Covin’ covin’ covin’… keep those doggies covin’… rawhide…
Managed to get the Friday off and quickly had the time scuttled away.
Got a call in the morning that Izzi was ill and could I look after her as she was off school and Anna needed to get to work.
Great, now don’t get me wrong this was a wonderful break for me and I adore seeing Izzi but a Friday holiday represents working two late shifts in order to make the in-lieu hours to take the Friday off. That’s leaving the house on Monday morning at 7:20 and getting home (well I stay at my parents on the Monday, as it would mean getting home even later) at 9:30 in the evening. This I have to do two Mondays on the trot in order to make the time to take one Friday off, so that’s two fourteen hour shifts to get that little ray of extra time – effectively doubling my weekend working on the house hours – off.
So my perfectly planned day of shopping for bits on the morning and doing work on the afternoon was out of the window.
I however had a marvellous lazy morning with my beautiful daughter threading beads onto a necklace, watching and singing along with Team Umizoomi and playing Dragon games. Not a bad morning at all, but not getting my decorating done.
When Anna got home after midday I had to zoom off back to my house. I’d already started the washing off so I quickly loaded up another load and headed down to the coal merchants to purchase some eggs (ovoids or whatever they are) to try out on the fire. I had a chat with the lovely woman at the coal merchants regarding the merits of steel coal bunkers and decided to economise on my coal bunker purchase and economise on the subsequent travel that this would have meant in tripping down to Barnard Castle to purchase one.
I quickly found though that my back porch made a suitable coal bunker and the coal bunker could wait until I had the time to make a nice wooden one. I prefer the wooden ones, not only are they cheaper than the recommended plastic ones but they’re far more pleasing on the eye.
I then hurried off to Bishop Auckland buying some rather nice coving – I’d done lots of research and Homebase was by far the best most convenient option here – from Homebase. I’d put up coving quite a lot in the past and had always used pretty standard concave plaster based coving. My house being rather statuesque and Victorian demanded more than plain ordinary coving so I decided on something bigger and more period.
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The coving options turned out to be extraordinary with internet specialists everywhere, however the choices were mainly polystyrene, duro-polymer or traditional plaster. Polystyrene was by far the cheapest, but it just looked awful and wasn’t up for the job at all. The plaster option was expensive but it came in enormous varieties, the real problems with it though were that it was heavy (I’d fitted plaster coving a lot and fitting it without help wasn’t impossible but it was hard, the more detailed larger coving may have proved impossible). It was also hard to source and although it could be delivered the cheapest suppliers generally needed a week’s notice, I needed something I could pick up on a whim. Plaster also shatters easily. The other option duro-polymer was new to me but there were plenty of followers and good reviews. It was light, there was enormous varieties, it was flexible, hard with a good sharp corners when cut, it wasn’t cheap but it looked what I needed.
Anyway I needed something a bit bigger than normal and after lots of searching Homebase offered the best value with four 2m lengths at £44, with a 120mm ingress into the ceiling and 120mm drop down the wall – which believe me is quite a log. Generally dimensions such as this would have cost £17 a strip from the Axxent range, so this was cheap and it was local so I could get as much as I needed when I needed it.
Homebase proved itself as brilliant. They only had three packs in stock and one was pretty knocked around so the lovely Gemma gave me a good discount on the spot. She even helped me to my car, chatted about my project and was generally fantastic.
I then headed to Tescos for vittles and Screwfix for a mitre box for the coving, I had a quick scout through the catalogue and decided that nothing they had was big enough so I postponed my purchase.
Quickly back to the ranch I put on the fire with my newly acquired smokeless eggs and did some painting and painting prep work.
Izzi to my folks on Saturday and Sunday back on the job.
By now I realised that the coal egg whatsits were the best thing since sliced bread. The fire actually got white hot at one stage, throwing a log on the fire it combusted immediately unlike the coaxing I’d normally have to do on a standard log based fire. The eggs were actually still burning the next morning which is something that I’d always wanted in my fire, they just seemed to burn at tremendous temperatures… forever. Bleeding brilliant.
The Sunday was spent putting the final coat of paint on the large bedroom wall and re-applying paint to the walls of the small room. The small room had been a slight disaster, I’d applied a coat of emulsion when they were still wet and the suction of the roller on the wet walls sucked the paint off in lumps. I’d had to scrape away large portions, re-fill them and then reapply the mist coat and undercoat. Not good but once I’d done the remedial work it was all looking great again.
The rest of the day was doing washing, cleaning and buying some pressies.
I also did some research and found a suitably large mitre block and say for the coving, the Orac FB13 and the Orac FB14 saw, I ordered up some bonding too and hopefully it’ll all arrive just after I finish the painting.
Anyway lots done, apart from the painting disaster I had cracked a bit of skirting taking it off and I’d lost a bit of time on Friday… well apart from all that I managed to make some progress. The coal and coving were worth it alone, hang on I hope the coving is up to it. Speaking too soon there.
