mybigadventures.com

Half term has arrived at last, as always it seems to have been a busy one at school, so the break it a nice change of pace. By a change of pace I actually mean we've taken on a big project that will keep us busier than ever tackling our upstairs spare bedroom. We decided a few weeks ago that we wanted to have a bit of a change around, and decorate, but in order to make the most of the room, we needed a bit more storage. We settled on some cupboards to run along the wall under the eave and had already made a start on creating the shells by the time we broke up today.

Last weekend we bought the wood needed to make the shells, MDF for the sides and some timber to brace across. We had the MDF cut to size at B&Q, but still needed to cut out for the angle and the skirting board. We made a template out of cardboard to speed things up and keep all the cuts consistent and then got started with the jigsaw. Over the course of the last week we got all of the pieces cut ready to put them together tonight.

After a nice tea, we got started and before the evening was out we had 4 cupboard shells ready to roll. A great start to the break, but a long way to go! 

This week was half term and unlike previous years we hadn't made any plans to go for a short city break. Our tenants at the house had given us notice so we had decided to have a look at the house in Leeds and get some estate agents around to value it for a possible sale. We managed to fit quite a lot in on Monday, getting three agents around and doing some gardening whilst there. So the short story is, we've decided to sell. Just a few bits to sort out and and then it'll be hitting the market.

In other news, I've added a few new albums to the site. We've been out to a couple of places over the last month, visiting Ham House and Hampton Court Palace. Both trips were pretty grey days in terms of the weather with plenty of cloud cover but thankfully the rain held off.

We visited Ham House on a weekend in the middle of January. It is National Trust so the cards came in handy for free entry. We spent a couple of hours in the gardens but didn't get into the main house as there were only limited tours and we didn't fancy waiting an extra hour at the end of the day - maybe next time. The gardens were nice although obviously not a huge amount to see for the time of year. The sun was warm when it came out from behind the clouds but it was otherwise quite a cold day. 

We managed to get half price tickets for Hampton Court Palace at the beginning of February costing £8.25 each instead of the usual £16. It was quite a cold day when we visited, so we stuck to the state rooms and other parts of the house's interior. It is quite a vast estate and the signs didn't seem to be the most helpul in getting you from place to place. We did have a free audio tour and I suspect if we had followed it more closely, navigation around might have been a little less haphazard. We had lunch at the cafe and stayed until about 4.30pm when everything was starting to pack up. The wind had picked up quite a bit by this point and had blown a few of the trees outside the orangery over. The gardens looked nice from inside and I think it will be well worth a visit another (warmer) time.

This week after sorting the house out, we had a day out and about around the capital so I've added a few more of the usual sites, Tower Bridge etc, into a new album.

We were there until dark but some of the lights on Tower Bridge didn't seem to be working. London Bridge was lit up in bright orange though which I don't think we've seen before. I think I'll leave it there for now. Cheerio ta ta!

There were two main jobs to complete today. First we needed to get the extra wood for the shelf back panel, cut and fit it, and secondly we needed to get some paint. We ended up buying another full sheet of MDF and geting some shelves cut, as the size of the piece needed for the back panel required the bigger sheet. Whilst there we had a look at the paint colours as they are in the middle of a 3 for 2 offer. We saw a Farrow and Ball paint colour, "Pigeon" on the colour chart that we quite liked, but B&Q didn't have it in stock, so we ended up coming away with nothing more than a couple of colour charts. On the way back we also picked up shelf supports from Screwfix for our new shelves.

Back at home we decided to make a trip over to Homebase as they tend to have a larger stock of the Farrow and Ball range. Sadly they didn't have any tins eiither, we did ask about ordering it in, but it was going to take 14 days, so the assistant suggested looking online. Back at home again we found we could order the paint from B&Q with the 3for2 offer and get free next day delivery - winniner! With the paint ordered, we made a start on our other job, cutting the back panel. This ended up being a massive faff, with a height difference of more than 10cm from left to right, this was in addition to cutting the angle away from the back. It took a long time but we were really pleased with the final result. We added wooden blocks to the rear or the backpanel and then secured it in place screwing through the underside of the shelf from inside the cabinet into the blocks. Finally we added decorators caulk along the edge where the MDF met the underside of the eave, and the job was complete.