and today i have mostly been...

[Doggy]

The 407 road trip was blessed with sunny weather and benign traffic.
First stop in Halifax revealed an Astra with suspiciously steamed up windows, damp carpets and masses of mould on one of the rear door cards
(Might not be the worst moment to have given your immune system a workout).....
On to Manchester via that moor, which was picturesque with a light dusting of snow, to find a gorgeous Merc C250 estate. Virtually unmarked inside & out, 2 owners, 159k miles but cheap. Went like stink too. Noisier than expected, suggestion of exhaust needing re-hung, sharp clutch, possible driveline vibration.....
Seemed a bit like my lad's old 320 when in need of a dmf, so we bailed.
Well, it was a change of scenery and got me out of DIY for a whole precious day.

Not done owt about the cistern yet, guess I'll get a couple more quotes today.
Would do it myself if I had anywhere. Have found a couple of places in Wellingborough & Northampton, (18 & 23 miles away) that might rent a ramp & workshop space by the hour. Could be worth a punt, guess I could stop after finishing one end if it went slower than expected.
Now where did I put my enthusiasm?

[steve_earwig]

It's in your wallet, next to that 475 quid...

Coronavauxhall

I take it the Merc. wasn't cheap enough to pay for a new DMF.

I've no idea how much it would cost to rent a workshop with lift, it sounds nifty but I worry how long it would take to use up that 475 quids if you run into technical difficulties. Plus you'd be 18 or 23 miles away from home with your motor in bits, stick a push bike in the boot?

I did driveshaft gaiters on the first BX in a mate's garage with few tools, it wasn't too bad, I didn't bother to change the output seals though. Rear coilovers, not sure, could you take the complete unit off and take it to a properly equipped workshop/garage (in your basket) for them to do the dangerous stuff?

[Doggy]

Don't know what it would cost - a quick check suggests about £600 to buy a dmf + clutch kit. My lad's bimmer was £1800 fitted, (a week before the turbo died draining the sump & seizing the engine). It wasn't that cheap.

I'm waiting on a quote or two.....

Just finished fitting a shelf round the plumbing in cupboard under the kitchen sink that some idiot* promised to do years ago.

[steve_earwig]

It's nice to have a few* easy* jobs lined up for those odd moments when you can't do anything smarter. I have an ever increasing list of them

We has new armchairs, we has new cupboards, so I wanted to get a new computer desk to match. Sadly a brief search said I wouldn't get anything like my old one. So I just spent 3 days repairing it (i.e. stopping it collapsing with an x-brace between the legs, complete with a stand on them for the pc) and re-varnishing it. I had the stove going in the shed to aid with drying, yesterday it was 2 degrees out but a whopping 28.3 degrees in, I said it was a bit powerful 4 coats of varnish later and I'm quite pleased with it, I'm not sure about the wife, I can't find "muh" in the dictionary

Meanwhile, my foot still hurts and I'm still wearing sandals. Yesterday shopping with Max we had hail (well, tiny snowballs really) followed by floods. Obviously my feet got rather cold and wet. In the evening t'wife wanted to pop to the shops, as it was snowing I suffered shoes. It started ok but by the end of it I was in agony

[Doggy]

Did you remember the cabbage? Hope you get over it soon.

Come to think of it, I've probably got arthritis in both big toes. One has been painful on & off for years.
Around the time I got the first Cistern.

Meanwhile in DIY land, whad'ya reckon?



Hides the eyesore that is my indoor firewood store. Cupboard's been there without a door forever in what was originally the garage (that I could really do with now), but it's morphed into the downstairs hall.

[steve_earwig]

I couldn't be bothered with the cabbage dressing last night (only remembered at bedtime) but generally it gets done. Miloš (builder mate) was just here, he said he had something similar and it took 2 months to heal

Door looks fine, and it fills the hole I suspect you need to varnish it to match the door next to it (unless that's just age). A roomstat by a door? I thought that was a cardinal sin

Fired up with my computer desk success, yesterday I thought I could make some speaker stands, they're only bookshelf speakers but now there's nowhere near I can put them, unless I put them together. Unfortunately it turns out that I'm crap at fiddly woodwork Now, if I had some scrap metal hanging about...

[Welly]

I'm often criticised for being, err, critical, so let's stay with this vibe.....I admire your woodworking skills there; nicely mitred Architrave and a professional look. One thing though - why didn't you fit concealed hinges? and perhaps magnetic catches instead of the latch? the noise of that latch would really grate on me but I am strange.....

[Doggy]

One thing though - why didn't you fit concealed hinges? and perhaps magnetic catches instead of the latch? the noise of that latch would really grate on me

Orders.
I was all for a made-to-measure door, but Mrs Doggy wanted the 'rustic' look.

[steve_earwig]

why didn't you fit concealed hinges?

Anything that saves a couple of hours work with a chisel gets my vote

the noise of that latch would really grate on me

Depends how much traffic it gets, seeing as the skirt will provide an interesting trip hazard I'm guessing not very much

[Welly]

Orders.

Understood! over the years I have probably forced my own choices onto the lovely Mrs_Welly (I even redecorated the entire house about 8 years ago in my choices of colour/style) but more recently I tend to just go with what she wants (broadly)

Then again we may be browsing 'stuff' for the house and either of us will suddenly say "ah look, perfect!"....... and that's what gets taken home.

[Doggy]

Depends how much traffic it gets, seeing as the skirt will provide an interesting trip hazard I'm guessing not very much

It's only a cupboard, (ready-use ammunition for the woodburner).....

[steve_earwig]

Lummy, some of that looks a bit too good for burning

Exactly, it's not like the latch is going to be going 72 times a day, enough to drive Welly up the wall

Speaking of woodburners, we didn't have ours going today, 17.8 degrees at the start of March, preposterous. I look forward to a bumper harvest of slugs, colorados, greenfly, hornets etc.

Meanwhile, here come the toms

50 so far but there's more seeds in pots in the boiler room.

And these are meant to be excruciatingly hot chilli peppers

I guess we shall see

[trufflehunt]

And these are meant to be excruciatingly hot chilli peppers

The innocuous ones are always the worst.

[Welly]

My late Father In Law_Welly tried explaining to me (over the phone) how to 'nip' Tomato plants early on in growth so they spread out more? or something? I never did understand but yo get more tommy's - you have to pinch off one or two new shoots before or after the last leaf?

Consequently mine grew like mini-tomatoes and split open (inconsistent watering) FFS I have to go to work

In the end Coriander was the only thing I could manage to grow without being sh*t and it was actually very tasty!

[steve_earwig]

Oooh, you don't wanna do that! Other things maybe, but with toms the idea is you want one stem (vine?) going straight up, they often side shoot from leaf joints and these are what you want to pinch out. Otherwise it does end up like a bush, have lots of small toms and a propensity to fall over in a breeze. You're meant to let the plant grow 5 or 6 bunches of toms and then pinch the growing tip out to force the plant to work on the toms instead (I usually leave them to get to the top of the stick). I should say I'm never sure what to do if the stem actually divides, sometimes I leave both of them, sometimes not, it depends on how healthy the plant looks. And then it divides again... Also, leave it bit before pinching, it's easy to mistake a flowering wotisit for the growing tip and pinch the actual growing tip out by mistake. I did this to one last year "no problem," I thought, "it'll soon put out a side shoot." It never did, it just sat there all year with 1 doodah of tomatoes.

Yeah, toms splitting is inconsistent watering, I got lots of that with cherry toms, the fussy little buggers.

These days I only grow things that will grow on our patch, things I don't manage to kill and things that I actually like to eat. Toms seem to like it there, whereas stuff like lettuce goes straight to seed. Meanwhile on neighbour Nada's bit (which is about 100 meters further along) toms never seem to come to anything while her lettuces are fantastic. So I pinch her lettuces and she steals my toms. That's bartering, right?

The innocuous ones are always the worst.

You can't get more innocuous than seedlings We'll have to see how they do, apparently they're a lot harder to grow than toms.