Confederacy of a Dunce - house

Street furniture

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:57:05 GMT

This weekend the Dunces said goodbye to a couple of old friends, two large Ikea> bookshelves (one "Leksvik" and one who-knows-what) which have been with us for ages and together offered us a dozen (much-needed) shelves of book storage. Unfortunately as we've moved the shelves from place to place, their structural integrity has gradually decreased (despite our efforts to take them apart very carefully, and just as carefully store all the hardware necessary to rebuild them successfully). And now they can probably be best described as "wonky"; they are fine if carefully propped in a corner, but tend to slouch if left to their own devices. But they've been happily slouching in the back bedroom for some months now, loaded with books and showing no signs of imminent collapse. Perhaps I've exaggerated their lack of structural integrity (although I'm irritated by their tendency towards "disposable", like many Ikea products [Sometimes you do get what you pay for]); the real problem is that they don't really fit anywhere in our flat. They've remained in our back room just because we've abandoned the room, leaving it as a disorganized storage area where we hang our clothes to dry, park an extra bike, and so on.

But now things are changing. Mrs. Dunce is spearheading the effort to make the room usable, which includes building a set of shelves* from floor to ceiling in a fairly wide alcove next to the chimney breast. These shelves should have just about as much capacity as the two bookshelves, and will allow us much more space in the room. So we dragged the two old shelves outside, leaving them next to the bins in the hope that someone else might consider them useful and take them away. I didn't think there was much chance; they looked even more wonky sitting on our crooked pavement in the front garden. But surprise, surprise, this morning they were gone. So now there's no going back. We have to build the shelves, or get rid of a dozen cartons of books!**

* We should be up to the job of shelf-building, having already completed a small test run in another room using the same style of shelf mounting.

** While I was clearing off the old bookshelves, I was also going through the books with an eye on getting rid of those we didn't need any longer. But I only found a dozen or so that I could really do without (to give you an idea of my hoarding tendencies, Battlefield Earth made the cut). So it was hardly worth making an effort to get rid of any books this time around.

The cat in the flat

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:13:45 GMT

Since we moved into the new flat, it's taken DunceCat some time to get used to the new situation. Everything smelled different, and there was the gross indignity of being locked inside for a month. But finally things are settling down, especially now that the weather has improved and we can open the front windows. She especially enjoys sitting in the front window spying on the neighbors. And watching us as well.

When I say "spying on the neighbors", well, she does watch people and cats coming and going down at street level. But really her focus is all upon our bird neighbors. There are quite a few of them who hang around the trees, roofs and power lines just above the window. So she spends a lot of her window time making birdcalls: odd, creaking sounds, interspersed with strange meows and chomping jaw movements (not sure whether these are intended to be threatening, or just wishful thinking. In turn, the birds squawk, swoop, and occasionally defecate in her general direction.

And then when she's done, it's time to ditch the window and patrol the rest of the house.

She's confident enough now to do full-speed rampages from one room to another, gripping the carpet for the sharpest turns, and skittering around the kitchen linoleum. But sometimes guarding on two fronts is just too much effort for one lonely cat.

But usually she's right back on duty in a few minutes' time. And woe betide anyone who tries to sneak past her. This is what it looks like if you try to enter a secured area without the correct pass:

None shall pass!

Wallpaper museum

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:16:21 GMT

As I've mentioned a few times before, the Dunces have recently moved into a new flat which required some amount of cosmetic effort and modernization (you'll have to wait for an upcoming post to see more details). One urgent need was to replace the ancient water heater, a process not without its problems. But there was a tiny window of time between the removal of the old water heater and the installation of the new one, during which the wall behind the heater was visible.

The previous owner of the flat bought it in 1977, and did the place up to a high standard at that time (including installation of the now-dead water heater). So the wallpaper behind the heater dates from before that time, which you can tell at a glance from the picture below. At the top is a hole in the wall: the original flue for the water heater, which was badly filled by the heating engineers, then knocked out and patched more appropriately. Below the hole you can see a nice indication of some previous choices of decor. Most of which are nicer than the present wallpaper which we have not replaced or painted over just yet (mostly gray/greenish, textured and shiny, as you can see around the outside. On the right side, the whitish bits are actually the camera flash, reflected off the textured shiny bits).

Yes it's a huge picture; sorry about that but I felt it was the best way to clearly show the different patterns.

Coming soon in the "house" series... some before/after pictures of rooms we've actually done cosmetic work on.

house swarming party

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:58:53 GMT

Well, we managed to get a plumber to pop round the morning of the party. It only took him 15-20 minutes to make things right, and now we have a nicely functioning kitchen sink, with hot and cold water coming from a single tap, and not a drip in sight (knock wood). Which allowed us to get things set up for the party with plenty of time to spare, and with no visible signs of the previous days' plumbing problems (except for my excessive tendency to turn on the kitchen tap and admire the smooth flow of water). I popped by the pub to collect some ale and then we were ready for guests to arrive.

We scheduled our house warming party to start at 2pm and continue "until late", with a vague sort of idea that people with small children might prefer to come earlier than those without. Only one set of small children managed to get there, so perhaps the early start was a bit of a mistake. In any event, people started arriving at nicely staggered times from about 3pm. The weather was perfect so most of the party occurred in the back garden (Mrs. Dunce and I spent a lot of time running up and down stairs to answer the front door). A good combination of friends, work colleagues and neighbors ended up coming round, although the early start meant a somewhat early finish (a lot of people came by early so they could make something else later on). At the bitter end, the last few guests headed down the road to continue the festivities a nearby nightclub. We were strongly encouraged to join them, but we were quite ready to collapse into bed.

Hulk Mad!! HULK SMASH!!

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:09:20 GMT

Last night Mrs. Dunce and I came home about the same time, arms laden with all sorts of groceries in preparation for our house-warming party tomorrow. We had ambitious plans which included some preparation of snack foods, some last little bits of organizing and perhaps a teensy bit of cleaning. But we were both hot and tired after our respective shopping trips, and both really needed a big glass of ice water (not the same big glass, mind you. One each). I filled up the glasses and turned off the water. Or at least that was the plan, but instead I failed to recognize my own strength, as the tap handle snapped in my hand and water started gushing everywhere (fortunately, "everywhere" really just meant "pouring at maximum rate through the faucet into the sink).

Our previous plumbing adventures had somehow not been sufficient to inform us about the location of the main water shutoff valve in the flat (previous workmen had shut off the water outside, where it leaves the pipes and supplies both flats), so our first step was a panicked run around the house, feeling the various pipes for coldness/signs of flow. A likely suspect appeared in the toilet (separate from the bathroom, in that traditional sort of English style), but of course the handle was immovable (and I sure didn't want to break it. Water spraying into the sink is one thing, water spraying all over the toilet room [WC?] is quite another). I must admit I was in full-on panic mode as this was all happening. Some spritzes of (bike) oil and some (gentle) manipulations with a wrench, and the water was miraculously shut off. So the most urgent aspects of the emergency were thus eliminated. And after all, we did want to replace the taps on the kitchen sink (having two separate taps, one hot and one cold, both of them very stubby, seems quite useless for just about any kitchen purposes). But then the phone rang....

It was the downstairs neighbors, wondering about the water. Apparently our supply is also their supply. The cold tap in our kitchen sink is fed directly from that supply, with no way of turning it off except turning off the water completely. This returned the problem to "immediately urgent". Mrs. Dunce headed straight out to the building supply store to purchase a new set of taps (actually, two sets just in case one of them wouldn't fit for some reason), while I put on my plumber hat and went to work under the sink. In a jiffy, I had the taps removed and was waiting with a cup of tea for Mrs. Dunce to return. Or, more accurately, I spent a couple of hours awkwardly wedged under the sink with some assorted tools, first trying to figure out how everything was connected, which parts were meant to unscrew (and in which direction), and just how to remove those bloody taps. All the while knowing that our neighbors were also waterless until the problem was fixed (fortunately they were very understanding).

The new taps were indeed appropriate for the job, and I'd pretty much figured out how things went together. So with a flourish of the wrench, and quick as a jiffy I fastened them all back together (doing them both at the same time with one wrench in each hand). Or else I grunted and strained and muttered and fumed and sulked and sweated and so on, until they were finally connected right up. Wheeee, I thought. Time to turn the water back on. And I did, and it sprayed. Under the sink this time, where, errr, we didn't have the right sort of washers to go between the various fittings involved in the connections. So off with the water again, and a frantic rush on the bicycle to get to the home furnishings store for new washers before closing time.

Knowing me, you already know that the store was closed by the time I arrived (open till 9pm some evenings, 8pm others. This was an "other".), so it was a swift and disappointed bike ride back home with nothing to show for it. Sometime during this period Mrs. Dunce tried a couple of emergency plumbing services but with no success ("morning" was the best they could do). I was a little bit loopy by then and wasted a while tearing apart the old tap in the vain hope of finding a suitable washer there. Or maybe I could cut down a rubber washer from the old taps. Eventually I decided to replace the tattered old washers from the previous fittings, in the hope they'd be better than nothing.

And they were. Once I (re-re-re-)reassembled the taps and turned the water back on, the leak had slowed to a regular drip (about 1.5 drips/second most of the time). Good enough to place some pans and towels, clean up, and go to bed leaving the water on (one of the downstairs residents gets up before 6am, so the water needed to be on by then, although they generously offered to collect water in kettles for the morning if necessary). We got up many times in the night to check and/or empty the accumulated water (I should note that water leaks have already been a nighttime obsession for me, long before any of our plumbing problems started), but there were no real problems otherwise. well except that my back, shoulders, hands and forearms are ridiculously sore from my amateur plumbing efforts.

This morning things were relatively fine, though I had to hang around for the expert to arrive. He did fix the leaky problems in the pipes, but sadly an additional leak was revealed in the tap once the pipes and connections were repaired. Taps themselves are not covered under our service arrangements, so that remains unfixed at the moment. Fortunately the expert did us a real favor and installed a shutoff valve on the offending pipes, so that they can now be turned off without affecting the water elsewhere in our flat (or indeed, in the neighbors' flat). So we are currently dripless, but also without a working kitchen sink.

And it's only 24 hours to the housewarming party, with a mountain of things still to get done by then. What else could go wrong? It's not like it's Friday the 13th or something. Stop by and check out the carnage!

good neighbors!

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:58:57 GMT

This weekend saw really nice, springlike weather so we finally got around to cleaning up our shed and back garden a little bit. We also had big plans for the cat: after just over two weeks being cooped up inside, it was to be her first day allowed outside. So we opened the door and waited for her to follow us out. Instead, she just peeked out the back door, then immediately scrambled for safety under the recliner in the living room. Where she stayed for the next five hours or so. Poor kitty.

But that didn't stop us; we lounged around the back garden reading the paper, moving plant pots around, and planting some tomato & zucchini seeds (the previous owner left all sorts of gardening goodies including one of those little portable mini-greenhouses, so we figured we may as well put at least a few of them to good use). Also found a stack of 33rpm records in the shed, unfortunately suffering badly from the shed's missing window (now temporarily repaired). An assortment of classic works including some classical (Beethoven, Chopin), some musicals (Mikado, Oliver!), and quite a bit of folk and traditional songs. We arranged them to dry out; surely some of them can be salvaged.

While we were puttering about in the garden, we got chatting to a neighbor who lives a few doors down (but whose flat shares a wall with ours... explain that if you can!). He's a very nice guy, even invited us over to his place for a BBQ. Conversations with neighbors?! Quite different from our previous homes around London. Turns out he works in the building trades, and bought his flat three years ago for pennies (it was a derelict wreck). He's put thousands into it, and loads of work, and there's still plenty to be done (attic conversion, roof replacement, never mind front stairs and front rooms which are still totally unfinished). But the rooms he's completed (lounge, kitchen, bathroom) gave us all sorts of large-scale ideas we might be able to think about doing sometime in the future (way, way in the future, though). All in all, a very nice meeting-the-neighbors occasion.

And oh yeah, we did have a new hot-water heater installed on Saturday. They arrived bright and early to do the work, and blazed right through without taking a break or anything. Before noon they'd installed the new heater, carted the old one away, and cleaned up at least a little bit of their mess. Except, well, one of our towels was full of solder and filth, assorted icky bits of residue could be found various places, and worst of all they'd made a mess out of our bathroom wall. The old heater had a very large hole for the flue; the new one required only a small hole. So they had to patch the remaining gap, which they did very poorly. I think they just used a large chunk of something wider than the brick in the wall, because it protrudes into the bathroom (giving the wall a lovely bulge). And outside is equally foul; they just did an extremely slapdash job on the wall (quite consistent with the stereotype of the British builder, I'm sorry to say). I really started to regret going with a local company to do the work, but it appears we will get some satisfaction after all; they have pledged to make the job good at no further cost to us. I will, however, reserve judgement until this actually happens.

Ah! the perils of the landed gentry

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 17:25:00 GMT

Since we moved into the Dunce Arms, posts here have been few and far between. Things have been really busy at work, and there's no shortage of things to do at home. As I mentioned in my last post, we started off with some bold plans, but reality quickly intervened. Instead we've been focusing on doing things gradually, focusing on those things most necessary to quality of life (facilities for eating, bathing, lounging, laundry and sleeping, perhaps not in that order). We've finally reached a point where most of the boxes are unpacked, though many things have not yet found their ideal locations yet. And a few windows are covered now (a couple of blinds, one set of curtains and another set hung temporarily in the living room so that "they" can't see in so well. And we've moved a bunch of luggage up to the attic, and moved items of furniture to their (mostly) permanent homes. And the cat seems to have (mostly) calmed down about all the new smells, noises and general strangeness.

There are still quite a few things still to come, such as a new bed (arriving next week, until which time we will get by with the sofa bed). And we still need to find more curtains, and down the line there's some really nasty wallpaper and carpets in certain places that will need to go really soon. And the back door frame is doing very poorly and needs to be replaced at some point. But then on Friday we had our first real fun excitement as homeowners... the lovely 30-year-old water heater decided to give up the ghost. Well, not exactly giving up the ghost, it just started spewing water (or at least a fast drip). Turns out an old repair on an old heater had finally given way. Fortunately this is an "instant" heater using only gas and not electricity, so it wasn't like a huge water tank suddenly gave way, but a continuous drip is a bad, bad thing. Plumbers jerked me around all day on Friday; eventually (at the end of the day) they claimed someone had left a message earlier in the day saying that no one would be able to come to my area that day (of course this happened at the end of Friday, when presumably they hoped to get me on a weekend call-out). The drip was slow enough we went through the weekend with the bucket system, and today a plumber (from a different company) finally came round to check it out. His opinion was that it must be replaced, and soon. To the tune of £1600, but fortunately for us they can do it in a day, given a day's notice. Can we say OUCH? The cat cowered under the chair at the sound of that, and I would have too if there was room for me. So it looks like we're going to be spending a hefty sum in the next few days. Looks like those jewel-encrusted bicycle tires will have to wait another week or two.

Moved in!

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:11:17 GMT

Well, it's done now... the Dunces have moved into their new home. We collected the keys a week ago today, and made our first visit to the flat right away. I have to say it was quite disheartening at first: Mrs G. (the previous owner) had lived there for 30 years, and with all of her things removed the whole place looked run-down, dated, and icky. And it didn't help that Mrs G had quite clearly been a smoker for many of those 30 years; white surfaces were no longer anywhere close to white. So quite clearly the first step was to buy a big-ol load of paint (lots of white, plus all the other colors for basically every indoor surface), and all the necessary accessories.

The next day I spent the morning tearing down a nasty built-in wardrobe in the main bedroom (revealing some serious nicotine coloration behind it), but had to go to work in the afternoon, while Mrs. Dunce slaved all day painting. In the evening we headed over to the old house to continue packing and cleaning (we'd finished most of the packing already, but it's amazing to see how many "left-overs" there can be. And then it was another day of painting. I seem to remember that I'm a very bad painter, but perhaps I'm mis-remembering the ineptitude of my brother (The Thief) as my own. After all, it is he who was well known for repeatedly "accidentally" stepping in paint trays so as to be barred from painting. In any event we proceeded slowly but surely, putting a few coats of paint here and there (the whole kitchen and bedroom ceiling, if you're keeping score). Our ambitious plans had slipped substantially by this point; we were instead focusing on the most urgent areas that needed to be usable by the time we moved in (kitchen and living room [UK "lounge"], the latter also serving as a bedroom until we buy a bed). I mention this like it was a very minor point and straightforward decision, but actually this decision process was full of anguish and despair as we wondered whether we would be able to manage even a tiny fraction of what needed to be done.

The next morning I had to work again (but really shouldn't have bothered as it turned out there was nothing urgent requiring my attention), and after lunch I headed out and collected the rental van. Let me tell you it's quite an experience driving a large van through the streets of London, especially if it's emblazoned with the name of a rental company, and also heavily dented and scratched already (it was that way when I got it...). Other drivers are amazingly polite in just about every way you can imagine, probably because they fear for their lives. We had some bold plans for the van: driving it out into the far reaches of northwest London to charity furniture shops which a co-worker (who happens to live in the far reaches of northwest London) recommended as fantastic sources of inexpensive second-hand furniture. We got an early afternoon start, but little did we know the journey would be long and arduous. We reached the first shop (in Kenton) about 3:30, but unfortunately it had practically nothing interesting (aside from a couple of dressers, but we were fully dressered already). And then we zoomed out to Watford, beyond the pages of our A-Z, only to find a nasty surprise: most of the car parks were multi-story, without enough headroom for a tall van. As we looped around a very unpleasant road system, the clock just kept on ticking toward the 5:00 closing time. By the time we found a place we could possibly park (perhaps illegally), it was too late. Talk about frustration; there we were, hours from home, without anything to show for it but a bag of subcontinental treats we collected at a fantastic grocery store along the way. The only thing to do was... a full-on trip to IKEA in Wembley. Maybe not the best choice after five or so hours of intense city driving but it had to be done. We staggered through, ending up with part of a wardrobe (the other part, we hoped, to be obtained from our local IKEA). And various other assorted necessities (and a few not-so-necessities). We really wanted a table and chairs, but IKEA's offerings were undesirable for various reasons, but we really wanted a table and chairs, so what were we going to do? The answer was to sleep on it.

The next morning we got up, heading toward our local(ish) IKEA (the infamous Edmonton location no less) to buy the remaining parts of the wardrobe, and a crummy table and chairs that would make do until we found something better (or, possibly, until they fell apart). But on the way there, eagle-eyed Mrs Dunce spotted a small second-hand shop/house clearance company, which had all sorts of cast-off furniture stacked around. And it just so happened that some of that cast-off furniture was a nice dining room set (table + 6 chairs, all in very good condition). We headed to IKEA anyway, and let me tell you, it's a joy to shop there in the middle of the day during the week (unlike weekends which are dire, and evenings which are still quite busy). Then a big grocery run (taking advantage of the van) and then off to the old house for one more round of packing and cleaning.

Saturday was the day of the big move, and the biggest of the big move items was our brand new sofa-bed. Which we purchased back in the holiday season, under the assumption that we would indeed be in possession of the new flat well in time for the January 29 estimated delivery date. Which would have meant that professional sofa movers would be the people moving it up the stairs, through the narrow hallway and into our living room. Instead they moved it into the old house, so we had to move it ourselves. I'd been having nightmares for weeks about this, because it's really, really heavy. And just barely small enough to fit through doorways (never mind the curve at the top of the stairs). Fortunately we had some macho lifting power on hand, in the form of our friend MJ. With quite a lot of effort we managed to get the sofa into the van (along with other items of furniture which were like feathers in comparison). And with superhuman effort we managed to lift it up the stairs; MJ doing the hard work, lifting from underneath, and me lifting/guiding from above. Then carefully edging it through the door at the top of the stairs, then coaxing it through the narrow doorway into the living room, where it will remain until it's no longer usable.

We spent the rest of the day moving all the rest of our things, with the aid of the Landlord (now ex-), and the Lodger (now ex-). The last thing we moved was the cat: just grabbed her, popped her in the carrier, and took her to the new place just like that. The rest of the day we did a small amount of arranging things so that the living room was fully livable (including use as a bedroom, using the sofa-bed until we get a real bed for the bedroom), and the kitchen somewhat in order. Imagine our surprise when we opened the sofa-bed for the first time, and found a sheet containing simple instructions: REMOVING THE BED MECHANISM FROM THE SOFA IN SEVEN EASY STEPS. So our superhuman effort lifting the sofa-bed up the stairs could have been divided in two. I get the idiot-of-the-week award for that one. Anyway, the first night in the new place went fine, except for poor Zosi. She was very worried about the new house, carefully creeping around, sniffing everything, and starting or growling at every little strange noise. At some point in the night she started with a miserable crying/meowing sound and just wouldn't stop. Fortunately things have improved since then, as she's become more confident about the new flat, even finding nice places to perch and observe things.

Sunday wasn't a day of rest either, as it was the (ex-)Landlord's moving day. Fortunately he didn't have nearly as many things to move, and none were anywhere close to the sofa-bed (although a huge, huge carton completely full of books was not exactly easy to shift). And then we were able to retire to the new flat, loaded with aches and pains, and good for nothing except watching some of Keanu's finest work on TV (the Bill & Ted sequel whose name I'm just too tired to check on IMDB, and then Point Break). Oh yeah, one of the absolute necessities in the new flat is a shower. Mrs. G was apparently a bath-only person, and that just won't work for us. But the current taps and pipes look like they haven't been touched in years, and I'm deathly afraid of breaking something while trying to shut off the water to put in new taps. So for now we're making do with one of those shower heads that fits over the regular taps, and probably getting professional help. I've returned to work now, while Mrs Dunce is doing one more day of painting (bedroom walls).

There are so many things we still need to do; very high on the list being "post some photos". Patience, grasshopper; photos will come soon enough.