Sunday, April 16, 2006

Working through the stain barrier...

I spent the entire day (except for a couple of meal breaks and a crafy 30min snooze at 4pm) in the garden staining the fence, decking and even finding time to pull down the kids old playhouse (read "shed" which I personally never wanted in the garden in the first place). My celebratory whisky and a packet of Hula Hoops (beef) as I sit in my "den" listening to the Floyd are, in my opinion, well deserved.

I predictably ran out of fence paint after about an hour and have only managed to do 2/3 of one side, much to my infuriation that my painting coverage estimates are so lax. Anyway, I lept into the car and off I went to the local garden centre to bag me some more - only to find that it was closed due it "being easter". Off I went again, this time going the whole hog and driving to the big B&Q DIY warehouse in Leeds only to find that shut too.

Is it just me or had I thought we'd got over this religious festival nonsense now? I'm not suggesting that people stop celebrating this momentus moment in fictional history for a second - I'm live and let live, but at least let the bloody DIY stores open so the rest of us can tend to our homes & gardens in one of the few extended weekends we get in the year. And to think, Jesus's dad was allegedly a carpenter, so he wouldn't have minded so much I'm sure. Anyway, I was very cross about it (see what I did there?)

The kids got a dozen big Easter eggs each. I mean that's just madness. They do have an extended family, but even so, 12 bloody eggs apiece is ridiculous. I swiped a crafty bit of Harry's he'd left in the fridge, but I don't think he'll notice :) Not with another 11 tucked away. Fortunately my diabetes will ensure that the majority of their chocolate goodness goes unworried.

Shed Hiding, good!

The kids' playhouse/shed thing has been occuping a corner of our modest garden for about 3-4 years now and I never ever really liked it at all, particularly when we added the decking a couple of years back (15sq.m) which reduced the amount of actual garden fairly drastically. It was also a different shade of wood colour, sticking out like a sore thumb and one of the reasons why I'm set with "unifying" the wood stains in the garden.

Anyway, the plan was to sell the thing (or at least give it away) so I spent 10mins looking at it to see how best to take it carefully apart in order to let someone else benefit from it's form. It was soon apparent that Mark (the brother in law and the joiner responsible for building it) had obviously constructed it to withstand a 10megaton tactical strike.

There was no way this bugger was coming peacefully and the next 2-3hrs were sweaty, claw-hammer and power-drill-screwdriver anarchic heaven. I actually found this very theraputic, knocking 7-bells out of it, wood flying everywhere, the only down-side was the realisation that there was so much wood that I'd never get it all to the tip without making 6-7 trips so I'd have to hire a bloody skip - but at least I could ditch a ton of other stuff at the same time.

All that remains now are the 9 concrete foundation posts, for which I'm going to need reinforcements to help me with as they're likely to go down 30ft. But at least I felt victorious that I'd slain the beast and suddenly light now fills a corner of the garden again and once more we look to have a more sizeable garden and one that wasn't blighted by quite possibly the ugliest looking playhouse that ever walked the earth. I'd like to replace it with a little pond, but it seems my other half wants a blossom tree. Oh well.

And another thing, some time back I asked my eldest why he and his brother never bothered with the playhouse, to be told "there's no way we're going in there, there's massive spiders in it" to which I explained he shouldn't be so soft and that he had to expect the odd spider outside, but being England we didn't have any decent spiders to speak of.

I take it back, I was chased away three times from one tatoo-wielding arachnid wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. A tad exaggerated maybe, but it was a big bugger... and I'm now just glad the shed has gone - I just hope the now homeless creatures that occupied it aren't outside stalking my every move.

Back to B&Q tomorrow, no stain, no gain.

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