I've had last week off work and spent the entire time working on projects around my garden and house.
The first project was building a pergola onto a concrete base that was at the end of the garden when I moved in.
Before:
Terrible photo but it shows the base
After a couple of days of work, which involved a lot of decisions as to where to postion posts etc I now have a nice pergola at the end of the garden which I will in time add plants and lighting to.
Viewed from upstairs in the house:
The next project was building a bench from a load of 4inch round fence posts OI was given a couple of years ago.
I was fortunate to have access to a large table saw to split some of the posts in half length ways to give me pieces for the back and seat.
The design was based on a bench my parents have so we had a good idea what we were doing and I bagan the design in Sketchup so we could see how things fitted. It took the best part of a day, under a gazebo to shelter from the pouring rain but we managed to get it built. I'ts very heavy and sturdy and can easily take the weight of three adults!
The third project was sorting out a wooden cable reel I have had laying around for a couple of years so it is useable as a table. This involved raising the height a bit and reducing the diameter of one of the sides so you can get chairs in close enough to eat etc.
Measuring and cutting the diameter of one side:
All sorted and ready for use as a table! I still intend to sand it all down and treat it to give it a nicer finish but for now it's useable as table as it is.
The table in place under the pergola, starting to look nice down at the end of the garden now:
Next up was sorting out the downstairs toilet. This was awful when I moved in, mould and peeling paint and general dirt and grime (and spiders...lots of spindly spiders!). As such it near got used as a toilet as became a dumping ground and essentially a cupboard. However I really want to have it a toilet so I needed to get working on it.
This is how it looked when I cleared out the stuff that had been stored in there, disgusting I'm sure you'll agree!
I'm trying to do it up on a really tight budget as I'm somewhat skint so I'm using up paint etc that I have laying around, and making do with materials etc I have to hand at the moment. In the future I will do more with it but for now I just want it to be useable.
A bit of a clean and a lick of paint and it's looking better already! Still lots to do, but it will be useable soon!
Yesterday I visited my parents and pickup my old (15 years or so) cast iron chimnea. It was corroded on the the surface and the wooden handles had rotted away but with the addition of some new handles and a coat of plasticote stove paint and it's looking rather nice again now:
A tiring but productive week.Today I'm back at work and enjoying the rest at my desk!
SDS + Chisel, and redo from scratch..
