My kids about to go knock over a liquor store…
Gangsta
Orange Traineeeeees
I finally got a pair of orange trainers and ohhhh my god are they orange! They don’t look so bad in the picture but once you get outside in them they’re bright. We went for lunch with Erika and Keith and I wore them. At the end of lunch I went for a wee. On the way back from my wee I heard some woman on a table remark to her companions “There they are…that’s the man with the trainers”
Windows
I wanted to make some rudimentary window frames on my workshop. Since I heinously miscalculated the amount of really quite expensive Larch I would need I managed to end up with quite a bit leftover. The Larch that I have leftover is currently being used as a temporary workbench and I have plans to build a wheelie bin enclosure with it, a pet shelter in the garden and the sides and maybe roof for a wood store. Yeah, I really have that much left over!
But in the meantime, I thought I’d use it for my “window frames”. The only thing left was deciding to whether or not to have a top framey bit hangovery bit. So I tried one of each.
The one above is kinda square and flush. The one below has a little hangover flourish at the top. It’s also the design that we all prefer so I’ll be changing the one above…when things get a bit warmer.
Turkey and Ham Pie
As is tradition after one cooks a Xmas dinner and has loads of food left over – one makes a pie!
Tasted fantastic. Well impressed.
Tetris off 2023
Charlie and I generally have a bit of competitive Tetris when he comes over. This year we decided to make it a formal Xmas thing. The only problem being that we were pretty drunk when we decided to formalise things. We definitely decided to do the competition over 5 games but we can’t remember if it was the best of 5 [ i.e. first to 3 ] or purely based on who got the highest score.
So now we reckon it was a draw since he won 3 out of 5 but I got the highest score.
Plough
At the end of each term everyone tends to finish at lunchtime so off we pop to The Plough for lunch and beers. The Plough is great as it is walkable, you can book a table for four plus a dog and they do fantastic salt and pepper chicken with half rice half chips and curry sauce.
The end of the Summer term was a bit of a bust as both the kids refused to come despite it being a family tradition so this year I made it clear we were *all* going.
Good enough for winter
Since the weather is starting to cool down quite significantly in the UK it was a final rush to get the workshop weatherproof, or watertight if you prefer.
The cladding turned up about a week earlier than expected and it coincided with some good weather in the UK so I dropped pretty much everything in my life and cracked on with it.
Putting up 3m lengths of cladding on the walls on my own was a bit tricky. I ended up utilising some 4×2 of various lengths to act like a second person helping me. It was slow going at first but once into the groove it worked out pretty well. The first “panel” that I clad…
… probably took me about 3 hours. By the time I got to the last panel it took me about 40 minutes. I always start anything new on this “hidden” side by the bushes so I can make all my mistakes well out of view.
Doing the top bit of the cladding, above the oak beam, was a bit tricky. I had to cut angles on each side to tie in with the shape of the stud walls and the roof beam. I then had to climb up on my platform and pin them in. The very top ones were put in using a ladder. The only good thing about it was as the cladding got higher up the frame it was also lighter to carry.
When I first started this project I cut almost everything with a table saw. It’s safe, accurate and pretty easy. By the end I was a dab hand with my angle measuring thing above and a skill saw. Went so much faster and there’s so much more flexibility in the cuts one can make.
I looked into various garage door options. The one that stood out to me was Crocodile. They’re not the cheapest out there by a long way but they do seem to be the best. They sent somebody around to inspect the site. They sent another fella around to properly measure up and work out all the details and finally they sent out two fine fellas that did the installation. Fortunately we could mount the door on the back of the frame so we managed to get past the problem of my door not being quite square which is something I was worried about. The garage door fitters even pointed out why I’ve been having scuffing problems with the doors on my garage and told me how to fix it.
The end result…
It’s still very much a work in progress. I need to add some fascia boards to the front and back. I need to add guttering down the sides and some downpipes into a soakaway. Need to fit a wood burning stove in there and also seal/paint the floor. Then I can start filling it with toys! But the happy point now is that I can sit back and wait for the weather to warm up before doing all that kind of stuff.
Midlands Ho!
Paul and I rocked down to the Midlands to celebrate Jason being a year older than us again for the next 7 or 8 months. The usual carnage took place. On the Saturday we had a lunch reservation for quite early, about 11.30 I think. So we were all up and about. We had a light breakfast. I settled into the best chair in the world with a superb view of the rolling countryside and started reading a bit of my book. Paul…in his inimitable fashion piped up “Is it too early for a glass of wine then?”
The first ever proper Magic Monday
My daughter tends to finish college quite early on Mondays so we decided to start a new tradition. Inspired by the Salt and Pepper chicken balls that we both love so much from Nana Pat’s Chinese takeaway we now intend travel to our local Chinese on the lunchtime of the first Monday of every month. The first Monday arrived the other day. The first ever Magic Monday. Every month we intend to treat ourselves to Salt and Pepper Chicken Strips [ not as good as the balls from Nana’s chippy but still pretty good ] and a main course with noodles. The hope is to try a different dish every month but I’m pretty sure we’ll quickly revert to Crispy Chilli Chicken.
Roof…we have a roof!
Given that it was starting to get cold and that the slates were working out incredibly expensive aaaaand I had six rolls of felt in my garage I decided to buy some OSB and felt my roof to get me through the winter.
Here it is with all the OSB up and the beginnings of a pretty bad bit of felting being done. Getting the OSB and felt up was very hard work and I couldn’t have accomplished it without the help of Oli.
After finishing the felting I took the waterproof membrane and started stapling it over the stud walls.
The next step was putting the windows in. The windows were bought off eBay for £70. I just chose the windows that were the cheapest and in roughly the size that I wanted then I built the stud walls to fit the windows.
This was about the time storm Ciaron made an appearance so I started running around the workshop and tacking fence panels up to protect the membrane. I also added some batons to the membrane up high in the triangle bits to keep everything intact. As I write this it’s all still in place and the cladding should arrive in 2-3 weeks to “finish” the outside.
Another escape room
This time we took Amelia with us since she wasn’t off sunning herself in Spain. We did the Wild West escape in Liverpool which was pretty good fun.
After successfully escaping within the time limit and with all the gold we went to a Mexican restaurant on Bold St for a seriously awesome meal. La Parrilla served the beer in frozen/chilled glasses and they went down exceptionally well. The food was fantastic and we all had a great time before taking the bustrain home.
Nail Gun
I have my own nail gun. It’s a little one for doing quite small jobs like pinning T&G to the outside of the OG shed, maybe a light bit of furniture work or attaching a skirting board. What I needed was a kick ass nail gun capable of firing 90mm nails into a rafter and holding up the roof of my new building.
Fortunately – as always – Hodgsons had one.
This is by far the best tool I’ve ever hired. It’s heavy, it’s loud it’s dangerous. It’s just every man’s dream.
I was almost sad when I had to return it to the hire place. Fortunately I’ll probably rent it again when it comes time to putting the cladding up. I could use a hammer but at £24 quid for a days rental why would I bother with a hammer?
Workshop progress
Coming along nicely. All the stud walls are in, the ridge beam is up and all rafters are in place.
The next step will be to put a roof on. One option is a membrane followed by shingles or slates. The other quick and cheap option is to temporarily put some OSB up and felt it, then next Summer do a proper job. After that I’ll have to put a membrane on the walls and then clad to entire building in either Oak, Larch or Cedar.
Toad in the hole
I love a good Yorkshire Pudding and since I had a bag of good sausages left over from a recent butchers trip I decided to knock up a Toad in the hole with proper sausages for Em, Oli and myself – and a vegetarian Toad in the hole for Amelia.
Turned out pretty well I reckon. Tasted good too – but not so great trying to eat leftovers next day by microwaving it. Batter does not take too well to microwaving
Square Twist Nails
I used some rafter hangers to put up the mezzanine in my new workshop. Initially I just fixed them in place with some 40mm 3.5 screws. However on the rafter hanger was written to use square twist nails. Being a bit of a novice at this I’d never heard of square twist nails so I decided to investigate.
I bought a couple of bags from my local hardware store and set to it.
They are an absolute thing of beauty. They twist as you hammer them in and everything! Those rafter hangers are not coming out again!
Northcote
Back in time when I was in London every week a gang of us would often go out and eat in swanky restaurants. I still often go out to swanky restaurants up North but not with the London crew. Martin was one of the London gang and he now lives up North too but we hadn’t seen each other for absolutely ages so we decided to lunch at Northcote and have a catch up.
Definitely worth it
Bamboo
On the same day that I finished my plumbing [ see previous post ] the ground workers turned up to dig up the bamboo. This bamboo was given to us by our neighbour about 15 years ago. “That’ll make a great replacement for the spots where the hawthorn has died” we thought. Turns out it was a spectacularly bad idea to plant it in our fence line. Spreads like a bastard. Grew under the path and started coming up in the garden. When I built my front shed I had a 1.5 tonne mini excavator that I thought I’d use to dig up the bamboo. It didn’t even come close. Didn’t budge it at all.
The builders turned up with a massive piece of machinery. Lifted up my path and got started. It took us a good while to find my electricity/water/data cables but once we did the digger driver was a proper pro and dug around them perfectly.
We ended up with two huge holes where the bamboo used to be. The next day the ground workers got busy with the dumper truck and brought over load after load of soil and filled in the holes again. I’m now waiting for some replacement hawthorn bushes to get planted and some grass seed to go down and all will be right with the world and I can stop worrying about invasive bamboo.
Plumbing
When we had the extension done we got a plumber in to do some stuff. Turns out he’s an absolute bell end. Monumental dick. Nearly ended up costing me a new boiler because he couldn’t be arsed flushing the system. Anyway. One of the other things he did was to fit a stop cock so that I could turn off my outside water supply when the weather gets toward freezing.
The input to the stopcock is a 15mm pipe. The output from the stopcock is a 25mm MDPE pipe that goes down the garden. So he fitted a 25/15mm stopcock. All good so far. The only minor problem is that the stopcock is unidirectional. It’s designed to stop the flow of water FROM a 25mm pipe to a 15mm pipe. The exact opposite of the situation we have. The upshot of this is that I could not stop the flow of water down the garden. This wasn’t such a big deal, I could cope with it, until the builders next door offered to remove my bamboo problem [ more on this later ] with a massive digger. The bamboo is growing directly above my water pipe and I was pretty convinced they were going to damage my pipe and my only solution would be to turn off the main stopcock in the house and we wouldn’t be able to use water until the pipe was repaired.
What the plumber should have done is put in a standard 15mm stopcock on the 15mm pipe and then just fitted an adaptor from the output of the stopcock onto the 25mm pipe. Piece of cake. No problem. Have it done in 5 minutes. Except of course since the pipe work has been fitted we’ve built a kitchen around it which makes access really really hard.
I had to chop the crap out of my kitchen cabinet, fit a series of 90 degree bends to avoid the waste pipe and introduce a 15/25 adaptor which can’t be seen in the picture above. All went pretty well until I had to introduce the adaptor. Getting a clean cut on a 15mm pipe is easy. inserting the pipe support on a 15mm pipe is easy. Everything to do with a 25mm pipe is really really hard. I couldn’t get a square cut with the cheap pipe cutters that the nobhead plumber left behind. I struggled to push the pipe insert far enough in. Both of which combined to give me a leak. Ultimately I bought a new pair of ratcheting pipe cutters which gave me an excellent cut on the pipe. I then fired up my heat gun on the MDPE to warm it slightly and make it just a touch more flexible so that I could get the pipe insert in.
Now the job is complete. I have a stopcock to stop the water going outside. The builders dug up the bamboo and didn’t even come close to my water pipe. It’s all been a massive waste of time.
Stud Walls
The time has come to build the stud walls and give some more rigidity to my oak frame. We got a delivery of timber and had to move it from the drop off point beyond my gates into my garage where we’d be storing it.
Oli and I did the manual labour since he was on Summer holidays. We started off carry 2 lengths of 4×2. Then I carried 3 pieces in one go. Naturally Oli then had to carry 4. So I moved 5. With 6 pieces of timber left Oli went for it. It all slipped out of his hands and he struggled to get through the gate but he made it in the end. Took him twice as long as if he’d taken them one at a time though
In the past when I’ve been making stud walls I just kind of eyeballed the right angles with varying results. But when I was making my bookcases I started to appreciate the beauty of a proper right angle. So I got some 90 degree clamps. I made use of them on each stud wall I made and they turned out pretty well.
As I put my first nicely square stud wall in it highlighted that the entire frame had shifted at some point and was now kinda leaning backwards a bit. So I dug out some ground anchors and a ratchet strap and brought the frame forwards by a few degrees. The ratchet strap would have to stay in place until I had stud walls everywhere. It was there for a couple of weeks and it was a happy moment when I eventually disconnected the strap and nothing fell over!
The day eventually came when I had all the stud walls in place and I could get rid of the ratchet strap and finally give my grass a proper cut.
It’s difficult to make out in the picture above but I’ve also put the rafters in for my mezzanine. So what’s the first thing everyone does when building a mezzanine? Lob a palette up there and then climb up a ladder onto the wobbly palette then call your son and say “hey look out of your window” and then wave at him from the end of your garden. That’s the first thing everyone does right?
Cambridge 34 years on
For the past decade or so all the old Xerox boys have tried to meet up in September to celebrate being another year older, wiser and still alive. We’ve lost a couple along the way and some have just drifted off but we always get a good turnout when we meet up
This year’s restaurant was Thaikuhn and we all had a wonderful time except Scouse who nearly got battered in the toilet when he flicked his wet hands in the face of a complete stranger who had a passing resemblance to Dickie. There’s always something that goes wrong!
For the past few years I’ve stayed in one of the colleges. I’m a bit dubious about going back to Sidney Sussex college after the fire alarm/smoke detector incident so this year a bunch of us stayed at Christs, which I argue is a better place anyway.
