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Losing my sense of humour

So last night, it being Tuesday and as such a kid-free evening, Tanya and I started assembling the latest units.

The 2400mm tall Colossal Cupboard (it’s also 900mm deep) had to be assembled upright, in place, because there’s no way to tip it once it’s assembled, it’s only about 100mm short of the ceiling. So the assembly was a bit of a mission, 720mm wide 900mm deep chipboard shelves are *heavy*.

I pinned and dowelled the two sides, slotted in the bottom and the backing board, and then realised that the top had no groove for the backing board. So with Tanya holding things from falling over, I rushed to the garage and chopped eight or ten millimeters off the bottom of the backing board — not the best plan of action but the best I could do under the circumstances.

Eventually got the whole thing assembled and in place and screwed to the skirting and to the piece of skirting I used as a spacer against the wall. Tanya has pictures.

So then I wanted to assemble the bookshelf that goes next to the Colossal Cupboard. And I noticed that the cam & dowel holes in the top didn’t match those in the bottom. The sides are correctly drilled, however — and this means this unit won’t work. And I noticed that neither the top nor the bottom had the slots for the backing board.

So I stripped my moer, commented on the stuff the guy in the workshop was smoking, made nasty remarks about his parents and siblings, and the like. And I checked the other three units.

Yup, groove on the one side, no groove on the other.

Went back to Lansdowne Boards this morning, voiced my extreme displeasure, and after much pondering over CAD drawings and many incredulous looks at the offending shelves (“Oh, look, the holes are *still* wrong!) they realised that yes, indeed, the fellow driving the machine was indeed high on… life… or… err… something.

So we went over to the workshop, waved hands all over the place, and the fellow jigged the stuff up and added the neccessary holes and slots. Got to see how the machine works. Impressive, although it doesn’t go “ping“.

/me renames his blog to “Dealing with Idjits”.

2008-10-08 by House 4

Road trip hiatus

I’ve been quiet because we’ve been on the road. Tanya and I drove up to Gauteng on Wednesday, September 24th, spent two days there, then drove down to Port Elizabeth and from there to Knysna, where we spent the most of last week.

Wednesday : Bellville to Rustenburg. Departed 04:00, got there after 7 the night. Bit of a drive.
Thursday : Rustenburg to Krugersdorp to Centurion to Randburg to Benoni.
Friday : Benoni to Witbank and back to Benoni.
Saturday : Benoni to Standerton to Bloemfontein and down to Port Elizabeth
Sunday : PE to Knysna. Shortest leg of the lot.

And then the next Thursday we drove back home. A total of 4435km, seven tanks of diesel totalling 285 liters for a consumption of 6.4 l/100km (The VW Golf computer reported a consumption of around 5.5 l/100km on Caltex and Total, and 6.5 l/100km on the one tank of BP I put in. It lies by about 0.7 l/100km).

Why? Because I like driving up. (Really! I’d like to drive up twice a year or so if I could.) And because I had to collect stuff which is too heavy to fly down easily, and because there are people up there I like seeing now and then, and because we were on our way to Knysna anyway so what’s a short detour?

Tanya has the notebook, so you’ll have to read more about it on her blog.

When we got back I followed up on our kitchen countertops, they were ready, and I picked them up on Friday.

I fitted the long counter first — this involved power planing off about 5mm on the back corner on one side because of course the kitchen corners are not perfectly square.

I then joined these two bits after edging the 600mm deep one. The holes are cut using a cupboard hinge drill, which fits a standard electric drill, and the slots are routed. I was extremely nervous about going all the way through, so I went 20mm in (I could probably have pushed it to 30mm).

Perfect fit.

I tried matching the back of the counter to the (not so straight) wall, using a down-cutting jigsaw blade. My recommendation is, don’t bother. My result is slightly less in line with the plaster than the original straight cut was. Down-cutting jigsaw blades don’t work so well. Or maybe it’s my jigsaw.

While waiting for the glue to dry, I went around sorting out door handles and locks. Just about all the handles had stripped out screws, some lock mechanisms were missing etc. I bought two new locks for Jessica and Tamsyn’s rooms, and I had one lying around for Tanya’s room — the bathroom and toilet don’t need keys, sliders will do. Basically I filled the holes, pilot drilled new holes, and used the nicest screws I could find — brass, which is better than the chipboard screws they sell with locksets these days, but not as nice as the oval countersunk screws one used to get.

The holes for the bottom hinge on Tanya’s room’s door were completely stripped out, so I grabbed the 10mm dowel kit and modified a few dowels by chopping the one pointy end off.

Holes drilled out and dowels glued in. All fixed up.

On Monday I got the five cupboard and bookshelf units I ordered from Lansdowne Boards. This time I paid extra to have them individually wrapped — this will go far towards avoiding the confusion I had last time, although I’ve already identified two 2000×500 panels with edging all around which were nicely wrapped with the 2400 tall cupboard, but which don’t appear on my packing list).

Chipboard is heavy. I had help loading up, but to unload I had to unpack on top of the Land-Rover and carry it down bit-by-bit. Kept everything together, of course :-)

2008-10-06 by Farting around House 0

Another lack-of-progress report, with pics

Last week was hectic, since my company exhibited at the African Aerospace and Defence Expo. I had to be in Cape Town early to pick up some foreign visitors, and evenings got late too.

The mountain does make a nice backdrop for pictures.

This is Harvard #7293, used by the SA Air Force from 1942 to 1961. In another life, I want one.

Nice colour scheme.

This is the only flying Shackleton in the world, since they crashed the other one in the Sahara.

After finding some currywurst for breakfast, I managed to tear myself away from our exhibit at around 12:00 on Saturday, and went to the office to print a contract, since my brother found a buyer for my Fox. Went to Bellville, found other paperwork, buyer came around, I managed to still catch the liquor store open (16:55, they close at 5 on a Saturday) and then rushed back to Tanya’s place, because I had to pick her up and go back to Bellville for a braai… after which we went back to Kommetjie again. Covered about 250 km the day :-)

View from the N1.

Somewhere in the early hours of Sunday I woke to a dripping noise. Tanya’s geyser was leaking. Bear in mind that we’ve only just sold the place.

So Sunday I investigated, drained the geyser, removed the element, and came to the conclusion that it was probably the geyser itself that was at fault. Drove to the house, got the Land-Rover, and the electric gate wouldn’t close. Fscked played with that until it started working, drove to the hardware store. Got into a traffic jam because some unfortunate individual got under the train, and everyone wanted to rubberneck. Bought a new geyser, battled the same traffic jam going back, picked up the ladder from the house, removed the crud from the gutters at Tanya’s place, waited for Tanya to come home to help me with the geyser, fitted the geyser, hosed out the gutters, loaded the b0rken geyser into the Land-Rover, and had a well-deserved beer.

But no progress on the house side of things.

Meanwhile, Crystal continues to crack me up. I need a support group.

2008-09-22 by Farting around 1

I hate Marko

I hate Marko*.

He blogrolled Crystal, and I liked her writing so much that I’m now wasting a considerable amount of time reading her blog from the bottom up.

Start with the Crazy Chronicles, or at some random point.

Oh, and they also did some home renovation (note — if you’re on the prude-ish side or easily shocked you might want to not read Crystal’s blog).

* Note that this is just the manly way to say “I love Marko to bits and will read everything he writes and everybody he blogrolls, because he so just rocks”.

2008-09-18 by Uncategorized 1

A date has been set

We received an offer for Tanya’s place. It’s only 5 1/2 % lower than the offer we had in April/May, which, given the current real estate slump, is pretty good IMO.

So we need to be out by the end of next month (31st October).

A month and a bit should be enough to finish the kitchen counters and upper cabinetry, a few cupboards, and carpets, no?

2008-09-16 by House 1

Big update

As mentioned in the previous post, I found a tiler, Glynn Maree, he advertises on Gumtree. I’m very happy with his work.

The border tiles were cheap, and we quite liked them at the time. But Tanya took one look at this, and said that they didn’t look right. So I quickly removed them before the cement hardened. The problem of course is that we now have a strip the width of this specific border tile (80mm) and we need to find something else that fits.

At the time I built the bath surround, I didn’t know what kind of tiles we’d be using, so the gap I left down the middle of the surround (to be able to connect the plumbing) was determined randomly by the board size. Last week, Glynn tiled to a point, and this morning I cut the hole bigger at the bottom and filled the top in. Glynn will stick two tiles to the loose plank, and I’ll fit magnetic catches to keep it in.


I’ve been building this unit out of my favourite material, shutterboard. Tanya and I carried it from the garage to the house (it’s heavy) and wrestled it into position. So what is it, you ask? Well, it’s part of my one built-in cupboard, the one with drawers and shelves that I’m still designing. It’s also a space to store towels, all neatly rolled up.

This is the view from the living room. A bit of cretestone and paint and it will blend right in.

On a totally unrelated topic. I’m around the house on Saturday morning, and my cell phone rings. It’s Tanya, she’s stuck in the toilet.

Now, there’s a story here. When we got the house, the toilet door had no mechanism, and I don’t know what they did to it to damage the door like they did…

I fitted a mechanism, cut a plank sort-of to size, nailed it into place…

… and liberally applied (automotive) body putty (bondo in the USA).

I still have to drill the hole for the square rod… but this explains why Tanya couldn’t get out. I had to unscrew the handle on the outside and use a pair of pliers to open the lock.

Bloody good thing this didn’t happen to me one morning while working alone at the house. Especially since I don’t generally carry my cellphone with me when working.

And yet another unrelated topic — I’m still looking for a wok, so I went to Taste of Asia in Plumstead. Found a mortar & pestle, and umeboshi. The umeboshi is quite expensive, the package above costs about the same as a flat (24 cans) of beer. Havn’t tried it yet.

I also made Cheezy-Lime White Chili with tofu, mostly for Jessica, but I ended up eating most of it. Gooood. Not that I’d call it a chili, it’s more of a (mild) curry. I’ll make it again.

I bet the car’s a writeoff.

Evidence that it hailed in Fish Hoek this morning. Just a bit, but man oh man was it loud on the tin roof of the garage.

2008-09-15 by House 1

So, I haven’t blogged for a while.

There’s a reason. I haven’t done anything to blog about.

With the kitchen base units in, I could measure and order the postform tops, which I did last week. ETA is Friday or so.

I found a tiler to do the master bathroom. He might be starting today.

I need a hall cupboard/bookshelf, some bookshelves for the living room, and two units for our bedroom. Julian at Lansdowne boards is supposed to quote me on these (procedure is he quotes, I pay, he manufactures, and then I audit and spend a week or three sorting things out :-) but so far no quotes.

And once that is done the carpets can go in.

So on Saturday I took the day off (from house stuff), drove out to Somerset West to help a friend with his PC (upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows 2000, and if this sounds terribly archaic please have a look at the URL for this page). Turns out he had a rather nasty virus (Win32:Virut) and after spending Sunday trying to get rid of the damn thing I copied his data off and reformatted the disk. That worked, of course :-) BTW if you have spare copies of Windows 2000 lying around, I’ll even pay for them.

And there you have it — a lack-of-progress report.

2008-09-10 by House 0

Barbara’s gone and done it

She posted her Vegetarian 100. While I’m still trying to catch up to the Omnivore 100. *sigh*

The Vegetarian Hundred :

Strikeout : What I won’t eat
Bold : What I have had
Bold and Strikeout : Have had, never again

1. Real macaroni and cheese, made from scratch and baked – Tanya makes great mac&cheese — Oh dear, I hope you don’t mean I need to make the macaroni and / or the cheese from scratch?
2. Tabouleh
3. Freshly baked bread, straight from the oven (preferably with homemade strawberry jam) — Sure, in a black pot on a campfire, many times.
4. Fresh figs — had a tree at my parents’ home.
5. Fresh pomegranate — at Tannie Lizzie’s place (Esterheim) in Montagu, many moons ago.
6. Indian dal of any sort
7. Imam bayildi
8. Pressed spiced Chinese tofu
9. Freshly made hummus
10. Tahini
11. Kimchi
12. Miso
13. Falafel — takeaway only.
14. Potato and pea filled samosas
15. Homemade yogurt
16. Muhammara
17. Brie en croute
18. Spanikopita — Aaah yes, the ex used to make these. Took up the whole kitchen and the whole day, but my oh my.
19. Fresh, vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes
20. Insalata caprese
21. Stir-fried greens (gai lan, bok choi, pea shoots, kale, chard or collards)
22. Freshly made salsa
23. Freshly made guacamole
24. Creme brulee — I like the Marie Claire Flavours recipe (Recipezaar link)
25. Fava beans
26. Chinese cold sesame peanut noodles
27. Fattoush
28. New potatoes
29. Coleslaw
30. Ratatouille
31. Baba ganoush
32. Winter squash — Butternuts cooked, in foil in the coals, in soup (better than straight pumpkin soup), gems cooked, gems in foil on the fire…
33. Roasted beets
34. Baked sweet potatoes — in tinfoil in the coals, oooh yes.
35. Plantains
36. Chocolate truffles — there’s a nice chocolaterie outside Tulbagh…
37. Garlic mashed potatoes
38. Fresh water chestnuts
39. Steel cut oats — rolled, yes. Steel cut, no.
40. Quinoa — I’ve only recently heard about this, but it seems the rage on the USA side of the ocean.
41. Grilled portabello mushrooms
42. Chipotle en adobo
43. Stone ground whole grain cornmeal
44. Freshly made corn or wheat tortillas
45. Frittata — my ex used to make these often.
46. Basil pesto — and this, when the basil bushes reached the level of the wall.
47. Roasted garlic — what’s a roast without garlic?
48. Raita of any type
49. Mango lassi
50. Jasmine rice (white or brown)
51. Thai vegetarian coconut milk curry
52. Pumpkin in any form other than pie — in SA we know every form except pie :-)
53. Fresh apple pear or plum gallette
54. Quince in any form — had a tree in the garden at Amperbo.
55. Escarole, endive or arugula
56. Sprouts other than mung bean — all kinds available here.
57. Naturally brewed soy sauce
58. Dried shiitake mushrooms — to give body to veg stews.
59. Unusually colored vegetables (purple cauliflower, blue potatoes, chocolate bell peppers…)
60. Fresh peach ice cream
61. Chevre — locavore delight.
62. Medjool dates
63. Kheer
64. Flourless chocolate cake
65. Grilled corn on the cob — often. We’re South African. We braai!
66. Black bean (or any other bean) vegetarian chili
67. Tempeh
68. Seitan or wheat gluten
69. Gorgonzola or any other blue veined cheese
70. Sweet potato fries
71. Homemade au gratin potatoes
72. Cream of asparagus soup
73. Artichoke-Parmesan dip
74. Mushroom risotto
75. Fermented black beans
76. Garlic scapes
77. Fresh new baby peas
78. Kalamata olives
79. Preserved lemons
80. Fried green tomatoes
81. Chinese scallion pancakes
82. Cheese souffle
83. Fried apples
84. Homemade frijoles refritos
85. Pasta fagiole
86. Macadamia nuts in any form
87. Paw paw in any form — don’t like it much.
88. Grilled cheese sandwich of any kind — with Marmite! Yeah!
89. Paneer cheese
90. Ma Po Tofu (vegetarian style–no pork!)
91. Fresh pasta in any form — made lasagna once. I’ll get better if I practiced.
92. Grilled leeks, scallions or ramps
93. Green papaya salad
94. Baked grain and vegetable stuffed tomatoes
95. Pickled ginger
96. Methi greens
97. Aloo paratha
98. Kedgeree — Tanya’s daughter is vegetarian but eats fish. So… yeah. I quite like the stuff. Edit : Barbara meant the vegetarian version, never heard of it. will hafta research & try.
99. Okra
100. Roasted brussels sprouts — Tried it the other night, maybe I need to practice, but I prefer boiled.

2008-09-04 by Foooooood 1

It’s starting to look like a kitchen…

Not only because the cabinets are coming together nicely…

… but also because the cupboards are being filled with all kinds of exotic goodies I’m picking up in anticipation.

I went shopping in the Waterfront the other night, saw that they had juniper berries and star aniseed, and that sort of started it. The star aniseed is for making creme brulee, from the Marie Claire Flavours book. I’ve seen exactly the same recipe online, will find and post a link.

Then came yesterday’s shopping trip. The cover story is that I need a wok. The folks-in-law have a cast iron wok that really works well. I can get something similar from Le Creuset in Cavendish, but it’s rather expensive, as Le Creuset tends to be. So I said that at some stage I’ll go to the Chinese/Japanese/Oriental shops and have a look-see.

The second story comes from a conversation I had with a friend (CH) a few months ago, which went something like this :

<me> I want to make Barbara’s Sichuan Shredded Chicken.
<CH> And you are going to get black vinegar where?

But the real reason I went Chinese shopping yesterday is all Barbara’s fault. In particular, #76, baijiu. I couldn’t believe it’s as horrible as the wiki indicates. To quote, “There are a number of accounts in English which comment unfavorably on the taste of baijiu, comparing it with rubbing alcohol or diesel fuel“.

So I went to Mainland China near Cavendish in Claremont, found 500ml of Er Gou Tou for R18.75 (note : this is less than the cost of a sixpack of beer). I also got the black vinegar, some Tom Yum paste, and an intriguing bottle of “Confucious Family Liquor” which was the most expensive of the lot, R43.80 the bottle (note : R40 is what a relatively decent everyday drinking red sets me back most of the time. Just to put things into context for non-local readers).

So now, I feel that I’m qualified to speak. And I can tell you that baijiu tastes nothing like rubbing alcohol or diesel fuel. No, it’s closer to acetone, although I must admit there’s a slight diesel fuel aroma to it — but on the nose only, not the palate.

After the first few sips (yes, I’m brave) one becomes used to the taste. Maybe because by then, my taste buds had decamped and moved south for the duration. It also has a not-so-nice aftertaste, courtesy no doubt of overly brave taste buds who make the return journey too soon.

I’m sure my Land-Rover will run on it though.

One has to admire the packaging. This is the Confucius Family Liquor, and I have no idea what it is or what it tastes like. Time will tell, I’m sure :-)

OK, back to the kitchen. As you can see from the very first picture, I eventually got the right size panel to close the front of the cabinet that goes up against the wall in the corner.

Julian originally designed the unit with a standard (left-opening) door, but I figured that the cupboard would be more accessible if the door opened the other way, so I picked up two “blind corner” hinges and used that to hang the door. The gas bottle is going into the corner, so I need the access.

With this unit now bolted to the wall, I could measure the exact size of the countertops I need. Aluta Continua.

2008-09-04 by Foooooood House 2

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