Day 578: A little garden de-construction

So what do these first 2 pictures have in common  ???

1. Both were built from stone (or concrete)
2. Both were made to last for several thousand years
3. And we have no clue what either were built for

The weather was nice this long weekend so I decided to tackle the obelisk in our garden. And by obelisk, I mean some random pole just sticking out of the ground 

I had previously given this a whack with the sledgehammer and a good boot with my steel toes and absolutely nothing so I knew that this wasn't a challenge for the faint of heart.

Today's tools were my trusty angle grinder with the masonry blade, my club hammer, my chisel, a little shovel and lots of TLC (Thumping - Lifting - Cursing)

So the first step was to clear the concrete away from the base of the pole. I later found that this was actually the easy part. I did this until I found dirt all around.

Then I kept digging, and digging, and digging, ...... and unfortunately, still no dinosaur bones

And finally I felt the pole wiggle. And with a little more digging and lots of TLC (mostly the C part by this point), the column finally gave way ..

And as you can see, there was good reason why it wasn't budging earlier on. I'm sure there are columns on the Parthenon that didn't have foundations this deep. What on earth were they trying to build?!!!

As you can see, the post gave way before the base. 

In the end, I had to rock the base back and forth and pile stones underneath to eventually work the structure out of the hole. Lot's more of the "C" here ...

But finally it was out and I was able to fill the hole with the leftover dirt. 

And now there is one big difference to Stonehenge .. our pole is no longer standing ...

Day 514: Getting board of windows

Just realised that I posted this out of order .. Kind of like a badly edited Tanantino film. So just pretend you didn't see the result in the previous post and act surprised/in awe when you see the final result.

It took us/me a long time to decide what to do - do we tile the window sill or do we chuck down a board? As you can see from the title (or from the previous post which you didn't read) we went with the board option. 

As I found a windowboard sounds impressive. But it's really just a flat piece of wood with a rounded (bullnoze) side to it. The options are expensive hardwood or MDF. As MDF is essentially glorified cardboard and this was going to be fairly close to water and we all know what wet cardboard is like, we went with a 3rd option - a bullnozed piece of wood that I think was originally intended for furniture. The guy at B&Q suggested we give it a try and the size fit the frame. It was about half the price of the other board and 2/3 of the width - which was a bit too thick for my liking.

Now as I've read when doing my research - people typically get the window board installed while the window frame areas is being plastered so it fits in nicely. We didn't plan this one out so it's going in afterwards - less common but not unheard of ...

The wood came untreated and was knottier than a little 4 year old I know, so the first step was to put on a knotting solution. This prevents any sap in the knots from leaking through the paint and ensures a nice finish in the end. 2 coats was apparently enough. 

Next came the primer/sealer. This provides a good base for the final gloss coat. But that is a ways away. I went with Dulux for many reasons - but mostly because it was on sale at Wickes.

After the wood was primed, I cut out the notches for the end surrounds. Don't ask me why everyone does this with windows as it does seem a bit odd. Maybe window boards used to be more integrated into the frames/windows. Anyway, it was the look that we wanted so we did it.

The ends were re-rounded and a second coat of primer/undercoat went on. The boards in the background are skirting - best to take care of it all at once. But that at risk of going off on a tangent and spoiling yet another blog, I'll save that for a future post. Pretend you never saw them.

To install the windowboard, I drilled 4 holes in the base and filled them with brown wall plugs. I then put some GripFill on the base and screwed everything down. 

As a final step (for this post at least), I got out my super duty, high performance, Type-R, professional, max strength wood filler. What does this wonderful stuff do? It fill wood, but better. And yes, I do think I got done in by the packaging. It smelled super strong too.

This was used to fill in the screw holes and the bit around the edges of the window.

And there you have it. We can all be board of windows now ...

Day 522: No more tea towels

With the windowboard in place and um, kind of painted, it was time to finish off the backsplash behind the sink and cabinets. Not that I didn't like having a tea towel permanently behind the sink to catch the water, it's just that I din't like having a tea towel permanently behind the sink to catch the water.

So out came the tiles, cutter and all the accessories. The concern here was "did I order enough tiles?" On a straight wall it's easy - measure length by width and add 10% for off-cuts (and oopsies). As you can see, I had a normal wall and bits and pieces of pieces of 5 wall faces. Calculating that exactly would have been well beyond my mathematical ability. So some rough guesses, some tile conservation/recycling and a little luck will hopefully work out.

I've done enough tiling now (see the bathroom) to be pretty good/efficient at installing them (typed with one hand while patting myself on the back with the other). The challenge is always the not-so-straight cuts. In this case, I had 2 wall outlets to cut around. This is where the tile saw and Dremel really come into their own. Scoring and breaking wouldn't have been able to cope.

The work in progress, ready for the cutouts. And yes there is an "oopsie" in the countertop. I swear it came that way. 

The cutouts in place around the sockets now.

The next tough part was cutting around the edges of the windowboard. To do this, I also used the Dremel with a tile bit to shave off and round the edges.

And finally came the grouting to finish things off ...

 

Edges were finished off with 11mm stainless steel edging nicely mitered to form a corner.

So there you have it. The tiling is nearly complete and the tea towels are back to their normal duty of drying dishes. 

Day 551: Good neighbours make good fences

As the saying goes, "good fences make good neighbours" .. but this blog shows the inverse is also true. Good neighbours make good fences.

April has been a tough month - I've been down and out with a bad sinus and ear infection. I didn't stop working, but I definitely have been progressing at a slower pace than normal. And I haven't had much time to write up my work, hence the big lag between posts. But rest assured .. I'll be working through the backlog over the next week. Stay tuned..

So the current task was not actually the kitchen. Yeah! The weather has been getting better so we turned our attention outdoors to the garden jungle and putting up a new fence.

As this was very much a two man job, I enlisted the help of Stu next door.

The first task was to clear out the jungle. Don't ask me what that pole thing is - I have no idea except that it's concrete and would survive a nuclear blast. A couple of whacks with a sledge hammer and it didn't budge - and I swear I heard it laughing at me.

Ivy had completely taken over and the old fence was no match. 

Stu vs. Ivy .. Round 1. I don't know how long it has been growing there. My guess is 30 years. The roots/branches were thicker than my wrist and some needed to be sawed off.

After lots of cutting, sawing, bending, breaking and cursing, finally the fence and all the overgrowth were taken care of, leaving us with a clear spot to build the new fence.

First was the posts. We elected to go with some 70mmx70mm pressure treated posts as this was sufficient for the new panels. As these were to be buried into the ground, for added assurance we dipped and coated the posts in water seal.

Now the excavation started .. We had to dig holes to set the posts in. Hopes were high that we'd find treasure or dinosaur bones. Unfortunately, we only found rocks/bricks/some old toy cars and a bone from some undefined animal (but not likely a dinosaur).

As this was my first fence, I found the B&Q video on fencing to be really helpful in this regard. Caitlin watched it with me - I didn't realise that this meant that she'd be critiquing our work later on ("is the hole deep enough?", "did you put in enough post mix?", etc.) 

After some serious manual labour, it was time to place the posts in the holes. We MacGyver'ed some braces together to make sure the posts were held 100% vertical and straight. When you're pouring concrete, you don't get a second chance.

We had assumed that one bag of postcrete would do the trick for each hole. I think we may have been a bit overzealous as the first hole ate up 2 whole bags. Thank goodness B&Q was still open!

Quantities aside, setting the mix couldn't have been easier. Step 1) fill hole with 1/3 water Step 2) pour, pour and pour more mix into the hole until water is no longer visible. No mixing necessary and it dries in c.10 min. Just before it had set, I got my trowel and made it slope away from the pole so that water wouldn't collect there. Posts in place, that was the end of day 1.

The next weekend (technically 2 weeks later), we embarked on the fence panels and gate. The panels had to be ordered online from Travis Perkins. There was no way we could ever fit them into a car. We ordered the closest size we could to what we needed. But of course, it wasn't exactly the right height and one also needed to be cut in half. 

We also decided to put in a gate as walking around the front of the house is way too far. Just in time for BBQ/Braai season. Some debate went on about whether to also buy a pre-made gate or make one ourselves. I was pushing for building one ourselves as gates are overpriced and as expected, none of them actually came in the size that we needed and would have to be customised. Also, given that one of the panels had to be cut in half, we would have excess paneling to work with. My comprimise - I the gate didn't look good, I'd order a gate online (like that would have ever happened).

So, on to customising a fence panel. Actually a fairly easy task. All you need to do is pop off the ends and supports, bang out the nails, cut to the desired length and hammer the ends/supports back on.

 

After the panels had been cut, they were fixed on with a couple of panel clips. And the fence was nearly there. Just for the gate ...

The next day, Stu and I finished off the gate. As a sign of how well built our fence was, a cat decided to test it out in the morning, walking along the edge.

For the gate, I looked on the Internet for some ideas on design. And off Stu and I went to B&Q to buy some supplies. 

The frame was built from 40x90mm treated timber. The top and bottom were notched out to fit the sides and allow for screws to be driven though. Support braces of 20x70mm wood were then fixed inside the frame to give the gate some extra support and provide a surface to hammer the panel wood onto. These were glued and screwed to the frame. I used waterproof wood glue to also keep out moisture.

The leftover overlapping panels were cut to size and hammered onto the frame. And there you go, a finished gate.

The weather had been kind for most of the day, but this is the UK so you can expect a little rain to show up at some point. Stu helpfully held the umbrella as I put on the door hardware

And there you go. a finished fence. We're undecided on whether or not to put some trellis at the top so we've left the posts a little bit longer. Once we decide, we'll cut them down to size.

Overall, I'm really happy with the final product. Much better than before for sure. 

So here's  proof that good neighbours make good fences.