My First Wheelbarrow

Retreiving Cat

Vegas has found out that cable ties are great fun and been playing with one for weeks now.

In the process we have discovered that, unlike Peggy (who's version of fetch involves running off and chewing whatever she should be fetching), Vegas is an excellent retreiver. It took a little training to get him to drop it inside arms reach. Now, as you can see, he's really got the hang of playing "fetch". Like any good retreiver, the owner gets bored long before the Dog, errrr, Cat.

More Baby Photo's

Don't panic, it's not just going to be baby this, baby that on here from now on. You've got all sorts to look forward too, a cat fetching a cable tie, gardening exploits, a broken car, a working car and so on. You will, however, have to bare with us. First time Auntie, amongst others, has asked us to publish a few more pictures of the little charmer. So here they are!

Drying after bath time number 2.

Wide Awake.

Playing piano with Daddy, for the musically concerned, he seems to like Debussy better than Beethoven and Fur elise is a definate no-no.

Nappy change number 273.

Labours' Reward

On Wednesday the 9th of April 2008 at 08:44 a.m. our first born son came into the world after a short but intense labour which started at around 02:30 a.m. On arrival at the hospital at 05:56 a.m. we went straight to the home style birth ward as planned. The non-availability of pain killers didn't cross our minds, it all happened so quickly there was hardly time to ask. Although I would have liked to try some laughing gas myself!

FBS weighed in at 4.27Kg, that's 9Lbs 7Oz in old money and was 53cm long, scoring 10,10 on the Apgar scale in the process. As you can see, Mrs Vls neat little tummy that produced so many comments was hiding a big whopper!

Both parents, understandably, are proud and think they've got the best baby in the world just as all other new parents do!

For 300,- Kr a night we were able to have a family room so I stayed in the hospital for both nights, that was a big plus for me and hopefully a big help for Mrs VL (she confirms as I'm writing that it was indeed a big help).

The hospital staff were fantastic, we managed through the nights without their help but their advice, help with food source attachment tecniques and demonstration of important tasks (such as bathing, below) were invaluable.

The journey home on Friday afternoon was uneventful, albiet a little bit of a challenge to work out baby to seat and seat to car attachment procedures!

The first two nights at home have been disturbed but by no means excessively. We are very satisfied with our "Baby Bay" sleeping arrangement. We are very grateful for the recommendation and viewing that we recieved during our visit to the wedding helpers on day 12 of Sert.

Baby Room Part 8 - Coving and Window frame

Still no movement..... The day that I am writing this is the official due date, so clocks really ticking now! Anyway, here's a tummy pick painting the coving for the ceiling, which, I have to say was a little bit of a challenge to cut out. Oops, watch the paint cat!

Undercoat on and another cat.

And in place, I used a little flexible filler stuff in the joins, as they were not perfect! We also found out that the pre painted ceiling panels were not as white as the white paint we used so they got 2 coats of white paint as well.

Mechanised Farming Phase 3, Aquisition.

Right, keeping to a strict chronological order I've got as far as Easter monday.

I work on the principle that regardless how much immediate pressure to get specific jpbs done one can never let long term goals slip too far from ones mind. One of these long term goals is to cultivate an area of land using one, or both, of my tractors. To do this we need a plough and a harrow in addition to the equipment we already have. So, when I found out about a harrow going free to a good home, I had no option but to jump in my tractor and go and fetch it!

I had to organise a wiper that worked for the windscreen and fill 10L of oil in the gearbox before I left and never mind that it took me 1 hour and 50 minutes to complete the nearly 40Km round trip, it's home. A quick fill of air in the tires and it'll be good as new!

Some pictures from my journey, as you can see I was even outside the kommune (council is the English equivalent, I think).

Loverly weather for an outing, just as well that the neighbours had bought the wrong wiper for their Honda CRV and that I was able to botch the rubber bit onto the Zetors wiper arm.

Was it really only 2.5 Km from the last junction, seemed like 25Km!

And another "In Tractor" shot for good measure.

Baby Room Part 7 - Wall papering

Don't worry, the baby rooms come a lot further than this, I'm playing catch up and no, there's no movement yet.

After 3 hours in the decor shop deciding which wall paper to have, in the end we had to settle for our second choice as it turned out our first choice was an old model and no longer available, typical.

Out first choice involved a border and 2 different types of paper so in some respects life was made a lot easier by the simplicity of chioce no.2.

The last time I was involved with wall paper was helping Father of All in the Bathroom in the Organists house, in 1980 something.... Then it was wall paper paste on the paper. Now, over here, it's glue on the wall and a damp sponge on the paper. Not difficult but easier than it sounds all the same!



Job done, not 100% but not at all bad! Would you look at all those cute rabbits, all together now "Ahhhhh".



We've had lots of requests for photos of the tummy before it dissapears, we're on the case but the tummy is proving not to be the slightest bit photogenic.

Fish Treat

On the Thursday before the Easter Weekend, I availed of the opportunity to eat pizza for lunch leaving my normal pack lunch untouched in my laptop bag. This included a tin of Sardines. Needless to say, I forgot that this was in my bag when I came home all ready for the long weekend.

Any food left lying around in bags after bed time is considered fair game by Peggy, who has a fantastic nose, is adept at opening zips (without damage) and getting around most types of packaging.

This is what we found the next morning. I think it's fair to say, that this takes the sardines!

ElKego's Blog

Parner in Crime, aka ElKego, aka KEG has started his own blog. www.elkego.blogspot.com

PIC has tackled (and is tackling) much grander rennoavtion and modification in his gaff than we have to date. He is also a great source of advice and support with many of our mad plans, although some might say he's resposible for hatching some of our mad plans.

KEG blog is mostly in Norwegian, but do not fear English speakers. KEG is a man of few words and many pictures (does that then make him a man of many thousand words?!?). Regardless of language, I thoughrougly recommend a visit! The links in the sidebar for future referance.

Spring?

Little more than a week ago we were out tidying the garden ready for a new growing season. The earliest flowering bulbs were beginning to open and we were excitedly watching the newly planted (in the Autumn) tulips and crocuses in the circular flower bed at the end of the lawn appearing.

Thursday last week it began to Snow and didn't stop until Saturday. Here's how it looked as we left for a fine Easter feed at the in laws chalet on Good Friday.

On Saturday night, it was down to -13.4 Deg C and hasn't been above freezing since.

On Sunday I took the oppurtunity to get snow chains on the David Brown and mostly for my own entertainment (and good experience) moved some snow about.

A few photo's of attaching snow chains on More-Power here.

On Monday it snowed a fair bit and even more Today. The weather forecast says that in a couple of days the temperatures will creep over freezing, but not much. Looks like I'll be waiting a bit longer before I can properly get to work in the garden.

Baby Room Part 6 - Prep and Paint.

The baby room will have (well has already actually, still playing blog catch up) 2 walls painted and 2 walls with wall paper.

Preperation for painting and papering is pretty simple, all that's involved is a little filler on the joins of the panels that will be wallpapered, filler in all of the staple holes and a little flexible filler/sealent stuff in the corners.

Something like this.



I did make the job a little more difficult for myself when I cocked up with measuring the last panel and ended up with a couple of extra joins to fill. Somehow I measurde 103cm but wrote down 113cm. It must have something to do with this metric business, if I had been working in inches it would never have happened!

Still, it turned out OK in the end.



Painting the walls involved 1 undercoat followed by 2 top coats. The first top coat was rolled on and then smoothed out with a brush to give a real wood effect, the second top coat was brushed on.



The walls for wallpaper got a primer of watered down wallpaper adhesive to seal them.

Baby Room Part 5 - Wall Panelling

Much the same technique as the ceiling, but bigger and more unwieldy panels and doors and windows to work around.





The job progressed pretty quickly, the only 2 delays were preparing holes for the cables (light and sockets) and when I found out that the back wall wasn't verticle. I had to build this out a little at the top so that the back wall lined up with the verticle lines in the panelling.

Baby Room Part 4 - Ceiling

The last couple of weeks have been one of those times that there's been so much to blog about that I havn't had time to blog.

Anyway, there has been loads of progress in the baby room. After solving the bathroom problem it was back to work. After attaching a layer of plastic to the ceiling and outside walls (to stop condensation) I was ready to get the ceiling boards up.



With both the instructions that I recieved and the nail gun I borrowed from the neighbour the job went pretty quickly and the result was more than satisfactory.

Bathroom Mods Part 4 - Testing

Err, Where's Wally?



It seems that it doesn't take much bubble bath to make loads of bubbles when you start the pump... Despite all the bubbles, everything worked exactly as it should. I have to say we're both really pleased, 4 days from purchase to completion and we've ended up with a way better solution to the problem than we had originally planned.

I've also had a request for a photo of the finished article, so hear it is. Difficult to get a pitcure of it all in one go, this is the best I could do.

Bathroom Mods Part 3 - Solving the height issue

The offending article,

which connects the back of the shower unit to the post which supports the glass. This piece takes the height of the unit over the 215cm available and as well as adding structure, houses the main shower head, and the hose that connects to the sideways sprays in the post.

Since the top of the post is just under 215cm from the floor my cunning plan was to do away with the monstousity above and replace it's function with the ceiling.

First I had to re-route the hose to the side sprays. I acheived this by drilling a hole in the middle of the bottom post mount.

Then another behind the shower unit so that I could route the hose down, under and up again. Luckily it was just long enough so I didn't have to extend it.

My first attempt was to screw the top post mount directly to the ceiling and attempt to jack the adjustable feet up to fit the post into it. I found that I was at the end of the thread on the feet so I needed to lower the mount. Which I did as shown below, to make, what Mrs VL reckons is a Dorian pillar....

This worked a treat and I managed to get the bath adjusted level, made a bracket to fix it to the wall and seal between the unit and the wall with some silicon.

The final part of the equation was the solution for the main shower head, a bit of chrome pipe and a couple of elbows and le-voila, job done!

The wooden bit will get a coat of white gloss when as soon as I paint something white in the baby room!

Saw Modifications Part 4 - Just needs a lick of paint now.

Here, as promised are the photo's of the finished saw modifications. It will get a clean, rust treatment and a lick of paint at some point in the coming months. Now that it's inside and in the dry, that can wait until a suitable time when it's a bit warmer out.



The stiffening piece, probably totally unneccesary, was welded on at the end of the last session, before attaching to the tractor for the first but after it was too dark to take photo's.



All in all, I'm very pleased with the result and it's turned out pretty much exactly as I had hoped. I am not yet sure if the DB will be able to lift it high enough, I havn't tried. Yes, it does stick out a long way to one side. I had to make allowance for the off-centre weight distribution. I will just have to be careful when I move it around, not exactly as though I'm going to take it far.

Bathroom Mods Part 2 - Retreival.

Apologies to those of you who have been hanging on the edge of your seats waiting for a bathroom update (and I'm sure there are many.....). Loading up pictures to blogger decided to be tempermental on Sunday and Monday evening. Finally, here is the next installment, hopefully shortly followed by the next (and the one after that).

Thursday evening last week I went to start the dismantling process. I had chosen to do this myself as the ladies husband was out on an oil platform and wasn't going to be home to do the job himself before the middle of this week. I didn't mind the extra work, working on the principle that it would be much easier to put together again if I had dismanlted it myself. As an added bonus I got the hoses to connect it to the water supply thrown in for my trouble.

I had taken the Volvo for the occasion and with the back seats down managed to transport the bath unit and all bits and pieces excluding the shower part and the bath surround.

One of the neighbour's sons kindly helped me to get the bath part up the stairs, here it is in the bathroom (Standing on end for cleaning purposes).



Most of the other bits and bobs.



I picked up the shower unit and bath panel on Friday evening and also purchased the few fittings I needed to complete the installation.



By the end of Friday evening, after a quick floor scrub, the two main parts were sealed and bolted together. All ready for connection to water, preliminary testing and installation on saturday.

Baby Room Part 3/Bathroom Mods Part 1 - New Shower/Bubble Bath

You may well ask, why does fixing up the baby room involve installing a new shower in the bathroom. Well, I've said it before, that one project leads to another, and I'll say it again.

On removing the panelling on the wall that is between the baby room and the bathroom we found out that our bathroom, which is supposed to be a wet room, is not 100% watertight. There's a small but all the same significant leak somewhere in the corner of the shower area. Wet rooms are suppose to have a waterproof membrane behind any walls/tiles, needless to say, this is nowhere to be seen.

After unsucessful attemts with some silicon sealant we decided the only 100% safe solution was to install a shower cabinet. The cheapest shower cabinets available are seam to be around 4000,- Kroner, a lot of money for a quick fix which will be thrown out in a few years when we re-do the bathroom properly!

Today, this appeared on Finn.no, Norways internet market place. It's the full pack, Bubble bath with 7 nozzles, back massage and seperate foot massage facility. Integrated shower with handheld shower head,shower head in the roof and 3 side nozzles. 3 years old. New Pris 21,000,- Kr.

You may well ask, why on earth I knowingly have purchased a bath/shower unit that's 225cms high when the bathrooms only 215cms to the ceiling. As ever, "I HAVE A CUNNING PLAN"