Category: Uncategorized
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Fiddly and annoying
It’s been a long time since I last posted – that’s largely because it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do a decent bit of DIY. Between our holiday to Norway, friends weddings and a few other commitments, we’ve barely had time to pick up a hammer. Although it’s nice to do…
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DIY to the Max
Unfortunately for my cousin Max, his name makes a good pun – bad luck. However, it has felt like a good week for DIY, with his arrival not only giving us always welcome extra pairs of hands, but giving us a boost too. Max arrived on the Friday night and stayed till the following Friday.…
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Van 5: Making the bed
The amount of time I’ve spent on coving four windows would be hard to believed. They’re finally done; filled, sanded, and caulked. Although they are a tiny detail in much bigger rooms, it’s amazing how much more finished they make the rooms look. So they may be bodge jobs, because the angles were impossible to…
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Van 4: Making good
Now the van is insulated it’s time to make it look less like a van and more like somewhere you can live. Our first job was cutting and attaching thin sheets of plywood to the wall. We’re a little undecided whether to paint them or just varnish, so for now we’ve been as regular as…
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Scuppered by gravity
I’ve had quite a long break from drystone walling, but after a particularly irritating teams meeting I got out in the garden to build some more, my own bit of meditation. It’s a bit of a unstable wall at the moment as I need to backfill in a number of the places, having built the…
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Van Post 2
Stage two of the van transformation was to insulate it. As someone that feels the cold this is a particularly important step for me. We’ve gone for slightly unusual insulation, as it’s actually the same stuff we insulated our house with. Chris found someone selling all the materials the contractors had left behind at a…
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Van Day 1
It’s certainly not a sensible thing to do, starting a van conversion when you still haven’t finished your house restoration, but this is exactly what we’re doing. In part we’re switching jobs because the IVF treatment starts in July so it’s possible next year we’ll be too busy with a baby to convert a van.…
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Once in a Lifetime
I’m afraid there’s only one thing I can start with, though it’s not DIY related. When I heard solar flares meant we would have the best showing of the aurora in a decade I decided to poke my head out the door, but I didn’t think I’d see anything. We’re very lucky to live in…
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Two Years On
This Sunday marked 2 years since we got the keys for our new house, and 10 months since we moved in. We had hoped to have finished the inside by the 2 year mark, but everyone that’s ever watched Grand Designs will know you never make your deadlines. We started the week with some boring…
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A Little Sunshine
You’d think I’d be bored of building drystone walls, but if anything I wish we had more to build. When the new fence went in our neighbour’s gardener, who put in the fence, piled up some stones along the boundary to cover the gap at the base. We didn’t want a full wall here, as…
Ruined 