the long hot weekend

Well, the past Waitangi weekend has been a scorcher. Although it's been uncomfortably hot here (especially at night), I can't imagine what it's like in Australia (esp. Victoria), where temperatures are up to 15° higher. Ouch.

It didn't feel like a particularly productive weekend, but we managed to do a few interesting things. We decided not join the hordes evacuating the city over the long weekend. I took my new road bike out twice for a couple of rides of about 20 km each, thankfully leaving early enough in the morning that I didn't evaporate in the heat. They were both enjoyable, apart from getting stuck in the middle of Waitangi day celebrations in Okahu bay on Friday. The bike held up well except for a clunk appearing in the headset and a squeak from the chain. I really must get some chain lubricant. I'm very tempted to repack the hubs with grease as well.

I decided have another attempt at bread baking, this time baguettes. Dean Brettschneider was again my tutor, and the DVD that came with his book has proved invaluable. In this case, one video is worth a thousand pictures! The recipe requires resting overnight in the fridge (as do most of his recipes), so it's not one for impatient people, Unfortunately, his recipe also includes onion and pumpkin, so I had to guess the water content somewhat. I think I used a little too much water, as my loaves spread out too much during the final proving. That said, the final product was delicious. Bring on the next loaf! What a challenge.

In DIY news, the bathroom is finished! It looks pretty damn good if I say so myself. Of course, despite my best efforts, my worst fears were realised. The first time fitting the basin, everything was perfect, but the waste outlet was misaligned by about 35 mm horizontally. It took me a few moments to realise that I had placed the template on the wall backwards! It would have been fine if the waste had been centred in the basin. So I had to remove and re-hang it, and this time the waste was perfect, but in my haste, I didn't take quite as much care drilling the mounting studs into the wall, and consequently, the basin slopes ever so slightly to the left. Bah. At least it isn't really noticeable to the naked eye, and it doesn't affect the performance. All that's left is to fit the towel rails. It feels odd not having that project lurking in the back of my mind any more. So, onto the next one - replacing the floor in the entrance way and laundry. In fact Vic and I went tile shopping for this area on Saturday, but didn't find anything decent. I'm in favour of a mid-light grey tile, but Vic wants something beige-y.

Having also pinched a big bag of windfall apples from our (absent) neighbour, the resulting stewed apples were a little lacklustre. So I turned half of it into spiced apple muffins, which turned out very tasty and moist. Success! I did make a mistake in sprinkling the tops of the muffins with brown sugar and mixed spice instead of cinnamon. This gave them an ever-so-slightly curried flavour! Nevertheless, they were still delicious.

Whilst out tile shopping on Saturday, Vic and I stopped by two farmers' markets - one at the Jubilee Building in Newmarket, the other at La Cigale in Parnell. La Cigale was much bigger, with a greater variety. I'm not sure why we didn't buy much, but I think you still need to have what you want in mind before you go. It was a fantastic experience though - great to see this sort of thing in the middle of Auckland! Once we'd finished there, we were suitably hungry, and headed for the reliable Dida's Foodstore for lunch. I was disappointed to find that the 'Eggs en Cocotte' wasn't on the menu, but instead I had the still-very-tasty Spanish scrambled eggs with lashings of diced chorizo. Vic had a delicious roast beef sandwich. The coffee was good, but unmemorable.

diy catch up

During the long Christmas break I had time to work on a few projects:

The shelves in the garage are finished, and are already overflowing! They worked very nicely, even though on the opposite side of the garage, there was no continuous joist line to screw the brackets into. A bit of creative spacing helped that, and they are screwed solidly into studs instead.

The bathroom is now so close to being finished - there's only the basin left to hang on the wall. I'm procrastinating a bit on that one, as I'm a bit worried that I'll hang it in the wrong position and the waste won't fit. The shower walls were a little harder than I anticipated, mainly due to the walls not being plumb or in fact straight (not my fault!). But they're up and sealed and look pretty damn professional. I sealed the grout in the shower with some hugely expensive stuff from the Tile Depot. We'll see if it works.

I've begun looking at the front door hinges too. There's something seriously wrong here - with only two hinges, the door works beautifully, but when the third hinge is added, the door jams. And even though the top hinge has been butchered, and is now set about 5 mm further into the door than the bottom hinge, the door still lines up. Somethin' jes' ain't right thur.

bathrooms and puddingspoons

Although it didn't really feel like it at the time, I had quite a productive and enjoyable weekend. On Friday we sang carols in Ponsonby, and on Saturday and Sunday I got just a little closer to finishing the bathroom.

The bathroom project has been ongoing for well over a year now (I don't really want to think exactly how long), but it has been a pretty comprehensive renovation. I'm learning everything as I go - just about every aspect of the build is a first for me! It started out as a repair to the cracked shower tray, which then mushroomed into a complete strip and refit courtesy of bad build practice (no waterproofing and no tile underlay) and rotten floors and walls. I completely gutted the room and replaced the floor, adding new bearers between existing joists to accommodate the thinner 12 mm plywood floor (to keep the tiles close to the existing floor level). The floor sounds thin, but I did the calculations, and I'm absolutely happy with the overall stiffness and feel of the floor with the bonded and nailed tile underlay. I also replaced most of the wall panels with fibre cement. The biggest job so far has been the tiling and associated jobs. I didn't realise how big a job it was to tile even a small bathroom from floor to ceiling. Ouch! Only now am I putting the finishing touches on - currently the silicone in the corners. There are a few rough edges, but overall I'm happy with the finish so far. However, I'll need probably another six tubes of silicone to complete it! If I get a move on I'll be able to fit the basin and shower walls next weekend.

I also managed to get one of the shelves up in the garage. The house has a severe lack of storage space, so any more is really helpful, especially when you are a bit of a hoarder :) They are simple 300 mm-wide shelves of (my beloved) 12 mm ply - non structural defect grade bought on special from ITM. They are supported by multiple cheap pressed-steel brackets also from ITM. I've probably gone a bit overboard on the number of brackets, but they were cheap, and I really don't want them failing. Even with just one of the four shelves up and in use, there is a noticeable increase in floor real estate. Result. Got to use my jigsaw for the first time too.

Meanwhile, I was also cooking my second batch of Christmas Puddings. It's become something of a tradition for me to cook puddings at Christmas. There's something very special about selecting and preparing all the ingredients, and the magical smell that fills the house when they are simmering away on the stove. This year marked a bit of a departure in a couple of pudding-related areas. Firstly, I decided to rationalise the ingredients (read: make 'em cheaper) due to economic factors that I'll go into later. To this end, I have omitted the figs (shock!) and used pre-blended fruit mix, as well as padding out the mix with fresh apple and carrot (both are acceptably traditional, I'm assured). Secondly, I tried cooking the puddings in the slow cooker rather than the stove, with excellent results. I considered using suet again this year instead of butter, but the timing was wrong, and I wasn't keen on the cleaning and chopping aspect. Maybe next year. Overall, the puddings have come out even better than expected - very moist, and with a lovely dark colour. I must say that the slow cooker method was fantastic - the cooking time doubles, but there is no need to constantly check the water, and little consequent risk of them boiling dry and burning. And you even can go out and leave them cooking. I am a convert! Bring on Christmas - I can't wait to taste them!

Adventures in DIY #2

To get decent access to the hot water cylinder plumbing last weekend, I had to pull out the shelving in the hot water cupboard. This gave me the opportunity I needed to upgrade the shelving. As it was, the shelves were only half the depth of the cupboard (< 300 mm), making them next to useless to actually store things on, and leaving a huge dead space between them and the doors. So this weekend I set about making better use of the available space. I dropped into Three Bros ITM in Glen Innes to see what was available, and they had a stack of 18 mm Melamine sheet seconds at half price ($40). Bargain! I quickly calculated that I could get all the shelves (just) from one 2400 x 1220 sheet, so I grabbed one along with some edge strip, and a sheet of 12 mm ply for the shelving in the garage.

The rest of the day was spent cutting, routing and test fitting the shelves. I cut a 75 mm strip off the front of the existing upright to support the front of the shelves, with the rest remaining where it was. This meant that there was less access to the HWC plumbing, but it’s a small price to pay for more than doubling the shelf space. And it can be relatively easily removed anyway. I also cut some strips from one of the old shelves to use as supports for the shelves and screwed them to the new front and rear uprights. It was a pretty tense time when I came to check that the new assembly actually fit in the space, but fit it did. Cutting the Melamine sheet was interesting, and a good learning experience. I used the circular saw, running the edge along a sheet of 3 mm MDF that Dad had given me. On the first cut, the saw ran under the edge of the MDF for a short distance before I noticed. Bugger. This was kind of annoying, as there was very little room for error. For the rest of the cutting, I used a piece of ply as a straight edge as it was much stiffer. The size of the sheets also meant that I couldn’t use the router on the edges of most of the shelves, otherwise I would lose precious shelf space. Thankfully I had the forethought to make sure that the front edge of each shelf was an outer edge of the sheet. Unhappily, the edges I did cut with the circular saw were pretty ragged where the melamine was chipped baldly. Next time I will cut the sheets with the melamine side down, and the blade set to just penetrate the sheet, reducing the angle the teeth make to the facing. Live and learn.

Anyway to cut a long story short, the shelves are in and look good. I still have to trim the edges, which I’ll do this week some time. Most pieces fit in nicely, except for the top shelf which was the full width and depth of the cupboard. What a mission to manoeuvre that thing in! Overall, I’m very happy with the result. And all for under $50!

Adventures in DIY #1

Last weekend as I walked past the hot water cupboard, I felt an ominous ‘squelch’ underfoot. All sorts of disastrous scenarios played through my head, but on closer inspection, there appeared to be a relatively minor leak in the pipe leading to the cylinder. One hurried phone call to Dad later, the wheels were in motion. It had obviously been leaking for a while, as there was a fair amount of mould creeping up the shelving in the cupboard. Of course the carpet was water damaged, and the crappy MDF skirting boards had soaked up the water and turned to weet-bix.

As it turns out, there was a split in the pipe where it had been bent way beyond its allowable curvature, and the one-way valve was also leaking. It’s surprising given the mickey-mouse installation job that the pipe lasted as long as it did (17 years). I fixed the pipe temporarily with a Hepworth quick-fit pipe joiner (who knew how useful those things could be!), but that still left the dripping valve. Of course it was now after 2 pm on a Saturday, when all of the plumbing supplies stores had closed. Neither Mitre 10 or Placemakers had anything, but a bloke at Placemakers pointed us to Chesters in Ellerslie who turned out to be open. They had the part, and sold it to me at trade rates. Good people – I’d go back there. Back home, a bit of hemp and grease on the threads, and everything is working beautifully.
What could have been a very expensive plumbing call-out ended up costing about $70. Result!