Sunday 31 March 2013

Not quite self sufficient

.. but getting there!

^^ baby carrots in front with polka dot sweet corn behind ^^
 
 ^^ tomatoes and cucumbers at back with lettuce at front ^^
 
 ^^ the Pinkabelle apple tree i got for Christmas from Clare with it's single apple hanging in there ^^
 
^^ one of the watermelon vines (may have missed the best season but we'll give it a go anyway) ^^
 
 ^^ baby cucumber ^^
 
^^ not-so-baby-but-not-quite-ready-to-eat cucumber ^^
 
 

Painting with a purpose

I spent this Easter weekend painting the spare room for my Mum who has decided to move in with us while she waits for her new house to be built.

As usual the uber stinky primer/sealer went on first and I did leave it for two days this time, which seems to have made a huge difference.  No headaches and only one almost fainting spell!

So here's the progress pictures:



Thanks goodness there's no carpet of floorcoverings in there yet as I had a bit of an accident .. oops!

The primer/sealer had been sitting undisturbed for about 2 months so I asked Alex to give it a shake to try and mix it up again before painting.  Unfortunately, being a 15L tin, it was quite heavy so despite us each giving it what we thought was a good shake, when we opened the tin it was still slightly separated.

I knew I had to mix it properly and didn't want to go out to Bunnings and get them to re-shake it, so I sent Alex out to the garage for Peter's drill and went and found the paint stirrer.  We fitted the paint stirrer to the drill and Alex, after lots of cautioning from me, started the drill up very slowly and did a pretty good job of stirring the primer back together.

Then, me being me, I had to have a go at this stirring business as Peter wouldn't let me do it last time he had the drill out.  I figured it couldn't be that hard to keep the paint in the tin .. I mean how much paint can one little stirrer move at a time?

Turns out .. quite a bit:



I thought I was starting the drill slowly but obviously it wasn't slowly enough.  Once the boys realised I wasn't going to somehow make this their fault (as they would have done to each other), they were all peeing themselves laughing. 

The first thing Andrew said after he stopped laughing was .. and I kid you not .. "where's the camera?" 

Followed closely by "Will you kill me if I put this on facebook?"

After assuring him that I wouldn't kill him if he put it on facebook, luckily he lost all interest in highlighting my failing to the known universe so it remains here on the relative privacy of my blog.

 It was all squishy between my toes which was quite gross but luckily I managed to not get any on the tiles in either the hallway or the bathroom as I did some rather awkward hopping to the bathroom.  I plonked myself down on the edge of the bath (very uncomfortable .. should have got a flat sided bath!) to try and wash the worst of it off with turps, soap and water then was straight back into the painting.

Which reminds me .. need to buy more turps; industrial size bottle this time I think!