Our House in 1910

We’ve recently found a photo of our house from 1910, which can’t be long after it, and the other 3 houses in the group, were built:

Click on the photo for a larger image.

How things have changed – it would be impossible to take an equivalent photo today as the area is more built up!

Fence Replacement

After 20+ years, the fence behind our garage had finally rotted beyond redemption:

It was a difficult fence to fit at the time, as there is a large drop and nothing to fix it to. This is the back of our garage with the old fence removed:

It was an ideal opportunity to clear the vegetation and muck that had built up in the gutters.

I’d already assembled a framework to hold the fence panels, and the first job was to fix this to posts at each end and brace it against the garage:

Once this was done, the easy part was fitting the panels themselves:

Hopefully this fence will last my lifetime – or if not, the frame will last – the panels are easy to replace!


 

 

New porch mat

I recently changed the light in the porch (a long story with many failures of various sorts), but whilst doing so, noticed that the old mat in the porch was quite worn.

So time for a new one. Luckily the porch is just under a standard size of coir mat so there wasn’t much wastage, but it was still a challenge to cut it to fit the porch floor.

But it was eventually done and looks a lot better:

Playing with our new toy

This week we had the second attempt at proving the pizza bases in the new proving oven:

It starts off quite flat, which is handy for storage.

The lid lifts up, then off, then the inside unfolds so you get a box.

It takes less than five minutes to get to 40°, during which time I make the pizza bases.

Next, the frame which Phil designed and 3D printed is unfolded, and the pizza bases stacked in it.  We had to buy new trays because the old ones were too big!


Finally, the whole lot is lifted into the oven. I must say the contraption is much more stable than I feared.  It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like with four pizzas!

Time to reduce my wardrobe

That is in quantity, not size!  For the past however many years, in the same way that we did when I was growing up, I have done a swap in May and October of the winter and summer clothes which are put in the camphor wood box while they aren’t in use.

This spring I was prompted to start early, and my aim was to reduce the (embarrassing) number of clothes I had so there would no longer be any need to keep the out of season ones separately.

So I took over the front bedroom for several days and emptied my wardrobe and drawers onto every available surface.  The beady eyed may also see the kirtle and coif in the foreground.

The shoes alone covered the bed!

I almost succeeded in my goal – there are only heavy winter coats in the camphor wood box now, and there are four bags waiting to go to the charity shop.  Furthermore, the clothes I do have are better organised.  Result!