Steve's workshop - Painting the outside walls

[monkeybiter]

and I fly on. Can't wait. I can't afford it, not sustainably, but you are a long time dead.

Too true, I should be saving more for my retirement but we love to travel and sometimes can't resist, however I've recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetes and apparently that knocks an average of ten years off your life expectancy. That's a very sobering thought at 52 and calls for a big timetable rethink.

 

[Max Power]

Have they put you on medication Mike ? Or are you borderline thus able to control it with your diet?
Great progress Steve , its all coming together now

 

[monkeybiter]

Metformin 3 times a day for now, might change after my first quarterly blood test.

 

[beech1948]

Hi,

Fellow Type 2 Diabetes sufferer as well. I have found that the info provided by doctors is minimal and thus less useful than it could be. My best approach was to get my GPs specialist diabetes nurse to talk to me.

You will need to control the sugar levels in all food. Your supermarket shopping will take double the time reading the ingredients on all of the things you wish to buy. Basically any more than 6mg sugars per 100mg of food is a no no. Wife an I now buy almost no processed food and we simply have gone back to baking, cooking from scratch and cut out all sugar.

Carbs will become your enemy as well. eg Toast as it all transforms to sugar in your gut. A bare minimum of carbs are necessary.

Exercise is a great help as energy is burned off. Walking, bike rides and weights all help. If you are overweight and have been so for some time then that is one of the principle causes of Type 2 Diabetes. Lose weight.

I have 1000mg of metformin twice a day. After 4 yrs I think I have my diabetes just about under control. My blood sugar readings are still a bit higher than is desirable but I have to keep trying to control it. My weight has dropped by 24 Kg and I have another 10 Kg to lose but it is slowly being lost.

Doctors are reluctant to issue finger prick testing kits because of the cost to the NHS. NICE recommend about 7x50 finger prick tabs a year. I now test 3 times a day for a whole 7 day week for one week a month. Get your doctor to do a Hb1a blood test every 90 to 95 days once a quarter or 4 times a year. Get hold of the readings and see that a) Sugar levels are reduced b) Cholesterol lever are OK c) Liver function is OK - metformin can affect ( rarely) liver functioning.

Will you lose 10 years off your life. NO. That is an old wife's tale. BUT diabetes will kill you; will cause amputations; will cause loss of blood flow to limbs; will cause blindness and a few other more nasty things.

Its like the rest of life. Get busy; get everything under control; work at the control issue and you will be fine.

I'm sorry if the above sounds a bit prescriptive or even bossy that was not my intent. The intent was to help and be realistic but take it seriously.

Good luck

Al

 

[Steve Maskery]

Ray arrived at 8am and a big lorry shortly afterwards. Ray had previously bagged up 3,500 of his spare blocks :shock: and his NDN brought them over along with a couple of bags of sand. The driver could not get all four loops onto the hook and so there was along of scary-sounding noises of rending bag and I honestly couldn't look. I had visions of it all pouring out into a dreadful pile on the road. But Ray assured me that the bags are rated at 5 Tonne and even when full of bricks they are "only" 900kg.

Then Charlie turned up. You remember Charlie:

Now Charlie enjoys a good workout, so he insisted that he moved the blocks himself and that I did something else! So he brought down blocks and fed them to Ray who laid them while I put my feet up.

Not really. I prepped the front path to 100mm

and then screeded the sand to leave the blocks about 10mm proud, laying the blocks back as I went.

When I got to the gate the blocks didn't quite fit. But they came out so they must go in! Ray is bringing his hydraulic ram tomorrow to try to squeeze them up a bit, but so far it looks good.

Meanwhile Charlie was hard at graft

 

[Steve Maskery]

We ran out of sand, but by 4 o'clock we had this

My back aches, my tennis elbow is swearing at me, but I feel like we have all done a darned good day's work

Got to do it all again tomorrow...

 

[Steve Maskery]

We thought we had arranged for the rest of the blocks to be delivered at 9 am. But at 10 we rang to find out what had happened. He hadn't set out yet But he did arrive eventually, and he remembered his cross hook today

So in the mean time, Ray had brought his ram to tighten up the blocks on the front path so that the last row of cut blocks go back as they did before.

Pete turned up. You remember Pete

He turned up with a year's supply of Madd Jam and his two lads. They helped me sort out the rest of the front, peeling back the old, rotten, stinky, cheap and nasty membrane and replacing it with new before replacing the pebbles.

So my front looks respectable again, and should stay that way for a while

The path still needs whackering and sanding but even so, it looks a lot better than it did.

Meanwhile at the back of the house Ray and Pete were sanding and laying.

When Tom, Sam and I had finished at the front, we joined in, too. We all carried blocks, we all shovelled sand and we all got knackered. Even Ray said he had had enough today.

We have a LOT of sand left over. A full builder's bag and another quarter or so. We shall need some, there is still a bit of work to do at the back of the workshop, but it won't use all that, I don't think. Never mind.

So the whole area has been blocked, but now we have a lorra, lorra cutting to do, as Cilla would have said.

Pete, Sam, Tom, thank you all very much for your hard work today. And it only cost me a bacon oatcake and some homemade ice cream. Bargain.

 

[Paul Chapman]

Looking really good 8)

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[John15]

Excellent paving work Steve. It looks really good. I can tell you had the A Team on it. I hope Ray's back is OK - in almost every piccie he's bent double!

John

 

[Racers]

Thanks Steve the ice cream was very nice!

Pete

 

[lurker]

Thanks Steve the ice cream was very nice!

Pete

Pictures of you standing around but can't see you actualy doing anything.
You know the rules..... No pictures it didn't happen :wink:

 

[Racers]

Obviously I was supervising, some one had to do it as you weren't there ;-)

Pete

 

[Steve Maskery]

Yesterday I made cradle to hold Ray's angle grinder. It was crude but effective, complete with a sliding table to carry the blocks. I told Ray about it last night at the folk Club. "You'll be impressed", says I.

wWhen Ray arrived this morning I was in the workshop assembling its component parts and feeling very pleased with myself.

"Forget that", says Ray, "We're hiring a machine".

Oh, OK. Apparently he'd been on to the local industrial estate for a part or his lawn mower and caught sight of a hire firm. On enquiring, we could hire a brick saw for £25 a day or £50 for a week. all including wear and tear, VAT and delivery and collection. No-brainer, really.

Unfortunately, although the machine was there in front of us, the delivery driver was in Lincoln, so we had to wait for him to get back.

So to while away the time, we whackered the front path. I say "we"...

So now that is done, although there is now a little bit of crumble damage to one of the curbs. That's a pity, really. Anyway. it looks good.

So we did a bit of this and a bit of that and had an early lunch, and just as we were finishing, the lorry turned up, with our machine on it. Parked in exactly the wrong orientation. Apparently it had been loaded with a fork-lift truck, but the driver had only a pallet truck, and the tail gate was not deep enough to accommodate it. I thought that there was not a cat in ****'s chance of getting it off, but the driver has done this before and somehow, I have no idea how, he managed to turn the whole machine 90 deg and get it off.

We'd laid some OSB on the patio to take it, and we set to cutting up blocks to fit the edges. I did the marking out and fitting, Ray did the cutting and fitting.

The machine has a water reservoir, so it is much cleaner than using an angle grinder, the dust gets trapped at source. I did have the decency to ask my neighbour if her washing was dry, though, before we started.

So in one afternoon we have done across the gate, up the edge to the log cabin and across to its steps. Also the conservatory wall by the back door.

On of the things we have found is that after yesterday's torrential rain and our walking all over the place, the sand has compacted quite a lot. Some of our blocks are already down to the edging, even before they have been whackered. I think we may have to lift the edges and put some more sand in.

If I'm honest, it does not yet look like a pro job. But I'm hoping that when it is all whackered and sanded, it will.

Next shift Thursday, because tomorrow I am having a Grand Day Out, hopefully with some Cracking Cheese.

 

[Racers]

Probably the best move, that machine will have saved you hours and Rays back!

Pete

 

[Halo Jones]

Great progress. I must admit that I am a little nervous about how close Ray's left hand is to that whopping big blade!

 

[Steve Maskery]

Yes, I was too. I think a lifetime in the mining industry has made a bit cavalier, sometimes.

 

[Mcluma]

I already thought just cutting these blocks will take you a week,

Getting the machine was a great idea

 

[blackrodd]

My Landscape Architect friend bought one of these some time ago,--
Most hire places have them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nwT43nKhlI
Fast and clean, as you can see.
Regards Rodders

 

[apreston]

I'm rather intrigued by your jig - it sounds quite impressive to have knocked something up with a sliding table "yesterday" - I would probably say I did it "last week" or "last month" - do we get to see it?

 

[Steve Maskery]

Rodders - Those splitters are fine, up to a point. The blocks have to be "friendly" and it's OK if you are just cutting them in half, like in the video, but if you just want to trim 1/2" off one corner, they don't work.

AP - Sorry, I meant to take a photo today, but forgot. I'll try to remember tomorrow. I'ts nothing very fancy, just a hinged cradle and piece of MDF sliding on a V-groove.