Finished the steps

Cut the rest of the steps, laid the slabs, and grouted all of yesterdays slabs.  long day.
Yesterdays mortar is still soft, meaning 2 slabs got wobbly from being walked on.  These autumn days slow things down.

paving the front of the house, wood store and more steps

Cut some stone with a diamond blade to make risers for the steps.  Only 4 steps this time.  Cut 1 step into the bank, and laid the rest of the slabs alongside the shed

Fire Hearth

After over 3 months of deliberation, the colder and darker evenings have turned our thoughts back to the hearth for the fire.  Constraints on the size and colours of tiles mean we have to compromise on the size.  A tad too small, but maybe  a small rug will protect the floor if burning logs throw themselves out of the log burner.

More paving

Another 25 slabs from Bricodepot, and a trolley load of plants from Jardiland.

I kind of liked the clay.

Moving the satellite dish

We were getting complaints.  From the space station.  They could see our dish from there.

It's only 1.2m.  According to the Astra 2 foot print, we are OK on a 0.9m, but I'd noticed new services on 1N which were moved over recently are less than 100% signal.  Could just be that the transponders are cheaper/weaker on certain non-mainstream channels.
So about 2 years ago, we had a spare pipe sitting at the top of the drive and I decided to quickly mount the dish there.  I say pipe, 450mm diameter, 50mm thick, 1m long concrete.  About 150kg.  I have been looking at alternative locations, but nothing really worked, until we had a tidy up at the rear of the house and found an area 4 x 4m which I could squeeze the dish into.  The rear had been a bit of a dumping ground for a while. 

This is one of those really annoying photos.  The satellite dish was plumb in the middle of the shot at the top of the drive.









You can just see the house wall on the right of the picture.  The 150kg 'pipe' was quite easily rolled into position.  However, thanks to the newly layed paving, this job was much harder, as I had to roll it up hill first, then along the bank and down, all in an effort to avoid crossing new paving.  The pipe was dropped into a hole and filled with small stones from the adjacent pile.  The estimated combined mass is 300kg.  The recommended concrete mass for a dish this size is 150kg.

Must dig some more holes and bury some more stones..

25 paving slabs put to good use

I'll have a lot more respect for the people that lay steps in the future.  This paved path replaces the fred flinstone one that ran up the slope here for the last 2 years





Viewed from the rear of the house.  The shed is on the right.
The path running to the right will continue to the drive/garage.

Kitchen / lounge finishing

Retrospective entry.
Receipt for marine ply under kitchen floor bought today, so must have filled/sanded lounge 2nd.
1.  remove kitchen to lounge
2.  fill paint tile kitchen
3 re-install kitchen
4 move lounge stuff to B2
5 fill paint lounge
6 relax.

say jan 2013 noticed grout on tiles nearest book case cracked for about 1m, parallel to joining strip
22/12/13 tiled/wooden floor producing load crack around 2pm and again around 6 as it expands/shrinks in the sunshine.