Archive for April 2009

Time is Tight

Posted by on April 20th 2009 in Making stuff, Projects, Video (YouTube, Vimeo etc.)

Apologies for the lack of regular blogging - there just aren't enough hours in the day. There's been no time for hiking or star-gazing, but to be fair we did manage to take a few hours off for a walk around Bosworth Park last Monday (which reminds me that I still have to upload the pics from that).

After two weeks of school holidays, I've a backlog of stuff to shift...

  • At least three trailer-trips to the local tip (sorry, recycling centre) for my waste, and another trip for my dad's stuff;
  • Setting up eBay and PayPal seller-accounts for a friend;
  • Fitting-out the old shed;
  • Digging out a 1m cube of soil/subsoil to take the foundation for the telescope pier;
  • Driving in several 2m steel rods to anchor into the clay subsoil;
  • Hand-mixing 850kg of concrete to refill said hole;
  • Installing footings for a 7ft x 7ft observatory-shed around said hole and pier;
  • Building said observatory;
  • Fitting a new garage door for my dad;
  • Getting the microwave oven fixed;
  • And all of the mundane everyday stuff that we all have to endure.

Never mind, we're looking forward to a carefree weekend, so it's not so bad.

A little chill-music would seem to be in order:

Reconditioned, runs like new

Posted by on April 13th 2009 in Making stuff, Projects
Tags: ,

Our old knackered hut had given good service but was suffering from a tad (well, more like thirteen years) of neglect, as you can see in the following pic taken last autumn:

 

The offending shed, dwarfed by our Salix babylonica and by the bonfire-fuel.

 

Deadwood.

 

The roof was, er, partial, and had let in so much rain that the floor and bearers had rotted, but the T&G shiplap sides were mostly sound. The choice was simple - repair or replace. Well, I'm not one for wasting £400 of cash, so we went off to B&Q, discount card in hand, and raided their timber and board stocks. A week later, after a jet-wash and much sawing and screwing, the thing now lives a bit closer to the house and looks like this:

 

Revamped.

 

It's shrunk a bit - we had to trim 5" of rot off the bottom edge, and we shortened the length by 5" so that we could use 2400mm timbers and boards instead of having to buy and trim 10-footers. Now the floor and roof are better than they ever were when it was new, and it's been fully double-proofed inside and out.

Not bad, eh? And there's enough change from the budget to buy a few beers, which are well-deserved.

I reckon I'm getting the hang of this recycling malarkey.
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