Last night I laboured in the house for a couple of hours. I think that two or so hours is about the right amount of time to dedicate to general-purpose DIY in a given evening. If there is a specific task that takes longer, then it can be laboured at indefinitely. However, if I'm doing a series of bitty tasks, then two hours is a reasonable attention span. As a result of yesterday's labourings, I achieved the following:

• Bagging the remainder of the rubble from the bathroom (some of which I chipped away from the walls freshly)
• Raising some floorboards to expose pipes and cabling - accidentally exposing some rotten floorboards that will have to be replaced
• Installing the hall light for the downstairs hall ceiling
• Applying plaster-patching to the remaining holes in the downstairs rooms, and repatching some bits that I'd not managed to patch properly the last time
• Having a general-purpose sweep up around the place

Not bad for a couple of hours. Most notably, though, I made another schoolboy error. I failed to check how complicated the wiring was for the downstairs hall light. I assumed it would be another 12 wire job, in need of a junction box. It proved to be drastically simpler than that - 3 wires. No need to raise floorboards at all. However, the upshot of raising all of those floorboards was that I discovered some rot. I have sections of floor that need rebuilding anyway in the bathroom, and it won't harm the work of the heating people if there are some boards already up when they arrive.

There's not going to be an awfully large amount of time available for house things before the heating people come. Then, in the following week - their first week in the house - there's probably not going to be a great deal of time either. As a result of this, I need to focus on making the place as habitable as possible, in the occasional times I get to dabble with DIY in it, as I have my family coming round to have a look in a couple of weekends' time. Though they won't judge me badly if it's a mess (given that it's not going to be down to bad housekeeping), it would be nice if the place were at least slightly habitable, so we're not forced to keep our coats on and then adjourn elsewhere to spend time together. We'll see. It will go at its own pace.

I must, in fact, empty my car of crap and go to B&Q and buy my bathroom fittings. I know what I want. That's quite an important task to do. I don't know where I'm going to store the fittings, though. I have a few ideas. In fact, I even have a shopping list I wrote when I was writing a verbose letter to the person who's doing the work.

Labels: DIY