Slow and steady

Here’s today’s progress on the laundry:

We’ve started varnishing the bench top in marine grade polyurethane. This is coat number 1 (of 4!) on the underside, so lots to go.

Laundry progress

There’s nothing like putting a 430 mm hole in an expensive bit of wood to get the heart pumping. Lacking a 2 foot wide hole saw, I broke out the jigsaw. But these are notorious for making wobbly, wonky cuts.

Enter the diy jig!

I found a bit of board and popped holes in the right places.

Screwed it to the foot plate of the saw

Screwed the board to the centre point of the hole to be and around we went…

Success! It’s not perfect, but much better than I could have achieved freehand.

This is another testament to the usefulness of a box of screws rescued from an old fax machine:

After sanding, this is the trial fit:

Next step: varnishing.

Love in the time of smoked chicken

Today’s post is a culinary adventure and homage to the wife.

Here’s the smoker she found at the tip for $80:

Fired it up for the first time today:

Four pairs of chicken breast in:

A few hours later:

Smoked chicken for pasta sauces, salads, sandwiches etc.

Of course, if you kill chickens yourself it has some risks:

But it’s ok, she got me some band-aids.

You could see this as a post about food or chickens, but to me it can only be about marrying someone who has an eye for a bargain and a heart of gold.

End of today’s tiling

Here’s where we got to. Lots of cutting tomorrow, which slows things down, but only about 25 tiles before the tiling is finished!

Tiling update

This is where we broke for lunch: about one third done on our final wall! Once you get started it gets faster: that first row is the slowest.

Slow progress…

Managed to get a bit more done on the laundry this weekend, despite sickness and extracurricular activities. The floor tiles are all down now, and I’ve started the wall tiles:

(‘scuse the mess: I’ll get a better pic soon)

The tapware is coming along too:

Now we have a gooseneck tap with a spray nozzle. No sink yet though.

Can’t believe how long it’s taking, but it will be a great improvement when it’s finished.

Most of a floor

Here’s where we are on Sunday afternoon:

some fiddly cutting:

A few more cuts to go and then I can get on with wall tiling.  It was great to walk on the tiles I laid yesterday: makes it feel like we almost have a floor!

Horror reduction

It feels like progress is being made. Started tiling today:

One row

Progress up to the quesadilla break

End of today’s tiling

I’ll have to wait till this set dries because I need to kneel on these ones to do the last bit.

The next bit involves cutting tiles which I have done before but have no fond memories of. Last time we did meters of diagonal cuts:

and they are trickier than orthogonal cuts. We’re only making orthogonal cuts for the laundry.

It’s starting to look good but there’s so much to go before it’s finished. After floor tiling comes wall tiling, grout, plumbing, and cabinetry.

Oh the horror

Repairing the damage caused by a water leak in our laundry kinda dominated the weekend’s activities.

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

Two more coats of waterproofing to go this week, then tiling next weekend.

A collateral purchase was a shiny new crowbar. It is the best $20 I’ve ever spent! I can’t wait to destroy some more stuff with it!

BodgeMW

My beautiful old 1982 Ford laser gave up a while back and rather than yet another backyard fix I decided to upgrade to something a little more modern.

After a period of grieving and some half hearted looking I found my new chariot, a 1993 BMW 318is for a song. Problem is though, it’s still a bit old and not all of the bits work.

An example: the driver’s door handle didn’t open from the outside. The handle has this extended lever thing that had snapped. The dealer wants $422 for the part, with a different key that is have to get changed over if I want only one key for the car. Ebay wants about $200 inc postage. Ditto the key.

I figure it can probably be bodged. I’m replacing the cast triangulation with solid aluminum. I’ll screw and epoxy the pieces together. Here is the bodge attempt at the end of afternoon 1:

The pieces go together better than that but I couldn’t hold and snap at the same time. Clamping will clearly be tricky.

A while back I disassembled a fax machine to see what kinds of bits it contained. I had the foresight to collect the screws together:

And here are the six I’ve selected to hold this bodge together:

Tomorrow I’ll start drilling and assembling.