New project started

Hello all,
Well it's been a fantastic bout of weather here in the UK with glorious hot days. That spell seems to have passed for now and it is grey and significantly colder, but I'm really enjoying the Summer (especially as I am not working away from home for the first Summer in 18 years).

So I have begun a new project which for me is the most head-scratchingly difficult I have attempted thus far so anyone who has any knowledge and tips will be welcome to give advice.

The slope that leads down from my garden proper to my greenhouse is annoying and unmanagable in bad weather and so I have started the groundwork to create steps down and a path along the side of the greenhouse, this should make trips down there in winter or when it is wet much better.

I have started by doing the initial groundwork of cutting out the turf where the path will be

and then I started to cut out where the steps down will be

Finally leaving me with the complete area cut out.

Now that the site is cleared I need to move onto stage 2 as there is no going back now.
My plan at the moment is to put in wooden sides and posts along the path and then to fashion the steps using wooden sides and posts also, three steps down to the path should do it. When that is all in place I will put down hardcore, sand and then concrete and hope that the whole thing works and is stable. It's at times like this that I wish I had a friend with knowledge :-)

I will continue to mark my progress but the next stage will certainly be careful measuring and wood purchase.

Bathroom transformation - finally.

Yes, it is done, 9 weeks of toil and swearing but I have finally completed the bathroom transformation and this morning had my first shower in there for 9 weeks. I am proud that I did it, but I swear I would never attempt to do it by myself again, it is way beyond me really and although I will have a go at anything the reason it has taken me so long is because I have been learning on the job. Now just pray nothing leaks - ever.

So this is how my bathroom was before:

It's difficult to tell on this photo, but the bathroom suite was green, the carpet brown and the walls dirty. If you remember, last February I put my foot through the bath and rendered it useless for bathing, a bit of gaffa tape meant that I could, at least, shower.

First things first, strip off the nasty wallpaper.

Then all the tiles off the wall

And finally back to basics with the room emptied - this was a rather frightening moment.

It is very difficult to photograph a small room like a bathroom well to give you the full affect

but.....

here is how it looks now:

Nothing is left from before, new blind, new light, new floor, new tiles, new suite. It all looks so clean!

New shower was the final thing to go in.

The sink is now I pleasant place to brush my teeth.

So there you have it, the hardest transformation I have achieved but I am very proud of it. Nothing about a bathroom is particularly cheap and costs mounted up as I kept on havign to have another trip to B&Q for another bucket of tile adhesive, but in the end the cost for the complete bathroom has come in at well under £1000, which is not bad (is it?) considering how much it would have cost if I were to have got someone else to do it for me. Labour here, was free!

The grand unveiling

I've finished my arbour!
A friend of mine has nicknamed it the Moomin House, because it reminds him of the house from the cartoon I used to watch 30 years ago called the Moomins.
It just started raining as I finished it and it does exactly what I wanted it to - keeps me dry! It was very hard to construct by myself I must admit and should probably have tried to get someone to help me, but I perservered and am thrilled with the results.

I think it compliments the garden pretty well, I'm sure you will agree.

Upcycling - not to everyone's taste.

I rescued 3 dining chairs from my sister's garden last week. As I have mentioned before she is at the end of a huge remodeling of her house and, me being always on the look out am profiting. Her old oven is already in my house and now I took the three dining chairs that she was about to put on the tip.

They were in a bit of a state, it has to be said. Having brought up 3 children on these chairs they were covered in grubby fingers, crayon and paint and thick with dirt having been out in the garden for a few weeks. I just call that a challenge.

So first thing was to clean and sand them down, no easy task actually because the dirt was matted on. Here is one after the cleaning and sanding (forgot to take a picture before this process)

A traditional looking chair, it wasn't a very nice colour pine varnish finish so I wasn't keeping that.

Next I primed them with a tin of primer I had leftover from a previous project.

Now comes the part when I go off the main track. My intention was to just paint the cream to match the legs of the table, but sometimes, when I get looking at paint colours a strange feeling comes over me and I start wanting to experiment. Not always succesfully. I have a lot of blue and white crockery and love this combination and started wondering about maybe painting them blue. After humming and haaing I thought, what's the worst that can happen? I don't like them and paint them again.

So Swedish Blue was decided upon. Decide for yourself. I'm not sure about the result, but it is growing on me, haha.

Still, a big improvement from a filthy old chair in the garden. I will liven them up with some nice pastel shade cushions and maybe get something blue onto the table to tie them in. If I am fed up with them in 6 months I will paint them a new colour.

gateway to the greenhouse

I finally did it, only 8 months late. I put the arch way up between the trellis and the decking. The men who did the deck did offer last summer, but I said I would do it myself. Well it took me a while, but I decided that today was the day - and now it is done.

I think that it finishes it off nicely and I look forward to the rambling red rose that was planted last summer on the left of it, finds it's way over the top.

A job well done.

Tomorrow - my first sourdough loaf.

March seed planting.

What a treat and a pleasure to be able to do my seed planting in the greenhouse and to make as much mess as I liked! The weather has been beautiful today and so, although it was a very chilly start to the day, I knew that the weather would be good. So the washing was on at 8 this morning and has subsequently dried on the line outside - after years of living in a flat in the past, I still get immense pleasure from something as simple as drying clothes outside.
At the weekend I made another greenhouse bench and a potting table, so the greenhouse is fully equipped now. I only spent £20 as I mostly had offcuts of wood left to use.

So today I have planted:

Tomatoes (Gardeners Delight and Tumblers, which have been highly recommended to me)
Cosmos
Aquelegia
Verbena Bonariensis
Shasta Daisies
Echinacia
Snapdragons

Definitely run out of windowsill room now, but tomorrow I am taking my seedlings that I planted a month ago to my mum to look after as I have to go to London next week (yes, it is that time of year again - sigh) for 4 weeks, so I have left the new seeds wrapped up in plastic bags to germinate. I am hoping to get home every weekend this time so keep your fingers crossed for me that this works out. I don't think I could bear a repeat of last year.

Last job of the day, I put up a little birdhouse. I don't know if any birds will use it, I hope so, but it looks really pretty anyway.

It is only 2 metres off the ground, which possibly isn't high enough, but sadly is the highest suitable place in the garden. If I have no luck I will rethink.

More DIYing

I couldn't believe the price of greenhouse benches/staging. They were either monstrously expensive £70+ for a 3 foot bench for the nice ones or about £20 for something so small and flimsy that it would hold only a few light plants and probably break in a second.
What do I do when faced with this? make my own of course.

This lovely 6 foot bench cost me £30 in wood and is a foot and a half deep too, suits my needs perfectly and would have probably cost me over £100 if I had bought it from somewhere.

I am rather pleased with the labours of one afternoons work and look forward to filling it with my trays of seeds etc. I will make another some time, but next project will be a larger platform for potting.

Preparing for the unexpected - or not in my case.

A lot of sensible frugal people prepare themselves financially for emergencies by putting a little away for such eventualities. Others are not in position to do so because they are already living on a shoestring. Yesterday I discovered why it is sensible to try and put a little away in a savings account for such emergencies.
I got in my shower, which is over the bath and what happened do you think? The bath cracked under my 13 stone 9 weight. Now, as you know, I was not overly fond of my bathroom, but I wasn't expecting to suddenly find myself in the position of HAVING to do it, and no, I hadn't got that emergency fund up and sorted yet. So I now find myself with a cracked sink AND a cracked bath. The cracked sink I have been getting away with because I am careful, but there is not much you can do with a cracked bath, the water just runs out.
So today I went pricing up new bathroom suites. The loo is ok, but in a particularly lurid shade of green and as a deal on suites means that you get a discount (also I can't face having a green toilet and white sink and bath) I have priced what I need to replace at approximately £350, inclusive of all taps and delivery. Not a bad price I have to admit, but not great when you don't actually have it. This includes a steel bath rather than acrylic.
Now I am faced with options. Option number 1 is of course to borrow the money by buying on a credit card or taking an payment plan. As far as I am concerned, this is NOT an option. I refuse to get myself in debt over it.
So option two is to see if I can do a temporary fix with a bit of gaffa tape regularly replaced and very careful cleaning after every shower.
Option 3 is to leave it and shower at my friends house where possible, have regular washes and save save save.
Having thought it through, I have decided on a mixture of option 2 and 3. It's a bit sad to have a gaffa taped bath but I can live with it. The real decision comes as to whether to buy, replace and make do, or to actually use the opportunity to fully do the bathroom, tiles, floors, the lot. It needs doing (even though i was hoping to have a couple of years to wait) and as I will do most of the work (if not all) myself it seems sensible to save for the tiles as well - flooring can come at the end another time. The problem with not doing the tiling at the same time is that it will need doing at some point and I have never thought that doing half a job then the other half at a different time pays, as you end up undoing half the first job.
Well, my hand has been forced and now I have a new and urgent project to save up for. Meanwhile, I hope I don't get too whiffy, haha.

Who's a clever boy then?

Thanks to those comments yesterday and welcome to my new followers. It was nice to read your ghost stories too!

I am rather proud of myself. I have floored my loft. I am always ready to give DIY a go, mainly because I am stingy at paying someone to do anything that I could possibly do myself.
Fortunately for me, laying a floor up in the loft was a much easier job than I anticipated, even though I am unfortunate enough to have joists that are all different widths apart (how annoying is that) which meant that I had to cut every single piece of flooring differently. Never mind.

Here is the final result though:

I have a good 10 metres squared of new floor space now which is going to be brilliant for storage. I even put in access hatches for where there were junction boxes (fortunately there weren't many of those).
One day I will do the other half (there is about 7m2 remaining on the other side of the hatch) but for now this will do nicely. All told, it cost less than £60 to do this and the lighting, not bad going and just 2 afternoons work.

Let there be light

I have been indulging in a spot of DIY this weekend. I enjoy tinkering with things but I did SO much when I first moved in here that I took a well earned and much needed break from it. Now I am back and ready for more.

One place in my house that I never have explored really was the loft. I have poked my head through to look at the insulation and once crawled over joists to check the TV aerial but besides that it has remained completely shut as though Mrs Rochester was slowly going mad up there.

Now I have decided it is time to get to know this space properly.

With the help of my brother, this new project was begun this weekend by putting lighting up there.

I won't bore you with how we did it, but I was dead proud and very happy when 2 working lights were illuminating the gloomy corners. Total cost for the job £3.96.

There is plenty of potential storage space up there.

The loft is in 2 halves with the hatch in the centre.

I've attached this trailing wire to the beams now.

As you can see there is plenty of insulation up there and I have some extra that a friend wanted rid of which will add to some of the bald spots here and there.

Now that I can see up here the next job will be getting some flooring down, might do that this week, or at least prepare it. Loft flooring is pretty cheap and I will do it in stages, one half at a time. I don't need to do a particularly neat job, but I am quite neat and tidy and can't help myself trying to get it just right.

It will be great to be able to use this space to keep the things I want/need to keep, but don't need to use very often. Christmas decs, blow up beds, paperwork etc.

One day I will sort a permanent ladder out too, although for now, my ladder from the garage will do just fine.

It's good clip my tool belt back on and get my hands dirty.

Bookcase project

I have a lot of books. I have been collecting books since I was a teen and as I am regularly re-reading books I never get rid of one unless I hated it. I don't buy so many now, just the occasional second hand or 1p amazon special now and again.
Storing my books has been a problem over the years and this is probably the first time in about 20 years that all my books have been in one place. I have had hundrends stored in my parents loft for many years and in various other cupboards. Finally I have them all here leading to problems with having them all out. One day I will have floor to ceiling bookshelves (when I convert the garage in a few years, but until then I would like to be able to get at most of them without hunting through boxes.

This week my project was to build a nice bookshelf for a small selection of my books, out of cheap flat pack furniture, modified by my own fair hand to look a little better and more in keeping.

So I went through the hateful experience the is shopping in IKEA. Where else can you get a flat packed bookcase, nearly 2 metres high for £19.99? So home I came with a KILBY bookcase which was swiftly put together.

First thing that I added was a moulding around the top and down the sides....

As this is to mostly contain paperbacks, this bookshelf has a monumental amount of wasted space between shelves, so some extra shelves were needed. I cut these out of plain cheap white covered chipboard. Making it a much more respectable 7 shelf bookcase (8 if you count the top)

I then primed the whole thing...

and added some brown paint to the edges and corners..

and finally gave it a couple of coats of cream paint (the same as the colour on the bedroom walls).

A bit of discreet sanding allowed some of the brown paint to show through a bit at the edges and corners...

The back was added (not sure I should have left that grey, but it can always be changed at a later date)...

Finally some of my books were put in and I think it looks much better than the original piece of flatpack that it was. The beading was the biggest expense coming in at £10, and the extra shelves cost me another £7 (although I still have enough particle board for use in another shelf in a future project.)

Now I have to come up with some more places to put more books, something for the kitchen I think.......