Happenings at Johnby Bank

Just entered the figures for the hot water generated by our solar panels. Its less that last year 2100KWhr vs 2300KWhr.

I finally finished off the kitchen shutters….I made the first one nearly 2 years ago. So I’ve made the other one of the pair, and fitted them, and made them some handles.

Today instead of doing something more important…like finishing the radiators…I decided to make some door handles. I had previously mended a can opener by replacing the rotating handle with a piece of cherry wood. It was originally intended for the fire, so it was nicely seasoned!When we couldn’t decide on what door handles to get for the new door, cecilia said why not make some like that can opener handle.

I made a bit of a miscalculation on one side; I had it positioned too close to the door jam, and scrapped the skin off my knuckles first time I closed the door!

Well my 2 week holiday is now up, so did I manage to complete everything on my list?

The spare room is getting there – it now has a floor, some shutters, and a radiator!

Still need to decide on the wall colouring – I think we have almost decided on light blue. Also needs some skirting boards, and the window sill isn’t quite finished.

Downstairs the passage has been painted, and (ir)radiated!

Big thanks to our lodger Niels for the painting!

We have been dithering about what to put on the floor…current decision is tiles off-white limestoney look.

Not as much as I had planned, but we did have a visitation from my parents which was a definite highlight to the holidays!

I’ve taken some time off work, so that I can do some work on the barn. I’ve got three weeks to do stuff, and I sort of have a plan:

• Passage to work room – needs a floor and painting, and possibly some bookshelves / cupboards,
• upstairs corridor – I want to get it plasterboarded so you can get to the spare room,
• spare room – needs painting / a floor / shutters,
• walls – the bathroom and other rooms are still missing some walls!

After the first week – I have got the floor done in the passage, and hung the door. It still needs painting, and tiles – if we could decide on what we wanted!

The work on the floor was powered by a box of chocolates!

We have had our solar panels heating our hot water for over a year now. I have been keeping a log of how much heat they have harvested. Total since I started recording = 2321 KWh, highest weekly total = 91KWh.

You can access the data here

[edit:changed the graph to an image rather than a direct link to google docs]

This weekend I was hanging a door, and rehanging a door until I got it right. And this door weighs a ton!

However now its done, I think it looks rather nice! It wasn’t helped by the builders making the gap for the door slightly too small for a standard door, so I had to chop 1cm off one side.

Other things we have completed since the last post – plastering completed down stairs, most of the lights working – except in the work room/living room where we still have to decide what fittings to get ( 5 wall lights and a centre ceiling light ).

This week I’ve been doing a bit of tiling. First room is the cold store; it needed a floor. I’ve been picking up cheep tiles on offer at the DIY store, and thought I had enough to do a nice checker pattern. Two nice tiles: one a grey blue, the other an off-white. First thing – check the tiles are the same size. Oddly enough the white ones are 5mm bigger than the blue ones. Second – check you have enough of both colours. It was a small room, I could have just laid them out on the floor to check….So I got half way through and realised I was short of 1 while tile.

So after a quick trip into town I got the floor finished. They are ceramic so don’t cut using the scoring / snap method. I used a diamond blade in a 4″ angle grinder.  If you don’t want chips along the edge of the cut, best to put masking tape along the line of the cut, and cut through the tape. Turned out quite well, and the size difference in the tiles doesn’t look too bad!

Next I had a window sill in the boiler room to do, I had some odd sample tiles lying around so thought I would try to alternate them in a random pattern. Thought I would save time by scoring and snapping – bad move! I ended up going for the crazy paving look, and dropping the tiles on the floor the get more pieces.

I’m quite pleased with the effect, even though it wasn’t how I’d planned it!