Building Work – In Progress

Posted: Tue 12 February, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, House Work | Leave a comment »

Well, it’s all happening.

Bathroom mid-work

The dividing wall’s gone, one of the doorways is gone and waiting to be blocked up, the shower cubicle is gone. Most of the rubble is also gone. The toilet and sink are still intact, and the bath was knackered anyway, so we don’t care about that.

And Hound is out in the car, barking at horses as they go past…

Fenciful Thinking

Posted: Mon 14 January, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, House Work | 6 Comments »

One of the jobs for this year is going to be the painting of all our garden fence, sheds, compost bins etc. As part of that process, we decided we needed to know how many fence panels and so on we’ve got, so I went out and counted them over the weekend.

Oh dear.

It turns out we’ve got no less than 97 (Yes, ninety-fucking-seven) fence panels to paint. Plus the posts in between them, of course. Then there’s four compost bins, two sheds, a normal gate and a five-bar gate, and (possibly) the chicken coop.

All told, we’ve worked out it’s not going to be far short of 100 litres of creosote/preservative/whatever.

Interior

Posted: Sun 13 January, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, House Work, Photography | Leave a comment »

And as well as finalising the room moves, we’ve also started the job of putting up various pictures and photos in the house, which has certainly contributed to making it feel more like “home” than “house”.

Hey, it’s only taken six months.

There’s still another fifteen or so photos to put up, but at least we’ve now put up all the ones we had specially framed earlier in the year (And yes, pedants, I do mean 2007) along with a couple of others in other rooms. A big job all told, but it’s started now, which is something at least.

2007 Review

Posted: Mon 31 December, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, House Purchase, House Work, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

In a lot of ways, 2007 has been a very long year – yet in others it seems to have raced past.

It’s been a year of many changes too – just before 2007, we moved to Norfolk, and now we’ve bought a place there too. So two moves in thirteen months, as well as doing the initial preparation on the new place (and continuing to do other work on it since moving in) and the work on the garden, and getting a mortgage for the first time, along with a whole bundle of bits that make me look a whole lot more grown-up than I did this time last year. Oh yeah, and three chickens.

Along the way, I’ve managed to stay in the same workplace all year, but also done a whole bundle of work for smaller clients, which has (in general) gone really well, with the exception of payment hassles from one client. But all told, a busy and fairly successful year, which will be the foundation for a lot of work in 2008. I’m going to be changing main workplaces in 2008 as well, but that’s something for another post.

During the year I’ve also bought my first car, and already added 15,000 miles to it – and there’s already a lot more driving planned for 2008, including a trip to Ireland in June, which reminds me, I must check my car insurance policy at some point and double-check the mileage on it, as well as the cover for non-UK driving. Still, that’s something for Jan 2nd, or sometime soon after.

It’s been a busy year, and I think 2008 will be busier – but hopefully a bit calmer at the same time. Lots of things to do, but the plan is definitely to have more leisure time (or at least time to get out and do other stuff) too, so let’s see how that goes. I’m vaguely optimistic…

Hallway

Posted: Thu 13 December, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, House Work | Leave a comment »

I’ve mentioned this in passing a couple of times this week, so figured I’d really best get round to explaining.

Up until now, the hallway in our house has been in need of decoration. It was a grungy sludge-green with marks of damp (following on from the pre-purchase flood, mainly- which I realise now I’ve never actually properly written about on here) which made the entire room seem really dark.

It’s always been due for redecoration, but because of other plans it’s been delayed. These other plans included moving the radiator, and installing a new vertical rad instead of the existing horizontal one as we need the wall-space for bookshelves’n’shit. The radiator finally got moved/installed a couple of weeks back, so it became time to do the redecoration.

Obviously the plan was to do the entire thing last weekend, but because of the bell-end neighbours antics Saturday got written off on the decoration front, so it all got a bit delayed. All the same, Sunday was spent getting it all sorted out, and painting the entire room with two coats of white to cover over the grotendous green. All told, it was pretty successful, and just the white made the entire room seem about four times larger than it had been previously.

Then this week we’ve spent two evenings putting on the final colour (one coat per evening) which is a pale yellow. While not my initial choice- I was aiming for something far brighter, and would’ve been wrong- it seems to really work well, so that’s good. And then we’ve also moved in the bookcases, and managed to get all my books onto the shelves, so it looks really good in the hallway now.

Even better, I’ve got all my books back (well, with the exception of the two box-loads that’ll be going to one of the local charity shops) so I’m going to spend the next few weeks re-reading some old friends, some of which I haven’t even seen since November last year. But that’s a post for another time.

It’s another job off the list, and it’s been done by the end of the year, which was always the target. So yes, overall we’re pretty happy with the entire thing.

All quiet on the home front

Posted: Tue 11 December, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

A day at home today – working on a client website and visiting said client with a progress and “future stuff” meeting, which was very promising. Always a good way to spend the day.

In amidst that little lot, I’ve also bought some extra bits we needed for decorating the hallway (a whole separate post, which I promised a couple of days ago and still haven’t got round to doing) and ordering a new desk for when we sort out the bedroom/office stuff. (probably either between Christmas and New Year, or early in ’08) And yes, there’s another incredulous post about customer services that’s coming up, thanks to the desk ordering process. Still, that’s for later, or another day.

Oh, and we’ve also completed the painting of the hallway, so that’s another job off the list. Yay, go us.

But because of all that, it means that things chez D4D™ are quiet today. Normal service will probably be resumed tomorrow.

Power Struggle

Posted: Mon 10 December, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work | 6 Comments »

On Saturday one of our bell-end neighbours decided to cut down one of his trees. In the process, the tree fell in the wrong direction, right into the overhead power lines. Rather than pulling them right down, though, it knocked one loose, which then swung round in the wind and kept on connecting with the other overhead lines, making for a very pretty firework display, and some very dodgy power. Of course, we just turned everything off at the main fuse-board, but it really put the mockers on the plans we’d had for the weekend. (of which more later)

As it turned out, we ended up calling the fire brigade, as the overhead lines were sparking badly, and directly over everyone’s oil tanks – as well as the sparks and arcing happening all the way out to the main road. We’d also called the electricity people at the same time, and generally dealt with everything about it – the bell-end neighbour was worse than useless about the entire thing.

The electricity people took a good three hours to turn up (Tossers) which left the fire brigade and police very pissed-off, but there we go. That’s something for them to deal with. In the end, the power was completely out from 11.30am through ’til 9.30pm. We went out in the end, did a bundle of shopping and so on, so it wasn’t a complete loss of a day, but it was still a complete pain in the arse.

What did amuse us, however, was that once the power was all back on, one of the electricity guys came round to check all was well. We had a chat about the events of the day, and it turns out that bell-end neighbour is in for a right shock- (pardon the pun) because it was his own fault, it’s likely that he’s going to get charged for:

  • All the time the electricity people were on site (about seven hours, all told, on weekend rates)
  • The cost of the new lines they’ve had to put up
    and
  • The cost of them coming out again to replace all the insulators and gubbins that’re now all scorched and in need of replacement because of the events of the weekend

So in short, he’s going to end up with a bill for a good few thousand pounds, when he could’ve spent £100 and had a tree-surgeon do the work safely.

Ouch.

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