(no subject)
Unusually, I've had a weekend without SJA duties, so I've been lazing around the flat. I've cleared out a backlog of TV episodes from my Digibox, so I now have more space to fill up with new stuff - mind you, a few series have finished recently, so the need is less pressing. More specifically, I've been watching Smallville season 5 and Charmed season 8. I've mainly been watching these out of habit, which is why I've wound up with such a big backlog (about a dozen episodes of each), whereas I watch new episodes of House as soon as I get hold of them. Anyway, both series ended on a high note. Smallville went for their traditional cliffhanger, which is annoying, but an interesting premise. Charmed pulled out all the stops for their final ever episode, and did one of the best series finales I've seen in quite a while; maybe not to everyone's tastes, but it was definitely aimed at people who've been watching for a long time, so I think they did a good job for the target audience.
Aside from that, I've been doing some sorting out around the flat. It seems as if wooden floorboards attract a lot more dust than carpeted floors, but I assume that it's just more obvious; either way, it's now fairly clean. I've also finally got round to pulling down the packing tape that's been on the ceiling since my last decorating session (in November). Granted, it would have been better to use masking tape, but I didn't realise that there was a distinction between the two types at the time (they're both brown and sticky!), so live and learn... Anyway, most of that came off ok, and hopefully I can paint over the residue.
While I'm catching up on long overdue DIY (and taking advantage of now being under the maximum safe weight for my stepladder), I've also had another attempt to get the curtain rail up in my bedroom. Due to the recent heatwave I've been sleeping without a duvet, but I still get woken up at 8am when the sun comes in at the right angle to roast me, so I'm hoping that if I can block it then it will get a bit cooler. Failing that, I will at least be able to remove additional layers without turning my neighbours blind... The idea is to have three round wooden things that hold the pole, and I've got the middle one in. I drilled a pair of holes for each of the other two mountings a while back, but I couldn't make them deep enough for the brown plastic rawl plug things to go in. Also, one of the holes was rather wider than it ought to have been at the front. I thought that I was just being singularly inept at holding the drill steady, but it turned out to be that the drill bit was bent, so I've now replaced that, which has solved the problem. (I also went for a shorter one at the same diameter, in the hope that this makes it less likely to bend.) The DIY shop underneath me gave me a discount on the bit, which I was quite touched by ("For you, £1.50"). Anyway, I've now got one of the holes deep enough for the plug, and the second hole is almost there; once the battery for the cordless drill has recharged itself, I'll resume work on that. That will give me the second fixing, and then I can move onto the third. I've found that hammer drill mode is much more effective than normal drill mode after a certain depth (i.e. something actually happens); I'm not 100% certain about whether this drill bit is supposed to support it, but I can live with mangling the bit if it lasts for the duration of this project.
Aside from that, I've been doing some sorting out around the flat. It seems as if wooden floorboards attract a lot more dust than carpeted floors, but I assume that it's just more obvious; either way, it's now fairly clean. I've also finally got round to pulling down the packing tape that's been on the ceiling since my last decorating session (in November). Granted, it would have been better to use masking tape, but I didn't realise that there was a distinction between the two types at the time (they're both brown and sticky!), so live and learn... Anyway, most of that came off ok, and hopefully I can paint over the residue.
While I'm catching up on long overdue DIY (and taking advantage of now being under the maximum safe weight for my stepladder), I've also had another attempt to get the curtain rail up in my bedroom. Due to the recent heatwave I've been sleeping without a duvet, but I still get woken up at 8am when the sun comes in at the right angle to roast me, so I'm hoping that if I can block it then it will get a bit cooler. Failing that, I will at least be able to remove additional layers without turning my neighbours blind... The idea is to have three round wooden things that hold the pole, and I've got the middle one in. I drilled a pair of holes for each of the other two mountings a while back, but I couldn't make them deep enough for the brown plastic rawl plug things to go in. Also, one of the holes was rather wider than it ought to have been at the front. I thought that I was just being singularly inept at holding the drill steady, but it turned out to be that the drill bit was bent, so I've now replaced that, which has solved the problem. (I also went for a shorter one at the same diameter, in the hope that this makes it less likely to bend.) The DIY shop underneath me gave me a discount on the bit, which I was quite touched by ("For you, £1.50"). Anyway, I've now got one of the holes deep enough for the plug, and the second hole is almost there; once the battery for the cordless drill has recharged itself, I'll resume work on that. That will give me the second fixing, and then I can move onto the third. I've found that hammer drill mode is much more effective than normal drill mode after a certain depth (i.e. something actually happens); I'm not 100% certain about whether this drill bit is supposed to support it, but I can live with mangling the bit if it lasts for the duration of this project.