Well it's been a good little week in terms of house planning/thinking/doing.
Hannah grabbed a shed from freecycle on Good Friday which was ace. So we went to a nice lady's house (who had a brilliant black labrador) at about 7pm on that evening, took apart this shed and strapped it to the top of the Vectra. We had to take the corners slowly but it stayed on! We used some ratchet straps we at bought at work but were too small for the application, so I have taken long term loan. Already proved to be useful!
Anyway, this Saturday I built the shed so that my bike could be moved out of the kitchen. Part of the build included digging a hole under the shed and filling it with concrete and setting a ground anchor in it. This has given a good solid 'thing' to lock my bike to. Great.
I had to rebuild the roof and re-felt it, and then stained the new bike shed and the other shed, so they both look like new. Although the shed was free, I still managed to spend £100 on concrete, ground anchor, wood preserve, felt, screws, padlocks, hinges and chipboard. It is a real challenge to go to B&Q and spend less than an hour there and £100!
The great thing about that particular trip to B&Q was that I could drive myself, thus taking as much time as I need without winding up my chauffeur (wife). It is good that I have passed my driving test... it frees Hannah up to not have to follow me around DIY shops aimlessly wandering wondering what the bit i need is called and I can nip out and get the gear I need even when Hannah isn't available. I think it is a good thing for our marriage. But as Hannah taught me to drive, our relationship has already been tested to a good degree!
Anyway, so I finished off the shed in glorious sunshine on Sunday afternoon listening to the sound of the 70s on Radio 2. Good Tunes.
On Monday I got the 3rd quote for the external rendering as a man without a van came and had a look and discussed options. He can do it for 3K. An improvement on 4K from a previous quote so we thought we might go for that. Then Hannah looked at the savings and having just shelled out for car insurance and windows, it's looking a little sorry for itself. If we spent 3K on rendering we would only have our rainy day buffer left, putting the rest of the summer build on hold.
So... i read a gazillion datasheets, books and websites and costed materials to do the job. That came to about £300. So if i did it that would be a saving of £2700. Now, I've done a course so have a little idea on lime plastering and rendering and i'm quite up for having a bash. Worse case - we spend 300 quid and a couple of weeks. It falls off in a year and then we have saved up some money again and we pay someone. Playing possible losses against possible savings it's a no brainer. The beauty of it is, with the old rustic traditional look, the plastering shouldn't be perfect anyway, so that's good!
So on monday night we drove over to Womersleys and picked up a bag of NHL 3.5 lime and a couple of bags of sand to have some practice. It's good fun, and I'm already learning techniques. A little more practice and improved mixing technique is required, but I'm quite positive about doing this job. Cool. Here are my practice attempts from Monday night.
Now we have a new shed, we have somewhere to store lime and sand too. Double Cool.
So now the bike is out of the way in the kitchen this got me thinking... What if we did the pantry now...
The positives are that instead of packing up the kitchen in summer everything bar appliances can be moved in to the pantry, thus keeping the kitchen fairly usable. Also, the work required to build the pantry is relatively small scale and not too dirty. And also again, it will give some good opportunities to practice lime plastering on an area which isn't going to be seen very much!
All good. Negative is that we haven't yet had permission for the pantry, but Conservation said it was a formality when they visited so I'm happy to press on with that work.
So I'm going to make a start on that this weekend.
and I think that brings us up to date.
Cheerio.
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