Riverview

Zorro now has his own shed office!

I started with a fairly heavy framework and inserted lots of insulation (100mm Kingspan) in all 6 sides. The insulation has been kicking around the garden for a few years. It was left over from my office roof and floor.

Internal walls of OSB that used to be the old shed office roof before I reroofed it. The boards have been sat in the rain for 2 years but they were fine. The lot was then finished off with some left over building paper.

I battened it and added some treated shiplap cladding.

The corners were tricky!

The roof structure was a frame of 4×2 timbers again with plywood over the top. There’s a small space between the roof and the insulation below to allow any leaks to evaporate.

Finally there’s some felt over the top.

The whole thing is a little over the top construction wise. In fact it took four of us to lift it into place. But it’s going to be nice and warm for Zorro and should last him a few years.

Incidentally any wood that is liable to be chewed is untreated. Even recently treated timber is not great for dogs to chew! I’d prefer it rots and I have to replace it.

It’s been a while since the last post on here. Not because nothing has been done (a lot has including painting the rest of the windows!) but we’ve been too busy to write about it.

We’ve just returned from Auvergne, and picked up the ceramic door sign we had made back in August at Poterie de Sailant in San Nectaire.

Originally it was supposed to be picked up by car but, but we flew there instead of driving as it’s just too far to drive for the short time visiting over Christmas. Hence I had a worrying time carrying the heavy and fragile sign in my carry on ruck sack on Easyjet. It got through unscathed though and I attached it to the door this morning.

It is a little larger than expected and the colours were a risk. However, they do not clash and the size means that deliveries might arrive. Apart from specifying the size, colour and an idea of the typeface we wanted we left the rest completely up to the potter. We’d seen their work in the showroom and we were not worried that we would not like the results. Of course when I visited the showroom to pick it up I was worried, but as soon as they opened it up it looked good. Poterie de Sailant is a small workshop run by two people. He runs the workshop and she does all the design and pottery (I would not presume as to whether they are a couple or not!). If you are in the area I can strongly recommend a visit.

I attached the sign using a mixture of a wood screw, a brass cup washer and two rubber tap washers. I’m not sure what the correct way would have been, but I hope that this allows slight movement whilst being very secure.

You can see it here next to the bell that we also purchased back in August.

The oak beams that were used to strengthen the first floor and also when we removed the wall between the kitchen and living room look great but they’ve been out in the timber yard for a year and look grey. They’ve also got plenty of black marks from contact with metal straps and also the forklift truck that was used to lift them into place. There’s even a red paint cross that was bisected when that beam was sawn down the middle.

I’ve recently been recommended (by a guy who was talking to us about a green oak extension) to use oxalic acid to clean these off. It’s apparently toxic (don’t eat rhubarb leaves) but has a great cleaning affect for wood.

This is the stuff:

Application was about two cap fulls in hot water. The solution was more or less saturated (i.e. I could not dissolve any more crystals). I wiped it on with a sponge, left for two hours, Gave another wipe, then washed off twice with ample hot water.

Here’s the beam with the forklift iron marks

after one application the oak is clean but the black marks were still present.

Here’s after another application.

These beams look nice now.

The one on the right has yet to be done the left one has.

I’ve never been one for built up areas in gardens, preferring instead the chaos of plants. However, on holiday recently in New Orleans I was really taken by the Jean Lafitte visitor centre‘s courtyard. This was a superb mix of very old and new brickwork. I even liked the water feature.

Water feature and person.

Nice brickwork like this soothes my soul.

I love this mixture of the old bricks along with the new floor. These look to be engineering style bricks. Perhaps to cope with the regular flooding they will get.

There’s four lots of brickwork here. All merge very well together.

For reference here’s how the “courtyard” looks at the moment:

I’ve not posted on here for a while so here’s a random selection of photos from the garden in April:

My new fence, hedge and daffs!

The Crown Imperials:

My bark mulch which sits there and makes me feel guilty for not spreading it yet:

…and finally a random photo of the garden at night:

I’ve just bought a “Log Grenade“. Basically you stick it in a log, whack it a few times with a maul or a sledgehammer until the wood flies apart.

Here it is stuck in the wood before hitting it.

..and here it is after I’d hit it three times. The wood fair flies apart. This is willow and it was quite wet.

Our stove burns through wood at a fair old pace so I need to keep at this. I aim to get this splitting in two hits or less. I do have the offer of a hydraulic log splitter to borrow, but this makes me do some actual exercise so it cannot be a bad thing.

About 2 months before we started renovating the house I was visiting a friend in London when I received a phone call. A friend, who was camping in the garden, said that there was some water, likely sewage, coming up in the garden.Eeek! The amount was insignificant, but nonetheless I cut our visit short and drove back. It was dark when I arrived and hard to see, but there was a constant leakage of sewage from a manhole cover in the garden. I reasoned that there was not a lot I could do then and since the sewer only served our house, which was more or less empty, and our elderly neighbour, I reasoned that the sewage leak was likely minimal.

What a piss poor assessment that turned out to be!

The next day I came armed with rubber gloves and drain rods ready for a few minutes of rodding. However, the stream was no longer a stream and during the night had almost reached the river which is about forty metres away. Luckily the garden path had contained the majority of the flow, however, it had covered the rhubarb patch and flooded a few flower beds. The flowers I did not have to eat, but being from the Rhubarb Triangle I was looking forward to this king of vegetables. At this point I still did not realise what was the problem and so I went to lift the cover. The pressure on the cover must have been high as removing the cover ended up with a short 0.4 metre jet, which quickly flowed down the garden. From certain items floating in the sewage I quickly guessed that this sewage was not from us nor our eldelry neighbour!

What had happened is that the public sewer, which I found out later regularly blocks, had blocked and the blockage had caused the village’s sewage to back up and come out in our garden.

Thus started a long battle with Anglian Water to get something done. All credit to them as the other week they came and fitted a non-return valve to our part of the sewer. If sewage flows back the valve closes. Of course this then forces the sewage to come out somewhere else. But at least I will get to eat my Rhubarb.

When I replaced the roof on my shed I made an overhang on one side in order to use it as a log store. It’s taken over a year, mainly because I built other log stores, but I’ve finally added some, and how nice they look too!

They say that burning wood provides heat three times. First when you chop it, secondly when you move it and finally when you burn it. This lot should add a fourth. I’m sure there’s some insulation value in that covering.

I should get around to painting that window though!

A few people have been asking if we ever finished the bath, as our original post showed the chipboard sides. Well here it is in its full glory.

The tiles were very nice, with a step to get in the bath for us petite people!

There’s something very satisfying about a neat log pile. Especially when you’ve stacked it yourself and it’s before Winter when you’ve only moved them a few times. Towards the end of Winter it gets a bit tedious with all that moving and fetching and carrying!

I like this second picture as it shows the logs, old form of heating, with our air source heat pump, new fangled type of heating.