More photos of Selsey Close

The pictures are on my Picasa album so click here to view them.

Fitting extractor fan to Selsey

This is the very large drill bit I used to remove some of the brick,

but most of the holes are 10mm. I drilled all the way around the circle and then using a chisel and hammer, I removed the plaster and brick.

If I do this again I will make the hole slightly smaller, I left too much clearance. Once I broke through the inside bricks I was able to drill a hole though the outside layer of bricks so I could work out where to start drilling from the outside. You can see the sunlight in the small hole in the centre.

This is on the outside wall, same story all over again.... Have a look at the pile of brick dust resting on the top of the ladder in the bottom of this photo.

Finally finished!

Walking on ice!

When we had the very cold weather, the canal crossing under Station road froze so we went up to see if we could walk on it. You can see lots of rocks and sticks behind Zac that people have thrown on the canal to try and break the ice.

I think we need to design and build a boat/craft with ice skates on it to play on the frozen canal, but we will have to wait till next year.

Bricks on roof

Dad (Soutter), remember we used bricks on the roof to keep the insulation down. Well the cement on them is just falling off. I guess it is from the wet and very cold weather???

Rat issues...

So we have some new residents, and this is one of them. Look how cute and curious he is!!!

Not very cute any more. This guy was hiding outside under our decking and we watched him on a infra red camera (borrowed from Wayne). It took a few days before I got him in the trap.
We have been hearing them run on the ceiling for a while now. I setup the camera in the loft.
I put the trap in the loft, but I haven't set it yet and I put a biscuit next to the trap. It is the round thing on the right of the trap. The council rat man said to do this, then if the biscuit goes you know it is a rat (mice can't carry a big biscuit).
Next morning when I checked the camera, the biscuit was gone!!! Time to set the trap!

More Selsey Close Photos

After talking to the Estate agent we decided to get the gas turned on, so the fire in the living room is working.

I has some help with painting on Monday.
Bathroom wallpapered and painted, the vent cover has been put on but no in this pic.

Selsey Close photos

I recessed the cable into the wall and then tiled over it. I will take pictures of the finished wall when I go back.
Floors mostly laid, more pics to follow.

Replacing the old windows

During what has turned out to be the coldest part of the year, we took on the job of replacing the old wooden (single glazed) windows with new PVC (double glazed, gas filled) windows. We replaced the bathroom and kitchen windows. Below is me removing the bathroom window.

and the new one installed!
The kitchen window I did without Alison's help and it was really, really cold! When I was siliconing the outside, I had to take me gloves off and I lost the feeling in my fingers after a few minutes and couldn't pick up small objects! The temperature was below zero at this point.

Below is the old window with stickers on the glass so when I break the pane it doesn't all shatter.

I have removed half the frame in this picture, all you have to do is cut through the frame and use brute force to get it out....and try not to damage the brickwork and plaster!
The frame is simply screwed into the brickwork at 6 points, then siliconed to seal it.

I don't have a photo of the finished kitchen window, but they all look the same in the end :-)

Bread maker repairs (Morphy Richards)

Our bread maker which is used at least once a day by Alison started to make more and more noises when working. It got to the point when it wasn't only squeaking any more it started to 'clunk'!!! After spending a while trying to take it apart I gave up and looked on YouTube. I found a video explaining cutting the bottom out of the bread maker which worked to gain access. When inside I found the main bearing had worn into an oval shape and the shaft was flopping about. You can sort of see the oval shape of the hole in this picture.

I removed the old bearing and replaced it with one that I made on the lathe out of brass.

A week later the bread maker is still working so all looks good so far!

Snow!

It snowed today and Zac spent most of the afternoon playing in the snow in the back yard. Liam wasn't quite as excited about the snow.

I hope we don't have to drive anywhere soon....

The fish pond has been frozen for a few days it is about 50mm thick and only a small patch is still open where the waterfall enters the pond.
Zac and his snowman he made.

Hornby train ride

This was taken just after Christmas and I have been meaning to post it for ages. Well here it is! We mounted the camera on one of the cars of the Hornby train.

Filling the crater in the front lawn....

One of our neighbours was having her garden landscaped and she was throwing out a skip full of topsoil (really nice soil!!!). As I am not shy about skip-diving, I spent a few days breaking my back loading up the poor Berlingo with soil and dumping it in our hole in the front lawn.

Sadly this photo doesn't quite show how much soil we (Alison helped) moved as the first few loads just filled the hole to ground level. Only then did we start adding to the mound. Hopefully when the ground thaws, we can start to spread it out.

Roof insulation (warm roof)

I was trying to think of a was to insulate our front flat roof over the winter. Hopefully we will be replacing it this year some time. So I didn't want to spend too much money and time on doing it, but something needed to be done as the ceiling was so cold it was constantly wet and dripping with condensation!!! I decided to insulate the top of the roof as getting inside the rafters was going to be very difficult and messy. I bought 50mm polystyrene and placed it on top of the roof held down with bricks and paving slabs.

I thought I had come up with something unique till I read in a Reader Digest DIY manual that this is called a 'Warm Roof' and is a know way to retro insulate a roof.

From the top it looks a bit shanty town, but from the front is isn't very noticeable.

New draw under oven

We had some wasted space under the oven which was just blanked off. I
had 4 (half) runners which I had selvages from a filing cabinet that
seemed perfect for the job.
So I welded the two halves together to get the runners to extend fully
(instead of only coming our half way) and this was the result........

Raising sewer sides

The man hole around our sewer was in need of attention and we also needed to raise it a bit so the fish would not get flooded with you-know-what next time the sewer blocked up.We had some foreign labour to help us
and some child labour ;-)