It took Two hours watching Youtube to get this right

Tiles look so easy to put down and tilers make things look so go and then there is Joe public who thinks that all he has to do is put the adhesive down and put a tile on top and job done.

I spent over two hours watching Youtube video's of how to lay tiles. The picture below shows that i did a good job watching how tiling is done. I only have a section in a corner and some cuts to do and it's finished. Grouting has to be done and the floor is complete and then it's back to getting the sockets wired and repainting the walls as soon as i get the yellow pigment for the paint.

Maybe next weekend i should be in a position to be putting my base units in position but for now a few jobs need to be finished.

I do feel proud of what i have got done over the last couple of days.

 I forgot to add this picture yesterday but i hope that this show how good the kitchen should be.

A days grouting and that's the floor done.

A night out for the local Oldies

I have previously mentioned that in a local village where there was a local club that never seemed to open. As it's a village club all money it earns helps the local community and it's where New year is celebrated for not just the local community but also the local gang of Brits.

The guy who runs the club or ran the club gave the keys to one of the gang of local Brits and it's where we go on a Friday night. It's common in the UK on a Friday night for young people to party the night away and older folk like we are to be home and in bed before the young people go out. Who said that we should be home and in bed nice and early, the club is often open till 3/ 4 or even later in the morning.

Now that the club is opened after so long the locals come in and mix with us and they stay just as late as we do.

Last week was just like any other week but one couple had family over to stay and they came down to spend a night with the local oldies. They have a young daughter who had her and she had been told that she was going to a club with music and dancing.  The guy who runs the club had opened before the local Brit arrived and he had the TV on so he could watch Football. Abigail had her Ipad with her and that kept her amused for a while until she found that she could take picture and distort them to make people look funny

I saw Abigail's mum today and i will post a picture as soon as i get it.

The floor tiles will have to wait for now.

It's towards the end of a good week for me i have managed to get my kitchen painted but, here comes my but. I had 20 litres of white paint and i used over 5 litres of the white to paint the walls after they were finished. Then i mixed my own pale yellow, i mixed my yellow only to find that i didn't have enough yellow pigment to give me the shade of yellow paint i wanted. It hadn't taken me long to caulk all around the room where the corners of the room met each other  and were the walls met the ceiling and all along the ridge beam.

I used the paint i had mixed but it wasn't right i needed more yellow mixer and the local Chinese shop has had none for a while. I could of used the room as it is but really i am not happy with the shade of pale yellow so i will have to paint the walls again. The yellow mixer comes in a tube and i can get every colour but yellow.

It's now that i had wanted to get tiles started on the kitchen floor but now i will have to wait till i get the walls done again.

Summary of the kitchen and work done

It's taken a while and some encouragement from my sons but the major work in the kitchen is drawing to a close or at least the ceiling and the walls are now almost complete.

The main problem with the kitchen as it was is that it was cold and needed insulating and over 50 years old . The ceiling has been removed and insulation has been installed up at roof level. The insulation now is the same as if i used 8inch of rockwool insulation but it is only about one and a half inches thick then plasterboard to complete the ceiling.

That done the walls were next to get my attention, each sheet of plasterboard is 1.2m X 2.6m or nearly 10ft X 4ft. But it's not normal plasterboard it is insulated on the back and as three walls of the kitchen have outside walls these walls had to insulated as well or i wasted my time doing the ceiling.

All  nine boards i had to lift, cut and put in position all by myself. I had to put battens on the wall before i put up the plasterboard and now that's all done.

Wanting to do the best job i could i painted the walls with two coats of white paint and when that was dry i painted the walls again with two coats of pale yellow paint. Now all i need to do is look for and repair any slight blemishes in the joints on the plasterboard and then paint with the main topcoat.

Holes are cut for all the electrics. For the TV, cooker supply and 14 electric sockets. It looks like by the end of the week i should be starting to tile the floor and for the moment that is my target for the coming week. Now for what's been done i can proudly say that i did every job and i had no help, not bad for someone close to 65 years of age.

What seems only a short time ago this was just a wall as was the wall by the window but now it's all done.

The last of the plasterboarding is now done.

It's been a long hard week rubbing down to get a perfect finish on my walls. Today i cut the last piece of plasterboard in place, it took nearly two hours. First i cut a cardboard template, next i transferred the cardboard template to a piece of plasterboard and made sure it fit into place, better safe than make a mistake.

I was nervous transferring the plasterboard template to the last piece of plasterboard but i got it done. It took a little time before i made my first cut but soon i had the board cut and ready to put into position. I was surprised but it fit like a glove had i soon had it screwed into place.

Now all i need is to wait for the filler on all the joints to go hard so i can start to get it rubbed down and ready for painting. Once ready for painting i will give the walls two coats of white paint to help me find any blemishes that i have missed. Once this is done then i will give the walls two coats of a pale yellow to match the rest of the room. once done and complete i will give the whole room a good coat of a pale yellow and then paint the ceiling again, job done.

Then it's down to the tiles for the floor to be put down but that's another story.

Insulation board up and just the finishing bits to do.

Well the heat we are having is such that i can't work outside at the moment. Over the last few days i have been fitting the insulation board to the last two walls and the bottom picture was the hardest to do. I have cable in the walls and i had to mark where to cut to get the cables out for the lights and sockets etc.

A good day spoilt by running out of screws.

Working on my veranda and giving the chickens a bigger pen and a few other things has put me behind with the kitchen. Now with it being to hot to work outside i have started to get on with the insulating of the walls in the kitchen. I am still waiting for permission to have a window without bars in front as is the way things are done here.

I was getting on well today until i came to put the last piece of insulating board up. No more screws but i could carry on filling in all the screw holes and the seams , now with these done it's down to rubbing down ready for painting. I now only have one full board to put up and two part boards and that's all the insulation done.

Long job it may have been but i started this without ever doing anything like this. sometimes this is a little daunting but anybody can do more that they think it just takes a little time.

I came to do the last bit into the corner and i had run out of screws, it would have been a perfect day to finish just what i had started.

Abseiling rope put to a new use.

These last few days have been busy on my veranda  but little seems to have been done. I have a huge rope that was used for abseiling but i am putting it to a new use. As the pictures show i have used the rope for the banister instead of having spindles. Also the top of the newell  posts i want to top with rope
something like in one of the pictures below.

The hard part has been getting something like string but in black and waterproof but in the end it's all worked out as i wanted.Now this part has been done i can start on the rest and the canopy for the top.

Chickens starting to lay at last

A while ago i got four new chickens to go with the two i already had. The two i had were bullies to the new four and after time i gave them away to a friend and for him they are well behaved.

A couple of weeks ago for five days in a row i got two eggs a day Wow things were looking up or so i thought. Ever day they would escape and roam around on the land by mine where the chickens live. I found that the gate at the back of the chicken run had a whole in it and the chickens would escape for the day and  they would  roam around eating what they could find. Today now that they couldn't get free i decided that they would be kept in for the day.

Yesterday  i only found one egg so i left it in one of the nest box's in the hope that it may show them what to do. I went over and found that the egg i left was still where i left it but also there was another egg so i removed the new egg and took yesterdays egg and left the new one still in place. I left today's egg in place and when i went back i found three eggs Thar's one more than i have ever had.

If this keeps up i will be able to bake a sponge cake like the last one. The last cake i baked i liquidised some strawberries to go over the top of it. The pity was i had a visitor and i had to share the cake but the next one is all my own.