Hold Onto Your Seat!

When I got Prick-illa she had a problem with a snapped cable under her drivers seat which prevent it sliding forward to allow rear passenger entry.

Whilst Simon was here on his last visit he said he thought he may have one, as he is a senior technician with a large German car manufacturer (mentioning no names LOL).  We were quoted about £120.00 plus fitting from the dealership (totalling about £250.00ish) we were thrilled that he was happy to check his garage for us.

Bless him! He arrived in Cornwall for his latest visit, with cable dutifully packed in his case for us.

Paul took some fitting advise from him, and once the tide race was over, and we got home and he began pulling my precious little motor apart to repair her.

The seat was removed from the foot well, and placed on its side on his work bench, and he set to work removing the old cable and replacing it with the new one.

Bingo.  One beautifully sliding seat, doing the job it was supposed to do.

The best part is, it just cost me 18 scones, a very large tub of clotted cream and a jar of jam! Yummy goodness enjoyed by all!

Thanks so much Simon!

Jo Anne

Doors and Windows!

Forgive me, for forgetting to get a before picture, but I was side tracked, ordering Emily's flowers!

Sooooo: the old door came out after some pretty heavy duty banging and pulling on behalf of the window / door fitter. These had only been organise two weeks ago, and suddenly it was all happening, and we would soon have a watertight door.

Before long the framework had gone into place, and everything was screwed in

and it was just finishing strips to completed the door and make it all beautiful one more!

Then it was off upstairs to the bathroom - normally a very cold and draughty place as the seals on the previous window did not work!

out came the old one - leaving a pretty awful gap

and in went the new one. - Beautiful! Once the new sill was in place it made the bathroom a haven of warmth.

Great job, messy, but worth it. I want some of the others doing now that's the only problem! Think we need to save up and do them one at a time!

Treasured Memories

We arrived back at home yesterday by 11.30 am, and from then onwards the house proceeded to resemble a Chinese laundry with all of the washing I was managing to get done.

Today however, we had plans to finish the holiday off in style, with Sally-Ann and Mike, by meeting up at Treasure Park for one of their Sunday lunchtime carvery meals.

We had no idea what to expect as carvery meals are a new thing at Treasure Park, but we have to say it was a very enjoyable meal, and the company helped to make the last day of our holiday most enjoyable.

After the meal I went over to the main building and had the jeweller resize my wedding band, eternity ring and trio ring, and clean and polish them all along with my anniversary ring that Paul gave me for our 10th anniversary. It took half and hour and only cost me £30 for the 4 rings. I was thrilled, as it now meant I felt married again, not having been able to wear them for the last few weeks!

The day was finished off with all four of us on the beach with the two dogs for a walk.

What a week! Full of walking and 'events' and friends. It's a shame it all has to stop for work tomorrow!

Glam Lam!

I am so sick of not having enough money to do anything on the house, and always seem to be robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. Since I had my stints in hospital in January and February, our accounts have just taken ages to recover from 5 weeks of little or no salary coming into my account. Even with the sale of the static caravan, and the money that gave us, things seem to have taken their own sweet time to fall back into place.

And so, with the misery descending on me, I decided to see how much it would cost to re lay some new laminate in the living room.

The old stuff, that you can see in the picture above, was a really pale maple like effect, that the previous owners had laid (very badly) and it was chipped and scratched to within an inch of it's life. I could not take looking at it any more!

Having got a quote from a flooring company, that reached nearly £800, my general mood of dissatisfaction got worse.

It was at this point we remembered we had nearly 2 packs lefts of a deep chocolate brown laminate that we had used in the hallway when we first moved here.

I worked out we need to be able to cover about 25 square foot, and we had about 3 square foot already, if we used the same stuff. I went online to check if our local DIY store still did that make and colour...... Bingo, and they had a third off, for this weekend only. The really cheap packs now got even cheaper! We did not even need the foamy underlay, as we had some left from last time.

A quick trip down to HB (you know where it is if you think about it!) DIY store, and we got the 8 packs that we needed to be able to complete the job. And the cost you ask? (bearing in mind we had not got anything to pay for it) £100! it went onto the plastic, and was worth every penny of worrying about the bill. Look at the results....

It went down in about 11 hours, over the Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon, and all we need to do now is to refit the skirting board, which we managed to get off unscathed so that it can be re-used.

A relatively cheap do over of a room that had not had a thing done to it since we moved in three years ago.

A lick of paint, which we already have, and it will be a whole new room. Thank Gooodness!

My lovely hubby even agree's it was what we needed to cheer ourselves up and feel like we are still managing to achieve something towards finishing the house.

And Finally, Maybe, Possibly...

Friday afternoon bought with it the prospect of our final trip to our BAH to empty the very last of the bits ready for the sale.

The front steps on the porch were looking a little rusty and Paul wanted to take the angle grinder to them and re paint them with hammerite, thus giving them a more loved look for the new owners, when they decided to buy!

Off came the steps and Paul proceeded to remove any flaky paint with a sharp tool, before taking them up to the yard where he could make noise and not disturb the neighbours

meanwhile, it was a roasting 32 degrees and Fred and I were enjoying the sunshine.... I had worked hard this morning filling the car and trailer with crockery, cutlery, pots, pans, and pretty much all of the final important bits we could now use in the tourer

Paul was quite disappointed at how bad the metal on the steps had deteriorated, but cracked on with the clean up anyway

soon enough, they were all cleaned up and placed back on the van, looking very smart with their new coat of paint.

A grand job done well. Now it's time for a nice bit of grub at the local hostelry! Well I have packed the plates and cutlery!

I'm A Walking Disaster!

Whilst in Brum, we helped Mom to sort her laptop out and speed it up by transferring everything to an external hard drive - in doing so, I was a little clumsy with my own lap top and once again managed to damage it much to Paul's disgust with me!

I placed it onto the floor, and unwittingly allowed Fred to run across the keys in his excitement to get to a dentistix in my hand - the result was the breaking off of the D and E key pads, as you can see above!

Once we arrived home, Paul went onto You Tube to see if there was anything on there on how to fix them back on. It transpires that there were a few really helpful videos, and it could be fixed, but we would need the parts..... Ah Ha! what about the last lap top I destroyed says I - after all I never throw anything away LOL

and so, my little old Acer came out of hiding at the back of the cupboard, and some keys were popped off to see if the fixing underneath was the same as the one we needed - Bingo! They were the right ones.... Off came the first ....

and placed onto the current laptop keypad, still following the instruction on the screen from You Tube!

Once it was in place, it was a matter of hooking the key pad back on top and clicking it down into place....

then off came the next key from the old machine and the process was repeated again with the E key

It was very fiddly and there was just not enough light to see what we were doing, but it all just came together......

and Voila! a fully working keyboard again, all thanks to the wonders of the internet and a little lateral thinking in relation to the spare parts needed!

Well done Paul, and thanks for fixing my lifeline, LOL