3 Sept 2012

Sorry, I missed yesterday's deadline. My DVD recorder told me yesterday morning that the hard drive on our DVD recorder was full (150 hours) so I had to copy some to disc. It takes about 10 mins to copy one disc.

The past week was very quiet.

I realised that I am heaping timber in front of my "hoarding wall". I got some nice timber from Ron next door. It is beginning to get so much, I will have to keep the street gate closed to keep it inside. The solution is to build the extra shed and "carport" that I envisaged when we built the wall. (Remember the garage we dismantled in December?) I think we have most of the material.

 Step one was to move the little shed  (2*2m) where I store my bolts and plumbing fittings, etc. I had to take everything out, and with Elna's help, we moved it about three meters backward and half a meter sideways. All on rollers obviously. The shed is freestanding. Next I had to put everything back again.

Step two was to smooth the ground a bit, put a black plastic sheet on the ground and to start repairing and adapting the frames I had and put treated joists on the ground to support a floor. I have some ply sheets to use as flooring.

Then it all turned into custard. The tenant in our Cambridge house called on Wednesday night to complain about a bad smell. We have had this complaint before, but could not trace the source of it, and it was never evident when we got there. When we walked into the house on Thursday, it was clear that we had a problem. I went into the crawlspace under the floor, and this time I found a leak on the waste pipe from the kitchen sink. It became completely disconnected and all the foul water was leaking out. Lucky for us we had a black plastic sheet installed on the ground, so most of the water was contained. I had to leopard crawl under there, fixed the leak and started cleaning up the mess. I got only halfway, as it was getting late, the tenant was due to come home. (And I was dog tired). We went back today and cleared it all up. At a rough guess, it was about 50 liters, crawling with buckets full of mess to the trap door. Of course, the leak was at the furthest point from the trap door. The space was never more than 600 mm. In the end we got the job done. I am recuperating now.

We'll see what the weather holds for tomorrow. If it is rainy, I will work on the new bathroom, otherwisee I will continue with the shed.