Tuesday 15 April 2008

we love free stuff!

One last thing we did up today that was free was a metal box, soon to be a planter, latterly a gas locker, that we found in the woods near to the boat. We nabbed it, rubbed down the rust with a steel brush, painted it with hammerite and then sprayed it with car spray paint. It's now ready to plant up, gotta love that free stuff!



box clever

Before christmas our neighbour phil gave us some big wooden crates that he needed to get rid of. The biggest one has been up on deck storing our logs over the winter (on the left in the picture below), but as spring, erm, springs, the need for plnaters for Lorna's ever expending back deck garden is greater than the need for log storage.

SO, i chopped it in half

chopped the two halves down further

and used the leftover pieces to form the backs of the two new, smaller, planter shaped boxes.

Lorna then painted them with cuprinol wood paint

before we filled one of them with compost ready to plant up. (the others will have to wait until we can pick some more compost).

woodlarking

We have a new boat! Slightly smaller than Peter, but a worthy addition to the fleet...

Recently Vortex escaped down the jetty and went walkabout in the woods round the back of the car park. While searching for him i caught a glimpse of something lying, half buried in the undergrowth...

On closer inspection it proved to be a tiny paddle boat, of the kind that you hire out in the park and take for a spin round the pond. Goodness knows how it got there, it's not close to any easily accessible water, but somehow it had ended up half buried in the woods and half full of rubble and black, rotting, stinking water.



Today we put on our 'getting' dirty' clothes and went to get it. We took trowels and dug out the rubble and soil, poured out the hideous stinky water, and checked that it didn't have any gaping holes in it.

We then had to carry it, in 20 yard spurts, back round to the jetty, and then down the jetty to the boat. We stopped off at the pump out station to hose it off


and then couldn't resist popping it in the water to give it a go. It goes like a dream! And it can turn on it's own axis too, much easier to handle than a rowing boat.



So we are going to give it a good scrub down to really clean it, then paint it (hot pink with Lorna's roller derby number:

on is the current favourite) and maybe have a look at the paddles and handles, and it'll be as good as new!