DIY jobs

 

What to do when you can’t work on the car.

 

During the last month I have been quite busy doing bits and pieces generating things from ideas and items I have in the garage and my wood pile that has to be replenished from feeding a chimenea. This last Monday I spent a day at Hampton Court Flower Show. It was the preview event where you rub shoulders with celebrities. I was in gardening gear whereas Gita set the stage with wearing a green saree with matching highlights in her hair. Always the star and with such grace.

 Sadly what promised to be an entertaining day ended  when the rain set in and we could no longer bear the weather and headed for home early. We did our best to watch the live band doing their show and we huddled under a car rug to try to keep warm and dry but got too cold to stay around to the end. Other than this second adventure to explore the world beyond our local Tesco we had a trip to Lidl’s for a change. On that day they had Sail Shades for sale. I bought one along with a table vice. I had an idea to use something similar to shade our garden but was not able to work how it would be erected or secured without using an umbrella pole to get enough height to be usable. The answer was not to have one pole but two and the sail shade started the evolution of ideas and construction.

 The sail is an elongated hexagon with holes for the poles at the furthest points and guide ropes all round. There are pegs with the shade to secure it. When you have a hard surface pegs are not much good so you need to use something else. I used an eye rawlbolt in the wall of the house and an eye screw in the post at the end of the garden. The side mounting guide ropes were to special brackets with eye bolts in that fitted into slots in concrete fence posts on one side and using existing dexian brackets the other side. One more bit of construction was to make custom length bungey cords. To finish off 6mm snap hooks were used to aid quick fitting of guide ropes and a way of getting the right angle and tension on them. The last mod was to use extension tent pole to get a bit more height in the middle. I have set it up to be able to erect it with a few minutes on my own. It takes two people if you need to peg it down.

Another DIY was to make a drain cover to hide waste pipes and keep a small dog from going where it shouldn’t all achieved from discarded wood and recycled with a coat of fence paint to smarten it up.

 The last thing needed a visit to the local shoe repair shop for a few inches of stitching.  My ancient coin pouch had fallen apart from old age although I had bought a replacement some time ago it wasn’t quite the same as it did not have two slots for credit cards so a bit of stitching to add the two card side to the new pouch meant a three card wallet was made.

 Just what you need for travelling. All you need in your pocket, with cards coins and notes securely folded on together. The last thing was to make some latches for my water tank base front. It had been falling off at any gust of wind so I wanted to make something that was a bit more secure and came up with this idea.