Cutting Tiles
Posted: Fri 14 November, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work 5 Comments »As I’ve said before, Herself has taken this week off work as annual leave. One of her main goals during this week has been to do the tiling of the final bedroom floor – we did the floors of the other two bedrooms before we moved in, as well as the living room, and didn’t expect to use the third bedroom for a while, so we didn’t do the tiling there.
Of course, plans then changed, and the second bedroom (which we initially were using) became the office, and so we set ourselves up in the main bedroom with the untiled floor. And so it’s been ever since. Tiling the floor has always been in the plan, it’s just that while we’ve been using it, well, the tiling hasn’t happened.
So earlier this week, Herself did all the floor tiles that didn’t need any cutting – the great majority of the work – and we hired an industrial tile-cutter to do the cuts. The tiles, as I may’ve said before, are 10mm thick fully-vitrified ceramic floor tiles – in other words, they’re tough as fuck, and a normal tile-cutter doesn’t even scratch the things. So instead we have to hire the industrial variety with a water-cooled rotating blade – like a bloody big angle-grinder – in order to do the work.
And that’s fine – except when it turns out that the blade supplied with the cutter is, to be polite, blunt as fuck. (That’s far politer than what I was calling it last night)
Amazingly, I only broke two or three tiles with the bloody thing. It was jamming up three or four times per tile, needing to be reversed, or lifted, or pulled out, or sworn at – or all of the above, of course. So all told, the cutting of the (approximately) twenty tiles took nearly three hours, lots of swearing, and me getting piss-wet through (due to the water-cooling of the blade, which is basically just a pumped spray of water) and effing cold. Mid-November is emphatically not the time to be doing tile-cutting in an open garage.
Still, it’s done now – there’s only one more room that’ll need tiling at some point, and that’s the kitchen. But we need to decide what we’re doing in there first, so that won’t be ’til at least the middle of next year. The bedroom looks fantastic, even before the grouting of the tiles is completed, and it’ll make a big difference to the house.
Even better, it means we might be able to go back to sleeping in there tonight, once I/we’ve reassembled the bed, and moved the furniture back in…
Domestic Injuries
Posted: Wed 6 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, House Work 4 Comments »So yes, yesterday we were supposed to be up in the loft, sorting out insulation and loft boards. The plans changed quite quickly, however, when Herself was coming up the ladder to the loft (I was already up there) and because I wasn’t holding the bottom, it slipped and she came back down to floor level.
Fortunately, she’s not badly hurt – she managed to dislocate two toes, and whacked her elbow quite badly, but that’s the limit of the injuries. The A&E department put the toes back in place, so they’re not too bad now, and it’s more a matter of “just” the bruises now for her to deal with.
And now we’ve added “proper loft ladder” to the purchase list before we go back up there.
Insulated Cavities
Posted: Tue 5 August, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Green, House Work 2 Comments »Today we’ve been getting cavity-wall insulation sorted.
For whatever reason, the previous occupants never bothered with it, so it was something that needed to be done and as a result we got a quote from the HEAT project for doing the cavity-wall, and upgrading the loft insulation.
Theoretically, today was the day for getting both things done, but a small incident with Herself (of which more later) meant that we’ve put off the loft insulation upgrade for a while, but still got the cavity-wall stuff done.
It’s taken a couple of hours, and been bloody noisy, but at least the job’s done now. And once the loft’s upgraded as well, the house should be much warmer (or at least lose a lot less heat) than it did last winter. It’ll be interesting to see what difference it makes, anyway.
Mowing
Posted: Wed 14 May, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, House Work 5 Comments »Last week, we decided to get someone in to do the mowing of the grass in our garden. It’s something I’ve been doing, but it takes up a large amount of time on a weekend when we could be doing other things – sorting out the veg patch, for example. The entire garden is something like 8,000ft² (roughly 165′ x 65′, which is just over 10,000ft², but there’s other stuff in there than just grass, so I reckon it comes down to about 8,000ft²)
So we got a guy round on Friday to have a look, and he quoted us £30 to do the entire thing – mow it, strim the edges, and clear it all up. Not bad at all – yes sure, we could get someone cheaper (as Lionel pointed out elsewhere) but for the moment we’ll see how we do with this guy.
He turned up yesterday when we were both out, so I came home to a fully mowed garden. And he’s done a fantastic job – everything’s been done, the mowing, the strimming – even the dog toys were tidied away, (with the exception of one tennis ball that died – hardly a worry) and all the clippings plonked into our compost bins.
All in all, £30 well spent, in my opinion. Although we may need to buy a couple more compost bins before long.
Norfolk Weekend
Posted: Sun 13 April, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, Green Garden, House Work, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s been a funny weekend, really – I haven’t had the time (or inclination) to be writing stuff for D4D™, as we’ve been fairly busy, yet it doesn’t feel like we’ve been busy enough to have a decent excuse.
Still, we’ve been getting a fair amount done.
Friday night was a social evening for a local charity connected (tangentially) to Herself’s work, doing a wine-tasting event – although it was a bit of a bummer to be the designated driver for the evening, as it meant I didn’t get to do any of the tasting!
Saturday sort of slipped away, really – doing a number of housey things, including fitting a new doorbell (we haven’t had one since we moved in, although the old bell-push was still on the door, which led to lots of annoyed delivery people) and just general domestic rubbish – shopping, sorting out plans for the weekend, that kind of thing.
Today we’ve been doing more stuff in the garden, including planting a whole bundle of veg in the veg patch (admittedly, that was mainly Herself) and sorting out some issues with our various water butts and the like. Oh, and I’ve spent some time putting together the basics for a new site, getting it all set up and ready to go.
So – busy, but not massively so. Just a fairly occupied weekend.
Finishing Off
Posted: Sat 8 March, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »This weekend is primarily going to be spent finishing off the main bits in the bathroom. Yes, that means tiling. And painting. Joy.
But still, at least it means it’ll be done. The tiling is the main job (and something Herself is damn good at – I’ll just be being the labour, putting adhesive on tiles, getting covered in grout/adhesive, and that kind of thing) so that’s (hopefully) going to be completed today, and then probably first coats of paint tomorrow.
I’m sure there’ll be other stuff to get done as well, but at least this way we’re getting there, and the job might just be finished off by the time we go away on Friday…
Done and Dusted
Posted: Sun 2 March, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »At last, the major works on the bathroom are complete – and its a big difference to how it was.
The new suite is installed, the shower’s in, the new cupboards are done, and today we’ve been shoving all the remaining rubbish into a skip, so that’ll be gone tomorrow too.
We’ve still got the tiling and painting to do, as well as putting in a shower curtain, but the massive majority of the work has now been done. It’s a good feeling, and it’s been a massive (and positive) change to the house.
Hopefully now the animals will also calm down again, with all the disruption over and done with.