Silence

Silence.  Did I ever tell you how much I appreciate odd moments of silence?  There is so much noise in our lives:  radio, television, the neighbours, traffic, stuff on MP3 players.  Sometimes, it is only when the noise stops that you can hear yourself think or listen to the wind in the trees or the birds in the garden.

Silence, is also relative.  In the background, right now, I can hear our new washing machine whooshing away quietly.  The last one shredded a bearing back in March and gradually got louder and louder on the spin cycle.  When I called him out, our marvelous washing-machine-repair-man told me that it wasn't worth fixing because the parts would cost almost as much as a new machine, but that we could run it until it died, which might take several months and be a bit messy at the end.  His solution to the noise was "Close the kitchen door".  (For his honesty and that call out, I paid £15.)

A week ago, we decided that enough was enough.  While it still worked, the old machine was deafeningly loud.  A quick trawl on the internet and two shop visits later, we'd bought an almost-like-for-like new machine:  7kg capacity; separate temperature control (so that you can run every wash on cold water - as we do - if you want that facility); handwash woolens cycle; everything mechanical, with no mother-board to go expensively wrong.

It arrived on Friday and was immediately plumbed in and tested.  It is so quiet.  For the first time in months, I can be in the kitchen during a spin cycle without risking hearing damage.  In fact, when a wash finished a few minutes ago, it took me a while to realise it had stopped!  It is that quiet.  Near silence is indeed appreciated.

- Pam

Not a good evening

Ever heard a tale about how bad things come in threes? Well this is one of those.

The only thing I had on my mind, when I left work on Thursday, was whether I should buy a 16GB iPhone4 or hold out for another month so that I could afford to buy the 32GB version.  My inner geek says "get the one with bigger storage", but I am about £40 short.  I drove home scheming:  the arguments in my head running along the lines of "if I take £40 from this account, I could get the phone now and pay it back next month" or "why don't I just charge it and finish paying it off next month?".  (I quickly shushed the latter argument.)  Another part of my brain was arguing:  "Why not settle for the 16GB? Do I really need 32GB of storage?".  It lost. 

Holding of purchasing for another month was still winning later on my way to a pub quiz, when I turned the car around outside the pub.  Then I heard it.  A metallic crunching noise, followed by "clatter, clatter".  I quickly parked the car up.  I first thought I'd damaged the steering (I'd had it on full lock); no, that felt fine.  Wheels, then?  They were still turning.  I decided it had to be a wheel bearing.  First thing wrong.

I went to the quiz, knowing that I could drive home with a broken wheel bearing, even if it wasn't safe to drive on the motorway to work.  We won.  And promptly donated our winnings to charity.  (You have to if you're known to be a friend of the quiz master.) 

Afterwards, S offered to shadow my drive home, in case something happened on the way.  Turned out, he didn't need to.  The Toy rolled about 2 feet before something seized up and he stopped.  So I phoned the RAC, switched off the engine, switched on the hazard lights and settled down to a long-ish wait.  When he arrived, the RAC mechanic determined it wasn't a wheel bearing.  It was the clutch.  The self-same clutch I'd had replaced 6 weeks ago.

(Incidentally, the most bizarre thing happened while I was waiting. A car pulled up beside me to ask directions.  Given that the only way to identify that my car was possibly occupied were its flashing hazards, I was a bit surprised to say the least.  Still don't know why they didn't walk into the pub and ask them.  It was fully lit.)


Watching as the mechanic hitched the Toy up to tow home, I noticed a long scratch on the passenger side.  Some bastard had keyed the Toy while I was in the pub.  Second thing wrong.


Got home well after midnight.  DH greeted me with a hot drink.  Then noticed a puddle of water on the oak floor in the hall.  Underneath the radiator.  A radiator that had suspicious looking rust marks down one edge.  It was obviously leaking from a seal near the valve you'd use to bleed it of air.  We could see the water drops forming.  I switched the radiator's thermostat to "off" and positioned a tupperware container under the drips.  Third thing wrong.

Definitely not a good evening.

In the morning, the RAC towed me to the garage, while DH followed and then drove me into work.  All I know is that the Toy will take several days to fix, so I've arranged a hire car for my trip to Site next week.  And we'll get the plumber in to fix the radiator next week.  It's still dripping a little, but not enough to get close to filling the Tupperware box.

- Pam

Random. Just Random.

In the things I wish I could remember department:

I wish I could remember how to reset the clock on the stove.  (Or, alternatively, what we did with the manual.)  I'm sure I used to know but it isn't intuitive and it's been 7 years since there was power to the clock and ovens.  (We used the gas hob.)  The electrician has wired it up temporarily for us and I've used both ovens, but I'd really, really like to set the clock to the correct time.  I've emailed the manufacturer - fingers crossed they can help me.

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Football

Have you been watching the World Cup?  Yesterday was a rather nail-biting day for me.  I'm cursed with having two national teams to follow:  Australia and England.  England needed to win to progress to the knock-out stages.  If Australia were to progress, they needed both a big win (with a goal difference of 3 or more) AND either Germany or Ghana to win the other match in their group. 

The canteen at work has been showing all the daytime matches on their big TV.  The England match was at 3pm so a group of us went down to watch.  (By the end of the match, there was 200 people in there.)  It was nerve-wracking!  I think I swore more in those 90+ minutes than I have ever sworn in the office.  Fortunately, England played like a team, defended well and won by a goal to nil. It was the best they've played in this competition - their match against the USA was OK but they looked nervous, while their game against Nigeria was dire.

Australia's game was at 7.30pm and not broadcast on terrestrial TV, so I watched the German game.  It was so frustrating!  I have only managed to watch one out of the three Australian matches and I was hoping to watch this one.  No dice.  We won, with two good goals, but it wasn't enough to go through.

Congratulations to the American team for getting through to the last 16.

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In Other News...

Can't remember if I've told you but DH is working a temporary job and has been since the second week of May. It's for a contractor for London Transport, which means that every day is in a different location. It's shift work. The hours are awful.   And he has to get there by public transport so an 8 hour shift is really a minimum of an 11 hour day.  It's not in his field.  But any job is better than no job and he's happy to be earning some money.

- Pam

Cooking in the danger zone (and more house photos)

This evening, as I was cooking dinner, I kept banging into things.  It occurred to me, while my sandal caught on the shoe rack residing in front of the draining board, that I'm cooking in a danger zone.  Everything is temporarily in a different place to where it was before the building work started, and more and more things have found their way into the kitchen because there was nowhere else for them to go.

This is my kitchen at the moment - stove view:

That picture was taken before all the dust and a lot of the stuff migrated in. And as it is now...

Absolutely everything covered in dust and everything is in the way, including Spikey (the yucca plant), the uplighter that is our main source of light downstairs at the moment and the shoe rack that earlier tried to mate with my sandal.

Frankly, I'm just glad I can cook in this kitchen, even if it does mean moving everything out of the way and washing the dust off everything before I start cooking.  Tonight, I found myself in the crazy position of holding onto the microwave to prevent it banging against the hot cooking pot when the washing machine went into spin cycle.

Looking the other way:

Yes, everything ends up on the kitchen table, because there is nowhere else to put it.  We can't put it on the floor because the roof now has a tendency to leak in new and exciting places every time it rains.

One of the things that found it's way "into" the kitchen is a new doorway.  You may remember the original doorway was rather low. (Turned out to be at least 6 inches lower than a regular doorway.)  It was also, annoyingly off-centre when compared to the picture window on the other side of the kitchen.   When the builders stripped off the plaster, they found this:

The doorway was inserted into a much larger space, which looked like it had once been a glass door flanked by two smaller windows.  The lintel was miles up and very long.  If you look more closely, you can see an arch built above the existing doorway.

I asked the builder if he could move the doorway about a foot over to the right.  Two Mondays ago, I came home to find this:

and

The doorway had vanished.  Sorry, they're a little blurry.  (In case you're wondering, Spikey isn't sick.  He's been decapitated because he was much too top heavy and we're waiting for him to recover from the shock.   We chopped his "head" into two parts and both Baby Spike and Posh Spike are doing well, according to their recipients.)

I took those photos just before I rushed out the door to go to Site last Tuesday.  When I got back on Friday, the new doorway had been built.

And from inside the kitchen.

By this time next week, it should even have French doors on it!


- Pam

It pays to listen.

Sometimes Fate comes along and whispers in your ear.   If you don't listen, she goes away and, occasionally, comes back and belts you round the head with a rubber hammer until you pay attention.  That's what she's done to us today.  In our case, it was to do with the back door.

Our "back door" is a full height sliding window.  To my eyes, it's inside out - the sliding window runs along the outside moving from left to right, whilst the fixed window on the right is on the inside.  In Oz, the sliding window would run on the inside; on the outside, you'd have a sliding fly-wire screen door.  (I have to confess, I have fantasised about replacing what we have with a Australian-style one, complete with screen door.  Oh, how I'd love a fly-wire screen door to keep the bugs out.)

It has two locks.  For the last year (ish), I've struggled closing the top lock.  It was stiff, so I sprayed it with WD40.  Strangely, the lock moved fine when it was away from the door jamb.  After a couple of months, I think (the timeline is a bit hazy now), I worked out that the door needed to be slammed hard shut for that lock to work.  At least once, earlier this week, I gave up fighting with the top lock and just locked the lower one.

Yesterday, we had a mid afternoon appointment so the builders had to lock up.   Strangely, they left the top-lock's key in the lock, whereas the other one was hung up on its hook.  This morning, I discovered why.  They couldn't actually get the key disengaged from the lock.  It was dark when we got back yesterday, so at 7am this morning I decided to water the vegetable garden.  Only, I couldn't unlock the back door.  Nor could I get the keys out. An hour or so later, DH succeeded.  When we went out later, he locked up with a little bit of a struggle.

Obviously, at that stage, we weren't paying sufficient attention to Fate so she decided to step it up a gear.  I noticed that the top of the door wasn't as closed as the bottom.  Thus was born my first theory - that the door is hung inside out and the sliding door track is deteriorating in the weather.  We covered the track in WD40 and hoped it'd be enough to keep the door working until we could get the builders to take a look at it.  Wrong.

When the neighbour's BBQ smoke started drifting in this evening, we tried to close the door.  And failed.  Multiple times.  Sometimes, it was as if a stop had been placed in the door maybe half an inch before the jamb.  At other times, the door closed to within a millimetre or so of it's correct position - it looked closed  but the lower lock wouldn't engage (we didn't bother to try the top lock).  Overall, it was getting worse each time we tried shutting the door.  We began to get a little panicky.  We'd slam the door and it'd hit this invisible brake each time.

I watched DH as he absent mindedly bent down and tucked the outside rubber seal back against the glass.  And that's when it hit me.  The problem was caused by the inside rubber seal(!) at the point where the two windows are always crossed.  I took a good look at it and it wasn't just sticking out of it's housing, it was dangling.  D'oh!  The seal was getting caught between the two windows and preventing the door moving further forward.   (At this point, Fate put down her hammer.)

The challenge was to get the seal back between the window frame and the glass.  15 minutes of poking it with a ruler later, DH decided the only thing to do was to remove it.  Problem.  The seal was sticking out the other side of the door but, if he opened the door, it'd slip back behind the glass and be unreachable again.  He climbed over the 6ft tall garden gate to get to it.  It took another 10 minutes of poking and prodding before the seal was out and the door moving freely.

Right now,  I'm sure Fate is polishing her hammer.  The door is locked but the top lock still can't engage properly.  We aren't sure what she's still trying to tell us.  Do we need to rebuild the sill?  Does the window need to be re-sealed professionally, rehung and rebalanced?  Please don't tell us we need to replace the whole damn unit!

We'll throw ourselves on the mercy of the builders on Monday and hope they can work out what's wrong and how to fix it.  I'm all out of inspiration.

- Pam

And finally

Yes, we now have central heating!  The new boiler was connected on Thursday and the house is MUCH warmer.

- Pam

To the man who built the wardrobe in our back bedroom

Why?  What were you thinking?  Was it your first ever carpentry project?


Oh, and why did you use so many screws to fix it together?  Were you bollocked last time you built something - did it fall down(?) - so that you were afraid your missus would nag you to death if the wardrobe wasn't stable?  Either that, or were you on a promise that if you used up every screw in the packet, you might be on to a "winner"?  What else can explain the gazillion screws you used, whether suitable or not?  Why else were there masonry screws holding two bits of wood together?  Have a look at your handy work*:

Seriously, what were you thinking?  Even on the fascias you used three screws of varying sizes and types, plus the odd nail and wood glue!  And you fastened it to the floor, the brick wall, and the plasterboard ceiling.   

It took us** two days to demolish this!


- Pam






* This photo was taken after the "easy" part of the wardrobe was demolished.  Before we started, there were two long cupboards, plus the connecting cupboards across the top and assorted pine panels arranged on the wall between them all (the black marks are the screw holes for those).  If you look closely at the remaining wardrobe, you can see the chicken-pox of plastic covers he used to cover up all the screws.  There is no logic to the number of screws he used or the varieties he used - some were Philips-head, some were flat-head, some were masonry screws screwing two bits of wood together (huh?), some were wood screws (including wood screws anchoring panels into the wall, with and without rawlplugs) and a few were plasterboard screws fixing the wardrobe to the ceiling and to the floor.  Sometimes he used two screws on the same joint.  He also smothered virtually every join with wood-glue just in case.  And threw in the odd nail for good measure.


**  DH did most of the hard work.  I did a lot of unscrewing and plenty of fetching and carrying.

Another whine about feeling cold

It's cold.   We have no heating and haven't had since Monday morning, when the old boiler was removed.  It's so cold that when I zapped some rock-hard coconut oil in order to soften it so that I could make coconut rough, it returned to rock-hard in the 20 minutes it took to eat dinner.

I know the weather here is relatively mild compared to some parts of the world but our houses aren't designed to cope without some form of heating.  And it's turned decidedly wintry in the last week (it's snowed above 200 metres).  We have the added disadvantage of several small holes in the walls downstairs creating a gazillion drafts.  I've lived in cold houses before - my first two permanent homes in the UK didn't have central heating - however I'd forgotten what  it was like.  Both of those properties had some form of heating, just not in every room.  Not here.  Not now.  Not until (hopefully) tomorrow.

The new boiler is "in" but it hasn't, yet, been connected to the gas.  Almost all the new radiators are in position (the ones that aren't have to wait until after the new kitchen is installed).

I can't wait.  Whilst running hot water would be nice, warm rooms would be lovely! (We have an electric power shower so are able to have hot showers, but everything else requires boiling the kettle.)

- Pam


PS:  Don't worry - the tiles, etc, are still getting the chop.

Photos

It's been a hellish week, very busy and very exhausting.  Today, I was up at 4.45am in order to catch the shuttle to Glasgow.  I got home at 7pm.   Anyway, enough of me moaning.  Here is what you really want - photos of the house!

Here are some before photos of the lounge taken when it was being used as a temporary resting place for stuff on the way to the storage locker.   This is the view towards the front window.  Note the cork tiles on the chimney breast and the suspended ceiling with the huge (useless) spot-lights.

And the view towards the kitchen:

The piano was the last piece of furniture to be moved.  It's being stored by specialist piano movers. 

On the left, you can just see the platform that was built over the floor where the original kitchen was until the '70's.  And one of the brick feature walls.  (Yes, that is the current kitchen through those doors.)  Did I mention that we think the old owners used that space as a bar area?  Seems logical when you look at it.

The only thing that is missing is the 1970's padded bar.  This is what was behind all those bricks:

They're all gone now, along with the tiles you can see.  So is the suspended ceiling (hello floorboards!).  I think the paint you can see is original, dating from 1939.  If you look closely, you can see the line of the old picture rails and, higher up, the line where the suspended ceiling was attached.

We've also kissed good-bye to the cork tiles on the chimney:

The pipes are from the back boiler, which will be removed next week together with the gas fire.  (I want to install a wood-fire stove but we'll have to save up for that.)

The last big change is to the lounge room door.  On the left, is the doorway we're filling in.  It dates from the '70's.  On the right, is the original doorway, which we've opened up again.  The plan is to put the sofa in front of this wall but we're now worried it'll be too long.

- Pam

OMG! It's finally happening!

For the last 6.5 years, DH and I have schemed, planned and saved for today.  We've daydreamed and wished.  We've said, "If I had the money then I'd....." before running off a wish list.  Finally, the great day is here - the builders started work this morning.  The downstairs of our house is being renovated!

Sadly, I don't currently have any "before" photos to show you.  I attempted to take some yesterday morning, before I left for Site, only to discover that the camera's battery was flat and the backup battery was also flat.  DH has taken some photos of the empty/almost empty rooms, but I won't get those until I get home on Friday.

I think I've mentioned before that ours is a typical 1930's semi-detached house, which was renovated in the 1970's.  Although it is orientated on the opposite side, the original floor plan was similar to this one.

It's not exact, but I couldn't find anything closer on-line tonight. The front is at the bottom of the screen.  The previous owners knocked the front reception room through into the back reception room, then took out the wall between that and the kitchen, before building a kitchen extension on the back.  They moved the lounge door to next to the front wall and closed off the back of the hall, inserting a laundry area into it which is accessed via the lounge and the old kitchen doorway.  The other doorways were blocked off.  We think they used the old kitchen area into a bar.  (Think "Abigail's Party".) The floor is covered with a platform, brick feature walls covered the two sides with mirror tiles on the third.  Their final "innovation" is a suspended ceiling, containing 9 huge spot-lights.

When we purchased the house, we said we'd started a 25 year project. We knew it needed a lot of work done - the kitchen's flat roof was gradually deteriorating, the wiring was not up to current building codes, the aging boiler was on it's way out.  Oh, and it has the most God-awful avocado bathroom suite.  But we didn't have the money to do anything except live in the house and learn it's ways.  There was never any storage.  Most of the kitchen cupboards were falling apart.  We couldn't unpack our wedding presents because there was nowhere to put them, and we didn't want to buy more furniture when we knew we'd have to move it out in order to do the building work.  (We've spent the last two weeks clearing everything out and putting it into storage: moving furniture, packing up all the books, boxing up the stash, etc.  It's amazing how stuff breeds!)

Everything is changing.   Gone is the suspended ceiling. The brick feature walls are partially dismantled and DH is happy to report that none of them were load bearing; they ended at the suspended ceiling.   The platform will be removed shortly.  The laundry area will be converted into a downstairs toilet, with access from the hall instead of the lounge.  New lights and new power-points will be installed throughout the house.  The central heating will be replaced, with a new "combi" boiler installed in the kitchen (just as well, some of the old radiators have stopped working).  Sometime next month, when the weather is better, the kitchen roof will be removed and replaced with a pitched, tile roof (goodbye leaking roof!  Goodbye buckets!).  At the same time, a new kitchen will be installed., including a wall of floor to ceiling cupboards.  After nearly 7 years, it's finally happening.

Apparently, the old kitchen had red tiles.  I can't wait to see them.

- Pam