Things really don’t seem to be going quite to plan at the moment, something which I’m desperately hoping and praying will be a temporary glitch and not a permanent change! This weekend I was supposed to be riding the 3 Down 300Km Audax on Saturday, but pulled out at the last minute (which is something I truly hate doing). I was all set to ride mid-week, but as the week went on my enthusiasm waned somewhat, and it wasn’t exactly high before (see last weeks blog for my tales of misery). Looking at the weather forecast midweek, Friday and Saturday were looking pretty grim, with long periods of rain and windy conditions forecast, a situation which did little for my enthusiasm or morale. Holding off on making a decision regarding my weekend plans, I got wet cycling into work and back on Thursday and Friday, and checking every weather app on Friday afternoon, things weren’t looking any better for Saturday. Now a bit of rain wouldn’t normally put me off, I’m normally more than happy to get wet, it’s all part of the adventure. But on top of the weather, my knee really isn’t right, and as I mentioned last week, my heads really not in it at the moment. My knees playing on my mind, and do I really want to make things any worse? 15-20 hours on the bike is a big ask at the best of times. Add in what looked like at least the first 5 hours being wet and miserable, and the risk of making my knees even worse than they already are, it should have been an easy decision to make. But it wasn’t! I had a chat with “The Emma”, I checked the forecast multiple times, and I looked out the window numerous times at the teeming rain. But things didn’t look like they were going to get any better. Eventually, reluctantly, I made my decision. There wasn’t much point in slogging all the way to the start if I was just going to be miserable, wet, and not enjoy myself. I might as well stay at home and do something useful and less taxing with my time. Decision made, that didn’t stop me from almost changing my mind after tea and heading out anyway just in case the weather got better. But eventually sense prevailed and I settled in for a weekend at home. My decision appeared to have been vindicated Saturday morning when I work up to yet more rain, a situation which continued all morning, before it finally stopped, and the afternoon brightened up a bit after lunch. That would still have been 5 or 6 hours of being rained on though, and even after it stopped the roads were still flooded with lots of surface water about. My easy weekend hasn’t helped my knees though. As, despite not playing out all weekend, they are both really sore, especially the left one which seems to be the main protagonist. Hopefully a few more weeks of not running and a few days off the bike over Easter will improve that situation and we can soon get back to normal, but for now things aren’t looking great. But I suppose that means than on the positive side, things can only get better. Being at home all weekend did mean that I got a few hours in on the allotment on Sunday morning. Not that I got much done as the ground is absolutely saturated. There are lots of little signs that better days are on their way though. Most of the seeds that I sowed in the greenhouse on the 18th March have germinated (Sprouts, Cabbages, Kale, Leeks, Peas, Sweet peas, Amaranthus, Marigolds, and a few other things that escape me at the moment). Likewise, there’s lots of new growth in the gardens, with Polyanthus in full bloom complementing the Hyacinths and last of the Daffodils, and all of the fruit trees in full bud and about to burst into leaf. The Chillies, Tomatoes, Geraniums, and Petunias that I sowed in pots on the bedroom windowsill have all germinated in the last few days too, so things are certainly looking up! Now that the admin is out of the way, I've explained why I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, and pottered around on the allotment for a bit, there was still a big chunk of weekend that needed filling. Luckily this little lot arrived on Thursday, which should keep me occupied for a while! Giant toilet rolls? Nope, carpet and lots of it. I've hinted a couple of times that I had plans for my Easter break and this is one of them (and the biggest) and as I've not been out to play, I might as well make myself productive and get on with it. Now, before I even start on this one I'm going to say 4 things. Firstly, I've never laid a carpet before. No actually that's a lie, I did the small bedroom and the bathroom in the first house I renovated many years ago (back in the days when foam backed carpet was a thing), and it didn't quite go to plan. The bathroom was the first room I ever did and I thought this looks easy, I'll take the old bit out, lay them on top of each other, use that as a pattern, and as that fitted then so will my new one. And indeed it would have done, if I hadn't put them back to back, resulting in a perfect mirror image in my nice new bit of carpet! Lesson learned from that one, the replacement, replacement, went much better and the spare bedroom turned out just fine. Since then, I've done plenty of Lino, loads of laminate flooring (we'll ignore the time I helped a good friend laminate their entire downstairs over a weekend only to discover a few days later that the lump in the middle of the lounge floor was a pencil that we'd lost on day one. Que the next weekend taking most of it back up again to recover said pencil) and they all turned out fine. So why not take on re-carpeting the entire house! Secondly, as far as I can see, the worst bit about fitting new carpets is that you've got to empty the room out. That means unloading all the cupboards, packing away all the nick knacks, and disturbing all the spiders that hide behind the sofa. You've then got to put it all back again. In which case, I'm going to do all the really unpleasant bit, then pay someone loads of money to pitch up and do what should be the easy bit, while I put it all back again! And I've got to do it all to their timescales! Which sounds a bit rubbish to me. Thirdly, If I pay someone else to do the job then it tends to get done to their standards and not mine, and at the lowest cost possible. And, as we'll see in a minute, all they're going to do is bang some more carpet down on top of whatever mess is underneath. Which appears to be exactly what whichever professional that laid the current one here did, where the underlay appears to have been made up from a million salvaged off cuts, with all the joins in the highest traffic areas, which probably explains why it's worn so poorly and why the underlay moves around all the time! And please don't take that last paragraph as a slur against all the highly skilled and professional tradesmen out there. It's just the reality of life. As a consumer we all want stuff doing at the lowest price, and if your carpet fitter came in and said "I can do a really good job, but it'll take 2 days and cost XXXX amount" and his mate said "I can do it in a day for half that" you know who's going to be out of business pretty sharpish! So we're our own worst enemies on this one. And finally, everyone we've spoken too, apart from the nice man that delivered the carpet, has said, "Oh, I wouldn't want to do that". Surprisingly though (or maybe not), when you ask them why, the only answers you get are the age old "Well, it looks difficult", "What if you mess it up", and "It looks like hard work". Which I'll counter with, "If it was easy it wouldn't be a challenge, and how do you know it's difficult if you've never done it"? I'm pretty sure that getting to the moon was pretty tricky, but JFK didn't say "Were not going to the moon because it looks a bit difficult" did he! Likewise, if I mess it up (which I won't, but if I do I'll be sure to let you all know), then I'll just get another bit of carpet and still be quid's in on the cost of getting someone else to fit it. And finally, yes it might be hard work, but I'm not afraid of hard work and besides, imagine the sense of satisfaction I'm going to have when I sit down at the end of the job and can say "I did that". I don't tend to blow my own trumpet much (apart from every week here) but when I wander around at home or in the garden and allotment and my eye falls on the things I've made or built it's immensely satisfying, and this is just another little job that'll hopefully be the same. So for a starters lets pull the carpet off the stairs and hallway. Then I can A) Have a look at what were up against. B) Paint the edges and skirting boards before the new carpet goes down and C) Hopefully fix some of the creaks on the stairs. But what's this I spy, hidden under the carpet? I'm hoping that it's historic settlement, where the floor slab has pulled away from the wall at some point in the past, (there doesn't appear to be any other signs of movement, and there's no cracking to the wall's so I'm hoping that it's not structural). Either way we need to do something about it! And that'll do for this weekend, I'll get some paint on the skirting boards and stairs in the week, which will get us a jump ahead, and then make a start on the lounge carpet which is the biggest one and has the most stuff in the way.
Were off to a start though and any progress is good progress in my book.
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Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
March 2024
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