Painting and Playing Detective
Aug 04, 2021 11:01 am
Hey friends,
Fair warning here, there's a topic on a sad matter but I'll ease you in...
🎨 Projects
The studio/office is now painted. I went for Farrow & Ball Hague Blue matched by Johnstones for a feature wall. It's the most adventurous wall colour I've ever chosen but I think it came out well and looks quite regal. The other three walls would probably have looked better with an off-white but I couldn't be bothered to cut in around the coving all the way round so stuck with brilliant white which I used on the ceiling too, with a 50:50 water:white paint mist coat on the bare plaster first.
It was a bit boring so my mind wandered to imagine a future where we can just hire a robot at low cost to paint perfectly straight cut-in lines with no mess. Then I realised that was silly because someone will surely invent walls that can change colour upon command. 🤔
Back to reality - Initially I had planned on keeping the carpet until we re-do the entire ground floor but I think it'll be okay having different flooring in this room so I'm going for oak-effect laminate. As a rule, I like carpet on stairs and upstairs as it's nice on the toes and deadens sound. Downstairs I prefer easy to clean hard flooring with a rug here and there for comfort.
As I'm changing the flooring I may as well take the opportunity to pull up the floor boards and insulate between the joists - probably wool to keep costs down vs PIR. I haven't run the numbers but I imagine the return on PIR from reduced heating bills would be low and take a long time to pay off, especially if you consider the opportunity cost of not investing that money instead. To get the floorboards up I'll probably need to take off the skirting which is a pain but on the upside means I won't need floor trims.
During another daydream I was thinking about how much of DIY is cleaning or tidying up after yourself. I'm going to keep this fact in the bank for when I'm next told I don't pitch in on the washing up enough.
It doesn't look like much but I've dug out about a foot and a half of soil around the stumps so that the land is level with the rest of the garden and will make it easier to get the stump grinder in. I've had a quote to hire a track-type for just under £400 for 2 days, so I think I'll ring around a bit more. I reckon I only need the smaller type.
Some buried treasure. I might sink it into the ground somewhere else and plant an arum lily. Judging by how well it grows next to my dad's stream, it seems to like having its feet wet. The soil is too free draining where we live for it to grow properly.
Finally, I've been clearing and tidying the back of the garden. I asked the tree surgeons to cut me a couple lengths from the laylandii trunks to finish off holding back the earth of the bed. Then I sorted out the various bricks and rubble left behind by the previous owners. You never know, it might come in handy, perhaps as hardcore. If not I'll surely be hiring a skip in future so can get rid then.
On that note, is anyone else getting charged for minor things at their local dump? I was charged £6.50 just to get rid of the old skirting from the bedroom. No wonder there seems to have been an uptick in fly tipping these last few years.
Anyway, if we ever have chickens or bees, this will be the spot for them.
Don't be fooled by the wide angle field of view, it's not as big as it looks but does feel bigger now the trees have gone.
In summary, everything's taking much longer than I think it will but that's one of the three truths of construction - it take longer, costs more money and is more hassle than you expect.
🕵️♂️ Playing Detective
I'm not one for sugarcoating so this one might bum you out. Feel free to skip.
Sad news, the cat hasn't returned. It's been a hard nine days since we saw him last. For the first week I spent two hours each night searching the woods for him, trying to catch his eyes in my head torch. It's quite unnerving being out there in the pitch black and I found that I had to get a hold of myself a few times to stop my mind running away from me. Fortunately, I have zero superstitious beliefs so the imagined dangers were restricted to the human realm.
It's a mystery what has happened to him and each scenario seems very unlikely:
Run over - We've never seen him in or near the road, nor has any remains been found.
Cat killer - They seem to like displaying their victims, so same as the above.
Stolen - He's only a tabby so not worth much, though I do think (ownership bias) that he's incredibly handsome. He doesn't go near people he doesn't know, as confirmed by our neighbours, so I can't imagine how anyone would catch him.
Stuck in a shed - Possible but we've asked everyone locally to check. Wouldn't it be cruelly ironic if he was stuck in a garden room inspired by my own videos?!
Taken in by someone - I know cats do this a lot but as above, he doesn't go into our neighbours' houses or near people.
Killed by dogs and evidence hidden - Maybe, but he went out late at night and usually returns to the garden when it gets light so there shouldn't be any dogs out when he was. He could have gone next door and got caught by those dogs but he is lightening fast when he needs to be and they've been supportive with the search.
Eaten by a red kite - There are loads around here and he's a small cat but still nearly three times the weight of a red kite and equipped with teeth and claws. This doesn't preclude another way of dying and a kite or buzzard finishing the job though. But surely there'd be some fur left?
He hates us and ran away - Well he had two years to do it so it's doubtful, plus he loves chin scratches.
Killed by a fox - This seems more likely. Unlike London there are very few foxes here but one had been screeching the few nights before he went missing. Since he won't have encountered one before he may have shown no fear and got caught out. My hope is that something like this happened, he escaped, ran and got lost so is out there somewhere. I take heart that he is adept at feeding himself in the wild and isn't wearing a collar so 1) won't get garrotted by a bush and 2) no bell so he can hunt silently.
So yeh, it's perplexing and at this stage, the not knowing is the hardest but I really miss him too. If anyone's inwardly thinking 'it's just a cat', I get that. I'd have probably thought something similar before we got him.
As a nation we're very pet obsessed, we treat them as part of the family, certainly we did with Arlo, and spend on them accordingly. If I did pick stocks, which I don't, I'd probably have a punt on something like PetsAtHome.
Anyway, I won't go on about it but if he returns home or we find out something I'll let you know.
Here's to Arlo, a truly great pet.
🎥 Time-lapse
I've not found anything good to watch recently so I've been re-watching Clarkson's Farm. Sure, Jez is amusing and farming's interesting but what really makes it great is in the edit which is what I paid attention to on second viewing. I noticed a lot of drone shots of fields and long-to-close focus of barley to nicely segue between scenes.
I live in a pretty part of the UK so I figured I might try to replicate that in future videos. I often go for walks with a neighbour where we chat on topics such as garden rooms, crypto and living the good life. On the last walkabout we stopped by a pub and over a pint I set up a time-lapse with a view over the fields where I caught some good cloud movement. Here's a still image of it:
📚 Reading
As I briefly mentioned in a previous newsletter I don't read much, to my shame. Well I do, but it's usually short form stuff as my millennial brain doesn't have the attention span for anything longer than a blog post. I blame YouTube and social media. *Shakes fist*.
Instead I've been re-reading some posts on Wait But Why, which has some brilliant articles on all matter of topics. My favourite is The Fermi Paradox which seeks to answer where on earth in the universe are all the aliens? It's been 13 billion years, shouldn't they be everywhere? A worthy read if you're into this stuff.
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