Twenty Four
On Monday I have the utterly brilliant idea of putting the party lights up. These will be the party lights we put up for Rob, took down, put up for the shed boys, and took down again. This means that we can (a) find the shed in the dark and (b) work in it when it is dark (all the available non-working hours from Monday to Friday) and (c) finish the floorboards.
With the lights up we can now de-nail boards in the cabin and clean them too. Except this is the coldest week this winter and it is FREEZING out there… Warmer in the shed, but still COLD. The sort of cold where you can’t feel your fingers. Which isn’t great for chiselling…
We shift the floorboards so that where my sitting room used to look like this:
It now looks like this:
Festive, eh?
Anyway, back to the floorboards. We’re not really, er, winning. We knock out the nails, which is better now with the nail punch (the tool I was calling a ‘nail knocking out thingy’ last week) (ooh, look, I’ve gone all technical) and then need to clean out the tongues and grooves. The grooves aren’t bad – mostly it’s soft earthy rubbish which knocks out easily enough with a tiny chisel. But the ‘tongue’ bit is another matter, and it’s really hard work. We buy ourself new chisels and it helps, but not much, and it’s going to wreck them pretty soon. Guy has the brilliant idea (one night when he can’t sleep – see what I’ve done to him, he now lies awake thinking of floorboards) of using Nitromors (vicious paint stripper chemical stuff) to eat through the gunge. On Saturday, chemicals at the ready, we paint the edge of the floorboard and wait for 20 minutes. Of course, being us, we don’t actually ‘wait’ – we go and mow grass/pick up leaves/try to get the wretched leaf blower working/borrow one from Colin/pick up sticks. After 20 minutes we try the gunge – it just lifts off! Hooray, Hooray and HOORAY! Result! We paint 5 more boards, trying to set up a little production line… 20 minutes (and more mowing/leaf blowing) later we go back to see the boards… some of it lifts off. Some of it is stuck and needs another coat. 20 minutes (etc) later, some of it is STILL stuck and needs another coat… The first one was obviously a fluke. This is going to be a painful and slow process. By the end of the afternoon we have cleaned 9 boards. 9. Ok, so we mowed the grass, picked up debris from the recent storms and blew leaves off all the gravel, but even so. 9? We reckon there are at least 200 more to do… It’s going to take us YEARS.
So here’s the challenge – PLEASE can someone make a suggestion as to how we get the old varnish/polish/dirt off the tongues of the tongue and groove? We’re going to phone the salvage yard and see if they have any ideas, and also email some reclaimed floorboard place from the back of a magazine and see if they have any tips they’re willing to give us, but otherwise we’re looking at spending all our waking hours for the next umpteen weeks cleaning floorboards. Which will make for A Very Dull Diary: week 24 – cleaned floorboards; week 25 – cleaned floorboards; week 26 – cleaned floorboards. See? Obviously we could spice it up a bit by finding a pin in the gunge occasionally, or trying to chisel through a finger, but otherwise it’s going to be DULL. Sandblasting? Chemical dipping? It’s maple, if that helps… (I have no idea whether that’s relevant or not, but it might be…. The chemical dipping chaps might say ‘yes, love no problem ooh look it disintegrated you never said it was maple…’)
We give up on the floorboards and set about making the shed look suitably clean and tidy to be admired over the festive period… we tidy up inside and move the two lovely planters and trees from my girlfriends into position. Yes, I know the gravel isn’t finished. Yes, I know we’ll have to move them again. But they look GOOD! Except by the time I took the photo it was a bit dark so they don’t really show up… better pics next week!
On Sunday we have lovely friends for brunch. I mean, we feed them brunch, we don’t actually cook them. That would be cannibalism… We have crackers and wear paper hats and tell terrible jokes… They all admire the shed in proper fashion but don’t really believe Guy is going to live in it. Oh yes he is… (panto season would appear to be upon us…) It would be truly impressive to say that after their visit we tackled more floorboards, but we didn’t – we fixed a leaky cistern. I know, now we’re doing plumbing – we are SO pleased with ourselves – not only is there no longer a leak, but we also have the world’s fastest filling cistern. Perhaps I got the pressure thingy wrong… No matter, a fast filling cistern will always be handy. And then we repaired the attic hatch door which had dropped off. Which is not so impressive as if I’d fixed it properly in the first place it wouldn’t have flung itself at the floor…
Achieved: Er, not a lot really. Tiny amount of floorboards cleaned, but we do have a tidy looking shed. Full of unclean nail ridden planks.
Hours worked: Shifting floorboards, rigging up lights, cleaning floorboards, cleaning floor in cabin: LOTS! Sweeping/mowing leaves, fixing loo and mending attic hatch, also LOTS. Not enough hours in the day sometimes..
Pressies: Fabulous wooden wine carrier from Karen for Guy – he can keep a bottle of wine in it in his shed!
Purchases: Plumbers tape, plumbers glue, new ballcock fitting. Nothing to do with the shed, but Very Useful Anyway.
Lucky moment of the week: We weren't standing under the attic hatch door when it fell off. Neither were the cats.
Wildlife update: the squirrels put on another brilliant floor show for Sunday brunch… Badger 2 is still visiting, but much later, about 10pm. Perhaps he goes to the cinema earlier or something.
Plan: Find a better way of cleaning floorboards. Bottle of plonk to whoever comes up with a better way of doing it. We have already ruled out chiselling, routing and Nitromors…
Drink: Yes, thank you, very necessary.
The ‘oh bugger’ moment of the week. The slow realisation that it’s going to take us till April to clean the floorboards…
Shed: Still gorgeous! And tidy. Did I mention tidy? I swept up the dirt left over from when it was an open base, and then I hoovered it…
Tip of the week: Don’t put pierced earrings in when you’re in a hurry. All this does is make a hole where there wasn’t one before And It Hurts.
Best brunch joke: Guy’s cracker. As he said before he showed us what his cracker gift was: ‘what would be the most inappropriate gift I could get?’
Here it is…
And here’s Guy:
With the lights up we can now de-nail boards in the cabin and clean them too. Except this is the coldest week this winter and it is FREEZING out there… Warmer in the shed, but still COLD. The sort of cold where you can’t feel your fingers. Which isn’t great for chiselling…
We shift the floorboards so that where my sitting room used to look like this:
It now looks like this:
Festive, eh?
Anyway, back to the floorboards. We’re not really, er, winning. We knock out the nails, which is better now with the nail punch (the tool I was calling a ‘nail knocking out thingy’ last week) (ooh, look, I’ve gone all technical) and then need to clean out the tongues and grooves. The grooves aren’t bad – mostly it’s soft earthy rubbish which knocks out easily enough with a tiny chisel. But the ‘tongue’ bit is another matter, and it’s really hard work. We buy ourself new chisels and it helps, but not much, and it’s going to wreck them pretty soon. Guy has the brilliant idea (one night when he can’t sleep – see what I’ve done to him, he now lies awake thinking of floorboards) of using Nitromors (vicious paint stripper chemical stuff) to eat through the gunge. On Saturday, chemicals at the ready, we paint the edge of the floorboard and wait for 20 minutes. Of course, being us, we don’t actually ‘wait’ – we go and mow grass/pick up leaves/try to get the wretched leaf blower working/borrow one from Colin/pick up sticks. After 20 minutes we try the gunge – it just lifts off! Hooray, Hooray and HOORAY! Result! We paint 5 more boards, trying to set up a little production line… 20 minutes (and more mowing/leaf blowing) later we go back to see the boards… some of it lifts off. Some of it is stuck and needs another coat. 20 minutes (etc) later, some of it is STILL stuck and needs another coat… The first one was obviously a fluke. This is going to be a painful and slow process. By the end of the afternoon we have cleaned 9 boards. 9. Ok, so we mowed the grass, picked up debris from the recent storms and blew leaves off all the gravel, but even so. 9? We reckon there are at least 200 more to do… It’s going to take us YEARS.
So here’s the challenge – PLEASE can someone make a suggestion as to how we get the old varnish/polish/dirt off the tongues of the tongue and groove? We’re going to phone the salvage yard and see if they have any ideas, and also email some reclaimed floorboard place from the back of a magazine and see if they have any tips they’re willing to give us, but otherwise we’re looking at spending all our waking hours for the next umpteen weeks cleaning floorboards. Which will make for A Very Dull Diary: week 24 – cleaned floorboards; week 25 – cleaned floorboards; week 26 – cleaned floorboards. See? Obviously we could spice it up a bit by finding a pin in the gunge occasionally, or trying to chisel through a finger, but otherwise it’s going to be DULL. Sandblasting? Chemical dipping? It’s maple, if that helps… (I have no idea whether that’s relevant or not, but it might be…. The chemical dipping chaps might say ‘yes, love no problem ooh look it disintegrated you never said it was maple…’)
We give up on the floorboards and set about making the shed look suitably clean and tidy to be admired over the festive period… we tidy up inside and move the two lovely planters and trees from my girlfriends into position. Yes, I know the gravel isn’t finished. Yes, I know we’ll have to move them again. But they look GOOD! Except by the time I took the photo it was a bit dark so they don’t really show up… better pics next week!
On Sunday we have lovely friends for brunch. I mean, we feed them brunch, we don’t actually cook them. That would be cannibalism… We have crackers and wear paper hats and tell terrible jokes… They all admire the shed in proper fashion but don’t really believe Guy is going to live in it. Oh yes he is… (panto season would appear to be upon us…) It would be truly impressive to say that after their visit we tackled more floorboards, but we didn’t – we fixed a leaky cistern. I know, now we’re doing plumbing – we are SO pleased with ourselves – not only is there no longer a leak, but we also have the world’s fastest filling cistern. Perhaps I got the pressure thingy wrong… No matter, a fast filling cistern will always be handy. And then we repaired the attic hatch door which had dropped off. Which is not so impressive as if I’d fixed it properly in the first place it wouldn’t have flung itself at the floor…
Achieved: Er, not a lot really. Tiny amount of floorboards cleaned, but we do have a tidy looking shed. Full of unclean nail ridden planks.
Hours worked: Shifting floorboards, rigging up lights, cleaning floorboards, cleaning floor in cabin: LOTS! Sweeping/mowing leaves, fixing loo and mending attic hatch, also LOTS. Not enough hours in the day sometimes..
Pressies: Fabulous wooden wine carrier from Karen for Guy – he can keep a bottle of wine in it in his shed!
Purchases: Plumbers tape, plumbers glue, new ballcock fitting. Nothing to do with the shed, but Very Useful Anyway.
Lucky moment of the week: We weren't standing under the attic hatch door when it fell off. Neither were the cats.
Wildlife update: the squirrels put on another brilliant floor show for Sunday brunch… Badger 2 is still visiting, but much later, about 10pm. Perhaps he goes to the cinema earlier or something.
Plan: Find a better way of cleaning floorboards. Bottle of plonk to whoever comes up with a better way of doing it. We have already ruled out chiselling, routing and Nitromors…
Drink: Yes, thank you, very necessary.
The ‘oh bugger’ moment of the week. The slow realisation that it’s going to take us till April to clean the floorboards…
Shed: Still gorgeous! And tidy. Did I mention tidy? I swept up the dirt left over from when it was an open base, and then I hoovered it…
Tip of the week: Don’t put pierced earrings in when you’re in a hurry. All this does is make a hole where there wasn’t one before And It Hurts.
Best brunch joke: Guy’s cracker. As he said before he showed us what his cracker gift was: ‘what would be the most inappropriate gift I could get?’
Here it is…
And here’s Guy:
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