Some things take a little while

I have a very long list of jobs, and a lot of stock items associated with them. I don't fully understand the process by which things get put off for another time - something to do with the difference between the important and the urgent?  When I acquire materials I almost always intend to process them reasonably quickly, but that often doesn't follow.  My record, I think, is a package in the workshop which contains the pieces of teak and slate needed to make a small coffee table, which is wrapped in newspaper dated 1975.  I should be able to sort it by the end of 2015, I think.

So my third willow basket has happened at lightning speed.  In January my younger son and his wife donated  a red wig for my car:

This was some overgrown willow from their Devon garden.  I don't know a great deal about all the various willows, but this had the advantage of beautiful colour variations from yellow to red, and the disadvantage of being rather thick-stemmed with lots of side shoots. When I got it home I spent ages trimming off the sideshoots, and used the thickest rods to create a screen for some of our compost bins.  The rest went in the bath to increase its pliability (not our only bath, in case you were wondering):

As I worked with it, I learned a lot about which rods were really too thick for the job in hand, so the outcome was a rough-and-ready (artisanal?) basket which has now gone back to Devon to hold logs for the willow-providers.  They are kind enough to say it's fine.  As it's the first basket I've made without expert supervision, I'm grateful to them, but shall be aiming higher next time.

Wisteria support

We have been planning for a while to plant a wisteria in the side garden.  To support it (assuming that it grows!) we designed an open structure which in effect creates a new south 'wall' facing the utility building.  In due course the drystone wall will be repaired (Elizabeth is going on a National Trust course this summer) so I used up some 4 x1 carcassing and some half-round posts, held together with galvanised roofing bolts.  The new planting is going to feel somewhat intimidated for the first few years, we feel.

Kitchen chairs - new life

We're not sure quite how the upholstered seats on our kitchen chairs had become so disgusting.  It's not as if we make a practice of sitting in muddy pools outside in preparation for using them, but Liz pointed out yesterday that it did look as if we had.  So off she went to Abakhan at Greenfield and back she came with some lovely large check material.

This afternoon the job snuck in front of the hundreds actually on the list and we shared the removing of hundreds of staples, the cutting of the material and the re-stapling.  There are eight chairs, so it did take a while. It also uses a lot of staples, but fortunately I received some recently (along with many upholstery tools - thanks, Graham) as part of father-in-law's stock clearance. Maybe we should now use the kind of covers the garage puts on the car seats at service time?

Bath installation

Well, this was the easiest bit of 'plumbing' I've ever done.  Ever since I brought my crop of willow from Devon, I've been wondering whether I could use our fish pond to soak it.  This seemed a bit harsh on our fish, so I advertised on Flintshire Freegle for a bath.  The system is great, and the following day I was able to help a chap in Abergele get rid of part of his rubbish after a bathroom refit.

This afternoon, in an icy wind, I popped the bath onto a couple of building blocks alongside the barn and out of sight behind an IBC, handily placed to fill it.  So in went the stored rainwater, and the willow, and in a few days time I'll be hoping to start my next basket.

The Ramp - part 2

Before we get going, here's the Welsh Water update (we had a visit from a great WW engineer): we don't have enough pressure to bring mains water all the way up to the house, so the pumphouse improvements must go on.  For the time being (fingers crossed) all is well.

Back to the ramp.  This is where we started on my last Devon visit:

The front step was a significant hazard for father-in-law, and a block to brother-in-law's wheelchair.  I took some fairly rudimentary measurements and a plan formed.

After I came home large amounts of timber (for everything except the actual decking surface) were collected from the builders' merchant's in Mold, and construction started (see last post).  Much measuring, cutting (measure twice, cut once) and a particularly large amount of hand mortice and tenon cutting (20 newel posts, almost every one jointed on two sides) took place, followed last Friday by half a day of packing the car and trailer with tools and worked materials:

So, on Friday evening, I drove down the M6, M5 and A30, with the car struggling a bit on the hills.  We made it.  I knew I was going to be pressed for construction time if I was to be home on Monday night, so on Saturday morning I unloaded in the dark and arrived before opening time at the local woodyard to collect the decking boards.  So far, so good.

Construction on Saturday progressed, as a forecast of wet weather for Sunday became firmer hour by hour. By dusk I had the main structure in place.

Sunday dawned pretty wet, and got wetter, so much so that by 3 o'clock I was like a drowned rat and using power tools had become dangerous, as moisture caused the volts to track across the switches.  I was quite a lot further on, with the decking boards in place.

So Monday would just be side rails (base and middle), a step, and a mini ramp for inside the front door.

And again things went well, though I was tiring and got the odd cut wrong.  Fortunately I had a little spare timber.  By lunchtime we were here:

So, a solid job, stainless steel fixings, and it doesn't even touch the house.  It can at some future point be dismantled and recycled, and with a quick rake of the gravel, will leave no trace. In the meantime my in-laws have amused us by deciding it is substantial enough to merit its own name ('The Approach') if not its own address and postcode.  I have had a great time planning and building it, and have learned a lot, including that I can do (relatively simple) things in 3D.  

Ramping it up

There's old stock, and there's new stock.  My latest project is to build an access ramp, decking-style, at the front of my in-laws' bungalow.  This is designed to make life easier for my father-in-law, who is beginning to struggle with steps, and for my brother-in-law who, since his stroke, needs a ramped access on his visits to Devon.

It has to be quite a sturdy piece of joinery, meeting regulations on the gradient (no more than 1 in 12) and width (minimum 900mm), so a visit to Travis Perkins was needed to bring the materials in.  This was 10 days ago, and snow was still lying in the woodyard, so it wasn't the most straightforward of tasks.

I've again been using the lower barn to do the construction work, with sections screwed together and newel posts bolted on with stainless steel bolts. I've been pushing my power tools close to their limits, not least because they don't like sawing and drilling damp timber. I've also been testing my not-too-good-in-the-third-dimension design capability.  The idea is to check that everything goes together, then dismantle it, take it Devon on Friday evening on the trailer, and build it again in situ over the weekend.  I have left the buying of the decking boards for a Saturday morning visit to TP in Okehampton as I've got more than enough weight to trundle down the M6 and M5.

There are one or two tricky bits (a gate and steps for those who don't want to use the full ramp, for instance) so I'm hoping the measurements I took on my last visit aren't too far out.

Here's what it looks like at present - I'll blog again with pictures next week.

More about water

Some time ago I mentioned the unusual hybrid system we have for delivering mains water to the house and cottage here.  In recent days we have had a rash of problems, caused we believe by high rainfall sincethe start of last summer, aggravated by snow melt last week.  The pumphouse was built about 30 years ago and it was not considered necessary then to waterproof the concrete slab which forms its roof.  When things get really wet outside (and they have) things inside get wet too, as water seeps through the slab.  This is not good for the complicated electrics which control the pump.

So yesterday we woke up to no electricity in the house or cottage because the RCD on the pumphouse supply had tripped the whole system.  We also had no water as the pump was obviously without power.  I isolated the pumphouse circuit and got the rest of the electric supply back first, then went down to the pumphouse for the first of many visits.  In spite of the fact that the electrics are protected by sheets of polythene, the distribution box and the connections on the pump were running with water.  No surprise that the RCD had tripped then.  An hour or so of drying everything out did the trick, and we had water again.

Through the day I plotted (waterproofing the pumphouse having been on the 'Big Jobs' list for 2 or 3 years) and decided on two courses of action.  One was to put aside today to take some of my stock of corrugated steel panels and lengths of telegraph pole (salvaged from the old post barn) down to the pumphouse and construct a ground level 'roof' to keep the rain out.  The second was to contact Welsh Water to ask whether it might be possible that improvements in their infrastructure over the last 30 years mean that they now have enough pressure in their pipes to bring water up to the house without the need for our pump.  WW have a good website so I completed an online form asking the question.

Then, just for a laugh, after our evening meal we ran out of water again.  No problem this time with the electricity supply, but another trip down to the pumphouse with the multimeter to see what was going on.  The mains switch on the distribution board had 240 volts incoming, but 8 volts on the other side of the switch.  Damp again.  Some vigorous switching created a working connection.  Water again, and, fingers crossed, we have had water since.

This morning brought a really efficient response from Welsh Water and an appointment for an engineer to visit next Monday.  Fingers crossed.  However, deciding that crossed fingers were not enough with more rain forecast, we set off with the materials in the trailer to take the Subaru through the fields and down to the pumphouse.  Mistake.  We got stuck.  Having disconnected the trailer, I just managed to get the Subaru back to 'dry land'.  Liz bravely helped me push the trailer back, though a tow was needed for the last 20 yards or so to get it through the gloop.  A bit of a wasted morning.  So after lunch we man/woman handled the materials down to the pumphouse and I set about digging down to the concrete slab to fix the poles and steel sheets.  As dusk fell the last bolt went in and I made my 6th climb of the day back to the house.  Tired is a polite description for how I felt.  So now the pumphouse looks like this:

(it has a few stones on top for fun) and we are hoping that we get good news from the Welsh Water man next week. Chances are, though, that the pressure won't be enough and we will then go for phase two - a dehumidifier in the pumphouse with some background heating to keep it working efficiently.  We are going to get this problem sorted!