Tuesday, 8 December 2015

Bad weather induces expensive diversions

It is nearly a week since my last Thursday "walk" with Pete. Weather and a new DIY project have delayed a post.

Non-stop rain prevented walking, but I had the idea of visiting Force Mills where a dramatic little stream bifurcates and tumbles down a hillside in the archetypal Lake District hinterland twixt Windermere and Coniston lakes. I reckoned it would be verging on uniquely spectacular with the nonstop downpour.

Photographing the stream from below is fraught with disappointing results because the camera just cannot capture what the eye sees here but we drove to the top where the water tumbles over the edge and got a few decent shots at the risk of writing off the camera with rain ingress. I wish I had experimented and used manual override to increase shutter speed and thereby sharpen up the fast flowing water, but at least I have a reasonable record.

My dormer bungalow has a landing between the two bedrooms with walk-in storage cupboards with sloping roofs on either side. I am installing in one of these a bijou WC and handbasin facility so that my nighttime geriatric requirements will be ameliorated.

Awful picture (rain on the lens - my excuse),  but it shows the two streams. The next ones are taken from the top before it flows down. CLICK TO ENLARGE
Where the main straem goes over the edge


This and the next two - looking upstream




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The WC and handbasin are going in the left hand side. The chipboard floor was not level so I had to create a new level floor.

You can see how much out of level the floor was near the torch light - it is propped up a couple of inches or so within an 80cm. spread


Plywood floor and Vinyl tiles have now been added

Downlighter lights have been added, there are two more in the roof at the top of the photo.
The WC will back up onto the rear wall. The walls will be cladded in upvc cladding.

Phil the plumber has just arrived and I have to go for a pre knee op appointment at the hospital at 2:00pm. When I had the other knee done, the time between the pre-op appointment and the real thing was so long I questioned the point of the pre-op thing, but we will see.

4 comments:

  1. What would that stream have looked like on Saturday, if you could have got near it.
    Linking your two themes hope there is no water gushing out of the cupboard, sorry new toilet, and down the stairs.

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  2. i've got plenty of jobs in a similar vein for you once you've finished that - our main bridge is damaged, so you'll have to brave the artillery instead
    ditto to bc 's comments - even the little becks were mini-Niagara's, wherever one went
    but there were walkers about - looked very happy in their high-tech kit

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  3. How incredibly polysyllabic you've become but perhaps you don't regard this as a fault. If you do, and you feel you could stand a little guidance, try to imagine some of your more baroque sentences set to music; it acts like a a purge.

    But here we are, fulfilling man's destiny: working the wood, driving the screws, measuring with a keen eye, and other sonorous evidence of modern-day masculinity. Mixed up with precisely reversing your car - a newer expression of manhood, given that our choked streets have done away with that other version of the clenched male fist: driving the car too fast.

    How lovingly you chart progress, setting out the sacramental paraphernalia, showing the stages by which craftsmanship will eventually be hidden from the user's eye (proof of the DIY male's essential modesty). I envy you, of course. How many times would I have to photograph my fingers diddling over the keyboard to approximate your grandiose efforts: the 21st century equivalent of building the Pyramids (suburban style). Just think of the essential tragedy of those earlier slavemasters, denied the benison of a digital camera to record their sweat and tears.

    Why it makes you... go downstairs and swig a fast G&T.

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  4. BC - No staircase waterfalls so far. All goes well.

    gimmer - I think DIY enthusiasm will be satiated for a while after this project.

    RR - I would be flattered to have my baroque sentences set to music, so I am a lost cause for you there.

    I should really have told the the flip-side of the story: following that old cliché of "measure twice and cut once" I still proceed to cut from the wrong side, and there goes another wasted piece of expensive panelling, and spending half an hour trying to extricate the circular piece of wood embedded in the inside of the hole saw after cutting pipe holes, and buying the wrong kind of tongued and grooved boarding, and now I'm rivalling Proust for long sentences. DIY enthusiasm and macho aspirations can turn into DIY anxiety.

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