Sarah and Guy Build A Shed

The beginning part of the week is weirdly filled with woodstain… shelves, floorboards for windowseat fronts, pew ends, window seat frames… To get the right amount of stain and varnish on things, I seem to be permanently staining something either before breakfast or after work.  And my fingers end up a funny colour.  On Monday I show three people in kagoules round Guy’s house and they irritate me.  They ask millions of questions like when was it rewired and what are the floors made of and have the walls been replastered and was this once wallpapered.  I begin to get facetious.  ‘Is this wall hanging hiding damp?’  I lift it to show the perfectly blank wall and say ‘Nope’.  ‘Is this fire ever used?  It looks suspiciously new’.  I fling open the doors, point inside and say ‘Ash’.  Eventually they go.  The youngest kagoule wearer phones the next day to say the house is ’15 miles too far east’.  I refrain from pointing out ‘it’s in ...

I have a day off on Tuesday to meet the energy assessor at Guy’s house to get the energy efficiency certificate bit of the HIP we need to sell the house.  He turns up late, stays half the time he says he will, doesn’t look in the lofts and shoves off again.  He says we’ll get a rubbish rating as its an old house but that it doesn’t matter as nobody ever reads the reports.  I say that must be a shame for you and he launches into a lengthy lecture on just how successful he is and how busy he is.  Odd chap.  I go to B&Q to buy pots for planters and then head for IKEA to get the shelf supports that they didn’t have the last time we went.  We had checked their ‘on-line stockcheck’ thing and it had said ‘in stock’.  Which, as they did have one bracket, was technically correct, if useless.  This time I am wiser.  I phone IKEA and speak to A Real Person who says that yes, they are in stock and that there are 57 of them.  Hooray!  I driv...

The week starts well with the builders merchants delivering lots of bits of wood for the architrave and skirting while we’re at work.  We get home and start measuring.  We measure how long the architrave needs to be, add on the width of the architrave, measure, cut and put in place.  How easy is that?  Except when we put it in place it is two feet too long.  TWO FEET!!!  Obviously something has gone wrong in the measuring/adding up bit.  We decide we’ll just plonk the wood in place and mark it with a pencil, and then try and figure out the angles.  Luckily we do have a mitre saw otherwise it would be never-ending.  Finally we get the hang of it, and soon we’ve got the door pieces cut to fit.  Then we start on the windows, and I cut the mitres totally the wrong way, so in the end we don’t have enough wood.  Bugger.  Never mind, most of it’s done!  We label all the bits on the back (LL for Left window, Left side, RB for Rig...

On Monday we varnish the floor again.  And we have our first badger squabble – by the time we’ve hurtled out of the comfy sofa where we’re sitting after varnishing, they’ve been spooked (probably by us hurtling to the window) and gone…  but definitely two badgers squabbling.  Later in the evening one returns, looking a bit dishevelled… and he doesn’t like apples.  Fussy bugger. On Tuesday we varnish again – that’s 3 coats, and they’re still just soaking in.  I say I’ll do one more Wednesday morning before work, then we can paint the walls in the evening.  It’s still soaking in, so we buy more varnish, and do another coat instead of painting.  And then I do another coat before work on Thursday.  We think it’s 7 coats in all, and it looks lovely.  Eventually.  Then we cover it all up again to do the painting… The colour is called ‘Cookie Dough’ and it is exactly like the same colour as our chocolate cake mixture.  The paint is...

The early part of the week is rather full of cakes… There’s a Horrid Henry cake for a little girl, and we start work on a 60th cake for two friends.  However, Tuesday night is enlivened by watching a badger in the garden… we have learnt that they like apples, so I roughly chop an apple up and put it out with the peanuts, dried fruit and Madeira cake remains (yes, I know, sounds like a fab meal for a human).  Very soon a badger appears and, as the utility room door isn’t shut properly, I open it a fraction and listen to him eating.  Fantastic chomping and slurping noises!  I push the door open further as he seems unconcerned and before long I’m standing in an open doorway watching a badger thoroughly enjoying his dinner only ten feet away.  Amazing! I have a good plan for Valentine’s Day.  It goes something like this: 1.  Get home very early (before Guy comes round) and wrap presents. 2.  See Tree Surgeon (coming at 4.30) with Guy. 3.  ...

On Monday night we do cake stuff, on the basis that the plaster is still drying out in the front room so we can’t mist coat it yet… we have a fairytale castle cake to do for Friday, so we prepare the turrets.  Very pretty.  Very unshedlike. By Tuesday the plaster is beautifully dry – and even looks smooth! We mist coat the whole of the front room, as I have a day off on Wednesday and can paint the ceiling – Dave the Tree Surgeon is coming to chat with us about the beech.  Except by Tuesday evening he no longer is coming, having cancelled.  I’ll have my day off anyway! So on Wednesday I have a lie in till, ooh, at least 7.30 and then spend a gentle day painting… first the ceiling in the front room, then all of the back room.  Then mum comes round so I have a break, then I re-do the front room ceiling, then the back room again.  The storage area is white (white was cheaper than ‘Magnolia’) and by the time I stop I have something akin to snow blindness an...