A new arrival (by alaric)

The lightbulb in the bathroom died.

So we placed an order with Lightbulbs Direct, and a few days later, a parcel arrived:

We took the new bulb - still safe inside its egg - and set it up in a little hatchery until it was ready to emerge:

Before long, the egg came open, and our new bulb peeked out:

After all that effort, it was hungry, so quickly tucked into the pile of batteries we'd left out for it:

After a while it had built up its strength and started trying to find a nest:

So we took it to the bathroom and set it free:

It quickly settled in the nest in the ceiling:

And began to roost:

The Curse Looms Bigger than Ever (by sarah)

Yes friends it is back - today in the Snell-Pym disastor sytcom we have exploding taps and clonking vans!

Five in the morning sleepily I moan at Alaric fro having a shower that early. He grumbles at me for leaving said shower on. There was a brief pause and he gets up to investigate.

Not the shower, no lo! It is the squeacky cold tape downstair the washer had finially gone and water was jettosoning out of it at a scary rate. And so poor Al hurts his hand trying to turn the stop cock off.

Now we had known the washer was going due to the squeak in fact we had bought washers for the tape over a year ago but could not get to the washers to replace them. On top of that we could not get the stop cock to completely turn off.

Then there was some confussion later in the day when I thought Al had told Barabara but apparently hadn't been able to find her and she came around to ask if I'd been having trouble with the washing machine!

After alot of talking round in circles before things became clear it was a wait for the emergancy plumber - who fixed it in under five minutes - he said to be fair it was only an easy job if you had the right tools becuase they are stupid tapes!

He was also impressed with our messures to reduce the amount of water lost - ie we put on the fitting for the hose pipe with a penny in it and then cable tied it to the tape and placed tea towls over it to reduce pressure spray.

It was a nasty day as I had left banana chutney half made the night before thinking it would be a simple task to finish it today - sigh.

Then I managed to loose the work I had spent all morning doing on the laptop as it crashed whilst I was saving - it somehow lost the stuff I thought I'd already saved as well :/ The whole file thing - I'm wondering if I forgot to do intermediate saves or something - what ever the cuase I was not very happy as you can imagin!

The Alaric leaves the house to go and help at another Cub group in a sort of exchange thing him and one of their leaders has set up. But a few minutes later he comes dashing back in the house in a bit of a panic as the van isn't starting.

Clonk clonk and the lights go out - so this ment I found myself helping to strip some copper wire to fix the positive contact on the battery and wating Al sand paper it. To our emmense suprise it worked and the van started but I think we are now both just waiting for the next incident to hit us full force!

SIGH

Broken Window (by sarah)

Sigh.

The house is very damp, unsurprisingly as there is a river running under bits of the structure, all be it the garage! And apparently the only way to get rid of this damp is to open windows, unfortunatly the window frames have swollen and it has been freezing so I did not want to open a window we may not be able to shut, in fact as we are still getting frosts here I didnt really want the windows open at all - its hard enough to keep the place warm as it is.

But the weather was nice it was almost a summers day outside so we opend the bedroom window, having switched all the heating off, and yes it got rid of a lot of the damp but then it started getting dark and we tried to close the windows.

The frame was so swollen that we had had to bash at the frames to open them, the same technique did not work to close them. And a frost had started settling so we did not want to leave it ajar. Our solution?

A bit drastic but something we thought wouldnt be too bad - we sanded the frames but alas there was just too much of an over hang of window and window frame so off Al went to get the plain. We plained it and got it shut.

This was a few days ago and the damp was gone - for a while - this morning I noticed the condensation on the windows again and told Al to open them whilst I was out at meetings.

This he did and it all appeared fine until he came to shut them up again to get me and Jean. The window frame at the bottom turned out to be rotten so when he attempted to 'slam' the window shut the bottom which for some reason is more swollen hit the window frame and sheared a bit off - yes it was that rotten and twisted the whole frame so that the glass in the bottom panel cracked 🙁

This is going to be a bit of a pain. Al wants to put a metal bracket on the wood to hold the frame together but this of course relys on us being able to find descent non rotten root to screw into - something that may well be impossible. Also this is a very short term fix and it looks like we will have to be replacing at least one window frame and one panel of glass 🙁

Now I do not believe that the frame has become that rotten in just the 1.5 yrs we have lived here - grrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!

Make your own spirit level! (by alaric)

You can easily spent £25 on a large spirit level. Even a cheap 60cm one costs £10.

Since I have some plans to build a wall across uneven ground, a long spirit level to check my footings are level is a requirement. But I didn't want to spend a lot of money.

So I went into B&Q and, for £5 plus a few tens of pence, picked up a two-metre length of extruded steel box section, a square tube about 1cm on a side and strong enough to not flex noticeably under its own weight.

And for about £2.70 I picked up a small hand-held magnetic spirit level unit.

Combining the two, voila - for under a tenner, I have a two-metre long spirit level.

And although there's only two vials in the magnetic level unit, it has the functionality of a level with lots of vials, since I can position those two vials at any point along the level I require. So I can have them in the middle, for traditional "is this rubble-filled trench roughly level" checking. Or, when nailing a series of pegs into the ground and wanting them to all be at the same height, I can bring the vials to one end of the steel tube, balance the other end on an existing peg (ideally with a helper to hold it there!), and easily read the vials as I adjust the peg I'm leaning my end of the tube on.

And when I'm sick of building walls, I can store the pocket-sized magnetic level away, and think of something useful to make with two metres of steel square tubing, an arc welder, and a brazing set...

Cube Units (by sarah)

To stop anymore cat wee incidents I have become a tad militant - and thus we have been focusing on doing something to the bare wood units we have in the lounge.

Here are photos of the first unit being dealt with.

First off we had to sand the cube all over - especially the edges as these are manky loose grain pine which splinters like anything!

Then we had to dust the saw dust away!

Then to the vanishing - we decided upon silk finish - it took four coats! Still I had estimated 5 coats!

We did everything but the undernieth surfaces, then when dry turned it over and did those - but we then repeated the processes with out turning it over so that there was less of a chance of ending up with a good top and bad bottom - not sure if that makes scense but thats how we're vanishing these babies!