Be Excellent To Each Other

I’d already insulated and clad inside a few years back.

I did the first (overdue) oil change on the wood chipper. Despite sitting unused in the damp garage for a couple of years, with fresh fuel it started on the very first pull! Honestly amazed, I was half expecting it to be seized to death.

It was also easier to restart than I remember it being after stall - it seems to love 99RON petrol, which it got because I needed to fill the car and I couldn't be bothered to put another transaction through just for a couple of litres into the can.

This comes after spending most of yesterday afternoon processing felled conifer using (powered) secateurs and garden saw before Helen said "hang on, we should be putting all this through the chipper shouldn't we?" - we'd both forgotten about the bloody thing.

I don’t truly know how this happened. The owner of the nursery Darwin used to go to sent me a message on Saturday:



So I gave her advice as she’d already purchased it, so there was no point saying it was in a terrible state and to just not buy it.

Anyway, then she said ‘can you please revitalise it when you have time’ and I didn’t quite catch that I was going to be the one doing it until too late. Anyway, Russell and I gave it a tidy up over the weekend, and it’s far from perfect but I’m still proud of the before and after:

Before:


After:

Utterly sensational!

(The expectation on you: not so much.)

But gosh. It's lovely.

I did fix the spacing ion the numbered dials before I delivered it to its new home

I hope you charged them a shit load.

Well, I did it for nothing so… no?

Admit it. You made a brand new one to the same spec, didn't you?

I think you should claim it! "That old thing? Rubbish, threw it away - made this, though"

I don't believe in heaven, but I still think Meems is going there. So fab.

That will be the first of many treasures then

Forgot to say it’s an amazing restoration job!

I tidied up the wire for the techno-airer and put a quick shelf above the tumble dryer, and I put some nice multi-coloured storage boxes up there.

I'll put a few shelves above the sink too. This laundry room had become a bit of a dumping ground and I'm aiming to make it a little bit better organised, clear some of the surfaces (like that windowsill) and just generally more useful as a room. I also want to keep my handtools and my cordless power tools in there rather than in the shed.

I also quickly bodged some sealant around the door frame (that's an external door) as there were some significant gaps between the frame and the bricks - big enough to see daylight through. It might just be wishful thinking but it does seem to feel just a bit warmer down there now

I was delighted with the coloured boxes, a nice splash of bright colour.

I would have to insist those labels were removed.

Seconded.

Good work.

I might just turn the boxes round so the label faces the wall

Omg, please remove them or my label spidey sense will be twitching from 15,000km away.

Make sure you peel them like 60% of the way and then leave a ragged papery residue for the rest

Those should peel off easily. I have a LOT (a lot a lot) of storage boxes, and the labels are always made to be removed.

Though GooGone is always a handy thing to have in the house anyway.

Or just leave one little sliver of label. Enough so that every time you walk past it, you think "I should sort that out"

I always just leave them, I figure that removing the labels might harm their future value as collectors items.

I pity the poor wage slave that has to pile of the plastic tubs out of the local Poundstretcher and line them up neatly on the street, only to have to drag them all back inside at the end of the day.

I always imagine old Arkwright from Open All Hours packing up in the twilight

I put some more shelves up this weekend, above the laundry sink, so now we don't have to keep buckets and things in the sink. It makes the whole room so much more usable.

I also further tidied up the power cables, and ran the vent hose from the tumble dryer to the window a bit more neatly. I then used some draught excluders to cover the gap around the window frame. The final thing to do now is fix the leaking taps in the laundry.

I mounted the stair gate properly (this is to stop the dogs getting into the pantry) and removed the broken old one.



Annoyingly they are the 'glued on thin papery' kind of label that rips super easily and not the 'plastic-y easy peel' kind.

It’s ok, we’ll wait.

Not much DIY this weekend but I did attempt to fix the stiff, dripping cold water tap in the laundry. I recall putting in a new washer in a rush some years ago, which didn't really solve the problem - the solution at the time was just to turn it super super tight and then use it vary rarely after that.

This time round I replaced the washer again, although it didn't look in too bad a shape, and this time I tried to do it more thoroughly so also replaced the rubber o-ring, and lubricated the moving parts, and even used a reseating tool to try and get the washer to sit nicely. I also used a little bit of thread tape and replaced the gaskety type washer at the top of the screw thread.

Did it work? Well It moves more nicely not but still takes AGES to stop dripping and unless I turn the tap super tight shut, I can hear and feel that it's still (effectively) flowing as I can hear it and also feel pressure if I put my finger over the tap hole. After SWEARING and repeatedly turning the tap on and off it seemed to do what I wanted. Longer term, if this hasn't done the job I'll just try and install a new tap or maybe just get a man in to do it.

I Araldited the cover back on to the piezo button on the hob. It's only been falling off every day for about the last 20 years.

That was not the job for which I mixed the Araldite, but I had a tiny bit left over and it seemed a shame to waste it.

I did some work at my sister in laws new house this weekend. In the boiler in the kitchen must have replaced a bigger one as it has made a mess of the wall (like this when she moved in). She wanted some cladding / shelves done like at ours so we sorted it as a moving in prezzie.

…reveal!

T’other way

Top job that mate. I've got a ton of jobs here I can't be arsed with so just let me know when you're free.

Will do, let me know when you have loads of money

I'm not impressed by the small and neat scattering of tools. To do a job like this I really expect shit to be scattered everywhere.

The chaos was in the garden. Lost count of how many times I misplaced my tape measure and pencil too.

One of the legs on Craster's BBQ (that has been living at my house for around a decade) broke, so I fixed it.



I ran out of woodstain, bet I can't get the same colour again

Good DIY'ing gents

Everyone needs to ignore the fact that the castors I bought were too big.

Craster's Castors

Craster’s castoff castors

We've finally found someone who will replace our garage roof! Rather than come and take measurements then disappear into the aether.

That means a skip arriving on Friday, before the man rips the current roof off the following Monday, so we've spent this weekend moving things outside which will survive, building a rubbish pile, ripping old units off the walls, etc. It hasn't been so empty and tidy in probably 7 years, we'd forgotten just how big it is.

More excited about this than the kitchen if I'm honest.

Best bit was finding that two of the wall cabinets were hung via a strip of carpet gripper. Maximum points for ingenuity but fucking hell I'm glad we never put anything valuable or breakable in them.

Is it staying as a garage/storage or do you have other plans for the space?

It's staying as a garage, hopefully we'll keep it better organised in future; it increasingly became an unnavigable dumping ground, especially as we moved things to try and stop them getting wet.

We're going to change the up-and-over door to outward opening normal doors which will help too, the current one would collide with the racking if we put it where we intended. And it'll be nice to not need to duck the whole time.

Have you tried not being so tall?

Is that barbecue resting in the wooden countertop? With no heat gap or insulation?

Hell yes it is, I'm no pussy.

(I may add some heat rope at some point).

To lasso cows with?

Only the hot ones.

Then you'll have to do the whole thing in a different shade.

Lady T saw some DIY racking for tote (large plastic tub) storage on Facebook and asked me to build a couple to slot into two little nooks in our garage.

I quite enjoyed doing it, and now just need to put them into position and secure them to the wall.

I hope that it helps kickstart the process of sorting out the absolute dumping ground that is our garage. I have a feeling I will be building more of these as we go.

I left the labels on just for Mimi and Zardoz
X

*twitch*