More Floor

Hi folks! As you can see we are just about ready to start laying the floor in the Love Shack. Its all cleared out, the underlay is down, and Richard kindly returned my chop saw yesterday. All systems go!

More Love

Today I finished the front side of the large removable panel. This is it in a state of non-removedness. The gap on the right will be filled with a non-removable panel. I've also been working on some integral shelves for the Love Shack of which more soon.

Love Shack Action!

Action stations in the Love Shack. I've started making the removable and non-removable sections of the panel which will extend right across the gap, offering privacy to all Love Shack guests in the future for whatever hot lovin' they want to get up to. The removable section of panel is so that we can get larger objects (such as a mattress) up and down which won't fit through the hatch.

Wood in the Hole

Another hiatus with work, and absolutely gorgeous October weather, what else could I do but get outside, trim the door, give it a couple of coats of varnish, fit all the knobs and hinges....

...and hang it so that the modesty of anyone using the shower room for whatever purpose is now fully protected.

Osprey

Sorry to report the amazing Osprey is now a late Osprey.
:-(

Something unusual...

... And nothing whatever to do with renovating a house. But I had to put this picture up. I found this chap yesterday, sitting at the bottom of a field on farmland near the house when I was walking the dog. It clearly couldn't fly and the weather was horrible, so I thought I'd better do something by way of animal rescue type stuff. I stood for a while admiring the many razor-sharp points on most of its extremities and decided the best course of action was to drop my coat over it and try to pick it up and get it home. To my relief, that worked perfectly. And to my further relief, it didn't go to the toilet during the 20 minute walk home. Not something you'd want in your coat I'd imagine. I managed to confine it at the end of our shed and we put down some water and raw mince, which it politely refused. Today we took it to the RSPCA animal rescue centre at West Hatch in Somerset where they identified it as a juvenile Osprey, which had obviously got into trouble on its first migration from Sweden to Africa, ending up in a muddy field in Devon.


I will certainly be following up on its progress, and if all goes well, we'll be invited along to its release back into the wild whenever that happens. I'll keep you posted on any news.

Plumbing

I forgot to tell you... The plumbers were in last week installing pipework, manifold, pump, thermostat and such in order to connect the under-floor heating in the new studio to the main central heating system. So I will be warm and snuggly all winter. At least I will be when the plumbers have been back and made some more improvements to the system... Something about needing a sealed system to stop the under-floor nicking the heat from the rest of the house. It will cost a bomb, no doubt, so I ask myself: Is it really such a bad thing if those who dwell in the rest of the house need to don an extra jumper or two?

Finally, some privacy.

As soon as I've got a handle and some hinges, I'll be putting the wood in the hole, and no longer will people be at risk of seeing me getting in or out of the shower when they come round. On a clear night you could hear the screams for miles.

Crystal ball

This is our bathroom. Its horrible, cold and badly laid out. It hasn't changed since we moved in over six years ago, except that a few of the tiles have fallen off the walls. But I've had a look in my crystal ball, and I've seen the future....

Its one virtue is that it is big. Big enough to divide into two or three parts.

I can't wait to chuck this monstrosity into a skip. I hate this bath with a vengeance! Richard is booked for the month of November and we've just ordered a small fortune's worth of new bathroom fixtures. We're going to have an en-suite shower room attached via some substantial wardrobe space to our bedroom, and a family bathroom with a lovely big bath set into a wooden deck. The plan below shows the plan, as it were, and although some details are bound to change, these will be minor (I may eat my words).

Stay tuned!

About Time!

Dear Blogfans,
A thousand apologies for the lack of recent posts! At first, I dismissed the trickle of complaints as being from cranky individuals who really should go and do something more useful with their time. But the trickle became a stream, and the stream became a torrent, and I now have a special folder for any emails I get which contain certain keywords like "death" and "kill" "pleaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!" But for my own safety, I must yield to the demands of my adoring and psychotic fans. So below you will see a couple of views of the studio I took this morning.

I put up the vertical blind yesterday, just in time to start painting the latest artwork for the UTC advertising campaign http://www.utc.com/curious It casts a completely neutral shade across the board in the mornings when direct sunlight pours in through the windows making it impossible to work in colour otherwise.

Red alert! Starting to get messy in here, darn! I knew that would happen....

Shower Room Update

Well I'm supposed to be working right now, but as usual in the early stages of a job a certain amount of procrastination occurs. During such periods I have busied myself in finishing the detailing of the shower room.

The last glass tiles came (you may remember I missed out a whole wall when I calculated the number of tiles I needed so I had to order more which took 8 weeks to arrive) so I stuck them up.

I've now finished all the grouting and put up this rather nice glass shelf which Tesco were knocking out for a fiver a couple of years ago. At that price, I thought, I can afford a speculative purchase in the hope of finding it a nice permanent home in some utopian contemporary style future.... How right I was.

One for Richard

Richard not only lends us his tools so we can continue the good work on the studio (so he can get out of doing the good work himself, yes, I know!) but also lent us his roof box so we could go on holiday. Also, I suspect, to get rid of us for a while so we wouldn't be hassling him about doing any more good work.

About to get very wet

A cold mountain lake at considerable altitude, and she's still warm and dry in this snap, at least for another tenth of a second. Go J9!

Flora and fauna

A few of Spain's plants and creatures were kind enough to keep still long enough for me to get a nice snap of them. The lizards were particularly difficult. You are never more than a meter from the nearest butterfly or grasshopper.

Up in the Picos

When we were in Spain we spent about two thirds of out time up in the mountains, the Picos De Europa and the Parque National De Somiedo in the Western Picos. If you've seen six spectacular sights before breakfast, there are probably a few more in store before lunch.

Drawing

Well, I appear to be back from a lovely holiday in Spain which would explain the long absence. I fully intended to announce my departure, but in the end failed to return to the computer before I left. Inspired by my pal Steve of Sketch of the Day fame, I took a pad and my colour pencils, and managed to get precisely one drawing done. This one. This was the view from outside our tent one morning when we were camping in the Picos De Europa. Or rather this is a drawing of it. Done rather quickly. And I couldn't find my knife to sharpen my pencils. Enough excuses. I'll post some photos soon too.

Clear out

Some finishing: Lacquering the skirting and door frames, bung a bit of architrave up around the Love Shack hatch, all washed down with a great big clear out ready for some furniture. This is the tidiest it will ever look.

Say goodbye to unsightly pipes in 3 easy stages

The pipes for the underfloor heating stuck out of the floor in the corner of the room. The heating boiler is just the other side of the wall, so that's where we'll put the manifold to connect to the boiler.

So I drilled holes and ran the pipes through.

Connected them with elbow joints

And boxed in the whole unsightly mess. Which is, according to the beautiful Janine, what I look like. An unsightly mess that is, not a box.

Hurdles

This wall was so unflat that I had to cut a sliver of wood and clamp it to the back of the skirting board to fill a gap. I had to use a lot of clamps because my cutting was also unflat.

After what we call a "Wiggy moment," a successful jam of skirting to wall was achieved. More tomorrow (hopefully)

Details

If it wasn't for the fact that I'm going on holiday next week and will be working again as soon as I get back, I might even think I'll get this studio finished sometime before the next millennium!!