Tag Archives: house renovations

Drilling

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I’m a Fire Marshal at my place of work, which means I essentially get no more pay than if I wasn’t, and have to shepherd people around the building in the event of a fire or bomb(!). I don’t mind too much, it’s nice to have on my C.V. if nothing else, and it’s fun putting out fires on the training courses. We had a surprise drill today which broke the day up nicely, even if it did mean donning my oh-so-attractive fluorescent yellow tabbard and shouting at people in the cold. I’m not sure why anyone wants to know any of that, but it was fresh in my mind so I thought I’d share. I’m sure that you, my lovely readers (yeah, I know you’re still out there reading), are enthralled.

I’ve spent some time doing a different kind of drilling lately, putting finishing touches to the house and attaching various things to walls. Generally all the DIY has gone really well so far, but I came close to snapping over the weekend when I tried to put a long curtain pole up in the bedroom. I was really pleased with all my planning and preparation, making sure everything was measured, spirit leveled and ready to go. However, fate and the builders conspired against me. I started drilling into the wall which was going great, but with about 5mm still left to go before the hole was deep enough to hold the rawl plug, the drill came to a complete standstill. Actually that’s not very accurate, the drill itself was still spinning like a Dervish on speed, but it just wouldn’t go in any further! Casting my mind back now, there’s a large metal lintel I remember the builders putting in during the build, but at that point I couldn’t have cared less. I was hot, tired and practically deaf thanks to the drill’s incessant screeching of masonry bit against metal, and ready to throw the damn thing out the window. After plenty of swearing, a foul mood and some less-than-perfect drilling, there is now a very nice curtain pole up and I’m no longer waking up at dawn ready to bare all at the neighbours thanks to the privacy of curtains. I’m sure the neighbours are glad too.

The third of my trinity of tenuous drilling links today relates to training last night. We started out as we always do on a Wednesday night with a Senior class, doing my best to indelibly stamp the new self-defence and knife defence on my subconscious. I quite enjoy them, especially the take-downs and armbars on the knife stuff, and i think they’re finally sticking. I stayed on for some kickboxing, and it was a treat to drill some of the other kinds of self-defence there too. Easily my favourite of the bunch involves avoiding a kick and ploughing in behind for the double-leg, immediately sprawling for some semblance of back mount, followed by a nice easy RNC. These days I don’t need to be told twice to take the back if I get a chance ;) .

It’s going to be a hectic few days now. I’m taking tonight off, my neck is still a bit funky and I feel like I could do with the rest, but from then on it’s training on Friday, followed by training on Saturday, then 3 hours on the road and my first taste of BJJ competition on Sunday (with the obligatory 3 hour drive home afterward), and back to BJJ on Monday night. I should be ready to drop come Tuesday.

We Will Now Return To Our Regular Programming

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Wow, are you still reading? After all my being slack? I like to think of it as a creative hiatus, not just me being really, really lazy and not bothering to update this at all.

Anyway, down to brass tacks, what’s new? There’s probably loads, in fact there definitely is, quite a few great things happened, but I’ll be damned if I can remember them all now. I suppose first and foremost for here is the house being finished (or near enough to count anyway). It’s taken a long time – six months as opposed to the twelve week estimate we were originally given by the builders… – but it’s been worth it. Central heating, double glazing, hot running water; as stupid as it sounds these things which are normal for most people are a real luxury now, and I love it! I spend more time in my kitchen than I do in the living room these days, it’s so bright and roomy, all I need to do is get around to wiring up a decent aerial for the TV out there.

Training’s going pretty well too. My usual TSD and Kickboxing are well and truly bolstered by the BJJ lessons, and if nothing else I’m sleeping really well for it. Five nights a week sometimes feels like just the right amount, and I can tell that sat here on a Monday afternoon, with one more session to go tonight, I’m looking forward to an evening off tomorrow. I’m already entered in my first BJJ competition, and I think it’s going to be a bit of a trial by fire. I’m competing at the Bristol Open, which is one of the bigger competitions in the UK, and after a scant three months training, I’m not expecting to come away with much in the way of success. I’ve competed lots of times now, so the nerves don’t bother me (although I doubt I’ll be able to say the same thing when they call me to the mat!), but I love the feeling after a competition. Win or lose it’s such a buzz, and I know I’ll learn so much, so I’m keen to go and see how badly I fare. I’m fighting at 100 KG+ which means I can be fighting anyone over that weight, which could turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on just how massively they’re built. My instructor has also told me I should compete in the Absolut (open weight) division too, although I don’t always like fighting the little guys, they’re fast and get my back too easily!

I’ve taken to baking pasties (I can’t bring myself to call them Cornish pasties, I’m Cornish already), and so far it’s going very well. I had to find something to test my new oven with, and what better to bake than THE tastiest foodstuff in the world? I had a bit of a disaster over the weekend, and it nearly brings a tear to my eye to think about it. We had four people coming over for something to eat (it’s a long story, which involves a drunk me offering to make pasties for everyone at a wedding the week before), so I baked six. The problem is I make biiiig pasties, and I could only get four on the baking tray, and with time pressing on and another two to bake I needed a stroke of genius. I came up with the idea of popping the other two on a wire cooking rack. I made sure the pastry on the bottom was strong enough to hold up against the combined forces of gravity and meat and potato filling, and stuck them all in for fifteen minutes on high heat to set the pastry. After about five minutes I heard some hissing from inside the oven and opened it to find that one of them had split underneath and was spilling its precious payload all over the place. I tried to rescue it with a combination of knives, spatula and the bottom of a cake tin, but it all went horribly wrong and it did the baked goods equivalent of self-destructing. I was not amused, not in the slightest. If Murphy could talk his vocabulary would have some colourful new entries in it, especially when I burned my hand trying to fish the veg out of the oven door. Note to self: always use a baking tray.

I’ll leave you for now with a quick before and after from the house, to give you some kind of idea as to why I’m so pleased.

BEFORE

The old kitchen, gutted

The old kitchen, gutted

Old kitchen demolished, foundations in

Old kitchen demolished, foundations in

AFTER

The new kitchen and French windows

The new kitchen and French windows

The new staircase and doorway into old building

The new staircase and doorway into old building

Touching (Or Should That Be Tapping) Base

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You might have noticed that I’ve got a bit slack at updating this over the last few weeks. I could say that I’ve been on a secret spying mission, or maybe abducted by drug lords while hunting for treasure in Peru, but in truth I’ve just been utterly rubbish. So what’s new I hear the assembled masses holler…

Work on the house continues apace, and it’s so close to being finished now it’s tortuous.  The old stairs are out, the new ones are in, and as I type the ceilings should be being plastered. The builders are paid in full now, and I can tell you it’s no fun walking through town with a bag stuffed full with twenty pound notes! I was eyeing everyone suspisciously like they’d been following me all day and had a master plan ¬_¬

My Xbox 360 gave up the ghost this week and has (for the second time) decided that rather than playing games and streaming my music and films, it’d be much happier showing the dreaded three red lights…. Once I can muster up the ‘can-be-arsed-ness’ to find the Microsoft number again I’ll get it repaired, it’s very annoying.

I have yet another new interest! A couple of weeks ago I went along with my friend to his first class in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and I’ve been back to every class since. It fits in nicely with my current training and I’m absolutely loving the technical – and very tiring -  aspects of the grappling. I’m covered in more bruises than a peach in a washing machine, have burned elbows and aches all over, but it’s great fun. It can be frustrating, but having something click and start to work feels awesome. It means I’ve had to buy yet another Gi (or dobok as is the case for Tang Soo Do), although this time it weighs easily twice as much as any other I’ve had. The heavy weave is really necessary as they take a heck of a beating on the floor, and are used for the locks and chokes. Some people really seem to like the look though.

And finally, to bring us bang up to date,  I went along to the Princess Pavilions in Falmouth last night to watch The Eagles Of Death Metal. I can’t imagine they’ll have known what they were letting themselves in for when they agreed to play there, but what we lacked in size and gradieur we more than made up for in effort and noise. The band themselves were awesome, every song sounded the way it should and the guitar riffs just tore through the place. You’ve never seen a more charismatic front-man, and it was so refreshing to see a big band like that who obviouslt didn’t take themselves too seriously.  What a great gig.

"I love you so hard baby...."

"I love you so hard baby...."

Last Time, On MacGyver….

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Regular readers will be surprised to learn that I’m not in fact MacGyver at all, it’s just a post title that came to me. I’ve not posted for a little while so that’s why.

Work has been crazy busy this last few weeks as the new financial year starts, and yours truly has been permanently staring at a screen or buried under pages and pages of (very boring) code. I’ve broken the back of it now though, and the near-permanent headache and stress vein can be put back on the shelf for a while. Training’s going pretty well now, and I’m supplementing it with the very handy gym at work a few lunchtimes a week. It’s sparsely equipped, but I can row, run, pedal and, umm, cross-train(?). There are a couple of resistance machines which offer a few different exercises, and I’m finally taking note of what weights I’m working with. Hopefully they’ll go up in the not-too distant future, but for now I’m working at 70KG for lat pulldowns and seated rows, and 65KG shoulder pressing. It’s not massive, but then my arms and shoulders have always been my weakest area. I’ve also started swimming again, hooray! Just fifty lengths to get going again, but my aim is to get up to around eighty in an hour. I’m a way off that yet, but managed those fifty in about 45 minutes, and after a year off regular swimming I’m happy.

On top of that I get a little extra exercise on Monday nights still, courtesy of dog agility training! Me and Murphy still go and he’s coming on brilliantly. We’re up to 16-17 obstacle courses and he’s started to really get the hang of his weakest area, the weaves. I think competing is still a little way off, but I’m hoping to get him entered into something later in the year. It absolutely lashed down with rain for a while during last night’s lesson, which soaked me and the dog (and consequently my car…), but in return we got this beauty…

Lovely double rainbow, carn brea monument in the distance

Lovely double rainbow, carn brea monument in the distance

There are some weeks when it can get very frustrating, especially if Murph’s not really ‘with it’, but more often than not it’s my fault if he gets something wrong. He really enjoys it though and has lots of friends there now, so even when Monday has taken its toll on me and the very last thing I feel like doing is running around a field in my wellies after a soggy spaniel, one look at this little face and I really can’t help but take him.

What a sad looking pup...

What a sad looking pup...

Work on the house has picked up again, and I’m elated to say that we have walls! Ok, they’re about five feet high, but they’re walls damnit! We’re told that we should be well up into the first floor by the end of the week, and from then on it’s almost going to be like having a home again. There are plenty of pictures I need to take off the camera at home to update progress, it’s just a case of finding the time and getting my backside in gear.

And to finish, well done Carl Froch. What an awesome fight on the weekend, talk about leaving it to the last minute! There’s more great boxing coming up too; Hatton Vs Pacquaio and Haye Vs Klitschko. The David Haye fight is going to be spectacular, I cannot wait!

Things Are On The Up

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I’ve had a lot of different things start to go right for me recently, and as much as I realise I’ll probably jinx everything by even thinking that, it’s tough, I wanted to post. Some things are probably pretty trivial, but the cumulative effect is a nice one. Even things like feeling my kicks are slowly improving and getting higher (they might not be, but they feel that way at least) are representative of these little pluses. It’s fair to say I’ve had some surprises too, most of them very welcome.

First up, my job looks safe. It’s been pretty tense over the last few months for everyone working for the council down here, as a giant merger of the main body and the districts have had people fearing for their jobs. I was lucky enough to be confirmed in my current role last week which was a massive relief having just taken some more money out on our mortgage to be able to get the house done.  Then over the weekend and early part of the week, Murphy seemed to be getting ill. His stomach was gurgling like crazy, he didn’t want to eat and was all slow, tired and unmurph-like. We took him to the vets as a precaution and typically the day he went he seemed fine again.  They say the best cure for a toothache is booking an appointment at the dentist after all… He’s got a few tablets to help settle his stomach now which is good and he’s back to his old self.

Work on the house seems to be going well. What was a massive hole in the floor has transformed into proper foundations and there’s even a floor now. It’s been built up with hardcore, gravel and sand and tehn compacted, and today they’re laying six inches of concrete on top of it all to form what will actually be the floor we lay the wood on. It’s exciting now to have something substantial there and not just a big pit of mud. Once the concrete sets properly I intend to get out there with big pieces of cardboard to represent the kitchen appliances and furniture  so I can see how best to lay everything out. The walls will go up pretty quickly apparently, I can’t wait personally!

My best friend’s stag do looks like it’s been sorted out, it seems we’ll be heading to the wilds of bristol for a weekend of drunken debauchery wholesome male bonding with vehicles and guns of different kinds. It’ll be nice to have the little break away because other than the prospect of being sent to Worthing again for more training, I don’t think there’s any chance of a holiday this year. Although saying that, having a nice new home with a bathroom and kitchen will certainly feel like a holiday compared to the last couple of months.

This Friday is the monthly Rock Night as ever, and it should be a good one. One of my friends and training partners has joined the RAF and is off to do a tour in Afghanistan for six months so we’re seeing him off in true TSD fashion ;) . I think that’s it for now, certainly everything I want the wider world to know, but yes, it’s been a good week so far.

Time for some music, first up is a lovely uplifting song which would easily have made it on to some of my older playlists had I known it then.

..and this is what I’m listening to a lot lately..

Giraffes Are NOT Dinosaurs (Probably)

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I’m a total part-timer at the moment. Last week I used up two of my days of annual leave that need to be gone by April, this week I’m using the remaining two-and-a-half. Wednesday lunchtime is the new Friday afternoon.

Last week’s break was welcome and really nice. The sun’s been shining like crazy for the last week (although I hear rain is due this week) so on Thursday I went to the beach at lunchtime. I didn’t go on my own though, because it was a certain spaniel’s birthday. That’s right, Murphy is two! We had a good run around the beach and a bit of a dip in the rock pools, and then I took my soggy doggy home for the afternoon.

We both had the Friday off and Adam had a plan. I saw a present I wanted to get for my mum for Mothers’ Day during the week but didn’t leave enough time for postage. Luckily the company is based in Paignton which is about ninety miles up the road, and Paignton is home to a great big zoo, so it became a zoo day. It was nice as the kids are all still at school so we had free run of the place with no-one around, and nearly all of the animals were out and about. I say ‘nearly’ because the one animal I really wanted to see, my absolute favourite animal, the red panda, decided he wasn’t coming out to play. Little git! Never mind, I had a great time in the new crocodile swamp and seeing the giraffes. It’s when I get to the giraffes that it feels most like being in Jurassic Park, I think it’s something to do with their disproportionate bodies but they’re just so weird close-up.

Definitely not a dinosaur

Definitely not a dinosaur

When we got home there was a bit of a shock as our front porch on the house was gone… The builders needed more rubble to build up the base of the floor around the back so decided to knock it down. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, it was always on the plans to have a new one built, but now that it’s gone I don’t think another one is going up. It’s so much brighter in the living room without it, and the courtyard in the front looks massive. I think I’m going to ask for a little pitched roof thing over the door and get the yard done out with some nice paving.

No more porch. Ginger is a photo tart.

No more porch. Ginger is a photo tart.

On a completely different tangent, training has been very quiet for the last couple of sessions as we’ve sent a small team out to the World Championships over in Rotterdam. From what I understand they’ve done pretty well and should be coming back with a few medals, but it’s meant the club here has been very small. In a way it’s been nice though, as it’s given me a chance to do a little more work in teaching the kids which I really enjoy. It’s enormously rewarding when you get that little spark of understanding and something you’ve been explaining suddenly clicks with them. I’m sure when I was their age I had much worse coordination, it must be really tricky. It’ll be nice to have everyone back on Wednesday and knuckle back down to work on the syllabus, Naihanchi Cho Dan is next on my list of forms to indelibly stamp on my brain.

I’m off to post a letter now which should hopefully sort out once and for all a massively annoying problem I’ve been having this year. I won’t go into details until it’s all cleared up, but let’s just say for now that some companies’ idea of helping when it comes to fraud prevention leave a lot to be desired. Accompanying me on my walk down to the post office are the mighty Five Star, who have seen a resurgence in playlist time for me lately. The Slightest Touch is three-and-a-half minutes of nostalgic 80’s brilliance. If I could get youtube here you’d all have the pleasure of an embedded video, you’ll just have to find and enjoy it for yourselves.

(it took me ages to think of a way of wording that so that it didn’t sound like I was suggesting you go and indulge in a little onanism….)

Ankle-o-sore

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Ankylosaur

Ankylosaur

That post title is a particularly sad play on words which dinosaur enthusiasts might appreciate, although I think they’d probably just groan. My ankle was sore from the seminar on Sunday, and last night I managed to turn it over and hurt it more. I thought if I was going to do it, it would’ve been sparring or something like that. Nope, despite being as sure-footed as a mountain goat I twisted it during a form. Doh! Never mind, it’s ok now, just a bit stiff and ready to go again tomorrow. The forms I’m working on now are really interesting and very hard to get right, and it’s getting even trickier now that subtle differences are being introduced as we learn them from our federation. They’re only small changes, a change of tempo here, an extra leg movement there, but it all plays with the muscle memory you build during practise.

It’s Thursday folks, and that can mean only one thing – games night! Once again the group of ‘old-enough-to-know-betters’ get together to shoot, punch and football(?) the crap out of one another via the medium of video games. I suppose really, if you were to over-analyse it, it’s just an excuse to see my friends once a week, but we don’t. It’s just sitting down, sharing a few drinks and flinging plenty of verbal abuse at one another. It’s really just an evolution of cavemen sitting around a fire in a cave and poking it with sticks, the sticks are just more expensive. Just how evolved we are, I really couldn’t tell you. I’m lucky to see my friends so regularly, and I’m making the most of it while I can because I know it won’t last forever. At our ages it’s only a matter of time before someone gets sprogged up.

The more observant of you might have noticed I haven’t updated much about the house renovations yet, and the reason is that there hasn’t really been much done in the last couple of weeks. Everything stopped until we got some designs drawn up by a structural engineer and got it all signed off by the buildings inspector, but this week digging has begun again. The three foot deep hole where the kitchen will be has a surround of foundation trenches now, taking it down to about five feet deep at places, exposing the sewer pipe which needs encasing before we can build on it. The groundwork is really dragging on now, but I always knew it would be the case so I’m not too concerned. I think once it starts going up it’s going to go up very quickly. I can’t wait; my barbecuing instincts are beginning to make me twitchy already since the Spring sunshine has started to show its face. The outdoorsy stuff is already appearing in shops and once those bottles of delicious sauces start appearing I’ll be going crazy.

Like Blowing A Trombone Full Of Gravel

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After a nasty few days of feeling terrible, a trip to the doctor and some very careful eating, I’m just about better again. I’m very pleased about it too, I hate being ill for a start and anything to do with my inner workings is worse again. I’ve missed training for a whole week now but I’ll be back there tonight to see just how feeble I’ve become.

Work on the house continues apace, there’s now absolutely nothing left of the old half of the building. There was a big fire in the back garden last night to get right of all the old wood from the units and floors, a very square pit has been dug in the floor in preparation for the groundworks (although they still need to go down another 3-4 feet apparently!), and a shed for the workmen to store their tools in has sprung up in the front garden. My home is barely recognisable as a home any more, I just treat it as somewhere I sleep, watch a little TV and feed the animals. It’s over a week since work started now and by my reckoning if the total time they estimate it’ll take is represented by a clockface, we’re at about 1 o’clock now. Only 11 hours left to go then, ideal. Next friday we’re taking a trip away to pick out a kitchen after the extortionate quote from a local supplier.

Although I’m being exceedingly careful with my money lately (a fool and his money are soon parted, I’ve learned that much!), next Friday is my own little treat to myself. Street Fighter IV is released, oh yeah! I’ve been dying to get my hands on a decent Capcom fighter since SF3: 3rd Strike (there’s still no better fighter), and for once I’m actually really excited about a new game. Capcom have an incredible track record when it comes to 2D fighters – with a few blemishes, see what happened when Capcom USA were allowed to design characters *ahem* Super Street Fighter II anyone? – and I don’t care what anyone says, 3D rendering or not, SFIV *is* a 2D fighter. My only concern having not played the new game at all, and having avoided as much of the media for the game as possible, is how it’s going to play. I mean, I know the controls are going to be tight, but I want to see which parts of which games it’s borged. I’m hoping it plays closer to 3rd Strike than SSF2T, I prefer the level of depth.

And to finish up with for today, what about this weather?? Granted, that rhetoric only applies to me really as most of the people reading this are nowhere near me, but it’s glorious out today. It really feels like we’re turning a corner into Spring now. I’m dying for a bit of sunshine and warmth, some light evenings and most definitely – a barbecue!

p.s. WordPress users should upgrade their installations to 2.7.1, it fixes loads of stuff and the backend has changed beyond recogition. Me likey.

House – Week 1 – Demolition!

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This last week has been utter chaos. For a start I’ve been ill. Nasty ill. I started off by throwing up in the early hours of Sunday morning and the rest of the week so far has been constrained to feeling like death warmed up and having my body trying to turn itself inside-out, in a southwards direction if you know what I’m talking about…. Not really the ideal time to be without a bathroom or running water, which is exactly the situation we’ve been in thanks to the building work beginning in earnest. Thankfully I’m feeling a little better now, and a trip to the doctor has helped re-assure me that it’s nothing too serious, so I should be back to work tomorrow. Oh goody.

 

Over the last couple of days of last week the builders got to work stripping out the old extension, and removing the wall which ran down the middle of it, which meant that this…

 

Existing dining room

Existing dining room

Existing kitchen

Existing kitchen

… got turned into this ….

 

Where the kitchen was

Where the kitchen was

 

Not a very private bathroom any more

Not a very private bathroom any more

 

The first thing that struck me was just how much bigger it was in there with that wall gone. The new extension is going to be a metre or two deeper again, I can’t wait to have a proper kitchen! The builders didn’t hang around too long though, and over the last few days this…

 

The old extension

The old extension

… has be turned into this …

 

All gone!

All gone!

 

Dumper Vs Digger races anyone?

Dumper Vs Digger races anyone?

Before all the work began I was very apprehensive. Twelve weeks seemed like a LONG time to be without a proper house, and I didn’t think I could bear to be around it all, but now that it’s all happening and all real, I’m kind of excited. It’s moving along at a fair old pace now, and while I’ve probably just jinxed it by saying that, I can’t wait to see it all finished. Yes it’s made me very poor for a very long time to come, but it’s going to be worth it.