Cooking for one (Mark Three)

Brambling

Money - I planted certain herbs in the cracks things like thyme worked really well and seem to flourish even with the bad root conditions, Mediterranean types worked best for me. Also some alpine type plants worked (sorry don't remember what I brought it was a bit trial and error) but my paving allowed me to take up small corners which had broken and plant in there. When I eventually had it removed my neighbour informed me I was removing good pavers which had been there 30 years :huh: nope they were cracked and broken and the 'good ones' were replacement cheap concrete ones which I recycled to someone needing a greenhouse base.

Kittie always a good idea to check the trees in the garden in both the house you're interested in and the neighbours especially if the soil is clay. I was lucky that I worked with subsidence experts when I was buying my house and knew I had to allow for the removal of 3 very large eucalyptus trees at the bottom my back garden only 40 foot away from the house and almost as tall as it. One of the guys I worked with showed me pictures of a house before it was demolished due to Eucalyptus trees :eek: . It's not just subsidence damage to houses in clay areas but also root damage to drains can also cause subsidence in none clay areas.

Can you tell I worked for 25 years for a large insurance company :rotfl: didn't deal with claims or underwriting but sat next to the subsidence team for a few years.

Farway

PasturesNew wrote: »

That's what I was going to do ... grasp and pull.

I'm googling pincers

Mine's new build cheap plasterboard!

Just googled and found out that the metal washers I have a called "metal anchors". You seem to prise the front off... then poke the back into the wall, but I'll be checking that before I do it (and finding a screwdriver big enough for the job).

Now eating fruit pastilles for lunch!

Pastures, the fittings are plaster board ones, do not attempt to pull them out, they are not made to pull out, if they did your shelves would fall down

They may have springy toggles at the back, which if you attempt to pull them out may leave a hole you could put your fist in.
Some images here
https://www.screwfix.com/c/screws-nails-fixings/plasterboard-fixings/cat840020

Counter intuitive, but[STRIKE] bashing[/STRIKE] tapping them through is the solution as you have found

Same goes for Rawlplugs, sometimes easier to just knock it in a bit & fill the little hole, or as per Kittie, leave the screw in, get some pincers and lever them out, by putting card under as per Kittie you protect the wall, or a bit thicker, like plywood, you can get a bit more leverage
https://www.screwfix.com/p/7-carpenters-pincers/16019 on offer, a 99p, very good price
PS, if you have a claw hammer, that will do same job, and have extra leverage

Not these though,
https://www.screwfix.com/c/tools/hammers/cat9260006?hammeraxesproducttype=claw&cm_sp=managedredirect-_-handtools-_-clawhammers
try £land

Back to CFO

Nil breakfast, nothing YS in Lidl

I was given some YS bagels at volunteering, never had bagels before, so had a couple for lunch with cheeses & salady filling
Nothing to write home about, I don't think I missed much by not eating bagels in 70+ years

Dinner, just no idea, I've taken a couple of bangers out of the freezer and hoping I get a better idea than sausage bagels:(

[Deleted User]

yes brambling I already walked away from 2 properties with conifers or leylandii next door. To get full insurance here we had to answer questions about trees, distance etc. Hubbie was a structural engineer and was often having to deal with drains and subsidence etc and that has made me very wary and picky and eucalypyus!! gosh people just don`t do research into how tall the trees grow and the root system. One of the houses on RM is a priod property but there is a protected beech near the house, didn`t read any further


Pn, mine is cheapo plasterboard, prising on the cardboard is the best way for these boards and filling the holes only takes seconds. I am intending leaving my tv wall mounts, the tv is at eye level when sitting anyway, now those big bolt holes would cause a problem. They are on solid wall but that is the only non-white painted room and I don`t think the paint would match properly. I am going to get a stand for the tv when I go and just forget the mount, which they would likely want anyway


I am looking for more stuff to remove, thinking lock n lock boxes but have to get my head around it

PasturesNew

Cheers

Farway wrote: »

screwfix(

I've one of those just 400-500 yards away, so that makes it an easy trip out to get them, if I choose to, ... rather than them being, say, 10 miles away in a town where I've never been to the road where a shop is (these trips rarely get done as it's such a faff).

I built my flatpack, that was amazing. Leaflet in the box said 1 hour... I spread the work over 2 days, it was mostly lying in the middle of the living room floor for most of that time... finally fancied it today and started... and, after a few false starts .... I built it in 1 hour 42 minutes

Go me! And it looks sound as a pound .... immaculately and correctly built. Looks a treat, just the job... it's enabled me to get rid of a large/60cm square coffee table ... this is 60cm wide, but only about 30cm deep.

Not sure about food yet.... I've some spuds that must be used soonest.... before they turn/sprout (if not already). If they're OK then I'll toss some beans at them.... but I'm out of cheese as I'm so used to always having cheese in the house that I'm not in the habit of buying it, and so I keep forgetting when I'm in the shop.

I need quite a few things to top up now: cheese, salad cream, brown sauce ... must try to remember.

I see that Heinz are thinking of changing the name of salad cream to sandwich cream as people use it more in sandwiches than as a salad dressing. I'll often use it instead of margarine in sandwiches.

[Deleted User]

oh my goodness, I must remember that about knocking the fittings into the wall, of course I would not have known about those special fixtures. Thank you farway. Luckily I followed dh around when he was putting these up and knew they were rawlplugs. I never thought to knock them in. Maybe I haven`t got that cheapo plasterboard on batons and so pulling them out was fine.



Today ended up very productive, cleared masses of stuff, ready to move, one day

Brambling

kittie wrote: »

yes brambling I already walked away from 2 properties with conifers or leylandii next door. To get full insurance here we had to answer questions about trees, distance etc. Hubbie was a structural engineer and was often having to deal with drains and subsidence etc and that has made me very wary and picky and eucalypyus!! gosh people just don`t do research into how tall the trees grow and the root system. One of the houses on RM is a priod property but there is a protected beech near the house, didn`t read any further

I had the trees removed within two weeks of moving in and sat at work the day they were due to come down and thought maybe I should have mentioned it to my new neighbours :undecided: luckily they both thanked me as not only did it give them their light back but they were also worried about them causing damage to their houses . The new builds next to me were built around trees with TPOs on them every time I walk pass the very nice 4 bedroom detached house (600k+) and look at the tall oak tree whose canopy goes over their house :eek: i think the constant clearing of their gutters could be the least of their worries.

Well done PN there's definitely a sense of satisfaction when you finish something like that especially if you have been putting it off :T

Lunch was a wrap with smoked mackerel and salad, I was out of horseradish so it was just missing that hotness. Not sure about dinner as I haven't taken anything out of the freezer, little cba at moment so will be jacket potato with either cheese and coleslaw or tuna or even lazier scramble egg on toast.

PasturesNew

I had a monster oak adjacent to my house when I bought it ... wasn't happy about it, but at least the foundations were likely to be OK as it was a newish build so the tree's existence would've been taken into account. The omnipresent carpet of leaves and all the "drippings" from the tree of miniature bits of bark and what not ... was a constant plague. Then there were all the creepy crawlies attracted to it ... and it did clog the gutters/drains etc.

One day I saw a couple of men that looked like they were going to prune it and I rushed out and said "If you're here to prune that beast, you can take as much as you like off my side of the fence as I'm not a tree lover..." and they said "we're not here to prune it, it's coming down... today" - and it did!

The garden's a different place now, no leaves everywhere, no bits and bobs of debris dropping perpetually ... not having to worry about the gutters.... marvellous.

Food: Changed my mind - going with quiche, chips and beans. That's the last of that cheese/onion quiche (L1dl).

3 cheeky prawn crackers from Saturday's chinese as a starter

moneyistooshorttomention

Thinking of matters house-related at the moment.

There's a light brown mark on a blind I had made for me since moving here. I said at the time the installer put it up - and he said "That's how its supposed to be". I'd had so much to deal with at that time that I thought maybe he was telling me the truth. I've realised since he definitely wasnt - and was lying to me - and that stain is still there on that blind and it's right at my eyelevel too and annoying me with a. being a stain b. being a reminder that sometimes, even now, I'm too soft/gullible for my own good.

Does anyone know how to remove a light brown stain (which I would imagine was a drop of tea or coffee made by the person that made that blind) and obviously without taking the blind down?

PasturesNew

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Does anyone know how to remove a light brown stain (which I would imagine was a drop of tea or coffee made by the person that made that blind) and obviously without taking the blind down?

Untried ... but my fallback plan for cleaning anything as a start is to try wetwipes ... or anti-bacterial spray and a bit of kitchen towel. For many things these just work without resorting to trying things I don't have

It's so bl00dy annoying when you get fobbed off.... makes you feel like a right patsy.... they'd not like it done to them.

Brambling

Money I remember being told that a restoration and recovery company said to use baby wipes to remove gloss paint from a sofa, because they can remove most stains, may be worth trying it on a piece that can't be seen first.