A DIY Weekend at Home
It seems to be a rare occasion that we get a whole weekend at home these days, especially one with no real events to attend. But that is exactly what we’ve just had. This was partly due to the fact that Morgan was ill so couldn’t go to a special orchestra practise that he was supposed to go to. Anna had been working from home for a couple of days at the end of last week so that she could stay home with Morgan so I tended to come home straight after work as well. This meant that I was home fairly early on Friday evening which gave me time to check out a potential bee swarm in Borth and then get out windsurfing – Now that the shed is properly organised I can see and get to my windsurfing kit. On top of this, I don’t have any races planned thanks to my foot injury so I’m not too worried about replacing training sessions with recreational activities. I’ve therefore been encouraged to get out on the water more and with a nice breeze and the sun shining I had a decent little windsurf session here at Ynyslas before we all headed off to build fires and cook on the beach with the Scouts for the evening.
We managed to get loads done on Saturday though. It was a nice warm sunny day and I wanted to tackle the strip of land and the sheds behind the house. It was a little overgrown, very messy and hard to get to and the sheds needed a little TLC too. I was up at 4am though so started on quieter indoor jobs first before heading out into the garden. It took most of the day to clear the area, empty the sheds, reorgainse them and move some stuff to the new shed, but now that it’s done it looks much better out there.
Back of the house
There was then time to mow the lawn and do some gardening and even replace some of the wooden edging around the raised gravelled seating area. Having a nice new shed to work in with all my tools easily available certainly makes DIY tasks much easier and more enjoyable though.
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- Working in the Shed
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- Edging
It was quite late in the evening by the time I finished after a hard day working at home. It was still warm and sunny though so we ate ‘al fresco’ and then toasted some marshmallows on a fire in the chiminea. It’s nice to finally be able to spend some time just chilling in the garden.
The Garden
Sunday dawned wet – very wet and I nearly talked myself out of cycling in the morning, especially as it was supposed to brighten up come the afternoon, but I stuck with the plan and drove into Machynlleth with my bike nice and early. I was out cycling at around 5:45am which gave my time for a little over 50 miles on a loop from Machynlleth out to the coast at Aberdyfi, through Tywyn and then along the coast through Llywyngwril and back in to Dolgellau before climbing up to Cross Foxes, down the Minfford Pass through Corris and back to Mach. It rained the whole way and the climb up to and over the Minfford pass was incredibly wet and with a strong headwind was particularly hard work and quite miserable. I made it back to Mach at around 8:45 though ready for a swim in the pool and a bacon sandwich.
Back at home Morgan still wasn’t 100% so we left him at home whilst Anna and I popped into town to take some stuff to the tip, buy a few supplies, get a couple of water butts for the new shed and a new vacuum cleaner as the one we have been using for a while has always been rubbish! Once back at home I tried but failed to attach the water butts as the pipes and guttering that we bought with the shed were all the wrong size to fit any of the water butt fittings and I couldn’t find adaptors anywhere. I did think it might be easier to admit defeat with the guttering that we bought with the shed, put it down to experience and just buy some proper guttering from somewhere – It’s been rubbish from the start. But on Monday morning I took the rain diverters off the drainpipes out the back and managed to get those to fit to the shed guttering and the new ones would fit to the guttering on the house. It did mean giving the guttering, drainpipes and soakaways a good clear out too, but I think with some bodging here and there to get them to fit and inventing a way of attaching the bottom piece of drainpipe to the bottom of the rain diverter that I succeeded in coming up with a solution that will hopefully work. We’ll have to see what happens when it rains now.
Water Butt
Anyway, back to Sunday and the sun was out now and the wind was blowing so I headed over to the beach for a windsurf while Anna played with the new Dyson and Morgan did some work on his scholl project. It was windier than I had expected, so after a quick overpowered blast with my 5.6m sail I changed down to a 5.0m sail and had a good session playing in the waves. That was until I snapped the spreader bar on my harness. I didn’t have a spare with me so packed up and headed home. Typically I’d thrown a spare harness and spreader bar out when I cleared out the shed. I did find another spare one though so should be OK for a while.
I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning and servicing my bike after it’s very wet ride that morning and doing a little more gardening.
It was nice to have a weekend at home and good to get on top of a few more things that needed doing, interspersed with some recreation too. If only the weekends could go on for a few more days.
