Last week (Thursday I think) we bought our new kitchen! We had a couple of hours to spare before popping into London so we went to B&Q and bought the kitchen we were planning on getting. It’s going to look very pretty, it has doors, a worktop and some other stuff (spot who was paying attention when Becca was picking stuff). It’s gonna take months to get done though 🙁 Probably mid-June by the time they get round to doing it.

My list of things to do has had an entry of ‘sync network’ for a while, well today I finally got around to looking at this. If the program I found to do this is as good as it claims then I am very happy. It’s called foldershare, and it claims to be able to do many things, one of which is sync specified folders. You install a small piece of software on each thing you want to sync and log into your web-based account, from here you tell it you want to sync whatever you want. It’s currently syncing my music on my laptop and study computer.

The reason why I’m bothering with this is that both Bint and I use the study and laptop at various times and we have a lot of data that we really don’t want to lose. The hope is that I can set up both these computers to sync with the media pc we have in the living room, thus saving all my pictures, web site stuff, music etc etc etc. Microsoft bought the company last year (thus admitting they couldn’t figure out how to do it!) so I think it should be relatively ok to use.

Also, today I have installed a TV areial in the study so I can watch TV at the same time as Bint and I finally put the trim around Cats window.

So now that the roof has been done, we figured that we should paint the door. So we picked red, bright red, and painted it today. I use the word ‘painted’ in the loosest possible terms. We used brushes and paint, but we may as well have just thrown the paint at the door! It has dripped down, there patches we missed, the edges haven’t been done, and there is paint all over frame. So we are going to have to put a second coat on, but we are going to have to sand it down a bit first, sigh. So that’s next weekends DIY planned.

As for the extractor fan, well that’s all up and running, some clever wiring and upgrading of stuff meant that it wasn’t too traumatic to install. Now it’s just a question of setting it up so the humidity sensor actually does it’s job properly.

So we went and bought a fancy extractor fan today, it has a humidity sensor in it! So I started to put it in. I made a huge mess in the bathroom but it’s up now and connected to the roof vent. Just need to wire it in. Maybe it will smell less when I go in the bathroom after bint 🙂

We got the garage roof fixed! The whole thing had to be replaced as some kids got on it and it fell through 🙁 The guys did a good job and they even made the door work better and took all of the crap that was inside.

I just need to paint the door (we have bright red paint) and move the bike fixings, then we have a fully working garage!

They also put some roof vents on our house, this means I can get on with putting an extractor fan in.

We are waiting for the guys to come back and paint our soffits now, but it keeps raining 🙁

We developed a leaky hot tap the other day, annoying but no big disaster. But then people started to really do the tap up tightly and so it got worse. The leak elevated itself to ‘must fix a.s.a.p. status’ when it was dripping at such a rate the boiler was on constantly. So I spent this morning fixing it, the problem was the tap is one of the origional taps that came with the house – so ~30 years old. This means it was gunked up and very stuck. After about an hour I managed to shift it though, GRRRRRR! It’s all fixed now though.

I then spent the afternoon clearing out the garage, three more bags of crap, bringing the total up to eleven bags in total. It’s looking pretty good now. I put the bike locks on the wall so we can FINALLY get them out of the living room. Just need to get the council to take all the big crap out, put a better lock on the door, paint the door and frame and fix the roof. So should soon be finished, sigh.

As for the central heating, well that seems to be working all right. Haven’t found any more leaks, yet.

We are having our central heating installed at the minute. HMMM, its a bit of a mixed bag so far. All the new radiators have been put up and they look nice, they are new and shiney 🙂 All of the pipework has been done, well that’s what we thought. When the guy turned it all on and let it heat up I went for a nose around to see how good a job he had done and lo and behold it was spurting water out in the loft, grrrr. So the guy fixed that and then spent about an hour in the loft, turns out one of the pipes has a hole in it and couldn’t be fixed. All this means that I have to take ANOTHER day off work and sit around while they fix it.

So the guy came round to put more traps down (I really reccommend him if you have pests) yesterday morning and within a few hours we heard the characterisic thud of a trap going off. But then there was more noise, a clanging and dragging noise, the little loveable rouge had got caught in the trap and was dragging it around. So I called the guy, he was miles away but because the thing was probably in pain he said he would come round and deal with it. About 5 minutes before he arrived there was another thud and the noises stopped, he must have walked into another trap, or so we thought. When we went in the loft we found two empty traps, well almost empty, one had a squirrel foot in it! Some how by setting the second trap off he had escaped (without his foot). Quite annoying you may think, but it gets worse, whilst stuck in the first trap it took it upon itself to get revenge and knawed through a cable. So we had to call out an emergency electrician, luckily our insurance covers this, so we got the wire patched. But it is going to have to be replaced sometime in the near future.
All we need to do now is to get the hole fixed, this will get done today, even if I have to kidnap a builder to do it.

As for the squirrel, well it’s footless and probably had quite a substancial electric shock so I don’t know what’s happened to it. It could still be up there, it could have moved on thinking our loft is quite a hazardous place, or it could be lying dead somewhere. I know what I hope has happened to it.

We have some un-invited guests of the squirrel variety in our house at the minute. The little beasts have been clambering up our wall and into a hole in our barge boards.

They have been living in our loft for about a week and in that time they have been elevated to arch-nemesis status. Various attempts to rid ourselves of them have all failed. I tried:

the logical way – I tried to block up the hole they come in, it’s in a very awkward place so this is impossible from inside.

the humane way I. – a plug which sends out a noise that irritates them so they move on (bollocks).

the humane way II. making lots of noise to scare them off, ranging from going up there lots and making noise, to making them listen to three counties radio all day!

Then, after beginning to make more noise every morning I found that they have been eating the wires up there, time to get the professionals in.

We eventually went with these guys. They were the only people would come out on Saturday. It cost us £75 and was pretty quick, it took less than a day to have them killed.

Now the next step is to go and inspect the damage to the wires, lets hope I can fix it and we don’t need an electrician.

There’s more squirrels! Just heard some scurrying so had a look in the loft, sat in silence for about 10 minutes before one popped its head out. Will have to get the guy out again tomorrow.

I hate squirrels.