Sweetpea's pathetic excuses for not fixing the MR2

I feel your pain, we combined Snetterton with seeing the wifes family this weekend. Thought it's been a heatwave and we never see the touring cars in nice weather (Always October at Brands Hatch).
Low and behold it was weather to build an Ark and we were soaked through. Thankfully it dried up in the afternoon but British summertime in a heatwave sucks.......

I'm about 10 miles up the road from Snett - relevant to my reply to James



In the one day that BSB was on my rainwater harvesting system went from zero Litres to 800........

It annoys me that I haven't increased the capacity in prior years when we ran out for small periods but this is the first summer in 10 years where we have run out of rain water for weeks

One of the problems of being married is that, along with the missus, you get free access to her parents. Wether you wanted it or not. And with an extended family you get jobs.

Now, I’m always happy to do the odd job here and there. It proves that I’m a loving and practical husband. This is a good thing as it means continued access to the missus’s favours… In the kitchen… She makes muffins that I take to work for breakfast lest I get hungry and grumpy.

So, broadly, I do jobs for in laws, I get fed. Seems like a fair deal.
Last time we went to France (fortunately the in laws life in France) I came home with a couple of little jobs. This is one.




What this needs is melting down and turning into bean cans. But Mrs Sweetpea’s mum thinks it needs welding, blasting, and painting.
I know, It’s got what you’d call patina and looks quite good. But it got it alarmingly quickly and is in danger of failing to exist.

The little bit of welding…




Which I did. Now waiting for blasting and painting.

On a previous visit I gained a rotten set of sails for a small concrete windmill. The wooden arms had rotted and fallen off. Some new bits of oak and a coat of paint and it looked like this.




And it went back to France to be attached to the rest of the small concrete windmill.

Except the bit it attaches to turned out to be broken too. So it all came back.




See, this whirly round bit should go on here but it doesn’t.

So I welded a long M3 screw on the end of the remaining stub.




Oh yes! You can call me a windmill guru if you wish.




The only problem now is that the M3 screw is a bit vulnerable and it’s going to get bent or knocked off on the way back to France.
We need a packing case type thingy to protect the screw. Here’s one I made earlier.




We’ll if this doesn’t get to France in one piece nothing will.




MR2 work next…

James

A double commode?

beaten by @quatermass

And now my missus is wondering why I'm crying with laughter. Quick, think of something that's not toilet humour...

No Sh1t!

See what I did there?
I thought it was a joke until I saw it was the BBC's site. It's not April is it?

Those are some damn ugly urinals. I love the fact that all the urine is just flowing out of the bottom of one unit, across the floor, in that one shot.

I'm with my wife who looked at it and said "Why not just build better facilities to cater for men AND women?

When we decorated the kitchen some years ago we wanted something that wouldn’t look out of place in a ‘30s house. That elusive ‘modern yet period’ thing. Well, to be fair, a true 1930’s kitchen would be a disaster in a modern house so anything that actually looked period wasn’t going to happen.
Anyway, we wound up with something that we both like and are very pleased with.

One decision we took to add a bit of age was to use solid oak worktops finished with danish oil. They cost a bloody fortune but they look fantastic. There’s nothing quite like having some whopping lumps of tree in your kitchen.

However, it’s not all good news. Danish oil is barely passable for a kitchen worktop. It’s easily damaged. You can’t leave water on it. Or even a wet mug.




It’s not so obvious in the photo but there is a light patch in the circle where the top was heavily cleaned and it took a lot of the oil off. And some rings where cans with wet bottoms have been left.
Worse still, if water gets through the oil it stains the wood and it’s impossible to sort out.

What I’m saying is that wood is beautiful but it needs constant, endless maintenance.

Our normal practice is that when the finish is looking a bit tired and marked we clear the kitchen, give it a light to moderate sanding and then re coat with 3 or 4 coats of danish oil. It’s a job that takes a long weekend before every thing’s dry again and you can put the kitchen back.
The last couple of times we’ve had a problem in that the oil never fully dried. It stayed just a little tacky which is a massive pain in the botty. I have no idea why. I think a chemical in a cleaning product softened the oil and it's presence stopped later coats from going off properly. But I've no proof of that theory.

Sanded off…




We’d used an Osmo product on the new gates and it’s really very good. Mrs Sweetpea noticed that Osmo did an oil for worktops so we thought we’d try it. But changing product meant a much deeper sanding to take off as much of the danish oil as possible. And off the upstands too which I don’t normally do. It took hours and hours…
To be fair the parts where the danish oil was tacky needed to go back to the wood anyway. Ever tried sanding off an oil finish that's a bit soft? It instantly clogs your sand paper. It's very frustrating.

First coat of Osmo going on.




Done.




It’ll dry to a satin finish much the same as danish oil.

That took all today. Tomorrow it’ll need another coat applied with a cloth. Then, apparently it’s done.
It’ll still need recoating occasionally but hopefully it’ll be a bit harder wearing, and, I really really hope, it’ll be a bit more tolerant of water. Time will tell I suppose.

James