Little quiz things

You Are Midnight

You are more than a little eccentric, and you're apt to keep very unusual habits. Whether you're a nightowl, living in a commune, or taking a vow of silence - you like to experiment with your lifestyle. Expressing your individuality is important to you, and you often lie awake in bed thinking about the world and your place in it. You enjoy staying home, but that doesn't mean you're a hermit. You also appreciate quality time with family and close friends.

What Time Of Day Are You?

You Are Incredibly Logical

Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic You think rationally, clearly, and quickly. A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

How Logical Are You?

How much effort did this take?

Charlie is a pretty large cat, and this is the most compact lump I have ever seen him turn himself into...

So why does he have to take up about four times that much space if he lies on our bed at night?!

Worktop!

After a series of delays (how unusual!), we have finally had our worktop fitted. The person we had already agreed a price with, then organised an appointment for templating, did not show up as he had been asked to do a whole block of flats! Apparently the business is incredibly busy at this time of year, but finally, the first guy gave our details to another person in the trade, and eventually, here it is. We may also be getting them to do our floor tiling, which would be another major leap forwards.

Oh how nice to have a window ledge instead of a gap into the cavity wall! And I will be looking for fudge recipes as soon as possible, now that I have the ideal surface to make it on. Apparently the stone is also excellent for defrosting things quickly. Another thing: when summer wends it's way back round again, I'll be leaning on the worktop to try to cool myself down!

Beautiful Autumn

In our rather unkempt garden there are quite a variety of plants. This one is looking stunning, especially due to the deep green of the surrounding foliage! I've the same photo taken with a flash, which is a little sharper, but unfortunately not quite true colours.

We also have this crazy rose, and my tomato plants are flowering again!

Progress!

We now have most of a ceiling! This is the area of beams I showed in an earlier photo, looking much closer to finished. There is still one half board to go up at one side of the room, and lots of short sections to fill in along another, but none of this will be as strenuous as putting up full boards. They are 12mm thick, 1.2m x 2.4m, and incredibly heavy.

Then we were finally able to wire up the dining room light, and the four spotlights. The main kitchen lighting is awaiting the arrival of proper plasterboard fixings. After one small glitch (a snapped connection up in the area of roof only I can get to now, through the thin strip where the ceiling is not yet up), it all works. Who'd have believed it? ;-)


So, having made such fantastic progress, I was then hit by insanity, and called the worktop guy. I've made an appointment for him to do the templating on Monday morning, leaving us with just days in which to finish the plumbing for the outside tap, connect bits for the fridge water supply(!), sand and seal the two really big units, and then level them all. Once the templating is done, they are not allowed to move!

The rush here is because it will take time for the worktop to actually arrive and be installed, and it being done is one of the things we agree is essential before we have relatives up for Christmas. They will have to put up with no decoration, no carpets, and lots of unfinished bits and bobs, but if a useable (and cleanable) kitchen and bathroom are not in place, we'll be the guests elsewhere this year.

Please excuse the disgraceful state of our kitchen: it is very hard to keep a place tidy when you keep having to empty the storage to work on it! This is the view from the dining room, and the closest unit is the "breakfast bar" one, and will have an overhanging bit of worktop. Will be very handy for the pasta maker I inherited, which needs to be clamped on to something!

Correction

I have discovered the real reason for our house being so cold downstairs! Look who is absorbing all the warmth:

House is a bit chilly in places

When we installed the central heating, we made a small mistake, in that modern boilers like the one we now have use "intelligent" control of a lowish powered integrated pump to operate the system as efficiently as possible. Our layout was perfect for the old "bung in as high powered pump as you need" separate systems. So right now, it works, but not very well: Some radiators get hot, some get warm, and one does nothing. Two radiators aren't even on the walls yet, as we've not finished the plastering and bathroom tiling.

Coupled with the lack of ceiling in the extension (there is no insulation there either!), no curtains downstairs, and some holes in the pantry in need of bricking up, downstairs is hovering at around 12 or 13°C. A tad chilly, even for me! (My husband and I have thermostat wars, with him wanting 19°, and me putting it to 17°. We both have a laugh at the adverts asking people to save energy by turning the temperature down, showing someone changing the dial from 22 to 21°)

Our plans for a solid fuel stove have slipped drastically behind schedule, not least because we wanted a quote for having it done before rushing in to do it ourselves: sometimes it is worth paying a little more in order to regain some of your own time. It has now been 3 weeks since the guy came to measure up, and we've yet to receive a letter from them!

So this weekend, Simon will be disconnecting the heating, in order to connect up some different pipes. Both days are reported to be around 11°, fortunately a little warmer than it has been. I'll be seeing what I can do about temporary curtains, and hopefully, putting up insulation between the joists in the extension.

I'm enjoying the weather generally: it is reminding me of when we first saw this house on the market (though it is the wrong time of year, the temperature is similar), and how excited we were to be buying our first house. There was a lot of nervousness too, not knowing whether our offer would be accepted, but now I'm only remembering the good bits!

Anyway, I seem to be writing an essay again, so I'll just quickly mention that Simon picked up our bathroom cabinet the other day, and hopefully that will be going up this weekend. Depending on how things go with the heating, we may also put up the central light fitting in the bathroom, and repaint the ceiling. We will also be rearranging the kitchen units, to their actual final positions!

First picture shows part of the view from our bedroom window. I've never lived in a place with a view of fields before, not bad for a city! Sometimes you can see a horse on the green blob of grass. Second picture is my tiling, which is getting there slowly.

Getting things done

I'm not great at it. In fact, I'm dreadful. It helps if you can break a job down into bits sometimes, but other times this means you do less than you could: It is so easy to decide on a rather unambitious point to get to, and stop at that.

However, getting bits of jobs done is better than doing nothing at all. By a very long way! So being able to put the tiles on our bathroom wall a few at a time is, overall, a good thing. Also, I like being able to save drafts on this blog site... ;-)

The next day...

Anyway, just thought I'd do a summary of the state of our house:
~The bathroom is in the process of being tiled, but has a working shower, a bath with a tap, and a toilet. The basin won't be going in until the tiling is done, nor will the radiator. We've plans to put in an extractor fan, but that is not important right now. Also, we'll be getting a cabinet, possibly quite soon as there is a nice one in a sale at "Bathstore".
~The two bedrooms are mostly just in need of decoration, if you call repairing the cracks in the ceiling decorating. All new wiring is in, along with some networking and TV sockets.
~The living room has quite a bit to be done, with a couple of single sockets being changed to doubles, the TV sockets and networking to be done, a blocked up doorway to be plastered, and a stove to be put in! We are waiting for a quote to have the last item done for us, but most probably we will be doing it ourselves.
~The kitchen... well, there is a lot to be done there too! The extension does not yet have a ceiling put up, and obviously lighting can't go in until after this. We've a small dilemma as to whether we should tile the whole of the floor, or tile around the cabinets. I'd have gone for around the cabinets immediately, if it wasn't for the cooker, which we cannot raise any higher relative to the cabinets (so can't tile underneath if not doing under cabinets), but we don't want to either have a visible edge to the tiling, or trap the feet of the cooker in place. Then we have the last of the kitchen units to sand and seal, the worktop to have done, the wall tiling on the bits above the worktop, and the extractor hood to buy and install.

If I've forgotten anything, it is obviously less important than that lot! Well, there are a lot of finishing and decorative bits to do, but once everything is in useable condition, we can relax and enjoy the "perfecting" stage.

Incidentally, the pictures are of the beautiful beamed ceiling (hohum) of the extension (no, we can't leave it like that, we have a sewer pipe running across it!), the gorgeous nearly-flat floor between old and new areas of the kitchen (which took a surprisingly large amount of work), and of the wonderful (and useful) bath tap, that we were both so proud to have finally put in! ;-)

I'm very definately still on the learning curve of using this blog thing, incidentally... Well, mostly with regard to picture placement.

How our cat decides where to sit

1. Is there a box in the area? If so, sit in that.

2. In the absence of a box, somewhere raised is good. Back or arm of chair, window ledge, stool, and yellow pages are all candidates.

3. Give a lack of the above, or a choice within either category, find the noisiest place, e.g. the box with some rustley paper in it, the chair with a magazine on it.

4. On occasion, the previous instructions can be ignored in favour of somewhere really inconvenient, such as on the book someone is trying to read.

New blog, old one had issues

The old one is over at http://www.manicfish.com/myblog.php?bbn=haize

Anyway, the photo was taken whilst at a wedding in Ireland (my brother-in-law's). With the equipment we had we could not do the beautiful view across the sea to Dublin city lights justice, but it is still a pretty picture. The evening do was at the Deer Park Hotel, near Howth Castle, and it was surrounded by golf courses and spectacular views.