Fences and tradesmen

With Steve locked in the basement sanding his bookshelf it's left to me to give another update. We've been trying to get a few bits of work done but are having a lot of trouble getting tradesmen to even answer the phone. You'd never guess there was a recession on. We managed to get an electrician and builder in to give us quotes for bits of work, but our most urgent need, window maintenance, we haven't had any joy with. At least we're not having to pay for it yet I suppose.

Meanwhile I've been fixing the fence at the front of the house. There were several broken or missing fence palings (think that's the right word). It's not that difficult to fix fences but it took ages to track down where to find the replacements from, get the right style, buy primer, wait for primer to dry, get matching paint, do two coats of paint, find the right nails and then wait for a dry day to actually effect the repair...

Apparently having a neat and tidy front of the property raises its resale value. Not that we're planning to do that in the near future but it's certainly more regular, but now it's obvious that the whole front fence needs repainting! That means sanding before I even get to the repainting stage. It's never simple...

Til next time.

Jo

Getting slap happy

I promised the double glazing and here it is over the louvred toilet window which lets the southerlies blow through and actually lets rain in too! Not any more. The room is noticeably warmer. Just seen you can see me in the photo...! ha ha.

It's Steve's very own invention, well - almost - it's a kind of stolen idea. Commercial companies do the same thing, create custom-made removable magnetic panels and attach them to existing windows - but for about $150 per pane. Steve's home-made version costs about $30 per pane, most of the cost being the adhesive magnetic tape. He's only used cheap thin perspex but you probably could scale it up to use a thicker kind of material which would be more transparent.

It works very well on conventional windows but on a lot of them you can't get a panel to fit (e.g. on sash windows) because there are locks etc. in the way. But it's a big improvement, plus you can remove them in the summer....

For some reason on our trip round Bunnings to buy a new shelf to put up in the kitchen (we were too short of worktop space so I thought I'd create a bit more next to the cooker)...

... we got distracted by paint and decided it would be a great idea to paint all of the cupboard doors in the kitchen a different colour using sample pots. Here's the before and after shots...

Before:

After:

I think it's very Balamory. I particularly like the purply one on the far right. But I think it clashes with the pink walls. With any luck we'll only have to live with this kitchen for a couple of years anyway...