23rd October
Outdoors, bathroom and hydroponics
Just as its officially declared Autumn, the last of the major outside groundwork has finished. The area around June’s chalet has been deweeded, tarammed, gravelled and whacked smooth, giving an area for dormant pots of spring bulbs, a potting table and some outside storage. In addition, we finally plumbed in the chalet toilet into the inspection manhole – flushed with success. I’m contemplating getting a load of old tires from the garage down the road to use as an earth bank retaining wall at the edge of the patio. It should be a cheaper option than blocks, stone cages or timber. Perhaps a spring project.
The bathroom refurbishment has finally finished, hence the missing September entry. I started in earnest with toilet and basin removed along with most of the wall tiles. Due to shoddy tiling, they came off the walls cleanly, needing only half a box of polyfilla to make the walls smooth enough to paint. The ceiling needed overboarding as the 6 four-inch holes left by the old downlighters could not be used again and the“unique” artexing makes it impossible to “make good”. My original idea of dropping the ceiling to 2.4m would be an unnecessary expense and probably add more problems with cabling and extractor ducting. I ventured into the loft since the extra insulation was installed to clear a space for the plumber and to sort out the electrics. The old bathroom shaver light was permanently live and needed removing so I could plaster over the old cable. I also redid the extractor fan wiring and prepared the cables for the main bathroom lights. Just as well the weather was cooler for working in the loft with dust mask etc. So the plumber did the first fix and for £40, him and his mate boarded the ceiling. I skimmed the joints and plastered around the edge to the coving. Our recently decorated and tidy hall looked like a builders merchant with most of the new bathroom fittings stacked, laid out or abandoned wherever space allowed. At least I had a photo or two to look back fondly of what the hall should look like! Never mind, a few more weeks and normality will return. While all the fibre glass had been pulled back in the loft, I put in a spur off the PIV system which vents into the hall. The spur feeds June’s bedroom to try and eliminate some lingering damp issues. The second plumbing fix allowed me to continue fitting the units and preparing the cladding for the shower. I fancied trying panelling the lower part of the walls and leaving the upper clean – no more tiles here. We’re pleased with the final effect and I’m so glad I purchased a compressor and nail gun, even though it’s a tad noisy when running! The final plumbing fix went well with Patch and I man-handling the 1.9m by 1m glass shower screen into place with a grunt or two. A job well done, but took way longer than expected, but did save a few thousand pounds. So next for me is to tidy up the garage and put everything back in its rightful place ready for the next DYI / decorating project.
My first attempt at growing salad crops hydroponically here failed miserably on two fronts. The first was the heatwave and the second was over-watering. It all withered, turned pale and stopped growing. The greenhouse will need shading next year. Now the weather has cooled and I’ve designed a better controller, I will clean the troughs and try again and see if I can get some winter salad crops. Meanwhile, the tomatoes on the other side of the greenhouse were prolific and ripened nicely, with the surplus green ones at the end of the season chopped and frozen for winter soup.
With the autumn comes fungi. I’ve lost count of the many different varieties sprouting up on the lawn and in the woods and as my knowledge is very limited, I only recognised the shaggy ink cap as edible. However, with foxes and cats on nightly walkabout, I’m reluctant to eat ground based forage.
The wood store / processing tent is defiantly coming into its own now the weather is cooling. I keep turning the thermostat down to 18.5, while June nudges it up by a degree – but not for long! We are burning a shopping bag full of wood a day, which equates a couple of hours a fortnight slicing and dicing. After a visit from our neighbour to inform me that we had been smoking all day, I re-read the log burner instructions and found the error of my ways. I had not been running the log burner correctly for the last two years! Oops….
