Happy Anniversary!

I really should have made more of the fact that I've had an anniversary - it's now been two years since the start of the Infinite Weekend!  Which means there's only 18 years left before my maximum chosen lifespan (80) expires in a puff of nitrogen.  Or to put it another way, I'm 10% through.  So far, so good.

Retirement has treated me very well so far, I must say.  The "Infinite Weekend" name still seems completely appropriate.  There has been a lot of lazing around, quite a bit of socialising, a slightly disturbing total quantity of alcohol consumed, and an amazingly large variety of things happening which get in the way of whatever it was I previously thought I was going to get done; in other words just like any normal weekend, but going on continuously.  For two years.  Together with the unfailing love and support of the lovely Jackie, and the free prescription Citalopram, it's a pretty good setup.

Unfortunately, the sorry story of the dining table continues - parts of it are still lurking in dark, hidden places in the garage paint shop, while I try to get round to masking the underside of the top so that I can paint the frame (but not the ballraces) a fetching metallic copper, like the centre extension pieces and the parts of the base which aren't RAL5020.  It will all make sense when it's finished, and I show you a picture of it, I promise.  In the meantime it's all going on far too long, and unfortunately writing about how it isn't finished yet doesn't seem to help complete it.

Meanwhile, our house has two outside taps - one on the mains, and the other fed by the rainwater harvesting system, which also feed the downstairs loo with flush water. Ever since the Battle of the Somme, it's been supplying water tinged with mud, which looks strangely like urine when it's in a loo.  One has to remember to explain the whole thing to new visitors, lest they get stuck in a continuous flush/wash hands/flush/wash hands loop.  Anyway, two taps... but we only have one hose pipe.  Fortunately it's on a fancy Hoselock reel which sits in a wall bracket, so it would be easy to move between taps, if only one had another bracket.

an original Hoselock bracket

 Amazingly, one can still buy just the bracket from Hoselock; but it does cost £10.99 plus shipping.  and it is only a bit of bent metal after all.  So, to perk up my ailing paint shop spirits with something more achievable, I thought I'd make one, out of nice predictable metal.  Metal, vise, hacksaw, bashing with a hammer, drilling, filing.  Proper making, in other words.  And here it is.

a cobbled-up out of odds and sods bracket

 The truly attentive reader might conceivably recognise the slot pattern in my cobbled up out of odds and sods bracket and say "Dexion", but how many would recognise that it's aluminium (or possibly Dural) Dexion?  They don't make that any more; actually I've been unable to find out when they ever did.  I'm pretty sure I've never acquired any myself, so that means my stock (sadly, only a couple of short lengths) must have come from my parents' house, where it was originally the property of my eldest brother, Ken.  I have no memory of a time before it was there.  It was definitely there early in my youth, because it was used to make a especially memorable soap-box cart - it was especially memorable because it taught me to file off the rough edges after you've cut up Dexion with a hacksaw, by gashing a big hole in my ankle during an otherwise trivial collision with a wall.  You can't beat trauma for getting the message through, can you?  Anyway, those bits of metal must be well over 50 years old, and have been faithfully following me around for most of their lives.  And now they are screwed on a wall, transformed into a fitting for a hose reel.  I think it's a fitting end.

Resolution

Welcome back, gentle reader!  I'm so sorry I haven't been providing any web-based offerings for such a long time, I really am.  Somehow, the continued presence of builders on the Sears estate seem to have had a strangely inhibiting effect on my creativity.  Anyway, I apologise, and I hope things can get back to normal soon, because...

It's all over, and the extension is complete!  Glass lantern in the ceiling, and everything.

before

after

Except for the bits I'm supposed to be doing, of course.  We went shopping for wall lights, and saw some we liked in a super-expensive lighting shop.  They were made of partly-painted acrylic sheets, put together in a simple way that made me comment to the lovely Jackie, "I could make those"; so that's now a project-in-waiting.  Then there's the multi-coloured LED recessed uplighting around the inside of the lantern, which was originally going to be built by the builders, but then got redesigned to be made of partly-painted internally-lit acrylic strips instead of dreary old wood, so I took that on as well.  And then there's the table.

We ordered a sofa bed online from Made.com, and then found ourselves coming back home from Yorkshire, so we diverted into Birmingham to see the sofa in the flesh in their showroom there.  Which we did, and it was fine.  But the showroom is part of a fancy new retail space, where one wanders from one well-lit showroom to the next in a retail reverie, without noticing that ones whereabouts have subtly altered; and so we found ourselves gazing at fancy Italian dining tables retailing at a cool £3500 or so in a stylish emporium with considerably more staff than customers.  Needless to say, I privately scoffed at the prices, although in this case I did say to myself, "OK, I probably couldn't make that."

Nevertheless, a seed had been sown.  When we got back to Devon, I was idly looked at dining tables on Gumtree, and lo! There was a second-hand absurdly expensive BoConcept extending dining table, functionally identical with the Italian ones we'd seen, and just the right size for the lovely Jackie's dinner party aspirations, ours for a bargain £200.  In white and stainless steel.  And in Bournemouth.

And so we bought it, and had a lovely day bringing it home in Leo's van, and set about refurbishing it into a greeny-blue colour with copper bits, to go with the new chairs with copper-finished legs, already arrived and awaiting assembly.  And then disassembly, because we decided to paint all the little white blocks underneath matt black, to match the other chairs (the ones with chrome legs) which have black bits underneath.

And so it was that the garage became the paint shop, complete with internal spray booth for small items, made out of a pop-up toilet tent that we bought once and never used.  Of course I had to make a light fitting for the spray booth out of bits of rubbish I found lying around, but I didn't take a picture of it.

Anyway...

There's a reason I don't like sloppy stuff like paint and filler.  It's because I'm just not very good at it.  I always forget how hard it is, and think I know how to do it. Nowadays you can even watch a couple of YouTube videos of people achieving a perfect gloss finish on a priceless vintage car using only an aerosol can of matt black paint and a Brillo pad, and be reassured that it really is possible for anyone to get a fantastic result - but it isn't really.

This time I fell for it hook, line and sinker when we went into a paint shop to check out aerosol paints and the man convinced me that we should (1) use some stuff made by Zinsser (who?) which they mix on the spot to the RAL number of your choice (5020, since you ask)  and (2) put it on with a brush.  It will magically self-level, he said, and a superb finish is more or less assured!  My arse it will.  After all my meticulous wet 1000-grit preparation, and the careful use of a superb new paintbrush with trendy synthetic bristles and a stainless steel ferrule, it looked as if it had been applied with very coarse sandpaper.  Even after I applied another coat with a roller, you could still see the brushmarks.  And so began round after round of sanding and painting, painting and sanding, which have not yet, as I write, come to an end.

Table, "transition to RAL 5020", with toilet tent and wrapped motorcycle.
Artist's own collection; sensible offers invited

I am now clinging to the hope that the whole thing will eventually be rescued by another product, namely  2KSprayMax SATIN Lacquer Clear Coat.  This justifies its phenomenal price by being a 2-part lacquer which fills up all the scratches in your paint, perfecting all imperfections at a stroke, and then dries to a super hard-wearing finish which repels water, attracts women and enhances sexual performance in all who buy it.  Or so I'm told by the man in the paint shop.

Meanwhile I am still so fortunate as to have my own team of private dressers, one day a week.  This week I will largely be wearing knitted head- and neck-wear from the lovely Jackie's winter collection, apparently.

private dressers at work

However, the resulting "look" hasn't met with undisputed acclaim, even within the team... 

aghast below!

 I am still hoping for a second referendum on that before the festival season kicks in.

Rusty, It's Goodbye

I was trying to find a suitable memorial for poor Rusty the digger driver, and I came up with this.  I think a dog-loving Australian yodelling cowboy bush balladeer guitar player with a rhyming name is a pretty appropriate candidate to commemorate a gentle English digger driver who worked with his dog in the cab, don't you?  Oh, and in case any of you were thinking of emitting a scornful snort at any point in the performance, I'd like to point out that during his lifetime, Slim Dusty was considered an Australian National Treasure.  National Living Treasure is a status created and occasionally updated by the National Trust of Australia's New South Wales branch, awarded to up to 100 living people. Recipients were [sic] selected by popular vote for having made outstanding contributions to Australian society in any field of human endeavour. (Wikipedia)

So there!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jozYWe4l_qY

Anyway, it turns out that our Rusty hasn't gone to the great scrapheap in the sky after all, and he's going to be here tomorrow with his digger and probably his dog too, to help the redoubtable sappers fill in the gaping gaps behind the redoubt.  Strange that, isn't it?  I mean, who has a dog called "too"?

Armistice

Well, actually two armistices.  The first one came after a visit from the Structural Engineer (I like him, so I'm giving him capital letters) who expressed considerable concern for the safety of anyone working in the bottom of our trenches.  There were several factors at play here:

1. The walls falling in, sometimes in big lumps, always unpredictably
2. The depth of the trench - over two metres so far, and only just hit the top of the house foundations
3. Rain - and more rain predicted

He said he would talk to the builder (they're all mates who have worked together before). The following day, after another collapse, the single piece of shuttering they'd put up fell inwards under the weight of mud. 

single piece of shuttering, still up (just)

So there was Dean in the bottom of the trench, gallantly trying to shovel mud out from behind the shuttering, whilst standing between it and a huge mound.  The fallen earth had left a two foot deep overhang, which, if it had chosen to fall, would surely have broken both is legs and trapped him under four tons of mud. So I went all managerial and told him to get out of there while we had another go at trying to put some safety into the whole show.  After all, massive loss of life has been tried before, and it didn't result in a very nice extension in 1914.

Armistice #1.  Overhanging stuff. Our brave boys stand ready (on top of the overhang, natch)

Phone calls ensued.  The Structural Engineer talked to the builder, and the builder talked to the digger driver, and the digger driver pointed out that if he did what the Structural Engineer wanted (which was to grade all the sides of the hole out to 45° slopes) he would then be unable to get the digger out of the garden, because of the resulting step up to the edge of the drive, and also unable to access parts of the ditch.  Hmmm.

Meanwhile, I went to sleep.  I expected someone to call me and explain what they were going to do, but...

Eventually I woke up ("in bear emerging from hibernation" mode) and went to see what was going on.  Dean was back in the trench, but at the other end, where there wasn't an overhang. Nothing much else seemed to have changed.

At this point I though, "Well I've had my say"; so I told Dean that I would be on his side if he decided he didn't like it at any point, and let them get on with it.  Here's what they did:

That's Dean, who is about 5' 10", below the top of the shuttering, which is about 3ft below ground level - so roughly 9ft deep!  Anyway, the building inspector came and said it was good; and so, it was good.  Next day they finished off the box, 

finished box

and the concrete came...

concrete - actually nearly all gone when this was taken

and our stout-hearted yeomen set to with barrows (!) to fill the thing up

A barrow boy

I must admit that my heart sank slightly at this point as I thought it would take longer than the remaining hours of daylight to do this, but amazingly they finished it in about an hour and a half.

And then they tucked it up for the night in yet more OSB and we all went to bed.  The second armistice was signed, and the collapsing garden gave up the fight in the face of surprisingly good weather, 30-odd tons of concrete and a lot of backfilling.

When it was all over, I was talking to Kieran the digger driver (still no word of Rusty, by the way.  I think the Wing Commander must have written a letter to his wife) who said he was just about to go on a course to renew his digger driving ticket, which had in fact already run out.  I said, "Oh, so you're probably not insured then?"  He looked quite wistful, and was unusually quiet for a few moments. "I suppose not", said he.

Shelling

Here on the front line. the distinction between a trench and a bomb crater is somewhat academic.  It's safe to say that terms like "patio" and "garden" have somewhat lost their meaning, too.  We do understand "mud hole" and "river" though.

Here's the latest aerial surveillance photo after a prolonged bout of Rain (or Rhine; past tense, Rhône).  You can clearly see the course of the Rhône:

the Rhine, of course!

The piece of lawn which used to support the top of the ladder now supports the bottom of it, after yet another collapse. Meanwhile, the sappers have been tunnelling under the drive in a bid to thwart the next wave of shelling  - at least that's what it looks like.

Ouche!

Needless to say, all this unexpected exposure of what should rightly be kept underground is putting a bit of strain on the plucky civilian population. How long will this terrible Rhine Garrone? It's the heaviest we've ever Seine (past tense: Saône).  Isère anything we can do? Seemingly, not a Lot. It's enough to make one quite Ill.  Just have to Marne up and take it on the Dordogne, I suppose.  (If anyone can explain that last one to me, please do so in the comments).

Anyway, we are consoled by the delivery of a new digger, late this afternoon, and the possibility of actual building-style progress tomorrow.  Alas, there is still no word on the fate of Rusty, who apparently went missing in action somewhere today and hasn't been heard of since.

Somme people...

We've decided to start a Battle of the Somme re-enactment society, based in the site of the old patio.

After a couple of hours mucking about with buckets and OSB, trying to make the trenches safe with shuttering, our gallant building crew (but sadly not including Rusty the digger man, who had a previous commitment elsewhere today) gave up and went home, following a near miss in which young Ewan became partially submerged in mud.  We never intended to risk to life and limb, after all.  And we aren't on a very strict timescale either, so no worries.  Apparently when Rusty returns, it will all be much better.

Pity really, it's a lovely day...

Battle scene, photographed from a passing Bristol Scout

Curtains

We don't really do curtains very much in the house of Sears, but the lovely Jackie decided that we need a fabric enhancement the bit of glass beside the front door.  This particular curtain-like entity would be hand-made of various pieces of exotic fabric (in middle eastern styles) collected over several years in our travels abroad, sewn together into a vertical pennant by the lovely Jackie herself.  The whole assembly would be supported on a bracket, which would need to pivot so that the pennant could rest against either wall or window, ninety degrees apart.  Obviously, this pivoting bracket would need to be custom made.  Equally obviously, the most fulfilling solution would be to make it out of bits of scrap found lying around the place...

One obvious source would be the several curtain poles which came with the house, now forlornly unused because of our general preference for blinds.  Here's a candidate:

a candidate

 When you take it apart, there are some useful things inside the fixing system.  And I had a few other bits in stock.

useful things...

 The two threaded bits on the wooden block are RivNuts; when you squash them into a hole in a piece of metal, they rivet themselves on, and you have a strong thread attached to a thin sheet.  I have those in stock.  The piece of aluminium underneath everything else was salvaged from Cambium Networks when they scrapped a load of them; I can't remember what they were originally. It's about 3mm thick, and has those bosses attached, but a swift blow with a suitable punch removes them quite easily (for use for something else). 

From these bits, I made a bracket, a cut down top post cover, and a rather complicated block:

One bracket, a cut down cover, and a rather complicated block

Or, looked at right side up, and with the addition of a long roofing screw, like this:

right side up

I also cut down the shiny post gizmo that screws onto the ceiling so that I could get it further into the corner, but I forgot to take a picture of that part before it got installed.  You get the idea from the cut down cover shown above.

The idea is that my little bracket gets screwed to the wall at the bottom, and then the roofing screw shown above holds the wooden cover on, at the same time as protruding upwards to form the bottom pivot by threading into the second RivNut, which is glued inside a hole in the bottom of the post.  The post then pivots on the thread, like the kingpin end of the bottom wishbone on an MG Midget.  But without the grease nipples.

When it's all assembled, it looks like this:

and the ends in close up:

Oh, and the top bar (from which the pennant will hang) is made from a piece of rather nice hardwood which was part of the packaging of our Miele dishwasher (I think it was three years ago).  And so, the whole thing was done with no new parts purchased at all, which I think is rather a delight.

The best bit of the whole thing was using the router as a spindle moulder by clamping it upside down in the vice...

spindle moulder anyone?

Then you have to clamp blocks to the workpiece to make it big enough to slide around on the thing:

big enough to slide around

(The hammer is just to stop it all falling off while I took the picture)  I pondered trying to use a fence to guide it, but in the end I did everything hand-held.  All in all, it worked surprisingly well, with no loss of fingers.

In other news, it's curtains for the patio, because we've started having the extension built which will become the dining room in due course.  So far, they've dug down over two metres and haven't got to the top of the foundations yet! The hole keeps getting bigger (sideways) and filling itself in as the sides collapse, too.  It's all slightly scary, but fortunately we are paying someone else to do the worrying, and Rusty the digger man seems quite good at excavating.

Rusty the digger man getting started

I expect there will be more news of the hole soon...  In the meantime, we are sticking our fingers in our ears and going "La la la" a lot.