deck renovation day 7

deck renovation day 7, originally uploaded by moncur_d.

it rained.

In fact it poured down, meaning no outside work was possible at all today, so I contented myself pulling up the old lounge room carpet.

Fortunately, managed to get a coating of oil on the new wood yesterday so things shouldn't be too bad ...

the deck - day 6

the deck day 6, originally uploaded by moncur_d.

things are taking shape, the new planking is down (mostly) ...

the deck - day 5

the deck day 5, originally uploaded by moncur_d.

footings nicely curing and most of the structure of the extension is complete except to the steps. Now starting to strip out the old damaged decking ...

Ikea and Ryanair

this morning it struck me that Ikea are the Ryanair of the home furniture business:

• it always turns out to be more expensive than you think it is
• service is anything between incompetent and apalling
• you only do it because there's no (affordable) alternative
  

Deck renovation day 4

The building inspector was happy with the work so far, so concrete poured to stabilise the footings. Now waiting for everything to cure.

Desperately un photogenic, so no picture this time

Doing the Ikea thing

Well, we’ve just bought ourselves a new car – we’d been thinking about doing this next year but J happened across this 2 year old Subaru 4WD, only 20,000km and previously leased to the Presbyterian Church to ferry old ladies about.

Everything checked out and it looked so much a bargain we said Yup! and bought it. Leaves us the ticklish problem of having three cars but we’ll sell the Hyundai to some impecunious student and I’ll drive the old green Subaru wagon, intergalactic mileage not withstanding, to work.

So having bought something that you cou;d use to invade small countries with, we decided to christen it by doing the Ikea thing.

Now, your version of the Ikea thing may be different but this is how it works in Canberra.

Get up at 6 am on a Sunday morning. Coffee, wholemeal toast, fresh orange juice. Off by 7.30 listening to NewsRadio chortling about the imminent collapse of civilisation as we know it. All good.

Realise we don’t have enough petrol for a 600km round trip and pay early Sunday morning rip off prices for a tank. Drive to Sydney. Ikea, Swedish style brunch. So far so good.

Walk round store looking at things. Acquire $300 of unplanned but seemingly essential purchases. Go to warehouse to buy furniture we meant to buy. Discover, despite having checked the website the previous evening that half of what we meant to buy is out of stock.

Buy the plan B alternative and resolve to come back in January for the other stuff. Take pallet trolley up 4 floors in multistorey car park and by some miracle avoid flattening several young children. At least this time because we have the mothership everything fits avoiding humiliating retreat to hire roofbars etc.

Sneak back into Ikea store to buy a hundred bucks worth of Swedish goodies. Realise that we should have gone to the  supermarket yesterday. Dive into Coles. Realise we’ve over the three hours free parking and pay eight bucks to escape out onto the lunacy of the Sunday afternoon M4.

Drive home, entertaining each other with funny stories. Ignore NewsRadio.

Spend an hour with the fridge trolley getting things out of car and into house (our bad for buying a house on a 30 degree slope). Prop offending items up in strategic locations. Say ‘fuck’ a lot.

Feed cat, eat dinner and contemplate the fact that today’s cost the same as a couple of air tickets to Bali. Say ‘fuck’ once more.

Collapse in bed.

the deck - day 3

the deck - day 3, originally uploaded by moncur_d.

The frame of the deck extension is now complete - nothing much will happen now until the building inspector comes round and checks the footings - after that it's pouring concrete and letting it set ...

the deck - day 2

the deck day 2 #, originally uploaded by moncur_d.

day 2 - the frame for the first part of the deck extension is up!

Deck renovation day 1 ...

we're renovating and extending the deck on our house:






so far it's just the messy bit of taking off all the old wood and painting the uprights and new beams ....