Stepping Stones

 I was chatting to the window cleaner at the front door yesterday morning and we were saying how mild the weather was for 7 weeks before the new year. 

 I said I'd got really hot laying a few paving slabs earlier and he gave me a puzzled look "laying paving slabs?" I said they're only small paving slabs!

 

Just stepping stones between the patio and the greenhouse so when I go out to open and shut the greenhouse door next year I won't get wet feet.

I've sunk them into the grass so the mower will go over the top.

 The slabs came from down the side of the bungalow, where there are several broken and uneven bits and weeds everywhere but  a quote to remove the slabs and replace them with a concrete path and shingle at the edges was £2090!! so I won't be having that job done for a while. Might as well use what I can elsewhere - less to pay for removal later.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Mending the Workshop Door

A few weeks ago I asked Col's brother if he could find an hour to mend the bottom of the workshop door as it was looking very  rotten with bits falling off. Unfortunately he couldn't spare the time because  he'd just decided to start knocking his house about to find the old fireplace in the living room where he wants to put in a wood-burner ... before he retires in a few years and because very soon no one is going to be allowed to put a wood-burner in a house for the first time (I didn't know that) and as he spends all his weekends hauling and cutting wood to sell so has a ready supply of free wood.
He said he would find me a bit of metal to cover the door and I could do it myself!
I gave him the measurements and he found a bit of metal at work and drilled some holes in it for me ready to fix it on.

I started by clearing away the soil and grass from around the bottom of the door. Room for mice and rats to get in. I don't really want rats chewing the ride-on mower cables!

I used some pieces of wood for the plate to sit on to get it in the right place. Drilled some small holes to help the screws go in easier. I thought I was bound to find plenty of metal washers to sit beneath the screw heads but had to search through several boxes of odds and ends to find enough - good thing I hadn't chucked them out.
Eventually I got all the screws in through lots of the holes BiL had drilled. The bottom hinge side was too rotten to fix.

 Ta Dah!

 Andrew found me the brown mastic and mastic gun that he'd used when he'd linked two water butts together for me. But I couldn't squeeze the gun thing hard enough to get the mastic out, so sealed the top edge of the plate with some white bathroom mastic sealer I had in the garage.It will have to do for now.

Took me ages to do, but it should stop anymore bits falling off the bottom of the door and keep out everything except the smallest mice......I hope.


Back Tomorrow
Sue


 

Fixed it Myself

To anyone who is handy with drills and screwdrivers and bits of wood the small job I did the other day is peanuts and not worth a mention. But I wasn't handy with DIY stuff, I didn't need to be, I had a husband who loved fiddling and fixing so he did it all,  as he would have said "by the time I'd have explained how to do it I could have done it myself"

During the summer I noticed the wood staging in the greenhouse was sagging on one side.
  The tiny bit of wood that should have been holding it up wasn't man enough to support the weight of 6 pots of peppers and 5 pots of aubergines I'd got growing.

Less than an inch wasn't big enough to support the staging

  I couldn't do anything except prop it up until all the pots were taken out.

After clearing the peppers out  last weekend I was able to have a go at fixing a new bit of wood to hold up the staging and eventually after a couple of attempts I succeeded. I had to use the drill with a wood drill bit to drill through the block, find a long screw and screw it through the wood and into the greenhouse.

The new bit is an inch and a half..................much stronger

The Ta Da ! moment!

I thought this was a job that was going to need brother-in-law's help, so I'm feeling quite chuffed.

The next thing I want to have a go at is replacing the lock on the garage door.
Should be another learning curve

Back Tomorrow
Sue