Shopping till I drop
Took the day off work, well I did deserve it as I had been working 11 days on the bounce.
All I intended to do today didn’t really work out. I did get a lot done but I’m not too sure if I made the mistake of preparing and not putting up the muscle power and just getting stuck in.
There were a lot of necessary purchases made today but there were a couple of glamorous ones that might have been better done later when I needed them. Still though I did get a lot of shopping done, sometimes I dislike shopping too so in a way it wasn’t a bad thing.
Right now I’ve talked myself into that what did I do.
Started off with a bit of washing, a bit of making lists for things I needed and a bit of waiting for Ray and his boys to turn up so we could sort out the jobs that needed to still be done. I wasn’t though too surprised when no-one surfaced as I think Ray may have had a bit of bad news and his wife has been rushed into hospital. I don’t like to interfere and I’d already been remiss enough to send over a couple of texts, so I decided to just ignore the fact that they’d not turned up, as I put in one text “some things are more important than building”. Anyway I hope that Ray, his wife and his family are all fine.
As I was waiting there was a knock at the door, at that point I fully expected to see Ray there but it turned out to be Andrew the arborist touting for a bit of business. He said that he had some elevated platform gizmology for the day and that I could take advantage of this fortuitous event and for a £100 I could have all my remaining Leylandii bushes lopped before they mutated into Leylandii trees. I being of little mind and my resistance guard being down – I was in shopping mode – I relinquished but on if he agreed to lopping some tree roots back to something a little tidier than I’d left them. We agreed, he told me about now doing the Insanity fitness programme and I resisted the urge to buy his chainsaw. I really wouldn’t like to refuse Andrew anything.
Anyway I did a few more jobs and having waited a reasonable amount of time I packed up the car with some running gear and bits and bobs and headed off to Bishop Auckland.
I did a bit of jiggery pokery with the mini-bank, changing pins on new cards and getting some more cash out for another engineer next week. I then doubled back to Travis Perkins and talked wood.
The whole reason – well most of it anyway – for this shopping trip was to get materials and stuff in preparation for Andrew’s visit next week. My intentions were to paint the cupboards, perhaps leaving the outside one alone though, to prep and clean them and to also fit a much more secure door to the outside cupboard as the one that was on there was rotting from the ground up. The cupboard upstairs was to house the thermal store and the one downstairs and outside would be housing the new fabricated oil tank and needed to be uber secure. I also needed to buy a pair of uber-duber wonderful Nest thermostats to be fitted in the project next week, so I did have my work cut out to deliver all this gear.
Travis Perkins knew wood so I’d headed there with the intention of buying timber for the door. There I met a very helpful young man which was good as the last time I was there I was a little overdressed in a three piece suit and tie and I left feeling a little as though I’d been last to be picked for the sports team. Unfortunately though Travis and the young man didn’t have anything suitable to replicate the boards on the door so I left empty handed. They did offer up some useful information on a store selling sheet steel (I fancy lining the door for extra security and also fire protection).
I headed off then to B&Q in Bishop and found it a little short on some of the bits and bobs I needed, actually I really do think that the packing of my running gear and the wearing of shorts under my trousers indicted my true intentions of going through to the bigger B&Q in Portrack Lane Stockton near to my running haunts. So now happy that I just MUST go to my favourite B&Q miles away I headed down there.
On the way in I popped into Norton, the scene of my last restoration to have some spare keys cut in the cobblers there and then it was off to the home of DIY.
I fully intended to be only an hour at most in the store but I ended up being in there for over two. It got to the point where I had to have a sarnie and a coffee in there. It got to the point where people were remarking on having seen me in there ages ago and it got to the point when suspicious security men were turning up frequently and looking suspicious in their intentions to my suspicious intentions. Honest guv I’m just mega-indecisive.
I love B&Q, it’s sad to say that even when I don’t need a single nail I sometimes find myself in there drooling over drills and mitre-saws, ok drool is too strong a term but there is a strong attraction to the siren yellows, orange and greens of Makita, DeWalt and Bosch, cor missus. Anyway I found the Nest thermostats and was quite lucky as I think I got the two of the last three in the store and I noticed later that the remaining one had gone too. I bought screws, bolts, washers, hinges, boots, cable extensions, paint, paint remover, a chainsaw visor – does this sound like I’m planning something and lots and lots of things amounting to a lot of money.
As I wandered around the store I bumped into a number of very helpful staff, at one point I joked with a Trade card representative that I could do with a trade card to save some cash. She was great, she simply asked if I was in any way in the trade and I told her my sorry tale of doing up my house and this blog and website and within a matter of minutes I was the proud owner of a trade card with a lovely discount on the way. All I had to do to honour this was to provide a business card/letterhead at a later date and once I did this then the card would be all mine. They then went through my screws and bits and offered me discounted and better value replacements and I left a much happier bunny.
Anyway cutting to the chase I now had a buckling trolley so I headed to the timber section, selected some planks, had them cut in two by a very helpful chap who pointed out that he really shouldn’t be doing this and headed for the exit.
A really really productive shop, I had so much I worried about leaving the car when I went for my run in Seaton. Still everything turned out and I’m now the owner of:
Two new keys
A trade card and catalogue for Trade Point
3x Redwood planks of wood cut into 6
Builders rubble bags x10
Builders flexi tub
Chainsaw safety helmet
Mini paint roller kit
DeWalt safety boots
Nitromors paint remover
Large paint roller set
3x large t-hinges
Various screws
Various nails
Various washers
Various bolts
Polyfilla
>Paint brush set
115mm cutting/grinding disks for my angle grinder
Liquid nails
Nest thermostat x2
Duluxe Paint Emulsion and Satin
White spirit
40m power extension reel
Yeti platform
Not a bad day’s work but it would have been better to actually do something.
I got back to find that my bushes had been topped and I’ve yet to check on the tree stumps. It’s good to see that Andrew and his loppers have been doing something constructive at least.