House

I suddenly realised why I’m so damned tired

Emotionally tired, I think, more than physically.

I looked back through some photographs… we’ve come a long way, and we did a helluva lot, but it’s not so obvious if you’re living it day-by-day — it’s much more striking when you look back.

This was the stoep area outside the kitchen door, back in April.

By July, it was looking a lot better.

Of necessity, Frank paved the bricks at quite a slope. This is good, from a water runoff point of view, but I had to chock the washing machine with a couple of 2x4s, otherwise it would bleat piteously and give up on the spin cycle.

I had planned a platform to keep the machines dry and off the deck, as well as a partition to keep the wind and dust at bay, and a table for sorting and folding the washing.

I’ll move the chest freezer when I have help :-)

2009-01-05 by wrm House 2

I’m your customer, not your fscking QA department!

Those following this blog will know that I’ve had many hassles with Lansdowne Boards. This is the second time I’ve run across this specific problem, which is that the board goes through the machine at a slight angle, which means that things don’t line up.

It’s not a lot, but it makes the front of the shelf stand proud by half a millimeter or so, and that looks bad.

The whole point of Lansdowne Boards‘ system is that they have the precision machines so that you can just assemble the stuff without using any complicated tools. In theory this is good. But if your machines are out of calibration or your operators just don’t care, this is the result — one pissed off customer.

So, sadly, I can’t recommend using them. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to suffer, and if you do know what you’re doing, you don’t need them anyway. Go to Davidson’s or someone else instead.

2008-12-31 by wrm House 0

Pot(ter)ing around

We got this yucca tree from freecycle. In a large pot with a small base, so it wasn’t very stable. We found a better pot at Builders Warehouse, transferred the yucca to that, and then figured that the new pot was still not big enough.

So we found an even bigger pot at Harry Goemans, which meant that we had to buy another yucca to go in the smaller pot.

In the process of transferring yuccas and moving pots around, I pushed the larger pot just a little too hard. Sprained my arm. Ouch.

But I think it looks good.

2008-12-29 by wrm House 0

Quick road trip

We had a bit of a booze-up at Amperbo on Friday, my brother had a few people over because the moon was full or something (actually it was his birthday but at our age we’re quiet about that).

So we looked and felt our best when we had to go to Knysna the next morning.

6 hours and 6 minutes of driving, 519km, at an average of 85km/h and 6.3l/100km according to the trip computer, which lies by about 1l/100km about these things. I normally get better fuel consumption but I was towing a parachute trailer.

The bottom half of the display cabinet we took to Knysna is on the trailer, the top half is inside.

Saw a nice looking Forward Control in George.

In Knysna we swapped the display cabinet for a dining room table, and then we drove all the way back again on Monday.

But at least we now have a dining room table :-)

2008-12-17 by wrm House 1

Small World

I should have blogged the start of this story when it happened… I had the dominos, and I had a gas bottle, and I even had some spare flexible gas pipe, but I needed the bits to make it all work.

So I went by the Gas Appliance Centre in Lansdowne Road, with a domino in hand. Girl behind the counter (whom I can totally go in for, except she smokes) takes one look at this, says “yea, you need a hose barb female with a *mumble* thread, they come from the factory with a *mumble-something-else* thread, we have a tap, we can fix it… but we’re out of stock… come back in two days’ time”.

So after checking back a few times they get the fittings into stock (this place is sort of on my way to / from Lansdowne Boards so it’s no hassle). And I buy the two fittings, a T connector, a regulator and a bunch of pipe clamps.

All of this is currently doing duty making the gas dominos work over at the house (there’s still a bit of a leak I need to sort out though).

In the course of this all I spot that they also have cast iron woks, but small ones. Which is a Good Thing, since this was only days after Tanya bought me the Le Creuset. And I spot the corrugated vent pipe they use to vent gas geysers to the outside world. Figuring I could use this to join the miss-applied sewerage pipe to the extractor fan, I ask for a small bit of it. And she says “yea, my brother has off-cuts in the back of the bakkie, I’ll ask him to leave a bit here for you”.

And since then I’ve checked in a few times but the transfer from back of bakkie to under counter had not yet been made.

Which brings us to the other story. I removed four fans, actually, I lie, I removed two fans and the previous owners left us two fans which they removed or never fitted or whatever, from the bedrooms. That still leaves two fans in the house, previous owners were serious fans of… fans. Anyway, stuck the fans on Gumtree. A month or so later this girl phones, says she wants two fans, and she’ll send her cousin or friend or something to collect. No worries, say I, and I stick the fans in the back of the car.

So this morning a fellow pitches, says he’s here for the fans. And he drives a Gas Appliance Centre bakkie. Ahah!

So now I have the bit of corrugated pipe I need to finish the extractor fan installation :-)

2008-12-04 by wrm House 0

Prep bowl

We bought a nice prep bowl at the Muizenberg market.

Then I redesigned the kitchen, and the counter became too narrow for that prep bowl.

Then we started looking for prep bowls to fit the narrow counter, with little success.

Until we went to the Hout Bay craft market, where we found these two bowls:

We both liked the left-hand one more than the right-hand one, but due to the way the clay is fired to get the finish, the right-hand one is slightly smaller.

So we went back home to measure. And I figured that I could make the shiny one fit.

The hole is just inside the cupboard front edge, and it overlaps the batten at the back, but the bowl curves, so it fits, with a centimeter or so to spare.

And then I could fasten the top to the base cupboards, and fit the tap. Yay!

Supper last night was spaghetti Bolognese, Michelle’s recipe via Alosha. And I mixed some speculaas dough, it’s in the fridge, will stick it in the oven tonight.

2008-12-02 by wrm House 0

Fun with Excel

I’ve been keeping track of my expenses, and decided to roughly categorize the spending. The total so far is just shy of R200 000, but it does include furniture which we would have had to buy in any case.

2008-11-26 by wrm Geek House 2

It doesn’t look like much…

…but it means one less extension cord to trip over.

The wire runs down through the ceiling behind the Colossal Cupboard, under the Hidden Door, and up along the door frame to the plugpoint.

With hindsight it would have been easier to fit the plugpoint before mounting the bookcase on the other side of the wall.

This is the second-last electrical run required. I still need to extend it to Jessica’s room and to the outside plug point for the washer, dryer and chest freezer. (The last electrical run will be for a plug point for Tamsyn’s computer). Edit : of course I’m lying, we still need plug points in the master bedroom, but for some reason that doesn’t come up on my radar…

The master bathroom’s looking good.

2008-11-26 by wrm House 2

Tomato and Beef Kofta, Pita bread, and a bit of bathroom progress

I’ve been browsing through Lex Culinaria, which is not something to do while hungry. The Tomato and Beef Kofta recipe looked good. So I made that (first time I’ve made meatballs, would you believe it?). Also tried my hand at Farmgirl’s pita bread, but slipped up, used too much water, had to add flour, and basically ended up with something closer to naan. No worries, it was great.

It’s easy to lose track of the fact that the house is far from finished when you’re having fun in the kitchen. I suppose I have to start from one side, and since the kids’ rooms are almost there (Jessica has a mirror that still has to go up, and the notwork and computer power points still have to go in) the bathroom’s high on the list.

I don’t know how one is supposed to keep the bath apron in place (note strategic use of batten and screwdriver) but I’m hoping that copious amounts of silicone will do. (I had to cut the tile on the far wall in a curved shape to fit, which is why this took so long. That, and the bath was leaking.)

2008-11-19 by wrm House 1

Appliance garage

I’ve been dreading the assembly of the appliance garage for a while, since it involves precision routing, both straight and curved. Had to bite the bullet, it was time.

The straight bits were easy, I clamped a guide to the panel and routed against that. The rounded bits were done very carefully, by hand. I slipped a few times, but the lip on the channeling is wide enough to hide small mistakes.

The completed right hand side. The way this unit is designed is that it gets a wrapped panel on either side, just like my other cupboards. And this raised a dilemma. If I hang the cupboard doors on the top “third” of this unit, they would hang in front of the side panel (If this doesn’t make sense, never mind, trust me). Point is, it won’t look good.

So I routed the thickness of a door off the front edge of the top “third”.

See?

If this plugpoint ever breaks, the poor bugger won’t be able to get it out (the nuts will just spin). Not Right, but expedient (this plugpoint at the top left hand corner of the middle “third”.

2008-11-15 by wrm House 0