Category Archives: Home

Stripped.

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9°C rain all day until evening.

Decorating: finished stripping the wallpaper in the master bedroom. The aim is to get the walls perfect so wallpapering is a doddle. The plaster round the new electrics needs a skim then I’m ready to start pasting up.

The first layer is off in the small bedroom revealing this 50’s style paper beneath. Before I paper over the good walls, I’m tempted to draw something onto the plaster in pencil. Somebody will find the drawings in a decade or two. Watch this space.

Here the sun sets on a satisfying day.

Plastering

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8°C, rain all day.

The old techniques are coming back. Since my skills are rather rusty, I decided to buy base coat plaster and then layer skim coat over another day. That skim needs to be smooth and that’s the difficult part.

Once finished, I ventured into the loft. There is the largest wasps’ nest I have ever seen.

It’s about the size of a full rucksack, so around 40 litres. However you look at it, it’s a fine and beautiful object. I see no reason to remove it.

Frogs have left the pond.

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6°C, grey.

No activity at The Pond today. This is what I think happened: last week, there were 10 males at the pond. Waiting, they would occasionally say “gribbit”. My suggestion is that they were staking out the pond waiting for an egg laden female to arrive.

It must have happened because there is plenty of frog spawn in the water. I’ll miss them but there are fascinating treats to come- tadpoles and then tiny frogs. I will construct some log piles for their cover.

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Eek, a Leak!

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Rain, 6°C

Not moved into my new house yet but did call in to drop some stuff there. I decided to switch on the mains water. While eating a sandwich, I could hear dripping.

That is a sickening sound to hear. Water was coming through the kitchen ceiling. Immediately, I turned off the stop cock and rushed upstairs to find the source.

It’s that big nut. White tape was visible and it looked askew on the thread. Next, adrenalin.

Here it is after my repair. The top nut was cross threaded and not fully screwed down. With the weight of the water gone, the tank may have tilted preventing the nut lining up straight when the seller drained the system.

It looks like they opened the joint to drain the tank with a syphon. I can’t find a drain tap below the tank so I did the same with a hose into the bath

It was then that it occurred to me what happened. The seller drained the tank as described above.

Next step. Once drained I cleaned the joint with a wire brush and put new PTFE round it before winding the nut back down.

I hope that’s right. A plumber is coming on Wednesday so he’ll let me know.

Finally. I drained the heating circuit again so it can be refilled with some corrosion inhibitor added.

Moral: keep an emergency repair kit, spare pipe, hose clips, and some flexible threaded pipe.

The surveyor got it right, that wasps’ nest is the biggest I’ve seen too. I’ll get a picture another day.

Should I open a separate blog to document the work on this house?

Something in the water is watching.

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12°C, sun and light rain.

Something in this pond is watching. There were two ripples from their dive for cover as I approached. Yesterday there was a glassy eye, a frog I think. Actually, two.
That’s great for such a small garden pond.

From the bottom of my garden, I see space for essentials like a compostheap and a larger pond. The Electric fountain can go though.

I’m in.

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6°C, after a snowy start, the next was vigorous.

A chance to try something seen at my old house, an igloo. The snow wasn’t really suitable, it refused to compact densely. The roof fell in before this photo.

Anyway, the real house: I have the keys, the place is all mine.

Mine.

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7°C, sun with few showers.

I get the keys tomorrow.

Maybe, I should blog about its modernisation here. The long wait is over, now the hard work begins.

Crusty tap.

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Changing the washer in a tap is supposed to be easy. This one has small facets making the spanner slip. Inside the tap is all crusty with limescale buildup. You’re supposed ot be able to unscrew the collar by hand, no chance.

As I write, there is descale fluid soaking. Can you see the bubbles? That’s the limescale dissolving.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Moving house stage 3

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6°C, grey but reasonably dry.
III: moving out: it took a week to do this. A stressful week with little sleep and a nagging fear that I could miss the Friday deadline. Completion date is Friday 12th January. The removal firm came on Wednesday morning.
I shalln’t document all the detail but a few things stand out. My neighbour moved in before Christmas and have me tons of good boxes and suitcases. That saved the day for me. They’d moved from Hong Kong and used very sturdy cardboard boxes which were ideal.They’re a lovely couple, shame that they didn’t move in years ago.
Most of the week, I felt the pressure. I woke very early, some days at 4.30 am.12MesKitchPAN

For a week, I was gripped by a feeling akin to panic. I woke in the night with butterflies and my mind racing around the job. I tried, with some success, to think plans for the new house to take my mind off this. we’re warned about how stressful moving home is, this is how it manifest for me.

One mile.

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3°C, sunny and light wind.
I rode Arrow with MapMyRide+! Distance: 1.70km, time: 07:09, pace: 4:12min/km, speed: 14.27km/h.

http://mapmyride.com/workout/2646007600

Abruptly cut this ride short once I noticed how much black ice there was hiding in the shadows. There appeared to be no grit or salt on the road and out of town is bound to be worse. So, I came home.​

Tree trunks: I had to have two trees cut down this week. The idea was to give the wood to my neighbour as a good will gesture on my leaving. The tree-surgeon was sure they only needed the logs large.
Not only was that wrong, but the guy didn’t want the logs at all. Now I’m stuck with massive logs that are too big for me to cut and I move out on Friday.