Wee small hours

Yet again my sleep pattern is all out of sync, with the rest of the world but not to worry.

The last two days has seen the piece of wood for the mantelpiece taking shape. It's been cut to size and sanded down by my daughter, then yesterday afternoon I sat and gave it three coats of wax. It turned out even better than I hoped, so later today it will hopefully be finding its way to it's new home. My daughter also sanded down an old pine tool box which she has utilised for her tattooing stuff, that came up beautifully too.

The other piece of wood I bought was delivered and seems even bigger now it's here !! This wood is elder, and it'll be even more interesting to see the grain in this appear as it's been stood outside for quite a long time so is looking very weathered. That might have to wait for a few days though, as we have to sand outside and I don't want to annoy the neighbours too much so early on in my tenancy lol.

The house is slowly but surely starting to come together. The front room is almost presentable now, the kitchen just about passable and my bedroom is looking better than it did, but far from finished. So all in all I'm pretty pleased with the progress so far.

I was texting with my friend Ray who lives on a narrow boat yesterday, and he's planning on being around the Birmingham area from next week up until Xmas. So hopefully there's a good chance we'll be able to hook up at long last. We've been trying to met up for over a year now, but are never in the same place at the same time lol. The only problem is, now that I seem to be getting arthritis in my hand I'm not too sure whether I'll be able to manage to hold the tools to learn to make glass beads now. Time will tell I'm sure.

How time flies

Wow.... already a week has passed since I wrote on here !! Doesn't time fly when you're having fun lol. The unpacking is pretty much done, but I have to admit quite a bit of the stuff unpacked, has just been put in places to sort out another day. But at least now there's a bit of space and room to breathe.

My daughter finished off laying the laminate on her own !! She's one of those girls that can't bear seeing things half done, so when my friend was too busy to come and help when he expected, she decided to have a go herself. She's done a brilliant job, and what a difference it makes, although the dog's still coming to terms with looking like Bambi, when he tries to stand up.

The front room wall now has a feature wall too, in a rich deep aubergine colour ( aren't we posh lol ) It looks amazing, as well as doing this my daughter also put up 3 floating shelves, which now have my favourite ornaments on, and the front room has started looking like home.

Saturday found us taking a trip to a car boot in Bangor that we'd never been to before. What a waste of time and petrol that was !! I can honestly say its the worst car boot I've ever been to. So Sunday we went to our usual one and came home with some cream curtains for Jen's room, a pair of matching Ikea lampshades and a couple of other bits and bobs.

Yesterday we took a trip to the recycling centre, to get rid of all the boxes we'd used to move. Then it was on a mission to find a timber merchants my friend had told me about. When we got there we found a beautiful slice of yew complete with bark. The guy told us that the tree was 600 years old, imagine that ..all those hundreds of years old, we managed to knock the guy down from £30 to £25 for it. This is going to be cut down to size, sanded and oiled and used on top of the fireplace, which I am mosaicing to cover the awful 50's tiled one that's there at the moment. Next was a trip to yet another garden centre on the hunt for a decent sized house plant. I've lost count of the number of places we've already tried. We still had no luck, but on the way out we spotted a corner of the garden centre which was a reclamation yard. There was some more slices of tree one piece in particular caught our eye, it was a beautiful shape, with loads of character. It was huge ..at least 8 ft long and 4ft wide in places. Not even thinking we might be able to afford it, we asked how much .....£30 !!! What a bargain, there was no way we could miss having that, so now we are waiting to have it delivered. That will be sanded down and made into a coffee table and at a later date we'll find something else for my clever daughter to make with the rest of it.

I'm back did you miss me ?

I'm back !! The big move has happened, and we are safely in our new house ...well bungalow, and we love it !!! When we actually got inside the bungalow, we were pleasantly surprised to find, that it looked bigger than it had from the outside when we peered through the windows. Also there was more storage than we'd hope for too, including a small storage room, which has now become the new place for my mountain of glass and art stuff.

When we came to sign the lease last Weds, we were very surprised when the council guy told us that we had to hand the keys in for the old place by the Friday at 4pm or we would have to pay a weeks rent. We were expecting to hand the keys in on the following Monday, thank goodness we'd already spoken to my son in law about the possibility of moving on Thurs already, and also that the van hire place had a van available on the Thursday too. My oldest daughter text me to say that my grandson Martin couldn't help us move after all. So we were left one man short, luckily after a couple of phone calls, a friend of ours Gwyn agreed to come and help us. So thanks very much to both of you, and my daughter Jen for making a stressful time, a lot less stressful.


There were times when we looked round at the mountain of boxes and bags and wondered if we would ever manage to get them sorted out. But now 6 days later, we're getting there very slowly. There's been a constant stream of moving boxes from one room to another in order to try and get one room straight, and then having to fill that room back up again in order to get another room sorted. My constant aches and pains meant that my daughter had to do almost all the moving and rearranging of boxes and bags on her own, where she got the strength I don't know...but thanks Jen. My son Billie and his girlfriend Alisha came round on Friday and Saturday, and Billie helped move things around, and sorted out some wiring for us too. Then on Sunday Billie tried to help my daughter Jenny lay the laminate flooring...what a nightmare that stuff is, to someone that's never laid it before. No sooner was one piece laid, than it popped out again. So yet another attempt failed miserably.

Just as we were about to give up on the laminate, I got a phone call from a good friend of mine to see if we were alright, as he hadn't seen me online. After hearing our tale of woe about the laminate, he offered to come and help Jen lay the first few rows to get her started in his dinner hour. The first few rows ended up being half the room, but I have to say even though my friend had experience at laying this type of thing, it certainly didn't go smoothly. As he had to get back to work himself, we'd hoped that Jenny would be able to carry on laying it with a little bit of help from me ...wrong !! My numb fingers on one hand and raging arthritus (which has only flared up this past few weeks) on the other hand, I just didn't have the strength to pull and push the strips of flooring enough to help Jen finish the job. My friend rang again to see how we got on yesterday, and has suggested we see if we can get my son to help instead, if not he'll book a day off work and come and help Jen get it finished. Thanks a lot El.

Sunday found us heading off to our local car boot to try and get some curtains and odd and ends. We had to try and be very strict with ourselves and only buy really essential things as I'm very short of money at the moment. But I just couldn't resist a beautiful steel ornament in an art noveau style, it was only £6 and I loved it. On the same stall my daughter saw some gorgeous pictures which she fell in love with and found it very hard to walk away from. But walk away she did. On another stall we bought an ashtray and from overhearing us talking the couple selling realised we'd just moved, and asked us if we needed a washer dryer. We didn't, but luckily they had a mexican pine bed ...which I did need, after sleeping on the settee at the old house for the last 18 months, it even had an orthopedic mattress. We arranged to go and pick it up that night.This lovely couple Mel and Vikki insisted on giving us some lovely stuff for free, and even filled their car up with stuff to save us having to do 2 or even 3 trips. How Mel managed to get a double mattress in my daughters car I'll never know...but he did lol. Thank you both so much, I hope karma returns your kindness many times over.

As we collected all the various bits and bobs we returned to the stall with the pictures my daughter fell in love with. She really wanted them, and much to my surprise she actually bought 2 of them for £29. Anyone that knows my daughter, will know that she, like me is constantly short of money despite being as thrify as possible, so for her to pay out this much on two pictures, I knew they meant a lot to her..but I'm so pleased she got them.

Whooo at last

Well I got an email yesterday from the housing woman, and we're going to see the new place and sign the lease today !!! So it's all systems go here.

We went and booked the hire van yesterday, but as my son in law is going to have to come up from Bromsgrove on Thurs to finalise all the details with his licence etc, we thought we might as well try and move on Thurs instead. If we can wangle this we will at least, be able to get the van in our street without the hassles we had when we moved in. Any time after 5pm and all weekend it's murder trying to get into our street, as it's very small and a dead end.

We went and bought the laminate flooring for the front room yesterday, and will be trying to lay it today, before all the furniture comes. Wish us luck as we've never done this before. I don't know if I'm going to be a help or a hindrance, I had so many things going round in my head last night I couldn't sleep, and then I woke at 4.30am and couldn't get back to sleep again...hey ho, I should have expected this to happen. Hopefully adrenalin will kick in.

Passing time

As I'm not very motivated with my latest project, my mind has wandered towards making a few things for the new house. I'm going to paint some stones to put in a bowl, this shouldn't take long and my box of acrylic paints is one of the few arty things that hasn't been packed yet. It's amazing how many times this week, I've needed something that's been sat there for months untouched .... sods law I guess eh.

I've also been thinking of colour schemes for the new place too. As always it'll be a riot of colour as I'm just not the type of person to follow the norm and go for safe colours. Various rooms will probably have some kind of theme, the front room will be a mystical theme, the bedroom will be Indian style and the kitchen Mexican, all of which will allow me to fulfill my love of rich colours. It'll probably be a long job, but worth it now that this is our home. The bathroom has eluded me so far, I think that's maybe as it looked very white from what we could tell through the patterned glass. As it's got a walk in shower there's possibly going to be floor to ceiling white tiles in some part. These will probably be way too expensive to re tile in something that would be my taste. I know there's tile transfers, but I expect these are all pretty much middle of the road style ...so no good to me lol. I've also read that tile paint isn't very good either, so I shall have to put my thinking cap on.

One of the people interested in the kiln, decided to have it, and that got paid for and is being picked up and taken to Derbyshire, this week. My daughters bandsaw also sold and went yesterday. So that will be two heavy items not to have to be moved thank goodness.

Getting there ...

My blog has definitely been suffering since I got the news a move is on the cards. This week unlike last week, has been a flurry of activity. Boxes have been packed and all moved to one room, and everywhere has been cleaned and hoovered to within an inch of it's life. A load has gone to the tip, and surplus goodies put on Freecycle. Stuff too good to give away, has been put on my regular forum uk hippy and also the realsellwales forum too. Sadly my lovely kiln has had to go, and I've got a couple of people really interested in that, my daughter has also decided to part with her band saw. It's of those handy to have things, which hardly ever gets used though, so because of the size of it, it has to go I'm afraid.

There hasn't been much time to do any work on the mannequin, and also I've hit a problem. Because I couldn't get the lid off my pva glue. I thought I'd use wood glue to do another layer on top of the glass. BIG mistake it's dried opaque and ruined days of work. The only way to get it off, appears to be to pick it off each individual teeny piece of glass and there's thousands of them. So this has demotivated me hugely and the mannequin has sat there for days mocking me now.

I had an email off the housing lady to say, that there are now heating engineers needing to sort something out in the new place :o( More delays ... our time in limbo land is now dragging and it seems like we'll never get moved. I know we will, but I wish it would just hurry up and happen, so we can start our new life in a home of our own.