House-warming present

Rather late, but then I'm often rather late with jobs, I put aside two days this week to lay a small (6m x 3m) patio at the Bury house my older son and his family moved to in the spring.  This was more a case of stock tools than stock items, as the stone, sharp sand and landscaping fabric had to be bought in.  This was a triumph of Ebay deals - excellent communication with each seller and delivery of tons of material at the promised times.

Son and I shared the horrible job of removing the turf and digging out enough soil to produce a sand foundation for the stone.  Both of us have occasional back issues, and this isn't a favourite task.  The hope that the turf laid a month or so after their arrival would lift easily proved to be in vain.  Barrowing in the sand, levelling it and laying the slabs one by one was less physically demanding.  I worked to a jigsaw-like plan to avoid unsightly joints and kept a good eye on the spirit level as I worked away from the house.  It's Indian sandstone, with a riven finish, so the spirit level has to be interpreted with due allowance made.

The last backbreaking tasks were pointing up all the joints and loading the waste onto the trailer to bring home to contribute to some land-levelling to be done here later this year.

Two good days - and the weather helped by being dry but not too hot. Here's to the first BBQ!

Throw it away!

After another three days' work in elder daughter's kitchen, I have had to concede that some stock items should just be thrown away - a difficult admission for me to make.

The focus of this trip was the removal of some very dodgy old worktops and their replacement with the beautifully simple and elegant solid birch ones which Ikea sell at a reasonable price.  This was the third stage in 'lightening' a dark room: new led ceiling lights have been fitted and the programme of re-painting the fronts of all the storage units is almost complete. Fortunately I had the kitchen to myself for a day and a half (with assistance available when required from son-in-law, who was busy marking university exam papers) as Elizabeth and daughter and grandson had decamped to Devon for an overnight visit.

Getting the old worktops out without damaging the kitchen units and the walls was surprisingly difficult - they had been well fitted.  A deal of careful sawing was required to divide them into manageable bits, the one with the pot sink in it weighing a ton.  This was the start of the 'interesting work'.  The measuring and cutting of the new tops proceeded steadily, with little in the kitchen exactly square, and cutouts needed for the hob and the replacement sink.

The fact that the new sink was a slightly different size to the original meant that the plumbing of the tap and the wastes (from two bowls and the adjacent dishwasher) had to be reworked.  In the end, after a minor leak on the old tap, a new one was bought and fitted, but the big disappointment was the use of my recycled stock of push fittings for the 1.5" drainpipes.  Late on the second day when testing took place, they leaked.  A lot.  Fortunately the incoming pipes had service valves fitted so there was no damage.  Note to self: always in future use welded abs fittings, with just the one compression fitting to allow the assembly to be removed. That's what I did the following morning, starting the plumbing again from scratch, and this time it was fine.

So, there's still some boxing in and re-tiling to do. And some rationalisation of my plumbing stock - I'll be throwing away anything that has a used rubber seal in it.

A new home for the hens (well, some of them)

A few months ago I made some carved house signs for a friend and took payment in the form of what was described as a dismantled garden shed. When I collected 'it' there seemed to be parts from two different sheds, but closer examination revealed that, in fact, three sheds were represented. However, parts of all were missing.

For some time we had been intending to move our small flock of hens, as their enclosed patch had been pecked bare and we were concerned that the soil might become sour.  So I chose a corner of our field where there is some tree cover (which the hens love) and levelled out a base using some old concrete blocks and bricks. I salvaged a base for the shed, trimmed two sides to the same size and used the two matching ends.  My human cleat, Liz, held onto things until I had got the main parts screwed together.

I had to improvise the roof panels.  A couple of pieces from a salvaged wardrobe and a length of furniture board did the trick.  With the roof on, the structure was pretty stable.

One end had helpfully come with its door, which I fitted with some new(!) hinges.

Fortunately I had some roofing felt in the stable.  This was bought about 9 years ago while I was still used to repairing sections of the stable roof after every gale.  I soon gave up and invested in profile steel sheets, so the felt had stood unused till now.

It made a tidy job, and as the roof is small and the site reasonably sheltered from the biggest winds we get here, it should be fine. The window opening took a standard 2 foot by 2 foot sheet of greenhouse glass (thanks, Ian, for the half dozen or so you gave me ages ago).

Converting the shed to serve as a hen-house involved cutting and hingeing a pop door within the main door, mounting a couple of 2 by 1's as perches and cutting a hole to take the removable nesting box Liz suggested I borrow from the other hen-house.

So here we are: our cockerel and 4 hens have accepted the move (though chickens don't like change).  Four hens, including the three young Cream Legbars which have got used to roosting in our trees in the kitchen garden, have refused to move.  We may yet persuade the Welsumer to shift, but the Legbars will just have to look after themselves without the electrified fence, which has moved too.  If they continue to lay their beautiful blue eggs in the same place, all will be well.

A year in a kitchen

Just over a year ago, I offered to install a new kitchen for my older son and his wife in their newly acquired house in Stockport.  It was obvious from the start that the long distance nature of the task (round trip of 130 miles) and my other commitments meant that this would not be the work of a moment, but even I didn't expect it to take a year.

Memorable moments of a complete refurbishment:

• a Saturday afternoon in Ikea, ordering every component of the furniture: cupboards, doors, worktops, appliances.  A long list, and always likely to be an arduous retail experience, but why did we have to choose the weekend when Ikea were changing their kitchen unit range (and dimensions) for the first time in a decade?  In the event, they did us proud with the delivery and didn't miss a single item.
• removing the linoleum covering from a basically sound timber floor to discover a square metre of 'temporary' flooring where boards had been loose-laid over a concrete slab which years ago supported the heavy clothes-washing boiler.  Not a suitable foundation for the tile floor I was laying, so it had to be sorted.
• finding an open fireplace and adjacent cupboard hidden behind a piece of plaster board where heavy cupboards were to be hung - wall rebuilding required.

Many new items, of course, went into this project.  However, all the tools came from stock, and certain bits and pieces came in very handy: a couple of light fittings, plumbing and electrical accessories, adhesives to mention a few.

The final job, the tiling, was completed just a few weeks ago.  Now, because as a growing family they need more space, the house has been sold (subject to contract) and someone else will enjoy their kitchen.  They are kind enough to say that my labours helped them to a quick sale.  Here are three images I've borrowed from the estate agent's website:

Now they are buying a new-build house which, I believe, has a kitchen already installed.  So I'll have to find something else to fill the next year.  No problem.

South Wales shelving

Our most recent trip to elder daughter's in South Wales was partly to help with the transporting to the abattoir of the three pigs which had had a very happy life in the pig ark described in my last post.  So the reward for the jobs which were done while I was there was half a pig, neatly butchered, to return to our freezer in North Wales.

The key job this time was to use shelving materials rescued from their former home near Oxford to make their new home feel like theirs - you can't have a home without books on shelves, can you?  As always, the problem with doing jobs like this miles from home is deciding on which tools and materials I need to take. This is part of the collection that went in the car this time:

(If you've spotted the rainwater pipe, that was for a different job!) We knew that we didn't have enough wooden shelving to complete the project this time, but the challenge was to get the uprights, the original brackets and some additional newly purchased brackets installed so that we could decide how much more timber to buy.

It's important with this kind of shelving system to get the uprights in exactly the right place on the wall.  They can be unforgiving, as the metal is pre-drilled and all the screwholes must be securely fastened, otherwise the strength of the shelving is compromised.  There's no room for botched drilling of the wall leading to out-of-line or wobbly wallplugs.

A tool I bought at a bargain price years ago came in very handy.  It's a laser level, and it was cheap because it came without a tripod support.  However, it exactly fits my camera tripod and when properly adjusted, casts a red laser-generated line on an exact horizontal level.  Here I'm demonstrating how it was used a while ago to line up the power sockets on a wall of our kitchen.

Fortunately, the marking, drilling, plugging and screwing went well.  It turned out to be a very good thing that I had included my small angle grinder in the toolkit, as the new brackets needed to be trimmed slightly to fit into the uprights, but soon we had the existing shelves in place - and then books!  I've measured up, and I'll be back soon with the additional timber.

As Anthony Powell wrote, Books do Furnish a Room.

Can we make a pig ark from stock items?

Our elder daughter has moved to a house high on a valley-side above Cardiff.  As well as taking on a barn conversion, she, her husband and their son now have a stable block and 5 acres of sloping land.  Their first new venture is to keep pigs - 3 weaners which will go to the abattoir in about 6 months' time, but not before they have prepared plenty of ground for next year's fruit and vegetable growing.

The electric fencing was ordered and I offered to knock up a pig ark for them.  It was a disadvantage that we live 4 hours away as I wanted to make the ark at home.  I decided to go for a flat-pack pig ark and trust to my roof bars for transportation.  Somehow we ended up adding a kingsize mattress for the journey so with the plywood pieces, corrugated steel, oak skids and softwood roof struts we produced a sandwich-style roof-load.

I'm not sure that this load was within the manufacturer's recommendations.  I did take particular care on the drive.  Rarely have I negotiated bends and roundabouts with such care.  We arrived safely and after unloading I set about the final construction.  I had found some nice pieces of oak left over from our roof rebuild a few years ago, and they went onto the underside of the base to act as skids which will allow the ark to be moved around.

With two side struts added, the base was carried up to its first home in the lower field.

The end pieces each came out of half a sheet of 18mm ply, with a bolt-secured door.

The roof struts which, like the corrugated steel, were leftovers from our old postbarn, were friction fitted to the ends.

My charming assistant, who unwisely likened herself to Debbie McGee, held the bag of roofing screws. This was a big help as the three sheets of corrugated steel seemed to have minds of their own.

So there we were.  I had to buy the plywood and the bolts, but all the other bits came from stock.

Our grandson approved.  In fact he seemed interested in moving in.  If he does he won't have long.  The piglets arrive in about 10 days.

Oak house signs

So here's what to do with those left over short ends of 4" oak floorboards: visit Matthias' brilliant website and buy his plans for a 3-D router pantograph for a few dollars, buy a nice little router, and spend much of the winter on and off fiddling around with offcuts of wood and steel rod to construct one of these fiendishly clever machines.  Spend more evenings in the workshop making the plywood stencils for all the letters you need for your signs (and even a couple of swallow images), then it's time for the quick bit.

Actually cutting the signs is really easy and quick.  Use some black acrylic paint to highlight the carved letters, sand and, if you wish, varnish away, then get out to the end of the track and, with your neighbouring farmer's permission, put up the signs to his farm and our house, Coed y Mynydd Isaf (Lower Mountain Wood), his horsefeed business, and our luxury holiday cottage, Gwenoldy (Swallows' Rest).

 

Job done. About a year from start to finish.