---
layout: ../../layouts/LayoutMdx.astro
title: "2024"
date: 2024-11-04
dir: year2024
image: garden-furniture
description: jobs jobs jobs
---

import { generateImageHyrdationFunction } from "../../utils";
export const s = generateImageHyrdationFunction("year2024");

import Cards from "../../components/Cards.astro";
import Callout from "../../components/Callout.astro";
import Solocard from "../../components/Solocard.astro";
import NextPrev from "../../components/NextPrev.astro";
import Progress from "../../components/Progress.astro";
import YTVideo from "../../components/YTVideo.astro";
import Quote from "../../components/Quote.astro";

It's been quite a while since we've done one of these! We've got to the point where each individual job isn't very big, so we haven't bothered documenting them.

The theme for this year's works is 🌤️*outside*🌤️. We're running out of large-scale things to do inside, but there was plenty of scope outside for improvement.

However, we've still accumulated quite a few other small jobs since the last update! Bim bim bam let's go

## The Back

Even since we arrived in Bath we struggled to fully enjoy our patio. It was a bit of an awkward shape and the floor was <sup>all</sup> _over_ <sub>the</sub> place. We also had issues with the drain, which would fill up with a big puddle in the lightest of rains.

<Solocard
  title="Still a huge improvement on what we had in Harrow..."
  src={s("patio-before")}
/>

Well, we decided that it could be so much better and got some people in to come and built us a new one. As always, Ozzy was astonished at the speed at which demolition happens, and after a couple of days in early June we were left with a big mess in the back garden where we used to have a patio.

<Cards
  images={[
    { title: "A big mess", src: s("patio-mess") },
    {
      title: "Trying to imagine what it would look like",
      src: s("patio-thinking"),
    },
  ]}
/>

Work tends to go fast when you're using the right tools, and given that 🎉🎉🎉 tools are our favourite things 🎉🎉🎉, we couldn't pass up giving you a quick overview.

<Solocard title="Power-Wheelbarrow and MiniDigger" src={s("patio-progress")} />

The **Power-Wheelbarrow** has a weight capacity of half a ton, and can lift and tilt its bucket into a skip. Super useful when you're having to take all the spoil down the full length of our garden. The tank-style tracks have an amazing capacity for churning up lawns, and it churned up ours with gusto.

The **MiniDigger** is just pretty cute. It can tuck in its treads so that it can be driven straight through a house - we didn't feel the need for a demonstation. They also didn't let us have a go as its quite a bit more tippy than a standard digger.

Between them they made very quick work on removing our old patio.

Despite having these excellent tools, they didn't manage to completely remove some of the slabs of original pennant stone - They dropped them halfway down the garden. Fortunately in a very neat way that happened to expand our mid-garden patio by the 'orchard'. 😁

\*Todo: Midgarden patio pic

Whilst the demolition was quick, it wasn't entirely smooth. We'd decided to have the treads of the stairs match the patio, and when they came to remove the old concrete treads, a fair part of the rest of the stairs came with them turning them into a bit of a slide.

<Cards images={[

    {title: "Not quite as neat as we'd hoped", src: s("stair-slide-2")},
    {title: "Wheee", src: s("stair-slide")},

]} />

We had a big ol' conversation about various options on how to proceed, but we didn't really like any of the options presented. We could see that there had been several attempts at bodging this staircase previously with assorted bits of wire and cement. The lowest stair was half missing, and was instead made of soil and plant roots. In the end, we decided to get our stonemasonry friends back to come and fix things properly. Of course this adds more time as we need to organise more people, but we thought that it would be worth it.

In the meantime, work continued on the main patio, and by the end of June it was done\*. We chose a porcelain tile as these would be very hardwearing, but mainly: flat (a feature we <sup>were</sup> _looking_ <sub>forward</sub> to). We would have relain the pennant stone if there was enough, but half of it was missing and replaced with concrete or broken.

<Solocard title="Done*  (Carefully framed photo)" src={s("patio-done")} />

We were so pleased with finally having a _flat patio_ that we decided to cash in a wedding present from Ozzy's parents - a garden furniture voucher. We couldn't see any expiry date, which is good considering we were over ten years late redeeming it 😀

<Solocard title="The voucher gained interest too" src={s("garden-furniture")} />

You can see the start of the work that the stonemasons were doing to the stairs here. The were so unsure about what might need to be done that they refused to give us a quote and instead agreed a day-rate. Watching them work was an education in stairbuilding technique.

We found out that each stair is almost entirely supported by the large party wall and the stair beneath - the smaller wall beneath the stairs was a much later addition. This ruled out replacing any of the stairs because we _really_ didn't want to do anything with the shared garden wall, so instead we opted to extend each step forward a bit - increasing the overlap between each step.

<Cards
  images={[
    {
      title: "You can see the diagonal line that would have been unsupported",
      src: s("stair-construction"),
    },
    { title: "Adding a new face and backfilling", src: s("stair-rebuild") },
  ]}
/>

By the time the masons had finished it was already late July. Now we just had to organise a time to get the original bloke back to place the stair treads.

Then, we had to get someone else to come and fix the railing. During deconstruction of the stairs, we had to cut out a few of the supports for the railing. This left it in such a wobbly state that if you did need to use it, not only would it fail to prevent your fall, it would probably fall on top of you afterwards. Fortunately, there's a really good ironmongers just down the road from us, so we got them to come and fix it up for us - it only took a few weeks, but that pushed us into September.

Lastly we just needed to tackle sanding and repainting the railing. I feel that having to wait a few weeks to get someone in to do something is generally considered an encouraging sign of competence - well in that case Nikki and Ozzy must be bloody amazing at painting railings! We had to wait ages for them to start!

<Cards images={[

    {title: "Before", src: s("rail-before")},
    {title: "Using bit of old railing to keep the tarps down 😎", src: s("rail-during")},
    {title: "Looking pretty smart!", src: s("rail-after")}

]} />

Now we just need to wait until spring for the plants to grow back in and it'll be done! We've planted rosemary, some lavender, a peony and a rudbeckia so far. We've ordered some climbing roses. Bets are on for how many will survive the winter.

DONE DONE DONE! It only took 7 months - no wonder our updates are slowing down!

**TODO:** Pic of done-ness

## The Front

Whilst all this was going on, we were having some work done at the front as well. Our front garden wall has been looking a bit fally-downy ever since we got here - another similarity to Harrow 🙂 Given what Bath is like, and the visibility of this change, we decided to take our first dip into the wonderful world of planning permission and listed building consent - Yay.

Fortunately, it was far easier than we expected it to be. We knew that numbers 4-7 of our house block had got their front walls repaired and re-railed a few years before we moved in. What we didn't know was that their consent forms included our house too! And because their work was done within 5 years of the permission being granted, planning for ours hadn't lapsed so we didn't need to do a thing! Nice!

Full steam ahead then! We had our stonemasons come round and take the unoriginal bits off, stabilise the lower course, then add a few courses of Bath stone.

<Cards images={[

    {title: "All in all it's just a massive crack in the wall", src: s("borked-wall")},
    {title: "Wall down to base", src: s("front-wall")},
    {title: "Wall built", src: s("front-wall-done")}

]} />

Our favourite ironmongers came back to add in the railings. They have a massive lead time so we had to wait a while before the railings could be installed. They drilled holes in our nice new wall, then the railings were stuck in with lead.

<Cards images={[

    {title: "Massive lead time", src: s("wall-lead")},
    {title: "Front with railings", src: s("front-wall-donedone")}

]} />

Time for another done\*

It all looks great, but the surface of the garden path is so uneven that it's not possible to close the front gate 🤦 We're choosing to think about how this shows how welcoming we are, rather than anything else.

## The Others

Time for the bim bim bam section of all the small jobs!

### Lounge

We moved the mirror to the other side of the room, and painted the walls and bookshelves a bit. We also replaced the radiators as the old ones stopped working. We don't have a huge number of 'before' photos because we forgot.

**TODO** Replace photo

<Solocard title="In progress" src={s("lounge.MP")} />

We got a footstool which has a bed in it - we had a bit of a mixup with the delivery where we received a completely different colour in a mislabeled box.

It's really cosy now.

### Shelves

<Cards images={[

    {title: "Bathroom shelf", src: s("bathroom-shelf")},
    {title: "Hallway shelf", src: s("hallway")}

]} />

### Basement

The basement continues to be pretty uninspiring compared to the rest of the house. We are mainly using it for storage, though now we've moved the sofa bed down there. We bought some moving straps which are rated for very heavy things, and spent about an hour carrying the sofa out of the front door, all around the side road and up the garden, as the sofa doesn't fit down our stairs. 💪 When we were halfway down the road, we got an offer from our next-door-neighbour to throw the sofa over the garden fence if it would help... (It wouldn't)

The sofabed was intended for watching films in the cinema and as accommodation for guests, but it came in very handy for us to sleep in when there was a heatwave!

<Cards images={[{ title: "Handy", src: s("basement-sofa") }]} />

Ozzy's second love in life is big plastic storage boxes, and we've reworked a lot of our shelves to accommodate these. They aren't the prettiest, but it's useful to have contained areas for storing stuff, and it's easier to see what's in them than in cardboard boxes.

Which means we can now return to the .....

<Progress value={67} max={67} />

WHAT'S THAT?? We've unpacked every box!! This means we've now officially moved in. Well done us! 🎉

Or rather, we've just transferred things from cardboard boxes into plastic boxes.

**Todo** change photo

<Solocard
  title="Clutter library - but now you can see what we're storing"
  src={s("basement-storage")}
/>

We've also done a couple of jobs in the bathroom - replacing the old loud extractor fan with a quieter one, replacing the light with one that wasn't falling out of the ceiling, and repainting and covering the louvre doors with burlap to help a little with privacy. We also "repaired" the slightly leaky shower by turning it off at the stopcock. This bathroom is likely to be a future project - either ripping it out or replacing it in some way. Stay tuned to find out!

## Excuses

We got a drone!  Unnecessarily epic music is required.
<YTVideo src="Hsj6rON1nO4" />

- Madiera
- Nikki awesome LVGO concert

<Cards images={[

    {title: "We got a drone", src: s("bathroom-shelf")},
    {title: "Hallway shelf", src: s("hallway")}

]} />

<NextPrev prev="year2023-1" />
