down the plaster patches
on the alcove wall and the wall around the back door again. It
suddenly didn't appear to look 'too' bad, and perhaps prematurely
because I'm just running out of steam, I went straight ahead and
slapped a 'undercoat' of emulsion on them to force a halt and
actually be able to see how much more work they need. Apart from
ironing out all the painted over problems on them all, that just
leaves me the wall up the side of the firebreast to do. I'm
getting there - very slowly. . . a million and one things still
to do all over the place, I couldn't quite decide what I had the
energy to do next and just sat around for ages. Given all the
dusty mess I was already in and with the dust sheet already stuck
up (and with the remote possibility the worst of my dust making
is now behind me), I figured there really was no choice but to
tackle having a go at extracting the existing light switch socket
box and try to replace it with a double one, together with
another run of conduit down in the wall! . . lifted the
floorboard upstairs, cut power and dragged all the cables up
through the existing conduit out of the way. Actually just left
them loose on the opened up floor of the landing, with the
switchplate put back on, sat in a plastic tupperware to be able
to put the power back on! Hardly agreeable but temporarily 'safe'
enough. .carefully cut around the single socket box with the disc
cutter and the drill and eventually succeeded in prising it out
of the wall without in any way dislodging or damaging the
existing conduit. As far as I can recall, it IS the first time I've
ever had to 're-visit' one of my socket/conduit installations.
The way I do them is just something I've kinda figured out, and
despite it always appearing to end up looking ok, I've never
really known how well it may hold together, 'over time'. Despite
always meticulously 'roughing' the outside of the plastic conduit
with sandpaper before I plaster them in, I've always had a
sneaking suspicion that the plaster could 'separate' from the
plastic in the wall (with different expansion rates, etc) over
time. Well - that light switch has been in the wall for at least
three years now I guess, and if it is anything to go by, then I
have no need to worry. Because of the shallow depth of the wall
there, and the deep (35mm) socket boxes I always
use to give plenty of internal space for the cables, I hadn't
even screwed that socket box to the wall
- and yet it was VERY firmly embedded in the plaster and took
quite a bit of getting out, even after having cut out all around
it! The conduit was equally firmly attached and happily forming
part of the wall now. All very gratifying to see that what I've
been doing, all works so well. :o) (Just for the record - here is how I
put in all my sockets in a solid brick wall:- use the drill and
small chisels to cut out a recess in the brickwork to take the
box (a hardened steel, old screwdriver blade is particularly
useful for 'precision' chiseling in the awkwardly small space,
which avoids the likelihood of damaging the surrounding wall or
plaster!). Making the hole slightly too large and deep is
preferable, to allow for adjustment. Knock out whichever blank in
the socket box has been chosen to take the circular plastic
conduit (preferably NOT the one immediately adjacent to the earth
post/screw) and then with the box successfully fitting loosely in
the excavated recess, mark the wall where the conduit will enter
the box. THIS is the dusty bit where I bet no-one but me would
contemplate doing it inside a house - but I then use the disc-cutter/angle
grinder (abused-drill and chisels) to cut out the channel for the
conduit all up/down the wall to beneath the floor or above the
ceiling as appropriate, making sure to get it deep enough so the
conduit will lie beneath the plaster and line up with the entry
into the box. Cut the conduit to the required length so that it 'just'
overlaps into the entry hole of the socket box. Use a drill
grinding-stone attachment to slightly 'ream out' both ends of the
conduit, to remove/round off the inner edge of the conduit wall,
to ultimately make poking cables down them easier and less likely
to 'catch' on the sharp edge. Rough-up the entire outer face of
the conduit with some sandpaper along all its length, to act as a
key for the plaster. The next bit can get messy and requires that
you work quick. Mix an appropriate amount of (wet) 'one coat'
plaster and trowel the plaster all along the conduit groove and
into the box recess. With the plaster still wet, push the socket
box and conduit into the plaster and into position, allowing the
wet plaster to 'splurge out' all around (so there are no hidden
voids/gaps). Make sure you don't get any plaster down
INSIDE the conduit! Plug the ends with protruding,
easily pulled back out twirls of kitchen roll, if necessary! If
the plaster consistancy is about right, the box and conduit is immediately
held in position, but still enables movement for final
adjustments to ensure the socket box is straight and level and
flush with the face of the wall etc. Double check
alignment of the box with a spirit level across the face plate
screw holes etc. When happy all is near perfect, fill in any gaps
and all along the conduit channel over the conduit with more
plaster, and smooth over everything. Carefully clear out and
remove all the excess plaster that 'squirted into' the socket box
through the screw holes - particularly making sure the earthpost/screw
is clear. THAT is pretty much job done. Let the plaster dry out.
In practice I've found the plaster/wall around the job, does
benefit from some sanding and filling and final sanding to get a
near perfect seamless finish capable of just being painted over.
The VERY last thing I do once everything has hardened up, is use
a small drill to drill through the screw holes in the back of the
box into the wall, push in a couple of wall plugs and put two
securing screws in (although not at all necessary since the
plaster and protruding conduit is more than capable of holding it
all VERY firm). It's a lot of hassle (and dust!) - but once all
that is done, wiring up the box or making future alterations/additions/re-wiring
is so, SO easy thanks to being able to simply push/pull the
cables up/down through the conduit. You CAN cram a LOT of cables
down through a single conduit (lubricate with washing up liquid
if it gets tight). It's just a lot more work if you put in more
than one run of conduit. (I HAVE put in boxes with THREE
different conduits - up, down AND sideways to an adajacent box!!)
Anyway - right or wrong - thats how I've learned to do it. It
works. :o) ) . happily
managed to get the new double box to fit into the newly cut
larger recess onto the existing conduit,
so it was 'just' (!!) then a case of cutting the channel with the
disc cutter and running another conduit up the wall to beneath
the floor upstairs. Big dusty mess but it all went ok. Ok that is
apart from getting some dust in my eye (AGAIN!!! I don't believe
it! And that, despite me dilligently wearing dust mask, ear
protectors AND glasses! :o( ) . . Eventually, at length, had the
new double box and conduit all plastered in place and drying out.
Always very satisfying to reach that point. Left the loose cables
in the tupperware up on the landing until at least tomorrow, to
enable me to sand and finish off around that box unobstructed
once its dried out, before eventually reconnecting everything
back up. So - that's THAT small piece of the puzzle done. First
time I've ever put in a double box for a
light switch! That one double box and double conduit should now
EASILY accomodate ALL the lighting options I can possibly
envisage in those rooms, AND still give me spare capacity for
unforseen future expansion. :o) . . that pretty much wore me out
and I only just had the energy left to make a start clearing up
some of the horrendous dusty mess I was in! . .vacuumed much . .
caved in and called it quits for the day around 6pm . . defrosted
a huge lump of 'dog food' pork and ate pork and chips, a banana,
chocolate and biscuits . . TVd struggling to stay awake (and
having trouble with my gritty eye!) before giving up and going to
bed by 10pm!
18 - Up around 7:15am . . PCd this for ages . .
plaster was still drying so I couldn't get on with what I wanted.
Ended up driving to the out of town DIY store for a small bag of
plaster, some single socket boxes and a few other bits and pieces.
One of the things I 'impulse' bought because it was on clearance/special-offer,
was a large lightswitch plate. A four switch plate that actually
fits on a double socket box. That thing about wanting to get
another conduit to the lightswitch in the kitchen/diner I hadn't
fully thought through. It's a single socket box. There IS a
physical limit to the number of switches it can have on it - and
I think the limit IS three! That's gonna complicate things
greatly if I want more. . successfully roughed-in two single
socket boxes and conduits on the side wall of the firebreast. (Rare
for me to go to all that bother of double the work for single
socket boxes, but I can envisage a possible future benefit in
that location for singles, and the flexibility of maybe NOT
having them both as power sockets). I had intended to return to
and do the same on the other firebreast side-wall to match, but
the position of an obstructing floorjoist under the floor meant I
couldn't do it until I have full access under that bit of floor
to be able to get under and drill out a couple of awkward 'notches',
so it'll have to wait for some other time. . tended to lots of
little things for hours, making very little progress but working
pretty much non stop nonetheless! . sanded down the newly
replaced coving in the corner and then got a bit of a skim of
plaster over the blocked up hole in the ceiling, and did my very
best with some very wet plaster and an old paint brush, to
attempt to disguise the scar and match up the existing swirled
stippled ceiling effect. . exchanged a few words with the
neighbour in the garden at one point (during my many many long
walks up to the garage for tools etc) and he offered me some 'surplus'
(?) eggs. Ended up being given a tray of fifteen. . with so
little progress made, although it was around 6pm, with yesterdays
plaster more or less dried out, I couldn't resist pushing on and
cellotaping a dust sheet back up between the two rooms and
starting to sand down the rough walls. Hugely disappointing to
find some areas of that newly applied plaster had reacted with
something on the wall and turned to dust again!!! What on earth
IS it that is causing that??!!!!! After all those hours
meticulously scraping those walls and trying to make absolutely
sure everything was off them before I plastered! :o( On top of
all that - the dust sheet did NOT hold back the dust (and even
eventually partially fell down during the sanding) and the whole
place got covered in a layer of thick dust again. It's SO soul
destroying to be constantly in such a mess and cleaning all the
same stuff over and over again. . plastered up the side of the
firebreast and re-did a few patches here and there before
eventually calling it quits around 8:30pm and just leaving all
the dust and mess everywhere . . TVd sat in the dust . . ate a
four egg cheese and spring onion omlette with four pieces of
bread and butter, a banana and some chocolate . . TVd until to
bed at 11:30pm. . woke back up at 12:55am!! Seemed to be feeling
quite a bit of pain and from my right arm in particular , and
ended up popping an annadin tablet before getting back to sleep.
:o(
17 - Poor nights sleep, gave up and got up
around 5:15am!! . . annadin tablet, coffee and cigarettes for
breakfast while PCing this for hours. Ummm - what day is it?
Funny how I had to go buy a new watch recently (which I'm still
VERY pleased with). What day or month it is, really has become
largely irrelevant to me at the moment with doing all this
renovating work on the house. I seem to be TOTALLY consumed by it
and single pointedly focused on reaching a 'certain point' to the
exclusion of ALL else. Having said that, I HAVE had enough of it
to last a lifetime now, and am really longing for a damn good
break from it! I've done nothing else for - um - months now is it?
I figure if I can keep up the pace, one more week of work should
see the diner pretty much coming together - at which point, once
the dust has settled (quite literally!) I may well start a bit of
a spending spree and go in search of table and chairs/fridge/freezer.
Having said that, the more the space is evolving, the more I can
envisage the need to sadly re-visit something I've already done!
The lightswitch. Moving the kitchen/diner lightswitch was I think,
one of the first things I did when I moved in here (because the
original switch was awkwardly/absurdly positioned behind a door!).
I only put in a single conduit to the switch, because I thought
at the time it would be more than adequate. With the changes I've
made, that single conduit is already crammed with three seperate
switch cables - one for the kitchen, one for the diner, and one (thick)
for the hallway light two-way. I can now envisage having another
set of ceiling spot lights in the diner (broadly in each alcove -
identical to how I put them in the living room), to give a
subdued lighting option in there (and I haven't given up on the
idea YET, of maybe trying to get a light up inside the fireplace).
I think I'm going to have to re-excavate the switch (some time in
the future - absolutely NOT now!) and try to get a second conduit
embedded down in the wall to it! Ugggh - more dusty 'disc-cutter
in the house' work! :o( . . it has occurred to me much of late -
(considering my eternal feelings of guilt and unworthiness) yes,
I AM very lucky to be in the situation I am, and I AM lucky to
have this place and all that - BUT - if I eventually end up
living in a pretty neat place (and it really IS 'starting' to get
to be that), it WON'T be about just being 'lucky'. In my own way,
I've gone without a lot and worked hard for what I've got. Always
have. I've worked DAMN hard of late!!!!! . . . funny - having
typed how hard I've been working, today I just couldn't seem to
get going to the same degree at all. I just didn't want to be
doing it - again! :o( . scraped paint off the diner walls for
hours. . fixed a temporary straight edge piece of timber to the
wall next to the back door and eventually got some plaster on it
and some more on the alcove wall. The firebreast wall I did NOT
plaster, because with my atrocious plastering skills, there is
just no way I'd be able to plaster two adjacent walls into a
corner at the same time, and get a decent straight corner finish!
It's also touch and go whether or not I've enough plaster left to
do the job, and I really don't want to have to go buy another full
bag of plaster at the stage where most of it will probably be
hanging around unused for months 'going off'. . cut and glued a
patchwork of pieces of board into the gap in the ceiling where
the pipes came down. (Everywhere I've put in sockets in the stud
walls upstairs, I've saved the small pieces of original timber
board, because I knew they'd come in useful elsewhere. Used up a
few pieces of that to patch the ceiling hole.) Good to get that
hole filled up and the dust in the kitchen sealed off from the
bedroom above! . .used the disc cutter out in the garden to clean
up the old bits of coving from that corner, getting them ready
for being stuck back up. . caved in early around 5:30pm and ended
up PCing a bit and just sitting around feeling a bit miserable
and fed up. I don't go on about it here, but I missed Sally a lot
today. :o( I simply try not to think about her most of the time,
but every now and then I can't help it, and I have to fight off
the 'tidal wave' of emotion that threatens to sweep in upon me.
It's a real physical 'lurch' in the stomach! When I removed that
weird vent in the floor for the back boiler, inside the grid of
the cover was a piece of her complete dry food. When I moved the
fridge freezer, there was also a piece under that. When I have to
go round cleaning the dust off everything, when I move the box
containing her ashes, I find my mind using the word 'precious',
as though I am some sort of 'Gollum' character! I can still
easily break into tears if I allow it (like almost now typing
this). I wish I could share the experience of the new open-plan
living area with her. I miss my friend. :o( . . quickly fixed the
two small pieces of coving back to the ceiling and walls in the
corner of the alcove at around 9:30pm. They went back into the
corner surpisingly well, considering they had been on top of the
removed boxing in around the pipes. . . ate a banana, pizza with
extra cheese and piece of iced sponge cake . . TVd until bed at
11:30pm.
16 - Up around 8am . . back to work in the diner
and started off by bricking up the large
hole in the alcove side of the firebreast, where all the central
heating pipes had been taken through to the back boiler. Actually
used the disc cutter out in the garden to carve up one of the
concrete blocks I've had sat around waiting to be broken up to
fill potholes in the lane, and fashioned an awkwardly shaped
piece to fill much of the hole in one go, with the remainder
filled with any old bits of brick and cement. . I HAD hoped to
maybe get some plaster on the wall corner near the back door
today, but while removing a bit of skirting starting to prepare
things with that in mind, I got distracted by the bit of uneven
floor by the back door. It's always been strangely uneven
immediately up to the door, but all covered by the floor tiles, I've
just put up with it. After having removed the carpet tiles, I
discovered the most amazing botch of a job on the section of
floor that goes over the main outside wall of the house (once the
actual double glazed back door to outside, but now opening into
my conservatory). A couple of long pieces of timber had been put
down at right angles to the rest of the floorboards to fill the
gap. They weren't at all level. They were in fact put in SO 'unlevel'
that at one end the timber was more or less flush with the
floorboards, while at the other end it was pretty much sat on TOP
of the floorboards!!!! Some 'just-bodge-it' joker in the distant
past (the carpet tile fitters?) had made a 'ramp' up to that
protruding timber with filler, and had just stuck carpet tiles
over it all!!!!! Who in their right mind would have done such a
bodge - and what owner of this house would have let them!? Foor
goodness sake! Outrageous. There was no leaving it to some other
time as I'd intended - I ended up prising the timbers up out of
the floor in the hope of being able to quickly re lay them more
appropriately. Oh dear - that revealed a whole new can of worms
to suddenly have to detour and sort out! I'd assumed that if the
worst came to the worst, I'd be able to just pour in a new slab
of concrete instead of those uneven timbers. That turned out to
be not so easy. Beneath the (rotten) timbers lay not only the
rubble filled cavity wall, but also a whole section of large gap,
into the void beneath the floor. To pour a slab would have meant
having to construct some awkward elaborate timber casing/shuttering
to take it across that gap and up to the floorboards!!
Arrrrggggghhhh!!!!!!!! What to do? Thinking 'outside the box' in
grand 'DIY/what have I got laying around' tradition, I quickly
measured up the depth of the gap from the top of the floorboards
to the top of the cavity wall bricks, and then raced up the
garden to measure one of the big old spare concrete paving slabs
I've had laying up there for ages. Would you believe it! 'Almost'
perfect! Like it was 'meant to be' again. lol :o) . so, to cut a
long story short, I used the disc cutter to cut the slab into
pieces to fill the gap, and eventually layed it in ontop of the
cavity wall on a skim of PVA/cement (and even partially NOT, in
places, because it was such a close fit to getting it level with
the floorboards at the 'high' end)!! Actually - prior to
cementing in the slabs, I spent a huge amount of time reaching
into the wall cavity with my bare hands and removing as much of
the loose rubble and debris as I reasonably could! Pretty much
filled a sack!! Not sure if it'll make any difference to anything,
but it seemed like the best thing to do given the once in a
lifetime chance. Left much of the skin on my nuckles in there in
exchange! . because of the tiny amount of cement beneath one of
those sections of slab in particular, I put in a crazy amount of
time in driving in a strong cement mix into the narrow gaps
around all the slab sections, in the hope of making it all as
firm and non moving as it could ever hope to be (although those
bits of slab are SO heavy, there can surely be little chance of
their moving at all anyway). It isn't perfect - maybe protrudes
above the floorboard level by a millimeter or so at one end - but
overall, I was very, VERY , VERY pleased
with the end result. :o) Yet another thing sorted. :o) . . .with
most of the 'working day' spent sorting all that out, I felt like
I was WAY behind my planned schedule for the day. Very tired but
felt obliged to push on, so mixed up various loads of cement and
eventually managed to render up the whole side of the ftrebreast
where the pipes had come down, patch a bit of another section of
wall and finally block up the remaining pipe holes on the INSIDE
of the fireplace (good to have that draughty cavity all sealed
back up)!! . . called it quits shortly after 7pm . . drank a
glass of red wine and TVd while cooking a mum donated pizza . .
ate pizza and chocolate . TVd until to bed around 10:30pm. d
15 - Up around 9:30am . . I REALLY need a break,
but with only that one last alcove and the sections of wall up to
and around the back door in the diner, still covered in that
disgusting heavily embossed wallpaper, I just HAVE to push on don't
I! :o( . . popped up to the garage for some tool or other and
found the back gates all open and blowing in the breeze!!!???
Feared the worst for a bit before eventually concluding it was
just a case of all the timber and screwed fitments having started
to all fall apart, and one of the bolts had just slipped out of
position. Tightened screws and left more serious remedial work
for some other time. I have more than enough on my plate as it is!
. . defrosted the fridge freezer and for the first time since
living here, finally got round to moving it out of it's absurd
alcove. Temporarily stuck it kindof in the middle of the room,
where it will have to remain - probably until I finally soon
replace and get rid of it! (Not soon enough! Horrendous noisy
beast of a thing!!! I absolutely HATE it!)
. wow - there's something seriously wrong with the floor in that
alcove where they had the fridge freezer! It very noticably 'sags'
when you walk on it! I'm suprised it could take the weight of the
fridge freezer in that state! Sadly (or actually perhaps
thankfully, given all the work I already have on my plate) there's
nothing I can do to remedy that until I finally open up that last
walled-in area of the underfloor space. As soon as I have though
- looking at beefing up the floor joists in that corner in
particular will have to be a priority! . . stripped wallpaper and
eventually after some diffciulty, managed to remove the coving
and boxing-in timbers that dropped down the length of the alcove/firebreast
wall around all the old central heating pipes. . lifted part of
the bedroom floor and eventually at length, managed to cut off
all the pipes and remove the lengths that dropped down into the
diner (all dumped in the garden with the remains of the back
boiler as scrap). . cut the power and eventually managed to
remove the old spur of wire which connected the socket in that
alcove and the power to the central heating controller. SO good
to finally get rid of that old bit of the original wiring. Half
way along its length under the floor, I'd long ago discovered it
had been joined using a connector block, all covered over with
insulation tape! (With no current access to that area of the
underfloor space, I'd not been able to replace it). . removed all
the old sockets and wires and the central heating controller as
carefully as I could. I have it in mind (when I finally learn how!)
that maybe I could sell that controller on e-bay and get a bit of
money back. . the section of wall all up the firebreast where the
pipes had been, is going to require a substantial amount of
rebuilding/ rendering/ plastering! :o( Also, the section of wall
immediately adjacent to the back door opening isn't at all level.
It curves dramatically upto the corner, so that whole awkward
corner is going to have to be built up with more plastering! It's
never ending!!!!! . removing one of the old broken sections of
skirting by the back door, I discovered a coin behind it. Turned
out to be a 1911, King George, 'States Of Jersey' , 'One Twenty-Fourth
Of A Shilling'. (What's that - I can't remember - a ha'penny?)
That's a weird thing to find there (particularly considering it's
a 1930s house)??? . . eventually called it quits for the day
leaving everything in a bit of a mess and PCd just a bit of this
. .ate salami, mayo and lettuce rolls with crisps, some muller
rice and chocolate . . TVd . . to bed around midnight.
14 - Up around 7:45am . . a bit of drizzle. God
knows I could use some rain - the doors and windows of the
conservatory and the whole of the back garden near the house look
as though it's been snowing, where I've been shaking out my dust
sheets and emptying the vacuum into a container, etc, etc!!! . .
put another coat of watery paint on the firebreast wall again.
Plenty of areas that will require further filling/smoothing
attention (and that brown staining thing to sort out), but
overall, there is every indication that I have more or less
acheived my goal and made it look 'mostly' flat and smoothish. It'll
do. :o) . . did dish washing chores and made an attempt at de-dusting
some of the cupboards!! Quite literally everything everwhere is
covered in dust. Everything INSIDE every drawer and cupboard -
and even some of it got into the fridge somehow!! Ended up
washing every single piece of cutlery I own and much of the
crockery before caving in and leaving everything else to some
other time! I need a 'day off'. . .Mum called in with the paper
and food donations for a cuppa and chats etc. Gave her a chance
to see one or two of 'The Beautiful Word' youtube videos. Not
really her cup of tea I think. . . ate Mum donated sardines in
tomato sauce with choped spring onions in bread rolls with crisps
and chocolate . .BB called . . napped until the alarm at 7:15pm .
. TVd briefly before turning it off and just guitarring for a few
hours . . TVd . . ate sausage rolls, crisps, chocolate and co co
pops . . PCd surfing dining tables and chairs etc, trying to
formulate a plan in my mind of what style may eventually suit my
new 'diner' area. Sprisingly, I think I'm leaning in the
direction of a 'dark wood' type set. Oooh, oooh - amazingly Argos
do a dark stain, cheap pine set complete with four chairs for
only around £100!! That (or one of their others slightly more
expensive) is VERY tempting! Imagine - ME with a 'proper' dining
area, table and chairs! I wouldn't know myself! I like the idea.
:o) . PCd until gone 4:30am before bed! s
13 - Up around 7am . . PCd a bit of this . .
cellotaped the dust sheet back up (further marking the coving!)
before sanding over the new plaster and the whole firebreast wall
again - and of course covering everything in layers of dust -
AGAIN! :o( . with hindsight perhaps I SHOULD have invested the
money and effort and pushed on and fitted the doors to the
opening between the rooms, for no other reason than to help me
contain all the dust I've been making working in the diner!! .
all of a sudden the firebreast wall seemed to be looking 'not so
bad' and the possibility of getting some paint on it today seemed
acheivable. Covered all the cracks, dings and plaster seams and
joins with a final skim of filler. . drove to buy petrol before
carrying on out to the DIY store for supplies of paint. Actually
felt rather strange to 'be out'!!. . returned home feeling all
exhausted by the effort and could very easily have gone straight
to sleep, but more coffees and cigarettes saw me resist! . .sanded
down the filler by hand using various grades of wet and dry paper,
before vacuuming around a bit (yet again!!!) and then getting an
'undercoat' of emulsion all over the wall. That paint appears to
be pretty cheap and watery, so I think I'm gonna have to put on
another coat before I know how successful my attempts at making
that wall flat have been and how much more work on it I'm gonna
still have to do before I may be satisfied. VERY disappointed to
have two areas of that wall spontaneously develop that awful
brown staining thing again, where something on the wall reacted
with the water in the paint! :o( I still haven't really got to
the bottom of how to hide that once it happens!!?? :o( . . dug
out three of my spare floor tiles and cut them to fit the gap
over the hearth and up to the wall - for psychological reasons,
as a 'morale booster' as much as anything else. . more vacuuming
and clearing up before eventually collapsing in front the TV
after 8pm . . ate a whole pack of corned beef in sandwiches with
lettuce and mayo together with most of a large pack of crisps, a
banana and some chocolate . . guitarred/TVd . . TVd eating
biscuits . . to bed around midnight. s
12 - Woke around 6am, snoozed on then up around
6:45am . . PCd this . . dug out a small jewelers screwdriver and
successfully removed three links from my new watch strap by
undoing the long screw-in pins. Seems like a pretty good quality
strap. I really am SO impressed with what I've got for the money.
. back to work on the diner firebreast. Sanded down all the
plaster I put on yesterday. . Oh no - something on the wall above
the old picture-rail line had reacted with the plaster I put on
yesterday!!!!!!???? Wherever traces of the mystery substance
remained unseen on the wall, the plaster had been somehow sort of
turned to dust, which just brushed back off the wall!!!??? I've
never encountered anything like this before. What on earth could
cause such an effect?????? Nightmare. Ended up having to remove
all the plaster I put on yesterday and start from scratch. VERY
depressing - and I don't think I can even see what caused it. .
spent ages scraping every last bit of paint I could find off the
wall, and even scrubbed and washed it all down! Re-plastered it,
and put some more on other bits of the wall around the fireplace
opening. Parts of that wall are going to need several layers of
plaster and much sanding down to build it all back up and get it
anywhere near smooth looking. I'm really sick of it and the
constant dusty mess I'm having to live in. :o( . . pulled up a
carpet tile and finally removed the ugly plastic air vent
protruding up from the floor near the fireplace. Ventilation for
the back boiler apparantly (even mentioned in passing on the
survey I had done when I bought the place). I'd always assumed it
was something clever, in some way linked into the back boiler, so
I'd always just steered well clear of it and left it alone. As it
turns out, it was actually nothing more than an air vent, not in
any way actually connected to anything!! Just a square plastic
cover containing a bit of mesh, covering a hole through the
floorboards straight into the draughty underfloor space! Good
grief - no wonder it's been so cold in this house. That's kinda
like having an open window in there all the time!! . spent the
next hour or more using the timber from an old pine corner shelf,
to cut out a four and a half inch diameter round plug to fill the
hole in the floorboards. Used the disc cutter to do the final
touches of grinding-off, to get it to wedge snugly in the hole
before gluing it in place. VERY glad to see that ugly vent
finally gone. . prised-up and discarded all the broken green
glazed tiles from the hearth. That revealed an uneven big slab of
concrete beneath, which was slightly higher than the bottoms of
the floorboards on either side, so that prevented any possibility
of just covering it all over with some new floorboard. Oh well -
that saves me some expense then. Cleared and vacuumed up a little
before, with really little other choice, I finally mixed up a
large load of cement and poured it onto the hearth slab and
tamped and smoothed it off to be level with the floor on either
side. Hardly attractive, but more than adequate for carpetting
over nice and smooth - which will be a vast improvement on what
WAS there beneath the uneven carpet tiles!. . it doesn't sound
like it, and it's hard to imagine how things take so long, but
that's YET another day of almost non-stop work (apart from much
stops for coffee and cigarettes) until well after 7pm! . .
showered and then drank a glass of wine while cooking. Defrosted
a huge lump of beef from the freezer, chopped it up and added it
to a cheap tin of beef curry. Cooked rice and eventually ate an
absolutely massive meal - easily enough for two (or even more!).
. TVd. . BB called to touch base only to find me almost
incapabable of speaking I was so tired and full of food! . .
managed to muster the energy to go stand in the dark up the back
garden for a bit, watching for the perseid meteor shower show.
Saw a few . . ate biscuits with coffee before eventually to bed
around midnight. d
11 - Woke earlier then up around 7:15am . . PCd
this . . soon back to work on the diner firebreast, trying to
scrape off more paint and having a go at chiseling off some of
the unevenness. . the postman delivered both my recent e-bay
orders - the watch and the three cutting discs. Had a quick look
at the watch and was actually really quite impressed. That's a
lot of watch and stainless steel strap for THAT money!
Unfortunately the strap is rather long and didn't include
instructions about how to make it shorter, so I won't be wearing
it until I've sorted that out. I like a watch to be tight on my
wrist so it doesn't 'slop about'. . . I so SO didn't want to, but
it eventually became apparant that the only chance I had of
getting the firebreast in any way appearing near flat, was going
to be by using the disc cutter (now I have some new discs) to
quite literally grind away a whole section of the face of the
wall!! I so SO didn't want to and it took ages of just sitting
looking at it before I could muster up the energy to do it.
Eventually cellotaped token dust sheets between the two rooms and
went for it. No one in their right mind should EVER contemplate
doing such a thing, but I couldn't see any reasonable alternative
and was absolutely determined not to still end up with that
irritating eyesore, dusty bump, half way up the wall that I've
lived with since moving in here. The process created SO
much dust, I had to stop on a handful of occasions and go and sit
in the garden waiting for it to settle, because it was simply not
possible to see through it to continue working!!!!!!!! No one
would believe some of the stuff I do and the state I get into
doing it!! Sat in the back garden with the door and window open,
it looked as though the house was on fire as the dust billowed
out on the breeze like thick smoke! Of course everything
everywhere (including inside all the
kitchen cupboards) is absolutely covered - again! :o( .
eventually called it quits, did a little cementing and plastering
and then cleared up just a little, before ending up feeling all
burned out and thoroughly sick and tired of it all. :o( . .
collapsed in front the TV and couldn't muster the energy to start
cooking and eventually simply ended up eating a couple of bags of
crisps, a chicken and mushroom pastry slice, half a buttered
golden syrup cake and some chocolate - NOT enough! . . TVd until
bed around 11pm.
10 - Up around 8:45am after quite a long sleep .
. drizzly. . measured up the diner fireplace and then got in the
car and drove to the builders yard. Sadly, as I'd suspected, they
didn't stock anything like that old round-edge timber detailing
that's been used throughout the house as edge bead. Bought a 900mm
reinforced concrete lintel, a bag of sand and another of cement.
. started work on the fireplace. Stripped off some of the paper
and then used the drill to excavate footings in the wall for the
new lintel ends, before very carefuly managing to drill out the
cement above the existing short metal lintel. Managed to remove
it, open the hole up to its full old extent, and get the new one
cemented in without everything collapsing. . A bit more cementing
to the rough base inside the opening. As a result of all the
pipework for the old back boiler having been put roughly through
the side wall, the inside of that fireplace is going to require
quite a lot of re-building - and a bit actually UP the flue too!!!
That ain't gonna be easy! . . stripped off the rest of the paper
to reveal the full horrors of the firebreast. Lots of old cracks
and the roughly patched up scars of at least two different
fireplace surrounds - including what must have been the original
one going very high up the wall with evidence of a shelf detail
near the top! Bet that was impressive in its day. Trouble with
all that is, all those old blocked up holes and cementing and
plastering over has created a really uneven, badly undulating
wall!! Concave in one large area, convex in another - nothing
straight or level in ANY direction! I'm really a bit stumped as
to what to do about it. It's simply going to be impossible to get
that wall looking smooth and flat as a result. One of the bricked-up
undulations had been done SO badly, that even with the heavily
embossed wallpaper covering it, it was always plainly visible,
and SO pronounced and sticking out SO much, it actually collected
dust onto the paper making it an even more noticeable eyesore.
Why oh why oh why do builders who block up old fireplaces ALWAYS
seem to completely ignore any attempt at getting it flat and
disguised? I don't think I've ever encountered a blocked up
fireplace where you don't end up seeing that uneven ridge half
way down the face of the wall! Drives me mad - and it sadly looks
as though I'm gonna be stuck with it! :o( . . scraped off just
some of the flakey paint for a couple of hours before eventually
calling it quits around 8pm . . TVd . . cooked and ate a Mum
donated pizza with extra (pretty much gone-off) cheese followed
by a little chocolate . .TVd until bed around midnight.
9 - Back up around 9:15am feeling really rather
awful and wobbly . . sat around/ate chocolate biscuits and a
banana/TVd . . two new recycling bins were delivered! . . cooked
mashed potato, chopped onion and peas - early. Just about serving
it up when PJ called to touch base (!?) and commiserate over
Sally etc. . just sitting down to eat (my burned potato as a
result of the delay!) with some slices of Mum donated ham when
Mum called to tell that one of the people at Uncle TJs funeral
recently (and video I did), had also just unexpectedly up and
died!!!!! :o| . . napped the afternoon away until around 4:15pm .
. TVd/sat around/did a little paperwork/PCd a little (had a bit
of a look at dogs) and finally got round to having a look at a
couple of the youtube
videos by a band called 'The
Beautiful Word'. (Coz1's son is the bass guitarist!) Good stuff. VERY
impressed! . . TVd/guitarred . . ate a couple of ham rolls,
crisps, mini cheesecake and chocolate. . BB called to touch base
. . TVd and ate bowls of co-co pops until bed around 1:30am. s
8 - Up around 8:45am again . . did dusty
laundry - lots. . sat around a lot doing nothing, enjoying the
new feel of the place. Did at least pretty much come to a
decision about what I'm gonna do with the diner fireplace I think.
The way the house is evolving, I really don't think getting
clever with brick arches and the like is the right thing to do.
Not in keeping with the character of the place. I think it's
gonna simply end up being a rectangular recess in the plain
firebreast wall, with a bit of that round-edge detailing around
it, like I've found and revealed on the corners of the walls
everywhere else. Only problem I can see with that (apart from
having to go buy a new short lintel and doing all the
considerable work) is I'm not sure you can actually buy that
round-edge-detail timber these days. If I end up having to try
and make some up, or even just try to 'mould the plaster', it'll
turn into a long drawn out pain in the ass! . . mowed the back
lawn and trimmed one of the grossly overgrown hedges with the
hedge trimmer just a little, just enough to be able to walk up
the path again . . guitarred in the garden . . drank a glass of
red wine . .ate salami lettuce and mayo rolls with crisps and
chocolate . . napped . . TVd until early. Alternated through the
evening between feeling ravenously hungry and then horribly
nauseaus! . . ended up PCing for hours looking at all manner of
nonsense on e-bay and the like (including such fascinating stuff
as curtain tracks and 'blackout' curtain linings! lol) .
eventually ordered a triple pack of '4 1/2" DIAMOND
CUTTING DISCS BLADES ANGLE GRINDER' for £4.95 including
postage, and even threw away some money on a cheap watch!! Mine
really has started to be more hassle than its worth. It'll now
stop if it gets cold AND/OR if it is taken off my wrist at all!
It's become SO unreliable, I've actually taken to not wearing it
some of the time, because being unreliable is worse than not
knowing! Ordered a 'Radio Controlled Watch Analogue/LCD
Black Face with SS Strap' for £13.49 including postage. I'm
under no illusions - I'm sure it'll very quickly turn out to be a
complete waste of money at that price, but I couldn't resist
giving it a go. I'm a fan of the dual display thing (traditional
plain hands and face - small inset LCD screen for the day, date,
other functions etc) - and very much like the idea of the radio
controlled thing for accuracy (although it does seem to cane the
battery life compared to ordinary ones!). Anyway - for that price
I thought it'd be - um - 'fun' to try it. Time will tell? lol . .
somehow ended up not getting off the PC to bed until well after 5am!!!
d
7 - Up around 8:45am . . PCd this at length and
tried to take photos of the diner. Impossible to 'get it' with
the camera. . .Mum called in with a paper, food donations etc . .
ate a pack of Mum donated pork pies with crisps and a little
chocolate . . cut my hair and beard. Haven't done that for far
too long. Was starting to look like a wild-man! . . napped until
the alarm at 7:15pm . . briefly popped up the store for milk. .
sat quietly/guitarred/TVd/PCd the night away. (Actually put in
quite a bit of time on the PC, using one of the photos (below) I'd
taken of the new opening, to 'mock up' what it would look like if
I put the glass panel doors on it as I'd planned, because the
more I get used to it open, the more I'm wondering if it's worth
the bother and considerable expense. After MUCH reflection, I
still think I should - eventually - but I'm in no hurry.) . . ate
salami and lettuce rolls, a mini cheesecake, banana and much
chocolate. Eventually to bed somewhere around 2am. s
6 - Back up by 9:30am or earlier! . . there's
one more thing I want to get sorted before I have a break for a
bit. Part of my master plan for eventually getting doors on that
opening between the rooms which can open flat against the diner
wall, was to change the opening of the existing kitchen/hallway
door so that it wouldn't interfere with any of that. . Quite
literally somehow ended up spending almost the entire day just
changing that one door so that it now opens outwards into the
hallway. Why does everything seem to take SO long, when you'd
imagine it'd just be a couple of hours??? To be honest, it DID
end up being pretty much like fitting a whole new door by the
time I'd finished. One of the existing hinges had been put on the
door in an absurd position so I had to move that and cut out the
new rebate etc. Then there was the handle/catch mechanism which
appeared to have been put on there for use by a midget - and the
catch mechanism hadn't been rebated and protruded from the side
of the door! I had to move that and cut in a whole new rebate for
the catch. Also turned out that the catch mechanism was actually
broken. Luckily had a spare in my junk collection in the garage,
so I fitted that one - eventually! Rebating catch mechanisms and
hinges on doors and door frames is NOT something I've ever
mastered. I think it's just a case of lack of practice. It's not
the sort of thing you have to do very often. I have however I
think, realised the secret of successfully acheiving it - HAVE SHARP
CHISELS! As simple as that! Sadly, all my old chisels are abused
and no longer straight or sharpenable, so things didn't go 'too'
well and ended up not being perfect. . . stripped off the old (original)
door jam timbers and found one length of it had been broken when
it was originaly put in place, so I ended up having to glue that
bit all back together. Left it setting clamped in the garage. .
cut the new rebates for the hinges in the frame and got the door
hung. Incredibly it actually worked out about right first time,
and there was no need for any planing off! (It DID actually
eventually turn out to be fouling a metal carpet join-strip below,
but since the carpet tiles in the hallway and diner are the same,
it seemed easiest to just do away the strip and cut some old
tiles to make a continuous flow through.) . anyway - blah blah
blah - eventually had it all working, hinged on the left, now
opening out into the hallway - out of the way, flat against the
wall at the end of the hallway when fully open. It 'may' be
unconventional having a door opening in that direction - but I
reckon it is a far better arrangement - should have done it when
I first moved in! Sadly the door is now of course full of the
holes and scars of where handles/hinges have been moved, so
ultimately it'll either be replaced or more likely just filled
and painted over. It sometimes seems a shame the two original
1930s, 'one panel over three' doors from the downstairs rooms
have been replaced with cheap newer plain wood ones. I HAVE
dabbled with the idea of attempting to get a couple of original
doors to reinstate the set, but it seems like a lot of hassle,
and they 'can' be quite expensive even on e-bay. . after all that
work, the door handle/mechanism was still disappointingly somehow
not 'quite' right in its operation. Couldn't figure out how that
was possible (given all I'd done and the fact that it was a
completely different mechanism!?) until I eventually concluded it
WAS down to the cheap brass handles on both those downstairs
doors! There appears to be a 'stop' actually built into the
handle mechanism, so you can only push the lever down to a
certain point on them. Stupid stupid stupid - because that stop
prevents the actual catch mechanism from being FULLY withdrawn
into its body. What that means is that when the handle is FULLY
depressed, the catch still protrudes from the side of the door
and is inevitably likely to foul the latch plate, even when
everything is perfectly lined up and nicely rebated etc, etc.
Only way around it would be to recess the keep plate DEEP into
the door frame - which would look wrong and ugly! THAT explains
why both those downstairs doors have
been a 'bit wrong' and 'catchy' ever since I moved in here! So -
different handles in the future some time then! . with the broken
bit of door jam still setting in the garage, I couldn't finish
the job, so put in some time filling some of the scars in the
original frame with a filler/pva mix, carefully trying to match
the existing doorframe moulding, covering old hinge positions etc,
etc. . cleaned up a bit before digging out a bunch of old spare
carpet tiles (the ones I removed from my PC room - VERY useful
having so many spares) and set about trying to work out a way of
making the floor look as though none of the recent building works
had taken place. I HAVE actually become quite a fan of carpet
tiles since living here. The whole of the hallway and kitchen
diner has been covered in them, with just a spray of glue to the
floorboards beneath, and although all old and dirty and needing
replacement, they really have been incredibly forgiving of the
abuse I've given them, and are SO easy to alter and patch. Having
said that, my 'spares' are now a VERY different colour to all the
permanently dust-covered rest, and there was no escaping an
obvious 'patchwork' effect. Nevertheless, I eventually managed to
sort out a way of cutting some pieces to fill most of the gaps (no
skirtings on those walls as yet, until I know where the under-lintel
frame will end up etc), and even used a couple of old carpet
strips just to make a neat join with the old (different) living
room carpet - which now completely hides the new bit of floor
where I took the wall out. . I actually STILL have some old
carpet-fitter glue in a spray can in the garage, and used just a
touch of that here and there to make sure everything stayed flat
and fairly seemless looking. Incredible that stuff is still fully
useable! I bought it many MANY years ago,
to glue some foam to a bike seat base!!! . 
. 
big de-dusting
vacuuming session - again! . . eventually had the place looking
pretty habitable, and collapsed in front the TV for a bit. Tried
but just couldn't relax with just the door jam and a little bit
of floor-tile patching still to do, so ended up around 9:30pm
retrieving the glued doorjam from the garage, nailing it in place
and then laying the last bit of floor tile around it etc. . so,
there we go. Lots and lots still to do - all of it in rough 'pre-decorating'
type shape, but that's pretty much all the 'building' type work
on that new opening between the rooms, done - and the place in
pretty good liveable shape. I like it - a lot. :o) I SO need a 'proper'
rectangular table and four chairs now (not sure what style) ,
rather than that awkward huge garden furniture! lol Far too 'trailer
trash' for me now! lololol. . The 'firebreast/hearth/fireplace
project' and working my way around the remaining third of the
diner walls (and the fridge-freezer in that corner issue) can
wait for a bit. I need to rest - MUCH!!! . . too tired to move or
cook and just sat in front the TV and guitarred for a bit. .
finally ate a lump of defrosted meat from the freezer with four
pieces of bread and butter, some muller rice, biscuits and a
little chocolate . . to bed at 1:11am. s
5 - Up around 9:15am . . slow getting going but
eventually back to 'work'. Used the remnants of a worn out disc
in the disc cutter out in the garden, to cut off all the old
adhesive from the back of the three pieces of broken coving I'd
removed from the diner wall when I started all this - determined
to somehow salvage it and stick it back up. To cut a LONG story
short, I managed it and got all three pieces back in place using
a PVA/filler mix to stick and patch them together, and some long
joist timbers to prop them in position while the filler set. Took
a long long time to acheive that - but very satisfying. It's one
of those little details which put back in place to match all the
rest, makes the whole thing look as though it has always been
that way. A significant little step towards making it look right.
I can still see the joins if I seek them out (but then again - I
can see ALL the joins all around the house if I look for them),
but it ain't bad, and can easily be improved with a touch of
filler and careful sanding some time. Mum called to touch base in
the middle of things. Called her back as soon as I was done. .drank
around three quarters of a glass of wine and cooked and ate fish,
peas and chips with four pieces of bread and butter followed by a
square of chocolate around 4pm . . napped for a couple of hours
until around 6:30pm . . slow 'coming to' but then straight back
to work on the diner building site! Sanded down all the filler
and my dodgy plaster on the walls around the lintel and covered
the whole house in dust yet again, despite keeping all the
windows and doors shut and even cellotaping a big plastic dust
sheet over the new opening to the living room! It's just
pointless even trying to 'contain' it - wherever there is air,
there is dust! :o( Despite wearing a dust mask, I still ended up
throwing up in the garden at one point!!! Those walls aren't in
very good shape and would very much have benefited from yet more
filling and sanding, but I really have had enough of all this,
and just couldn't face doing any more - day after day! Ignored
all the (considerable) imperfections and used up more or less the
last of my emulsion paint, and got a first 'undercoat' on them.
It'll all just have to do for the time being. I really am feeling
pretty burned out with it all. I think I need to try to force
myself to take a break. :o( . . cleared up just a little and then
ended up messing around cuttting away some of the rubbishy
protruding lino which is under the diner carpet tiles, so that I
could put some of the tiles back down nice and flat. . called it
quits at getting on for midnight and showered before briefly
PCing this . . touched base with BB around 2am . . VERY tired and
eventually to bed, only to then be unable to sleep!?? Tossed and
turned for ages before eventually getting back up an eating a
couple of bowls of muesli and some muller rice before finally
back to bed at getting on for 5am!
4 - Up around 7:30am . . I think I HAVE
noticeably lost a little bit of weight recently, with all the
work I've been doing and with not finding the time to stop to eat
as much as I should. Dunno how accurate they are, but my bathroom
scales say around ten and a half stone at the moment . . sat
around a bit looking at the building site, before ending up PCing
a bit of this. I'm just puttting it off really - today I am going
to try to plaster the wall in the kitchen-diner!!! . . oooer -
this morning turned into one of those hocus pocusy type moments.
I'd JUST finished typing this for yesterday (and the comment
about having to get a gas man in before I could do the diner
fireplace, etc) and went downstairs and looked out of the window
and there was a gas-safe registered heating engineer's van parked
just down the road. Oooh, oooh, oooh - how cool it would be if I
could catch them returning to their van from whichever house they
were in and persuade them to do me the five minute job of capping
off the supply to that fire, more conveniently under the floor
somewhere. Ummd and ahhd for a couple of minutes at the window
before eventually grabbing a pencil and piece of paper and
walking down to the gate, to jot down the phone number on the van.
Just as I was going back inside I heard voices and two guys were
returning to their van from the bungalow opposite (the one with
the seagull chicks). Dashed out and 'propositioned' them - and
sure enough, they were game! They put their tester on the gas
meter and checked the existing supply wasn't leaking, and then
one of them followed me through the narrow hatch in the floor
under the stairs to the underfloor. He cut the pipe where I
wanted, capped it - and even reassured me about the old lead pipe
I was scared to touch, and actually sawed it in half just to
prove to me it WAS safely disconnected and fit for removal. £25
for cash - a quick handshake, much thanks on my part, and they
were gone. Just like that!Literally five minutes. EXCELLENT! :o)
So - I can now take out that damned fire and back boiler, and
ultimately remove all the associated spiders web of pipes at my
leisure. That's VERY cool. Like it was 'meant to be'? lol :o) . .
mixed up plaster in the miniature plastic dustbin I use to hold
my recyclables in the kitchen, and then successfully plastered
the kitchen wall. It isn't 'good' (nowhere near smooth or flat)
but I think it'll eventually do ok. I WILL happily admit - I'm no
good at plastering, and surely never will be! . . cleared up a
bit and managed to reorganise the 'FULL of junk' garage, to be
able to put the redundant kitchen units in it and out of the way.
. unscrewed awkward pipes, undid a couple of screws and nuts and
bolts, seperated one wire connector and hey presto, the old fire
and unbelievably heavy back-boiler (SO heavy I could only JUST
carry it!) was discarded in a heap in the garden next to the
conservatory. The uneven weird old pad of brown tiles in front of
it, emerging up out of the carpet, also came out (in one piece,
pryed up with a wallpaper scraper!) and revealed a big section of
the original green, glazed tiles beneath! Sadly, many around the
edges were broken, so nothing really worth salvaging there. Hmmmm.
I think it's another one of those pause and take stock moments.
The flue is properly lined, so if I wanted, I COULD put a new
fire of some sort in there (wood burner even?). Trouble is, being
the diner, it really doesn't lend itself to actually having a
fire there. NOT having a fire actually gives me, way inexcess of
a foot of extra useable space, which is highly desireable if I am
going to put a proper table and chairs out there, like I
eventually intend to. I think it's going to have to end up as a
just a 'feature' hole in the wall type unused fireplace - maybe
with a light up it, and maybe for sitting my Buddha in, like I
did in Bristol? I need to figure out what sort of a hole/design
to construct. An arch I think - but 'plain' or otherwise, I'm
undecided. Whatever - it's gonna be a bit of a job in itself,
opening up the hole to it's fullest reasonable extent, and
slightly raising the height of the existing 'lintel' arrangement,
etc, etc, etc. Oh dear - there's no end to all this work - but it
IS starting to all come together at last. It really IS a
different house now. VERY much more functional - and kinda 'honest'
- in respect of the painted walls, with nothing papered over and
hidden, etc. Perhaps, unlike Bristol, THIS house IS worth all the
effort I've been putting in?! Much of what I've been doing HAS
been a 'once in a lifetime' thing (for the house, that is) and
will never again need such attention. Can't imagine ANY owner of
this place in the future EVER having enough time to scrape all
that paint of the walls etc, etc. . ate three cheese, onion, mayo,
lettuce and corned beef roles with crisps . .napped for an hour
or so . . touched base with Mum . . TVd . . guitarred for hours,
until my fingers were very sore (some of the time sat in the
diner watching plaster dry - and with my empty fireplace, trying
to picture alternatives). . . PCd until deep into early, actually
looking at 1930s fireplace pictures (all yucky) and then fridges
and freezers. My fridge freezer is SO, SO in need of dumping -
and the other day I had a brainwave about the kitchen. I figure
if I can get a seperate small fridge and freezer (about the sort
of dimensions of an undercounter type), if I replace my HUGE OLD
(came with the house) microwave with a small modern one and put
it on top of a counter somewhere suitable (in the corner by the
hob), I should be able to re-jig the actual kitchen to get the
fridge in beneath the oven (if that isn't unwise/unsafe??) and
get the freezer in where the drier used to be (with hopefully
enough room behind to get the central heating pipes down there in
the future). If - and it IS a bit of a risk in various ways - but
IF I could pull that off, that would ABSOLUTELY solve the
nonsense I've been living with, of having that horrendous old
fridge freezer on completely the opposite side of the diner, away
from all the rest of the kitchen. (That corner also needs to be
gutted/rebuilt/decorated to remove all the central heating pipes/controller
etc, so I'll HAVE to move it soon anyway.) The kitchen bizarrely
appears absolutely tiny ('galley' style?) and yet it seems to
have more than ample storage in all the corner cupboards etc, and
for a single person to cook and work in, I can't imagine how it
could be bettered - apart from this fridge thing. Although it'd
all be a little smaller than what I currently have, for round £300
or so I could solve all my fridge problems in one go - AND clear
that opposite corner of the diner - and actually make the kitchen
work (for me) SO perfectly - AND a lot of the deals these days
include removal of your old appliance for recycling (quite an
issue for me in itself, given the size and weight of that old
fridge, all the steps and distance to the street etc) ! I think
it's gonna have to happen - sooner or later! . . PCd this until
around 3:30am before eventually to bed even later!! s
3 - Up around 6:30am . . my hands are really
aching! All that desperate gripping of trowel handles yesterday.
. emptied all the junk out of them and then dismantled and
removed from position, the kitchen cabinets in the alcove next to
the lintel and new opening in the diner. Those cabinets have
always bugged me since I moved in here. It was as though when
they had the kitchen fitted, they had some left over, so they
just stuck them in that corner, on the complete opposite side of
the room nowhere near the rest of the kitchen. It made absolutely
no sense and made the whole room seem ill thought out and utterly
wrong. I just ended up using them as a 'dumping ground' for lots
of junk I need to sort through. Temporarily dumped them out in
the conservatory. Useful spares I suppose, and maybe somewhere
down the line if I can keep them in good nick, it is remotely
possible one of the narrow wall cabintes 'could' maybe
be somehow squeezed into the kitchen at some point. (In the back
of my mind, I may at some point have a go at painting all the
kitchen furniture white - so some of those pieces will be a good
test to see if it would work, and if a viable finish could be
acheived.) . stripped off all the remaining wallpaper (they'd
papered around the cabinets) and found
the paint on the walls in that area in terrible flakey shape. On
the plus side, in comparison to all the other walls I've 'de-painted',
the stuff came off 'relatively' easily. Still took me around five
hours of hard-graft scraping though!!! . eventually
had all the paint off the three sections of wall around the
entire alcove and up to the outside edge-detail of the firebreast
in the kitchen-diner - which is as far as I intend to go for the
time being. I'm itching to take the disgusting paper off that
firebreast and have it all nice and smooth, and tear out the
remnants of the fire and old back boiler and associated pipework
and see if I can make some sort of attractive feature out of the
empty fireplace, but until I have a gas-man in to cut off the gas
pipe well away from it all (currently capped off IN the fireplace
behind the case of the old fire, left on the wall to hide the
mess behind), I can't really touch it. . cemented a couple of
patches of wall where the skirtings were missing and in poor
shape . .removed all the old wall plugs and then applied a little
plaster to various areas, and as usual, all along the rough
uneven scars of where the old picture rails used to be in an
attempt to once and for all eradicate all sign of them . ran out
of steam rather and just sat around and PCd for quite a bit,
without even clearing up any of the big mess I'm now in again. .
eventually cooked and ate fish and chips with four pieces of
bread and butter, some Mum donated muller rice and a little
chocolate . .TVd until bed around midnight.
2 - Up around 6:45am . . PCd this and just sat
around for hours, I guess actually just having a bit of a much
needed rest. The kitchen side of the work I have to do, is
actually going to be even more difficult than the living room! I
had to remove the loose render from one entire side of that
opening, and it's going to be a bit difficult building that wall
back up so that it is exactly the right thickness and in-line
with the opposite side etc etc. Not looking forward to it. :o( .
observations on the new opening/current open-plan type
arrangement:- First things first - it WAS the right thing to do.
I do NOT regret it - despite having already devoted SO much of my
life to acheiving it! I CAN see how maybe a full-on, permanent
open-plan arrangement WOULD have been ok - but I think I prefer
still aiming to get doors on that opening to give the choice. It's
irritating trying to watch TV in the living room with the washing
machine going in the kitchen - and my in-DIRE-need-of-replacing,
fridge-freezer is SO noisy, it's unpleasant having to endure it
all the time. Having said that, it is SO cool being able to just
get up and pop through to the kitchen for coffee and such. I
never have before (largely so that Sally could come and go to her
food and water as she pleased) but I now mostly exist in that
opened up space, with both doors to the hallway closed. With the
new bay windows open, and the back doors open, depending on which
way the wind is going, it is possible to get a real blow of air
right through the place, which is VERY cool on a really hot day,
and not something I have EVER experienced before. (This 'blow
through' business is a real consideration when doing building
work and creating the huge amounts of dust that I do. When I did
the disc cutter grinding work when opening that hole in the wall
up, the wind was blowing through from the back, out to the front
- hence all that brick dust blowing straight into the living room
and onto the new windows, furniture, carpet, TV equipment, etc! A
day or so later it was the opposite way round, so it all blew
back through the kitchen into the conservatory etc, just to make
sure absolutely everything everywhere was completely covered!
lolol) . . Mum called to touch base and tell of her friends
husband with alzeimers who'd fallen down the stairs and crashed
into the wall at the bottom and who was now in hospital!!!! Her
new door lock mechanism isn't right and she's gonna have to call
the guy back in! :o( . . ummd and ahhd about having the day off.
Even before midday I felt SO tired, I was pretty much ready for
bed again - but - I SO didn't want to waste the time. The next
task for me to do on this door project thing is the really REALLY
unpleasant hard graft, of rendering the walls around the new
opening in the kitchen! Rendering over the lintel was a nightmare
in the living room - it's gonna be worse in the kitchen, with at
least three times the wall-area to do, and anywhere up to an inch
of thickness to build back up in places!! Until that's done,
there's little progress to be made - and even when it is done, it's
gonna take a while to 'go off' and dry out before I can carry on.
Oh I'm SO tired - but it needs to be done! . jumped in the car
and popped round the post office to withdraw some money (bought
milk and a couple of supplies) and then drove to the builders
yard for two bags of sand and YET another box of filler! . .
wedged-in my straight-edge piece of timber beneath the lintel and
then cut a piece of the old front door capping timber to fit
beneath it, to act as a guide/straight(ish) edge for the width of
the wall. Drilled the wall and screwed that one in place. . mixed
up a whole three bags of sand with around two thirds of a bag of
cement, by hand with a shovel out in the garden around 2pm. Hard
hot, hellish work! (I'm gettin' old! I think about 'Bristol'
quite a lot of the time - and very much on occasions like now.
How easy this all would have been if I hadn't had to leave my
cement mixer behind when I fled! :o( ) . . rendered the wall. It
did NOT go well!!!! Same hassle as in the living room - trouble
getting the damn stuff to actually stick to the wall. I've no
idea what I'm doing wrong. Aside from being an incompetant DIYer,
I at least in part blame the sand! The sand I'm getting down here
seems to be SO gritty, it's like trying to render the wall with
concrete rather than cement! It also appears to look mostly black
when done! Back in Bristol, bags of 'ballast' were more like this
sort of stuff. The sand was finer and MUCH easier to work with. .
I'm not sure how long you are 'supposed' to be able to work wet
cement - but I didn't finish battling with those walls (working
in just shorts with sweat absolutely pouring off me!) until well
past 6pm!!!!!!!!! (Despite the nightmare of applying it - once it
had hardened, the end result in the living room was actually
perfectly acceptable to be plastered over, so I'm hoping it'll be
a similar story with those kitchen walls.) . . threw away a good
bucket full of cement . . cleaned up, showered and all done by
around 8pm. I am SO pleased to have gotten that out of the way.
Hard, HARD work!! The rest of what I have to do should be 'a
doddle' in comparison. EVEN the plastering - which I ALWAYS find
difficult and daunting. . PCd a bit of this until 9pm. I'm
hurting quite a bit here! . . ate Mum donated pizza, banana, two
pots of muller rice, piece of sponge and some chocolate. . to bed
around midnight. s
1 - Up at 6am . .sat around and then PCd a bit,
just wasting time until it was late enough to start making noise
sanding. . around 9am covered as much of the furniture as I
reasonably could with sheets etc, before getting serious with the
electric sander and filling the place with a new layer of dust -
MUCH!!!! :o( The wall around the new opening isn't at all perfect
but turned out to be not 'that' bad in terms of straightness and
evenness (fairly vital since it'll show all the more once a
straight edged timber frame is put in under it), and was somewhat
improved by sanding some of the new plaster away by hand using a
sanding block. My long spirit level placed against the wall from
different places shows all the imperfections and unevenness, but
it looks ok, which is I suppose more
important really, especially when ALL the walls throughout the
house can be shown to be uneven if you use a spirit level like
that. Eventually figured enough was enough and I quickly moved to
putting an initial coat of emulsion on the two alcove walls and
the walls around the new opening - by hand using a wide paste
brush! With the amount of making good of these walls I have to do,
and the huge quantities of filler that ends up on them, I've
found that I eventually reach a point where I can no longer
actually see the mass of imperfections that require more filling
and sanding, until AFTER I've got that first coat of emulsion on
them. (Actually I also have some weird sort of a mental block
when it comes to doing alterations like this. I can't actually 'see'
what progress I may or may not have made, until everything is the
same colour!!!???? I made the mistake of mentioning this to one
of the guys behind the counter in the builders yard the other day
when buying the bag of white, one coat
plaster. He looked at me as though I was nuts! lol) . . spent the
next several hours having a serious go
at de-dusting the place as best I could. Suprisingly the upright
vacuum held out and did really well considering, so perhaps I'd
written it off a bit prematurely. 
It's all fully clogged with dust again
already, and would benefit from ANOTHER dismantling and cleaning!!
. . with the room starting to take shape and be really pretty
habitable once again, I was able to perhaps see things a little
more objectively. The firebreast and the long wall opposite I
STILL haven't touched, and have left the old dirty heavily
embossed wallpaper on them for the time being. The firebreast is
a whole little project in itself, because of the gas fire etc, so
I'm happy for that to wait until some suitable time in the future.
It's quite acceptable(ish) as it is for the time being. The long
wall opposite, with the door to the hallway, I'm also currently
leaving (but AM itching to do) because I haven't yet fully
decided just exactly what I intend to do with it. Getting
furniture and any sort of seating plan going in that room is VERY
difficult, and until I've lived with it as it is for a bit, I'm
undecided as to whether or not its good enough as it is, or if it
would benefit from having the door to the hallway moved along the
wall. That would require moving the light switch - and then there
is the issue of maybe putting in a whole new bunch of power
sockets, etc, etc. Now is not the time for that. I've enough on
my plate as it is! (the warped panoramic photo I've included here
makes the new opening look really small?? It really isn't THAT
small! It IS two doors wide. Also - the fact that the end of the
green sofa fits perfectly up to the opening, is just by chance.
Where that opening starts is actually dictated-to by what is
going on, on the other side of the wall in the kitchen.) . . Once
that first 'undercoat' of emulsion had dried, things suddenly
started to look really rather ok. Even though the paint is
blotchy with plenty of brush marks, and the walls on close
examination are FULL of imperfections requiring LOTS more filling
and sanding, even in this state, it did NOT leap out at you as
requiring immediate attention! Even the nightmarish mess of that
front alcove had somehow receded back to not being 'such' an
issue (even with some new 'bubbles' where the filler had raised
off the wall when it got made wet by the paint. Oh and it also
shows signs of that weird yellow staining coming through in some
areas!!) All in all, it suddenly appeared to be fairly acceptable
as it was for the time being. The new opening just looks
unfinished as though it requires a wood frame added, and the rest
just looks like a 'poor decorating job' which could easily be
improved 'piecemeal' over time, when in the mood. Even in this
state, it is such a VAST improvement on what WAS there on those
walls, I think it is reasonable to leave it and push on with the
more serious rendering/plastering of the kitchen side of that
wall. If I can manage to get the kitchen side in similar shape, I'll
be in a pretty good position (despite having already identified
that the lintel is probably a good inch or more two high for when
(if?) I put the doors in as I'd ultimately intended, and will
require some awkward upside-down rendering, filling-in etc! :o(
In fact - the more I think about it and rehearse it in my mind,
actually fitting two doors and a frame to the inside of that
opening is going to be a REAL bugger of
a job, to get it right!). . . showered and did laundry . . drank
a glass of wine while cooking chips. Ate a chicken and mushroom
pastry slice with chips, followed by a couple of tubs of Mum
donated 'muller rice'. . guitarred/TVd the evening away, feeling
generally 'satisfied' with progress. . ate a banana, chocolate,
and then a whole small tin of spam (on its own!). . struggled to
stay awake until to bed before 11pm. ds
