When we did the extension the builder installed some Oak skirting boards. He did the joins using a butt joint. I moaned about it here [ https://junglefreedomfighters.com/?p=2017 ] in the past.
Well I’ve just been bought a scroll saw [ thanks Mum ] to have another crack at all this. The scroll saw is essentially a powered version of the coping saw I mention in the post above.
Turns out I’m still a bit rubbish at it.
Shiny!
The skirting board joint you see above is my first attempt. I’ll persevere with my scroll saw with a bit more practice and then hopefully I’ll finally have the skirting boards I’ve dreamt of.
Jac and Mark and the kids all went out to celebrate one of their children’s birthdays…yeah I should really know which one but I’m rubbish at things like that and I was totally distracted by us getting Holly for the day.
We absolutely loved having her. Yeah, there were a few puddles. Yeah, she did nearly break the patio doors by running head first into them. Yeah, she did have a bit of a chew on my hat. But it was brilliant to have such an excited bundle of energy in the house. Violet enjoyed it for the first hour or two but then she wanted a sleep…and Holly didn’t.
As a side note I also popped around to Jac and Mark’s yesterday and Holly came running and jumping at me and was so excited that a bit of wee came out onto my foot. Her wee, not mine.
When I was young and at Primary School my Mum was a Schoolteacher and so couldn’t pick me up. Fortunately Nana Molly lived a few hundred metres away from my school and so after I finished school I’d walk over to Nanas and she’d make me my “tea”. Dinner was often “Lobbies”. Meat, potatoes, onions and other veg in a gravy. Some call it potato hash, some call it scouse. We called it lobbies. Anyway, quite often Nana Molly would also make jam tarts. They were amazing. Highlight of my day even though it was just shortcrust pastry with some jam in it.
I recently had some pre-rolled shortcrust pastry that was past the use by date so I had to do something quick. So I picked up some sausage meat from the local butcher and made some posh sausage rolls. I had some left over pastry and we had some jam in the fridge that had been there a while and this is the end result.
The third from the right was made without using a pastry cutter. Dunno what I was thinking
My friendly neighbourhood electrician finally found some time for me and came and hooked my workshop up to power. I specified my usual ridiculous number of plug sockets, four strip lights and two outdoor sockets. The electrician quizzed me about what I intended to use the outdoor sockets and I had to admit I had no idea. I’m sure they’ll come in useful for something though.
We left the armoured cable trailing over the garden because neither of us were up for digging. The sun came out the next day and Oli fancied earning a bit of cash so out he went and buried the cable for me. He actually did a pretty good job of it too.
Will we as a race [ or possibly that should be as a gender ] ever get tired of drawing penis’ on things? It’s a pastime as old as the hills. I reckon somewhere in Africa there’s a cave with a huge penis drawn in dinosaur blood or something.
Anyway, I bring you the latest act of petty vandalism from my little boy.
I finally got a pair of orange trainers and ohhhh my god are they orange! They don’t look so bad in the picture but once you get outside in them they’re bright. We went for lunch with Erika and Keith and I wore them. At the end of lunch I went for a wee. On the way back from my wee I heard some woman on a table remark to her companions “There they are…that’s the man with the trainers”
At the end of each term everyone tends to finish at lunchtime so off we pop to The Plough for lunch and beers. The Plough is great as it is walkable, you can book a table for four plus a dog and they do fantastic salt and pepper chicken with half rice half chips and curry sauce.
The end of the Summer term was a bit of a bust as both the kids refused to come despite it being a family tradition so this year I made it clear we were *all* going.
When we had the extension done we got a plumber in to do some stuff. Turns out he’s an absolute bell end. Monumental dick. Nearly ended up costing me a new boiler because he couldn’t be arsed flushing the system. Anyway. One of the other things he did was to fit a stop cock so that I could turn off my outside water supply when the weather gets toward freezing.
The input to the stopcock is a 15mm pipe. The output from the stopcock is a 25mm MDPE pipe that goes down the garden. So he fitted a 25/15mm stopcock. All good so far. The only minor problem is that the stopcock is unidirectional. It’s designed to stop the flow of water FROM a 25mm pipe to a 15mm pipe. The exact opposite of the situation we have. The upshot of this is that I could not stop the flow of water down the garden. This wasn’t such a big deal, I could cope with it, until the builders next door offered to remove my bamboo problem [ more on this later ] with a massive digger. The bamboo is growing directly above my water pipe and I was pretty convinced they were going to damage my pipe and my only solution would be to turn off the main stopcock in the house and we wouldn’t be able to use water until the pipe was repaired.
What the plumber should have done is put in a standard 15mm stopcock on the 15mm pipe and then just fitted an adaptor from the output of the stopcock onto the 25mm pipe. Piece of cake. No problem. Have it done in 5 minutes. Except of course since the pipe work has been fitted we’ve built a kitchen around it which makes access really really hard.
I had to chop the crap out of my kitchen cabinet, fit a series of 90 degree bends to avoid the waste pipe and introduce a 15/25 adaptor which can’t be seen in the picture above. All went pretty well until I had to introduce the adaptor. Getting a clean cut on a 15mm pipe is easy. inserting the pipe support on a 15mm pipe is easy. Everything to do with a 25mm pipe is really really hard. I couldn’t get a square cut with the cheap pipe cutters that the nobhead plumber left behind. I struggled to push the pipe insert far enough in. Both of which combined to give me a leak. Ultimately I bought a new pair of ratcheting pipe cutters which gave me an excellent cut on the pipe. I then fired up my heat gun on the MDPE to warm it slightly and make it just a touch more flexible so that I could get the pipe insert in.
Now the job is complete. I have a stopcock to stop the water going outside. The builders dug up the bamboo and didn’t even come close to my water pipe. It’s all been a massive waste of time.
The time has come to build the stud walls and give some more rigidity to my oak frame. We got a delivery of timber and had to move it from the drop off point beyond my gates into my garage where we’d be storing it.
Oli and I did the manual labour since he was on Summer holidays. We started off carry 2 lengths of 4×2. Then I carried 3 pieces in one go. Naturally Oli then had to carry 4. So I moved 5. With 6 pieces of timber left Oli went for it. It all slipped out of his hands and he struggled to get through the gate but he made it in the end. Took him twice as long as if he’d taken them one at a time though
All set for turning into beautiful stud walls
In the past when I’ve been making stud walls I just kind of eyeballed the right angles with varying results. But when I was making my bookcases I started to appreciate the beauty of a proper right angle. So I got some 90 degree clamps. I made use of them on each stud wall I made and they turned out pretty well.
As I put my first nicely square stud wall in it highlighted that the entire frame had shifted at some point and was now kinda leaning backwards a bit. So I dug out some ground anchors and a ratchet strap and brought the frame forwards by a few degrees. The ratchet strap would have to stay in place until I had stud walls everywhere. It was there for a couple of weeks and it was a happy moment when I eventually disconnected the strap and nothing fell over!
First test stud wall with added ratchet-strap-nessMore stud walls with the OG still in the background
The day eventually came when I had all the stud walls in place and I could get rid of the ratchet strap and finally give my grass a proper cut.
It’s difficult to make out in the picture above but I’ve also put the rafters in for my mezzanine. So what’s the first thing everyone does when building a mezzanine? Lob a palette up there and then climb up a ladder onto the wobbly palette then call your son and say “hey look out of your window” and then wave at him from the end of your garden. That’s the first thing everyone does right?
Me on top of a palette on top of my mezzanine taking a selfie
