Category: Uncategorized
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Dad to the rescue
After covid had scuppered his previous attempt to lend a DIY hand, my dad finally made it up for a weekend of roofing. This, after visiting one of my siblings to take the grandkids to a dinosaur park, and before taking another out for a fancy birthday meal. But who wants dinosaurs and cake when…
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More roofing
It is a truth universally acknowledged that roofing takes absolutely ages. At least it does when you are two amateurs working weekends and evenings. The good news , however, is that the rain has held off. This long dry period that has left us all sunburnt and exhausted, and killed off half the plants in…
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Roof week
It’s roof week! During our initial estimates of how much work the house might require, Chris felt replacing the roof might well be an unavoidable job. Yet, it wasn’t until we had had a better poke around and gotten the advice of a structural engineer that we knew that the slight dip in the roof…
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Red bull gives you… insulation
There comes a point in every DIY project where you seem to have a hundred half-finished jobs, but nothing that actually seems to be moving you forwards. We’re very much in this zone, seeming to flit from one thing to another. At some point all the half finished jobs will reach a satisfying crescendo, but…
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Finishing at the start
When people say not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess they mean that things that seem free always come with a catch. Probably about right. When we were going through the motions of buying the house Chris went back one day to take some measurements. The estate agent, who was there…
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Slowing down
Anyone who has ever done any DIY will know there are periods when everything just seems to slow down. You’ll be flying along feeling like you’ve hit your stride, when suddenly it’s as though someone has placed the hourglass on its side and everything stops. This is how our second long weekend has felt. While…
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Changing rooms
This week, on our fourth week of owning the house, we had our first full seven days of DIY. When we first knew we were getting the house, we agreed that all holidays would be devoted to its renovation until further notice. Now at the end of our allotted time we are bruised and battered,…
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All hail the Recycling Centre
It’s been our first long weekend at the house. Normally long weekends are a relief, a chance to relax and unwind. But it’s a little different when you’re lugging bags of rubble down a narrow staircase. We had planned to hire a skip to remove the bulk of our DIY waste. However, due to the…
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Opening up
One of my favourite things about old houses is the history they come with. Marbel staircases worn with the passing of feet, brass door handles polished by many hands, layers of paint and paper exposed by rips and chips. Yet, while the past can be picturesque, it doesn’t always meet modern needs. When updating an…
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Up, up and away
When it comes to DIY planning, Chris is the expert in our little team. I am an over-optimistic DIYer. I look at jobs that take weeks and think; ‘oh yeah, that’ll be done in a few hours’. One of the reasons for this is that I forget that jobs are like Russian dolls. Open up…
Ruined 