Leftover vinyl flooring, and what to do with it?

I *like* vinyl, in lots of ways, tho I loathe the smell that hangs around just after its been laid. Fortunately, after the last lot, I went on holiday :)

And now, I come back home to lots of bits of vinyl - some are really big, 3 metres by two, others tiny, a foot wide by three long. So, what to do? This is what I've thought of so far:

- put a big piece underneath a rug thats on the ground floor - it can act as extra insulation, and will hopefully feel quite luxurious underfoot.

- use at my computer desk as a floor protector. I haven't used one previously, and the flooring was literally about to wear through after a decade of intensive use, ballooning in a very unattractive manner, shall we say!

- I have an old table on the patio outside, which I'm planning to put on its side and transform into a turf bin - I'm slowly digging up the grass so I can extend my borders - I'm planting herbs at the moment - mint, creeping thyme, ordinary thyme and oregano are in at the moment. The table will keep the slowly-growing stack of turf clods off the wooden fence at the back, and I'm planning to nail squares of the spare vinyl between the side legs of the table to keep it all in place.

- not sure about this one, but I was thinking I could construct a dust cover for my mahoosive all-in-one printer/scanner/copier, rather than buying one in the shops.

- I really don't know about using it as a mulch in the garden, I don't think its appropriate - its not water permeable, for a start. Well, thats a finish, really, isn't it. If its not permeable, it can't really be used in the garden. And because its not bendy enough to bend around clods of earth, it would provide *lovely* cover for slugs and snails. Don't think I want to go there.

Any other ideas gratefully received!

Water butts and showers

I'm very excited :) I've ordered two water butts from Wilkinsons Online, complete with lid, tap and stand. A big one for the back of the house, a small one for the porch at the front - altogether the total is just over £50 including delivery. I've got to get them fitted yet, of course, but I'm very pleased at all that.

In the same order, I've also got a solar shower coming. I was having a long chat about experimenting with solar energy, basically because I'd wondered about how hot it gets upstairs in my house, and thinking I could just hang one of these camping showers in the window, then hey presto, a free shower :)

Well, when I was searching for water butts, I found one of the solar showers, also at Wilkinsons - their search engine isn't very good if it turns up "solar shower" when the search terms are "water butt", but I'll forgive them, because its coming along at the princely sum of £4.68 - even if it doesn't actually work here in the UK, I've had an interesting time talking about it with friends, and its a good experiment for the long term! Plus, when I live in Spain, in some future indeterminate time, it'll definitely come in handy by then :)

Blackberries

Oh my word. I got back from holiday yesterday, and I've been hard at work in the garden: making sure everything is watered, mourning the creeping mint that didn't survive my absence, clearing ivy and long grass, starting to clear space to get rid of two of my three rhodedendrons (in a tiny suburban garden!!!) so that I can plant my blueberries in the right soil ....

Well, earlier this evening, I took a walk around the rest of my domain (also known as the Council Recreation Ground). And I picked a handful of blackberries! I've never lived anywhere before that was so close to so many blackberry patches, so I've no idea if this is ridiculously early, but I know its *fairly* early....

I'm determined to make lots of blackberry jam this year (strained - I don't like the texture of blackberries, even whizzed) and these are now washed and in the fridge - I'll pick some more tomorrow and take a bag with me, as I'm on staycation, and can do anything I want :)

Cleaning the oven. Eggshells?

I've noticed how this blog is often more about having moved somewhere than about renovation and whatnot ... sorry about that! But this is what's actually going on, as opposed to whats meant to be.

I'm certainly not particularly houseproud, though I'd like to be, and I'm also often quite slow to do things - like, starting to cook again after moving. Which has meant I didn't realise quite how *filthy* the oven was. And I'll confess now, which I haven't before, that I was storing egg shells in there to dry, to put them out around plants. So not only is there filth, *old* filth, there's starting to be mould. And it all got a bit much over the last few days, with the heat - so, in spite of the kitchen having the living room emptied into it because of the new flooring I'm having fitted (more in a while ...) I have to have a spring clean of the oven.

Started the normal way, just doing the door for now - I soaked it in stardrops. No reaction. Started scraping the crap off with a spoon - very slow. Then I realised I had some wire wool somewhere :) result! The stuff just fell off, in some parts, it was on so thick.

I can start to see through the door again, and this is good! Though in the long term, I may have knackered the door, because I can see crud thats got in between the two panes of glass or whatever its made from, though realistically that may be very old.

The egg shells can come out today into the garden, no problem, because a friend just gave me some comfrey cuttings, and they've rooted but in the last few days their pots have been in an overgrown bit of the garden (ha!) and their leaves have been chomped by something. So I can actually use the egg shells for what I was saving them for :)

Forgot to say, I'm using the elbow grease now because a few years ago I used oven cleaner in my previous house - and I scared myself stupid with the warnings and the smell and the look of the chemical reaction that seemed to be taking place. My green credentials were under threat, thats for sure, but I'm certainly re-converted after that experience.

Insect screens are all over the place

I'm seeing them available for purchase everywhere now. Its a well known psychological effect, but really, its very odd.

Robert Dyas have full-door flyscreens for £13 or so - made of metal links, and some are like vertical blinds. Lakeland, of all people, do door curtains like this too - even Lakeland manage a door curtain for £36, including a very jazzy version of bamboo. So the money I was originally quoted for a window - £230 or so - means a horrendous amount of profit would have been made from me. 100% markup can be fair enough, but its starting to sound like 1,000%, though I know that small businesses can't have the bulk savings that big firms do.

Lakeland also do a kit - consisting of fibreglass mesh and "adhesive hook and loop tape" (erm, velcro, anyone? anyone?). The screen mesh is one metre by two metres, and the kit sells at £16.99; with an unknown amount of additional tape (velcro! its velcro!) being available at £4.99. Okay, the profit margin on this may "only" be in the region of 100% or so. Good grief.

The final product dear Lakeland do is a weird foldaway thing - it covers a door, and it looks like when its folded up it'd be the size of a nappy changing pad... again, it sticks to the door with velcro, not the hanging blind version, so its ventilation only - it'd be impossible to use the door as a door. Mental!

It would be hard to express how pleased I am I found the roll of screening at the princely sum of £2 a metre :)

Adventures in insect screening

Ha! Well, I've done one window, and I'm already using the screen every day, as that particular room needs a lot of ventilation, for reasons I won't go into here :)

The first step was sticking the velcro onto the window frame, around the area I wanted screened - that was horrendously easy, no measuring required, so I was a happy bunny about that.

The next step was to figure out where to cut the material, which was basically about measuring what I'd stuck onto the window, lol. Transferring those measurements to the roll of screening material was much more difficult for me - as with cutting anything to fit, you need to take care, and you need to make sure you're cutting in straight lines. Dreadfully obvious, I know, and I knew it before I started, but I *have* still ended up with quite a lot of wobbly lines. Happily, the excess that I factored in has taken care of this. It will also take care of the fraying, which is considerable - I haven't yet hemmed it, so I'll have to update again about how that goes, but its obvious that its essential.

To be fair, the screening was really easy to cut, and I used a normal pair of scissors - if you can cut material, you can cut this. To get the velcro stuck onto the screening at the right place, I did one side, and worked from there, no measuring at all, just judging by eye where it needed to go, and it really does the job.

So, whats the result? I do need to take pictures still, but realistically, it works AND it doesn't look great, and these are the recommendations I'd make:
- the velcro you use *must* be the same colour as the windowframe its stuck to, so it can disappear as much as possible.
- the insect screening has to be hemmed, bits of material and fraying edges are not attractive.
- even better if the whole thing is behind something else, curtains, blinds, voile or whatever.
- you need lots of velcro! I only bought two metres, because I was experimenting, but obviously you need enough to go round the whole perimeter of the area you want to screen.

One final interesting point, for me was about what velcro you can buy - different colours and different widths, sure, but also you can buy the smooth bit and the hooked bit separately: so my aim now would be to buy one half sticky, to stick onto the window frame, and the other half the non sticky stuff, that can be sewn onto materials. Because thats what the screening is, its not magical, its just very stiff material. Happily for me!

Insect screens

I've been checking these out ever since I went to Grand Designs in April (was it April? good heavens, I can't remember ...) Anyway, prices have varied between £165 and £230 for half an ordinary kitchen window to be flyscreened, which seems a huge amount of money.

And yet I was still willing to pay it, until I saw one close up, that a salesman brought to my house. The handles were naff, no other word for it - real 50s retro, in other word no style at all, because this thing was otherwise in a normal, sleek modern style. And the closure of a good part of the screen was done with a brush, the sort of brush that acts as a draught excluder. Seems a lot to pay for that. And some of the screens that are that price are clipon things, where you turn four little woggles, one at each corner, to hold it on. Some need to be built out, to take account of clearance for the window handles, all sorts of things that stop the screens being a smooth, beautiful thing of, um, beauty.

Then I was at a garden centre today and saw it, in a roll along with the netting for climbing plants and fleece for frost protection. Insect screening! Eureka! It was £1.99 per metre, and its about 60" wide. I know the figures should be transplanted, but no such luck. I bought 3 metres, totalling £5.97, and my little tape measure says that its 60" once the bound edges are cut off (tho there's a good bit of edging I'll be leaving on, thank you very much).

So, its a home made version, but I'll have it as soon as the end of this weekend, with none of the hassle of workmen and the smell of glue. Cost is as follows:
£5.97 3 metres of insect screening.
£4.80 2 metres white velcro for the white uPVC - this was a guess, I may need more.
£4.80 return fare to the garden centre, in the interests of not over-egging the pudding :)

Total: £15.57, for 3 windows. I'm very happy about that!