Day 1688: We all need a spur to lean on

Before I get down to business with the patio in front of the cabin there is one thing that I need to attend to first .. a wobbly post.  It's basic biology .. wood left in the ground will decompose over time. Fence posts are treated and covered to delay this but it will eventually happen nonetheless. 

I noticed when prepping for the patio to go in that the fencing between us and our neighbours was a bit wobbly .. definitely a sign of what was happening down below the surface. Figured it was best to take care of this before it becomes a bigger problem down the road. 

Digging a bit below ground the rot became obvious. This poor fence post would need some support. Enter the concrete spur which was designed for this purpose. There is a great video on YouTube that explains this entire process here - but my half ass explanation, please continue reading. 

I first needed to do a bit of digging and put the support in place. The spur was 1.2m so I was targeting 60cm below ground and 60 above. 

Taking on board the lessons learnt from earlier (read here) on overzealous use of concrete in the garden, I wasted no time in putting a call out to Scott to borrow the breaker again. I really should buy one of these one day. 

And on went the chiselling, digging, chiselling, digging, chiselling, digging .. etc. for hours on end until finally the end of the concrete came in site. Finally. 

And while many of my fellow countrymen were finding treasures in their gardens over the coronavirus lockdown period (see here), this hole once again came up empty. I'm beginning to think the dinosaurs, Romans, Vikings and just about everything else notable in history somehow avoided just avoided Surbiton. 

Half a day and 40cm done and still another 20cm to go  .. 

Finally, after some long gruelling hours of work I managed to get down to 60cm. I'm so happy the other posts look to be pretty solid as I couldn't imagine trying to do this for an entire fence. 

The posts would be held in place with square washers (because they looked nice) and 10mm coach screws. Having again learnt from previous mistakes of not having the tools for the job, these impact sockets were pre-ordered from Amazon to make short work of driving in the screws. 

The next step was to get everything level before pouring the concrete in place.. I chopped some scrap bits of wood to use as supports for this.

Looks pretty good. 

Next comes the postcrete. Amazing stuff. Fill the hole 1/3 with water, empty the bag in and stir away. The mix sets in a few hours time - but best to leave it overnight before removing any supports. 

And there you go, the finished product. You can't tell from looking at it how much work this involved. However, the fence is no longer wobbly and hopefully will give us many more years of use before we ever need to think about it again.

 

Day 1660: Child labour ain't cheap these days

This weekend I learned a valuable lesson. Don't negotiate with some sharp kids after you've had a few glasses of wine. The task was to paint the outside of the cabin with some specialist (i.e. expensive) paint to seal the wood, make it look nice and prevent it from rotting. Buying into marketing with a hint of science, I bought the very expensive paint from Tuin (who we bought the cabin from). And by expensive I'm talking £78 for a 2.5L tin. No spillage or drips here .. it's way too dear for that.

If that wasn't bad enough, I was negotiating with the kids to help paint it. Finally, I could get some helpers to share the DIY workload around the house. Unfortunately, sensing an opportunity to earn some pocket cash, this ended up in a negotiation. 

Being the savvy negotiator that I am (or thought that I was after my 3rd glass of wine), I decided to make this a price per square meter bid. I started with £1/sqm each for 2 coats. They worked me up a bit to £1.30/sqm each for 2 coats. Care wasn't helping at all by pushing the bid up a bit more yet. We ended up with £1.50/sqm each for 2 coats. 

We all went to bed happy after a deal well negotiated. Me especially as I thought I'd gotten the better of these kids in their first wage negotiation. Haha!

The next day rolled around and the kids were still happy at the prospects of making some good money - they were already planning on how they'd spend their fortune. In my sobriety I also calculated the numbers....

What?! I'd just agreed to pay each of them £46.62 to paint the cabin! I'd been taken to the cleaners by a couple of pint sized con artists. Don't let those cute faces fool you for a minute. 

For that price, they had better do a really, really good job.

The wood had weathered quite nicely over the 1 month in the sun and it was almost a shame to spoil this with paint. But I'd already spent a fortune on it so there was no turning back now. 

And here is what £78 looks like. I was expecting some kind of advanced carbon fibre / titanium bling factor for that price. But it was just a pretty ordinary paint tin. I guess it does say 'ULTIMATE' on it - that has to be worth something.

The 2 painting princesses ....

And their helper .. who luckily also didn't try and negotiate a 'fair' wage ... 

I have to say, they were quite diligent in their painting. No splashes or drips or complaints all afternoon. They had better not for the price that I was paying them!

"Yes, what do you want?!"

Care did have to help with anything above the 1.8m height mark.

And there you go, the cabin after 2 coats of paint. I must admit, the paint did feel like it went on much better than other brands and it did seem to offer the deep penetration into the wood that Tuin promised. But maybe it was just me rationalising the price tag.

And the rich 2 workers at the end of the day with their spoils. £50 each for a hard days work. Yes, we rounded up. Thank goodness they didn't decide to charge VAT on top of that.

Day 1643: What's a dog's favourite trade?

What's a dog's favourite trade? .. Roof-ing. Bad dad joke of the day today.

The skies were blue and the weather had warmed up a bit so time to get ready for the roofing. 

As the roof was insulated now, I just needed to put on a layer of 9mm WBP (outdoor) plywood and then put the shingles on top. 

I lifted the panels on first, put them in place and cut off the excess by hand. This was the easiest way and most exact way vs trying to cut to shape on the ground. The panels were heavy so would recommend having a helper if you try this yourselves. The biggest problem with a sloped roof is that the panels also tend to follow gravity and slide right off. 

The shingles were laid out on the ground. Given the colour could differ slightly between packs, it's always best to mix them up when installing. 

Also used were the slightly longer 9mm roofing nails to make sure the shingles got a decent hold in the plywood and some roof and gutter tar (bitumen) to hold everything in place. Nasty stuff to work with that sticks to everything (like tar). But needed to make sure the shingles were held tightly and watertight.  

Day 1629: No power tools on Easter

Apparently there is a verse somewhere in the Bible that forbids power tools on Easter Sunday (or at least according to Carolyn).

So today I had to down tools and postpone all the great projects I had for the day. Instead I decided to do some gardening ..

With the contents of the old shed strewn across the lawn under tarp .. the grass had taken real beating this year. Today I decided to get it back into shape. I did some radical weeding and pruning and cut the grass. Then I planted some seeds and watered them. Nothing like watching grass grow! All done very quietly so not to disturb the Easter bunny or our neighbours or break any commandments etc.

And with all that quiet ... Could I hear the birds, the crickets, the wind blowing through the trees?

No, all I could hear was a powersaw across the road and an impact gun 2 doors down. Obviously these people weren't observing Easter .. or didn't get the memo. Who knows?!

Looking forward to creating 2 days worth of noise tomorrow!

Day 1617 - My first video (and first log cabin too)

I've been a big consumer of YouTube videos on my DIY journey so finally time to give something back. Needless to say, making videos is much harder and time consuming than DIY .. I'll stick to my 'other' job I think. 

This video shows our one-day installation of the Tuin Elizabeth cabin. Stay tuned to future posts as I show the installation of the flooring, roofing and painting (very exciting). 

Some great inspiration for both the log cabin installation and the video format came from - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4UDFzeOPhEkPJMuIqoVqTA. Worth checking out if you're attempting to do something similar as he clearly is much more ambitious with his project and proficient in YouTubing than myself. 

Anyway, hope you enjoy the video. It's my first so while I probably won't be making another cabin any time soon, I will definitely keep the videos coming!

Day 1599: Back to base-ics

Now with the garden clear of the old shed, it was time to do some of the hard work. While I'm not shy from doing a little manual labour, this was a bit too much for me to take on at the moment so I decided to call in reinforcements .. in this case our neighbour and friend Scott from Scott Greenscapes. 

The task was to break up all the old concrete base and who knows what else, put in a new fence and pour the concrete base for the new cabin. This took several nights of rigorous planning at the Royal Oak to make sure we got everything correct. I've found going over plans to be much more enjoyable with a pint in my hand. 

So here is the starting place .. doesn't look great does it?

Maybe this time around, we'll finally find dinosaur bones or some viking hoard like the luck folks below ...

But, alas .. no. We found the remains of an old green house (with all the broken glass to go along with it, yeah), a spoon, a plastic army figure and a bit of riveted metal from a boat or plane (of course).

   

Scott also found some not so little beetle grubs under the rotting old fence. These things were both big (size of my pinky) and really gross. And like any good dad, I had to show them off to the kids.

More than enough stuff to fill up an 8 yard skip. The thing I find with projects  is that you always seem to need more time and more skip than you'd ever imagined. 

Beanbag was also there to "help out"

With everything cleared, it was now time for the fence. Most of the trees back there were dead and cleared out. There was one tree in the middle that straddled the property line. This had to be pruned slightly and the fence also trimmed around it. As 90% of the fence will be hidden from view, it probably didn't matter. But Scott did a nice, clean job regardless.

A nice finished fence. Looks great. Now to hide it with a cabin :)

It was great to watch Scott do the cement base as I've had little experience with cement myself and good to see how it's done. We originally planned to put in place paving slabs and bridge these with a timber frame but elected to go with a strip concrete base instead as it would be cleaner and stronger. 

For the cabin, all the weight would be on the edges with little down the middle so it was important to make sure this was solid. We also decided to put a strip down the middle to provide additional support to the flooring joists. 

First the frame to pour the cement was made. Gravel board was dug into the ground and made square.

After that .. cement time. Bridges were run across the channels to allow the cement to be poured from the wheel barrow. 

And the finished product looked great .. much better than what was there before.This was a lot of hard, back breaking work of which I did little more than taking pictures. Credit to Scott for the great work he did. Now we are just waiting on the cabin to arrive .... counting the days!