Hey friends,

Nothing too in depth this week. I've not had much time for writing as we travelled down to Dorset over the weekend to introduce grandson to grandad.

One of my favourite pastimes is messing about in the chalk stream at the end of his garden. Where once the wide and shallow stream would become blocked with debris and weed, over the years I've built up the banks with rocks to narrow and deepen it and to stop erosion of the banks. It's held up well:

Before:

After:

Besides seeing my dad for the first time in ages, it was also good to see Matilda the chicken whom you may remember from Part 1 of the GRW series. All the others were taken by the overabundant urban foxes so I retired her as the sole survivor to the Dorset countryside. She seems very happy and continues to lay at the grand age of 7, but didn't seem to remember me at all. I think we'll stick with the cat for now, though I do fancy keeping bees at some point.

⚒️ Tools, Again

Behold!

It's terribly exciting. After you fine folk recommended them so highly I did the sums of purchasing separately vs as a kit and while it wasn't a huge difference, the kit came out the winner. I bought from FFX in the end and found a 7% discount code from The Sun: EXC276 (lasts till end of June I think) which knocked off £80 or so.

Now I have 9 Dewalt tools (+ the laser level - takes AAs) and 5 x 5Ah batteries so I'm set. No doubt I'll treat them like any new thing: cleaning them after use, storing them nicely and calling them my precious and then in a year or two become a bit lax - why do we do that?

So is this a case of buy cheap, buy twice? I don't think so. My cheap tools taught me which ones I use regularly (jig/circular saw and impact driver) and which I don't (router, band and table saw) so if I'd gone high end on the latter, it might have been money wasted, so no regrets. So whatever tools you decide on, there's no right or wrong. I'm also pretty happy with corded tools for those I don't use often or move around a lot such as my mighty concrete breaker.

If we take brands and power (torque etc) out of the equation it goes:

Corded > Brushed cordless 18V > Brushless cordless 18V > 54V Flexvolt (Dewalt ecosystem).

I've jumped two levels here and very much doubt I'll ever need to go to the next but I reckon that will become the standard in a few years. Luckily the 54V batteries are backwards compatible with mine.

In conclusion, that's one niggle dealt with and should speed up my DIY considerably. The other frustration is that I can never find what I'm looking for so that's what my second garden room build is about - finally I'll have a workshop with all my tools displayed on the wall (I'll have to look at our home insurance for outbuildings again). With the extension on the cards it will be a different build to my last, with the focus on cheap and fast. Current thinking is around 7m x 3.5m so quite a high perimeter to area ratio - bad for heat loss but good for wall space!

🥾 Footwear

I get a bit of flack in the comments of my videos for wearing flip-flops while doing various DIY jobs. And rightly so, I'm probably not setting a good example for safety.

I can't defend wearing them but I do wonder if people are picturing me clomping about ungainly as if on the beach. If so, that's not quite the case. I used to be like that with flip-flops but after spending 6 months in my mid-20s living in the Philippines wearing them everyday, climbing up mountains and whatnot, I've become quite adept at moving about in them.

So while I've had laced work boots for a while, the beauty of flip-flops is when I'm going in and out of the house, instead of having to untie laces each time to prevent traipsing in mud, I can just slip them on and off.

Long story short, for the best of both worlds I now wear these:

Safe, slip-on and recommended 👍

👷 Project - Bedroom Downlights

If you're anything like me, electrics can be a bit baffling and a little scary so here's a run down of how I'm doing this:

First, I switched off the electrics at the consumer unit, took apart the existing pendant light, pulled the cable up into the attic and re-wired before turning the electrics back on (yes, this means the light switch in the bedroom turns on a light in the attic).

With that done, the plasterer could smooth over the entire ceiling.

Today I've been taking up the chipboard and insulation in the attic above the bedroom to be able to run the cables from the pendant cable to 4 downlights, being careful not to put a foot through the nicely painted ceiling.

Back in the bedroom I marked the desired locations for the downlights and checked with a magnet that they weren't below or near joists (the magnet finds the screws in the plasterboard and therefore the joist locations, though you could use a stud-finder).

Tomorrow evening, I'll use a hole saw to cut the holes, push the downlights up flush with the ceiling and wire them all up from above. I'm leaving this to my mate Steve who went on an electrician's course (just for the hell of it - legend) but hope to learn from him and explain it in more detail when it comes to the next bedroom.

A couple of oversights:

• I'd intended on using dimmable LEDs but the light switches required for these need a 25mm+ back-box and the existing one is only 16mm. I don't fancy having a spacer frame which would make the switch look chunky and at this stage can't be bothered to hack out more brick to replace with a 25mm back-box. If it bothers us, I can always replace the standard GU10s with dimmable ones and put in a dimmer switch at a later date or maybe just go with smart bulbs that can dim on command. I'm very slowly getting into this home automation stuff.
• I'll need to put the insulation back over the cabling afterwards and in my electrics video I made a thing of current carrying capacity being an issue. The easy way around this is to go for a larger cable which I don't think I mentioned in that vid.

On the insulation, we have no plans to extend into the attic so having the insulation where it is currently makes sense, rather than between/under the rafters, but it could probably do with being quite a lot thicker so I may look into that before putting back the chipboard - loft flooring legs required me thinks. Perhaps if I do it bit by bit as I put in the lights on the first floor of the house it won't be such an arduous job.

So I think downlights will really finish the room off well and make the ceiling feel higher compared with having a central pendant. Plus you can always tell a room has been renovated when you see downlights. I did have some reservations about lying in bed with spotlights shining down at us but reckon we'll use bedside lamps a lot of the time. Can't wait to be in!

👋

So between the road trip and momentous football game this was a bit of a lighter one. I intend to get back into video editing mode this week but have in mind a beginners', but complete, guide to investing in the stock market as a future newsletter topic. Let me know if that's something that would interest you - otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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