ONLY A NUMBER

What a weekend! Still buzzing from rocking my socks off to the Vengaboys at Victorious. And I mean buzzing. Five days on, my ears are fizzing like a sherbet dib-dab. That’s what happens when you stand too close to those enormous speaker stacks. You’d think after all these gigs that I’d know better especially now the TV volume is beginning to slowly creep up. Nah!

All aboard the Vengabus

The venga bus is coming, it would be rude not to get on it. Even though I’m a few years off from getting a biddy bus pass, I haven’t forgotten how to rave on. 

Age is only a number. And by next weekend, my knee/hip/butt will be telling me it’s a nine out of ten on the Pain-O-Meter. 

Up then down. Up then down. We like to PARRRRTAAY!!!

Scissor Sisters were also great

Summer is now officially over. Thank **ck. It’s rained (yay!). Cooler temperatures are hopefully on the horizon. Goodbye heatwave, hello tsunami. Happiest when I’m wearing my cagoule and not feeling like a roast-in-the-bag chicken without one. Finally, I can open the lounge curtains to look out at … clouds. And dead plants. Gardening is back on the agenda.

But before I ditch festival fripperies for garden fork, I’m devoting 15 minutes of my day to numbers because life’s all about maths. (And spreadsheets).

160 – the number of days since I left work to embark on my retirement odyssey. It’s been brilliant! I’ve not missed the drudgery of it all one iota or been back to see old colleagues because when you’re retired every day feels like a weekend.

56 – days to The Budget on 28 October. Horrible Healey’s replaced Rachel from Accounts. Will we see any relief from the tax burden foist upon us over the past few years or is it more of the same to come?

14 – days to the Bank of England’s next meeting to discuss interest rates, the BOE’s last knees up before The Budget. Andy Pandy had better hope they don’t decide to raise the base rate in anticipation of an inflationary spike. If they do, it’ll be a case of what comes soonest - Christmas or a recession?

114 – and that leads on nicely to number of shopping days before the big C. That is if you have any money left because the previous two points are going to deflate your financial headroom quicker than that inflatable unicorn you bought for the beach.

4.6 – kilos. When Bertie joined our household some years ago, he was a proper fat cat weighing in at a massive 10.1 kilos. Thanks to a diet of expensive cat kibble, his weight has reduced in direct correlation to my bank balance. Honestly, although I love my eggy-fart moggy there are times when I think it would be cheaper to turn him into catsu curry. Bertie! Why are you looking at me with kitty daggers?

2.45 – hours to my next visit to the Joint Pain Programme. This is like AA for the arthritic. Recommended by my physio as an alternative to medical intervention because let’s face it, the health service is going the same way as dentistry. ‘Motion is lotion’ utters our ‘rehab’ specialist as she drills a class full of octogenarians through an exercise routine designed around tortoises. I’m the youngest there. My pulse rate rarely gets higher than that of a cucumber and if the motion is ‘lotion’ then my aching joints are in desperate need of some WD40.

1 - week since I heeded the message from the clergy inviting me to pay homage to the Papa at his screening of '2 Big to Rig', the movie premiere of Ghost's world tour gig filmed in Mexico.  Awesome!  Gutted I missed getting tickets to see his Infernal Holiness in the flesh - busy holidaying in Munich at the time but watching this film more than made up for it.  

Ghost movie - amazing!

361 – days to next year’s Victorious Festival. Yep, the tickets are already on sale although headline acts haven’t even been booked because these days, music festivals are just glorified piss-ups with takeaways. If you’re lucky, you may even get to hear some decent bands. Or the Vengaboys.

The venga bus is coming. Waa Haay! Up then down. Up then down. 

We like to parrrrttaayy!!

BOOK LIBRARY - DOOR ASSEMBLY

Is it or isn’t it going to rain? I’m praying for a biblical deluge that will make my butts over-floweth so let’s hope the good Lord is listening to me and not plugged into some podcast on how best to manage an apocalypse.

Meanwhile, several counties away … a painted book box means we can now carry on with the next phases of this project – assembling the door then installing the little lending library in son’s front garden.

The gateway to literary opportunity begins with small hinges. Using very small screws, fit hinges onto the door frame into the previously identified positions. Don’t do like me and fit them back to front. Divvy! Work out which way round they go first then screw into place. Do not fit door to main body of the box at this stage.

Fix small hinges to one side of door frame

Next - lay your hinged doorframe flat so that the part going inside the box is face up then grab your sheet of Perspex. Position the Perspex across the frame leaving a small margin between the edge of the sheet and the edge of the frame. Use a bradawl tool to mark each of the pre-drilled bracket holes onto the wooden frame.

Position perspex sheet on frame

Mark position of holes with bradawl

With holes pricked out, lift the Perspex and carefully peel away the protective film away from the corners towards the middle of the sheet until it is completely removed. Do this on both sides taking care not to scratch any of the exposed surfaces. Lay the clear Perspex back onto the frame taking care to line up all the pricked-out screw holes.

Fit brackets on top of perspex

Fit metal corner brackets using short screws. You are sandwiching the Perspex to the wooden frame so two key things to bear in mind:

1) Ensure your screws are short enough so they won’t go through to the other side of the wooden frame.

2) Don’t tighten your screws too much as it may crack the Perspex.

Once you have all 4 corner brackets in place, then add the 2 x T shaped brackets to secure the Perspex to the central door strut.  You can now remove the rest of the protective film if you have not already done so.

A word here about stuff that’s obvious but often gets overlooked by the enthusiasm of cracking on. The more observant of you might be wondering why the door has no knob? This is not a deliberate design queue but an oversight on our part. Yeah, we simply forgot to drill the hole through the frame and Perspex beforehand. Top tip – never forget your knob!

When everything (knobs included) has been secured to the wooden door frame, attach frame to the main body of the box. This is a two-person job as one has to hold the frame up whilst the other person attaches the hinges.

Here’s what it should look like once it’s attached to the main book box.

Door successfully attached

BOOK LIBRARY - ROOF

Son’s kindly volunteered to take on the role of chief door frame painter, leaving us free to concentrate efforts on creating a roof for the main library structure.

The original idea was to make one like this

The original drawing used as a blueprint for our little lending library shows a peaked roof held up by two triangular panels. The roof overhangs the main body of the book box to prevent rainwater dripping down it and is covered by some kind of waterproof material. Hmmm - how can we re-create something similar?

Firstly – we need to make the two triangular panels that will form the main support for the roof. Here’s how to do this:

Start by cutting two rectangles out of OSB or whatever material you are going to use for your roof structure. The rectangles should be the same width as your underlying book box.

The plan is to make 2 of these

Draw a pencil line on the OSB to mark the centre of the rectangle’s length. On each side edge, mark a point that is approx. 7 cms from the bottom. Join the mid-point mark to the side mark (see sketch) to determine your cutting line for the apex of the triangle.

Cut away the bits either side of your dotted line. Repeat for the second panel.

Cutting out your triangular shape 

Use chunky timber battens to cut smaller lengths for the sides of the roof structure.

Wood battens for sides

Your triangular panels are screwed onto these battens from the front. I’ve used one batten for each side and one in the middle for extra support. Use clamps to keep everything together as you work.

Making a roof truss

Clamps to hold it all together

The finished dimensions of the whole piece should be the same as the top of the underlying book box, nothing should overhang at this stage. I’ve left a small indent front and back to accommodate an identical panel made of white UPVC that will cover the OSB for additional waterproofing.

Truss should fit neatly on top of box

Permanently fix this triangular truss to the top of the main book box using long thin wood screws drilled in from the inside of the box. Countersink all the screw heads so nothing sticks out. Doesn’t look pretty but once painted they won’t really be visible from the outside.

Attach roof truss to top of box 

With the truss firmly fitted, time to make roof panels. Again, I’ve used OSB for this as I’m intending to cover the panels with some of the rubber roofing material leftover from our dormer refurbishment. You could also use felt or just paint them then coat in yacht varnish to waterproof.

Making the roof panels

Cut two OSB rectangles to sit on top of each side of the truss but this time each panel must be larger than the truss so that it creates an overhang on all sides.

Angle one side of the panel to create a mitred joint

As both bits of OSB need to join at the apex, cut an angle on one side to create a mitred joint.

Screw roof panel to truss

Make a tight joint at the apex

Secure each roofing panel to the truss using long thin wood screws. Again, countersink all the screw heads so nothing sticks out. Make sure your central mitred joint is nice and tight.

Roof attached

You should now have a book box with a nice overhanging roof ready to prime and cover with appropriate waterproof material of your choice. Here’s ours with its new rubber roof.

All primed up

Rubber roof stuck on

Now excuse me whilst I go off for a nice little drive to Somerset to drop off the finished book box to son who is waiting, paint brush in hand to spruce it up in a nice shade of rustic green.

BOOK LIBRARY DOOR PREP

Flip a coin. Heads or tails? Ah, tails it is - looks like we’re making the door for our little lending library book box first.

Materials needed for this part of the project are as follows:

• 2 x 2.4 metre lengths of par timber approx. 4.5 cm wide x 1.8 cm deep
• 1 x sheet of 2 mm thick clear Perspex
• 4 x 50mm angle plates for door corners
• 2 x 75mm tee plates for central door support
• 3 x small flush hinges
• 1 x door knob
• 1 x door hook clasp

Metal plates for extra bracing on the frame

Flush hinges and door clasp

Begin by making a mitred frame that fits on top of the box front.

Cut mitred pieces of timber to make a door frame

Glue the frame together at each corner.

Glue your frame together at each mitred corner

Add a wooden strut to the middle of the frame for extra support.

Adding extra support to the middle of the frame

On the inner side of the door frame, position your hinges along the left-hand edge of the frame to correspond with fixing position along the rim of the box. Don’t worry too much at this stage about fully fitting the hinge into place as this can’t really be done until the door frame has been painted.

Add hinges

A word here about hinges. Disclaimer - Being DIYers and not carpenters then it’s a job to know what type of hinge you should be using for this kind of thing or how best to fit them. If you know of a better/proper way of doing this bit then great but for us, this part is trial and error.

Put plastic on frame to work out sizing

With your hinges in place, lay your sheet of Perspex down on top of your frame to work out sizing. I bought my clear Perspex from an Ebay seller who specialized in cutting it down to size. However, as I didn’t have exact sizes at the time then there’s a small bit to lop off on one side.

Cutting the plastic

Two millimetre thickness doesn’t sound like much but when it comes to cutting plastic it can be a big deal especially if you don’t have specialist cutting tools and as always, there are a million and one ways to cut Perspex according to the internet.

We tried scoring it with a sharp knife. (Who is Stanley and why did he invent a knife?) Using brute force and ignorance, scoring barely touched the sides. But it did leave a nice line clearly marked out on which to try something else.

A small fine-toothed hack-saw, our next tool of choice, did little other than splinter some of the edging. Pants!

Having almost given up the ghost, the other half dug into his box of power tool tricks and brought out a Dremel multi-tool. Using a small rotary blade to slice through the plastic, slowly but surely, finally the bugger was cut down to size.

With your plastic sheet cut to fit inside the wooden door frame, place your angle and tee plates on top and mark out their fixing positions using a sharp pencil. Mark the location of screw holes as these will need to be drilled first before fitting.

Mark out screw holes for drilling

Drilling into plastic is less of a headache than cutting it and can be easily achieved with a small drill bit. Drilling or cutting plastic can leave a hard residue/ridge around each cut likely due to the plastic ‘fusing’ from friction. This can be easily chipped off with a long finger nail.

Clean off plastic ridges around holes

Right.  I think that covers all the fiddly parts. Before anything else can be done, the door frame needs to be primed and painted so I’ll return to door assembly later on after I’ve tarted up my frame.