November 2020 – Darren Steele

November 11, 2020January 13, 2021

Upcycling

We’re having the garage that’s part of the house turned into another room since we now have a big garage out back. So naturally I have to clean it out and there are these truly massive metal shelf units. They were going to be sent to the metal recycling at the tip but then I realised I could relatively easily turn them into staging for my newly erected greenhouse.

The first order of business was to chop the massive shelf posts in half…

This was the slave labour session that resulted in Amelia getting paint onto her juvie [ juvenile detention centre ] clothes. They seemed to enjoy themselves though

Here we see Oli earning his pocket money by using an orbital sander to take 20+ years of garage grime off the shelf so that we can paint it. This is the second set of shelves we are working on, which will bring the total to four staging units and a full greenhouse. We’ll have two going spare!

With Charlie doing a fine job of supervising

There’s nothing quite like a nice leg painting session with a cup of tea followed by a cheeky glass/bottle of red. I mean, upcycling without wine is positively barbaric.

The first shelf unit has now been turned into two full on fantastic bits of greenhouse staging. Metal shelves with several coats of radiator paint. I reckon these shelves will be in my grand-children’s greenhouse one day.

November 9, 2020January 6, 2021

… in with the new

So we bought a new trampoline….a bigger one….a truly massive thing – it’s gotta be seen to be believed

These are some of the boxes it came in, being closely watched by a pheasant that just decided to hang out on top of my gates

This is some serious steel tubing. I built it, then I took it apart, then I built it again, then I took it apart again. Then I chatted with the help desk and took it even more apart and then built it all again. To say that a few swear words came out of my mouth would be an understatement. If it were flammable I probably would have just set fire to the whole thing. I think the design has some issues…..or maybe they should just try writing the fucking manual in English rather than using those ridiculous drawings that are intended to explain the build procedure to every human on the planet but instead leave you scratching your head about why some cartoon character is specifically being told not to eat a slice of cake.

Over a grand for a trampoline and they can’t be arsed translating the build instructions.

You can’t really tell, but it’s truly massive

Those bushes to the left are about 7ft high

November 6, 2020January 6, 2021

Out with the old…

Amelia loves her trampoline, adores it. It’s pretty much the only thing she’s ever asked for – and it’s never been quite the same since a gale blew it across the garden. So when it moved past being ugly and into simply being an eyesore we took it down. To be fair summertime was coming to an end and we planned to buy a new one but it was very, very satisfying to take it apart and get rid of it.

A quick mow later and it’s looking much better. I’ve since put grass seed down and you can barely tell it was ever there.