h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sounds like something from Star Trek...

House trek.. Our give year mission, to seek out new paint, new wallpaper styles, and to boldly vacuum where no vacuum cleaner has cleaned before..

The same thing might happen around here one day...
(You've seen the hallway, but I still haven't done the bottom two steps...)

Regards,
Jim
Linux Bigot

I need 5 years just to cover up the mistakes I'll make! You should have seen my first attempt at gloss painting

The living room only requires something special for the central light fitting , possibly a new carpet and a bit of varnish on the woodwork and the major decorating will be done. After that its just a case of filling up the nicely painted, but pretty bare walls. Got lots of pictures and stuff, just no frames because they are so expensive.

Star Trek the Emulsion Picture? Star Trek, the Wrath of Crown? Its a thought but the last thing you want is to get me going along these lines, remember VAXBusters! I may even do a sequel one of these days, its just a shame no one uses the darned things any more, most people wouldn't understand the references without a glossary.

Or, in a more up to date vein, maybe 'Episode I, the Painting Menace'. I'll be seeing it tonight, I wonder if its got potential in this area.

Martin
Amigaphile!

Well, one year of the 5 year plan is up, I know this because I had a letter recently from my mortgage provider thanking me for my business, oh and by the way, have a 0.1% interest rate rise. Oh well, not too bad compared the jumps experienced by some friends, and I'm sure the local council will put in an inflation busting council tax rise as usual to make up for it.

Back to the plan. Its slipped. Hardly supprising, must be something to do with working in software. The living room is done barring minor tweaks if I come up with ideas for extra storage, especially of video tapes and photo albums. The only thing missing is a nice big TV (widescreen if possible) and some of the walls are a bit plain (but I can live with that).

Got myself a cam-corder, maybe I'll begin documenting this for a laugh, though I will post it on my own web site at http://www.free0033124.free4all.co.uk/, and not here. However, as my video grabber is on the Amiga, I will need to get it repaired ASAP to do this.

The cunning plan this year is replacement windows throughout and to make a start on my bedroom which has pink florally wallpaper and not enough useful wardrobe space or mains sockets. A bit of a rerouting of the electrics is called for, but I'd better get the window sorted out first as that is most likely to make a mess of any other DIY efforts - assuming I do DIY this and don't pay someone to do the job. Actually, I expect I will pay for someone else to do the Windows, but I am not too sure about the wardrobes.

Time to go window shopping

Pink floral wallpaper?

It's got to be better than the pink wallpaper in my back room with the 'Snatch the dog & friends' freize all around the walls. One day I'll get around to redecorating.

I gather, from the length of this post, that you have either been extremely lucky, or you have figured out how to get Nyetscape to work with h2g2 on your linux box without segfaulting and doing nasty things to XF86?

Jim
(Posting from Netscape, running atop XF86_Mach64 3.3.3.1 pl0)

Jim,

Pure luck. The use of these textboxes appears to increase the chances of a Netscape 4.71 crash, but I had the thing keel over yesterday with exactly the same symptoms, and I was not using a text box in Netscape, just simply browsing the web. Still, better that than the continual crashing that was version 4.51. I will check out version 5 at some point.

I'm still busy painting the ceiling, walls, and on occasion, the carpet. I can see why the previous owner papered over the walls, the plaster looks like the surface of the Moon and there are what appear to be several long-dead mould patches near the Window at floor level.

Maybe I'll get some fungicide, just in case. I am allergic to its spores, indeed I think it was this organism that triggered it in me in the first place.

Oh well, at least there has been no sign of that mouse this year.

Martin

Mouse?

I'm trying not to think of mice.

It says in the manual, an experienced BS2000 operative should be able to process 400 bets a day. On Grand National day I put 1800 bets through the system. About 1500 bets into that, I developed an acute RSI in my right LMB finger, and had to move to the middle finger to get the rest of the bets in. This is why I want Ladbrokes BS2000 eng's to move to using the keyboard.

I had a live mouse here once, it appeared in the bath after I opened the loft hatch. No sign of others, I assume it was lost. A small pygmy grey mouse, about 1.5" round. Caught it in a pint glass and dropped it into nextdoor's garden.

When you've finished painting your carpet, my back room carpet is only partially painted (after mum dropped a can of gloss on it) so you could come around a finish the job if you like...

Jim

Progress with the 5 year plan. Zenith Windows are comming to fit new fascias, soffits and guttering. The first major/expensive bit of work I have had done to the place.
I had my first solo experience of wallpapering a few weekends back. I understand the theory well enough, having watched and helped my Mother innumerable times as a child (mainly because tea/dinner would not be served until it was finished, so to prevent starvation, I had no choice but to either help or learn how to cook. I opted to help with the decortating) but unfortunately used biro to mark the vertical lines on the wall against which I line up the paper.
The theory was that biro is waterproof, so it won't run. There must be something in wallpaper paste that makes biro run, because there is distinctive blue smudging down two of the otherwise pretty well done seams. Shame that, otherwise I think it looks OK.
I can't be bothered to fix this yet, I may stip the paper off and try again. I may buy some of those mega-expensive mini-strips of paper and cover the seams with them, or I may try painting something on there with some stencils that I am going to use somewhere one day.
The rest of the paintwork appears to be going well - though I may replace all my houses exterior woodwork with UPVC one day, as well as the kitchen units - so its all temporary.
I did make a fake stone floor for the hallway with the old linoleum and several paint spray cans of stone effect textured paint. It looks nice, but whether the thing will actually last. I think I will apply a few layers of varnish to try to protect it.
The painting made its way to the stair banisters - which were a rather ghastly light grey. Now they're turning a jade colour with that wood grain effect to match the doors.
Anyhow, with most of the wall work done, and only the ceiling and some of the woodwork left, it'll soon be time to tackle the downstairs carpets - those bits that you can still see through the paint spillages and maybe redo the kitchen worktops - which I really should have done last in hindsight.
So there you have it. Not as much progress as I'd like, still I have three excuses. The garden, the WWW/this Linux PC and my salary.

Today I thought I was going to get my new UPVC fascias/soffits. No such luck, GAGH!!!! Asbestos. Nice of them to inform me on the day rather than last week when they should have.

Who'd have thought it (given it was built in 1971), my house has fascias/soffits made from asbestos. Probably explains why the place is so warm in the winter!!!!

Thankfully, this has only delayed the fitting of the new fascias/soffits/guttering by 2 days (touch wood - or maybe asbestos). There would have been no delay, but there was apparently some fire/emergency that occupied the firm contracted to remove the asbestos last week, so they didn't do it which is why I didn't know about it until today.

Thankfully the stuff that is there is not flaking (though the paint on it is in a very sorry condition), and the contractors are comming round to remove it. Alas, the boards of asbestos that are there do not align with the property boundaries so I do not know quite how they plan to tackle the problem tomorrow.

Wonder if I can taker legal action against the surveyors who checked this property, of all the things they should have spotted, asbestos must be up there at the top of the list.

Trouble is, if my house is like this, then chances are so is most of the rest of the street/estate/village as large parts of it were built at that time. It would not supprise me to find out that the water tank/pipes in the attic are asbestos coated.

Wonder what sort of reaction I'll get from the neighbours when I let them know. Both of them have stated they wish to do something about their fascias/soffits/guttering, and if they just go and DIY rip it out themselves, it could be a problem. One of them is very likely to tackle this kind of job as a DIY project.

Anyhow, I hope that in years to come they don't discover something about UPVC that causes a similar ammount of problems as asbestos does now!

Fascinating Martin,

I'm just about to give the contract for double glazing to a company in Waterlooville.

(As you may have seen last week, my front windows are looking rather sorry).

I'll let you know if there's anywhere they can install asbestos for you...

Jim