2021 Goodbye Trampoline

After many years of great service, time came to retire the old trampoline. The kids had stopped using it and the weather (as strong winds from 2020 showed) was likely to take it to strange new places anyway.

2020 Log Cabin Interior

The Chinese word for crisis is frequently (incorrectly, but usefully) said to be danger and opportunity (more like danger and change). Thanks to Covid-19 I was finally able to make the most of my log cabin, using it as the office/workspace it was always meant to be. Here a VERY WIDE panorama of the space provides you with a good idea of what the space has. Yes, there are a LOT of screens! The panorama makes it look too curvy, it's not, it's a big rectangle.

2019 Shoe Rack Upgrade. The original shoe rack(s) from Costco have now been replace by much neater ones from Argos. The new ones were not as easy to make as something from IKEA, the Argos stuff didn't even have all the holes drilled and I had to find actual locations to put in real nails. Even aligning the doors using (provided) thin small bits of wood, to get them properly square, and vertical was an actual task, like a real carpenter rather than the simpler, putting bit A into hole B experience you have when making something from IKEA. More rewarding perhaps, but it took 2 days to complete, whereas the IKEA equivalent would have been up in less than one day, but the wife like the Argos ones (actually made in Brazil).

2010 Splicing the old floor with the new.

2010 2010-2011, we now have an extension ! We have added to the back room, converted the old kitchen into a study and have a new, larger kitchen area as part of a kitchen/diner.

2007 We now have a log cabin in the garden, 7.0m x 4.2m to keep it below the 30m² area allowed by the council without planning permission. We first ordered it from Keyops Interlock at the Ideal Home Exhibition in 2007 at Earls Court and finally had it built end of August. It is a pine building to our design with a 5.5x4.2 main room and a 1.5x4.2 store room. We spent 3 whole weekends varnishing the outside using the best stuff we could afford, 2 coats of Sikkens Cetol HLS and one of Cetol Filter 7 (both in Light Oak) which should look after the wood for a long time. As I write this we are working on the inside, more photos to come when that's complete.

Look here (or below) for a time-lapse video of the making of the building, taken using my Minolta 7D using its built in time-lapse feature, over 1000 photos were taken and combined to create this 48 seconds video.

2007 Also a short 12 second clip of the first protective (stain) coat going on.

2005 We found a beautiful double-herring bone designed parquet floor under the carpet in the hallway. It had been badly damaged by the carpet, adhesives and moisture, but fortunately there was sufficient wood to enable a through sanding and it had been so well made the its structural integrity was still good. It came up beautifully, here you see the first stage of the sanding process.

2005 Angela had a grand design for our abloutions, we knocked through the wall separating the old upstairs toilet and bathroom to make a much larger room, put in a downstairs toilet under the stairs and this wonderful room upstairs. We did not skimp on fittings with a Matki shower of an extra large 920mm radius, a Bette bath and Grohe fittings including a double headed adjustable shower/bodymassage head thing for the shower. The colour scheme is white tiles with black/grey floor tiles and black mosaic stone trim on the walls, with chrome fittings throughout. The curve to the wall in the photo is due to the panoramic photograph, it is actually straight.

2005 The old bathroom being knocked through. The dust got everywhere, we tried to prevent it, we sealed around doors, but somehow it managed to coat every surface in the house.

2005 After much research we decided that fitted wardrobes just would not be good enough so we hired a carpenter to make bespoke bedroom fittings. To keep the costs down, I would do the varnishing, here the wood for the draws dries off. The best thing about doing your own is that you can get the exact design you need, with the wood you want, and actually maximise the space usage rather than settle for the pre-built carcases that fitted companies use which tend not to fit older houses for maximum affect. I can thouroughly recommend making the effort and from my experience, (as long as the carpenter is of a good standard, which our was) you actually get a better product of a stronger and higher quality than the fitted ones.

2004 December 2004, after 2 days of sanding by hand (because I did not like the tiny circular marks my rotary sander left behind), a further 2 days of staining by hand (using a cloth not a brush) and a further 2 days of varnishing (by roller and brush) ... what you see is the finished oak floor in our rear room - I think I've created a work of art. The boards were laid professionally, but the untreated wood needed a lot of work to get it to what you see now.

We would have preferred to have stained the original flooring, but at some stage a hessian cover was stuck to it using some oil based product, some kind of tar, which bonded to it, making it impossible to remove - so we had to get new flooring, expensive but a joy to behold, and fun to work on too.

2004 Another view of the floor, this time with the fireplace also in view.

2004 20th July 2004 and we start moving things into the house, just on a small scale, two beds (our king size and a single for guests) and some other stuff mostly for the kitchen. Here the van I rented is being filled at Angela's house. The house is not quite habitable as yet but we need to get ready to move in after the honeymoon.

2004 7th July 2004 and the kitchen is taking shape. The equipment is ready to be put in place, all plumbing and wiring has been completed.

2004 As you can see, floor boards are up, radiators lying around, network and power cables are being laid, and in the top left you can just see the leg of a wallpapering table in the front room which by the time this picture was taken was already wallpapered with all the new wiring and plugs laid, just waiting for the paint to be chosen - not such an easy task when there seems to be 1000s of shades and variations of just white to choose from, let alone any other colour.

2004 We are networking the house and were able to pass most of the cables under the floor boards using a pipe and string, but to lay the coax cable for the broadband internet supply (to take it to my comms room - under the stairs) and the digital television I had to go under the floor boards in the front room. I also need to do this to lag the central heating pipes as they are not insulated downstairs, not a pleasant task but necessary.

2004 Floor boards up to wire the network and replace the old wiring upstairs with a new ring main. The downstairs will need similar work as the wiring in the house was of the old style not a ring.

2004 Angela painting the celling in the small room

2004 A view out the back room into the garden

2004 My father and Angela stripping wallpaper in the front room

2004 My father considering the entrance hall wall

2004 The kitchen

2004 View from main bedroom back towards bath room