Waiting on the postman

We were lucky, we now have water to the village, but still no real rain.  I suspect that is the same for most of us in the UK at the moment.

What I don’t have yet are some of the items needed to be able to trot on with the present mini tasks.  But it’s getting there, that is the project and hopefully also the parcels of goodies.

The water tank and plumbing

So far I’ve sort of plumbed the tank with short pieces of copper wire and various beads painted appropriately.

I’ve made the tank platform which looks more like an upturned orange crate than anything else.

The two together but not pushed the ends of ‘piping’ into the walls yet. The extra upright pipe on the left back is the pressure release pipe from the hot water cylinder.

Over done the detail a bit, do you reckon?  Most certainly made siting it in place a contortionist’s delight 😀

The rest of the space and where it is

Must be late autumn as someone seems to have stowed away some Christmas gifts along side last year’s paper chains.

Paint stains and storage tins along with discarded pieces of this and that. Needs one or two rolled up rugs, perhaps and the odd non-working lamp.

This is where it is in relation to the last attic hoard.

and where it is in relation to the rest of the main piece of house/cake.

Either the house inhabitants are big water users or the tank looks over-sized because we don’t usually view one at the same time as beds, chairs and other the other bits of life’s furniture and dressings.

As you can see, this storage space is at the top of one of the inner faces from where the slice has been removed.  On the left we can just about make out the girl’s bedroom and the beginning of the entrance hallway below it.

Tomorrow, with luck, the water effect may arrive, then, once that’s set enough, the tank can finally be wrestled into place.

Advertisements

Time to install the water tank

Third, and last, attic space

We’ve just had a little rain here ‘up north’, not enough but thankfully not too much.  I understand from the general weather forecast that the south and west in the UK is about to have a deluge; not good.

A dry tale
plans for a water tank, but no water

Over the last day and a half most of the village has had no water supply and here I am, set on doing my next mini task of building the water tank!  Unfortunately the river is so low I don’t think I could have scooped up a bucket or two for the essentials.

I’d been putting off this min-ing job as there was so many other things needing attention and had allocated today to get at it as it were – I am such a sucker for a timetable.

It’s an unfortunate coincidence that the water had ceased to run here just as I was determined to at last give the tank building a go.  Stupidly refusing to be totally deterred, I’ve ended up being wasteful of baby wipes instead of water using them to clean my hands and have been reusing brushes and everything else whenever possible.  At the end I stood the brushes and bits of sponge in approximately half an egg cup of the water that we had been hoarding over the last 24 hours or so from the hot water cistern .

Where is this third space?

It’s directly above the boys’ bedroom.

This dark photo is a shot through the doorway of the ‘wireless’ and storage workroom attic into this new space.

The space itself without a roof on so that we can look down on it, that door opens into this attic.

A not very successful attempt to get a shot through the doorway back onto the other two bits of attic.

The door we’re looking through, its wall and bit of floor are attached to the slice of house and the bits of other attic we can just about make out are the wireless room and bit of its ceiling and the very edge of the space that houses the stirrup pump and broken jack-in-the-box.

Tank and room

I’ve gone for a galvanised and riveted tank something like this image from a reclamation site.

I’ve cut out some of the flooring to let in a tank platform framework directly on to the floor joists

First I’ve got to make a tank. Using the 3 mm grey card and some multi grey wallpaper.

I adjusted some of the card sizes, glued them together and have now added a false bottom as I fancy putting in a water effect

Back to the room itself. What I take to be a gas light, which the house wouldn’t have, but here it is. I’ve darkened the white body and added yellow to the bulb

A bit of white card for the ceiling for the moment, just to get a feel of the room when lit.

Time to wrap the tank in a wallpaper coat, giving enough overlap to reach down inside to the false bottom

Not got any water effect left that hasn’t gone solid so have just order some to ‘pour’ over the false bottom to give a water level. Must remember to insert the ballcock before pouring the water effect.
Still got the supporting framework to make, and all the plumbing to add but this is it so far, rivets, rust and all 🙂

On the real world domestic water front, we have been very lucky and the engineers were able to fix the pumping equipment early this afternoon (bore hole supply) and we now have running water once more.

Dimming and masking another LED light

Crawling back in from the gardening that’s been so needed this last week or so, I finally got around to dimming the tilley style lamp in the second attic/loft space.

This space

Slotted in place – an odd shaped room box as the second half of the box room

I should have added this to the last post. It’s a view of the room box/box room when it’s slotted into the roof framework – roof slopes yet to be added.

The very bright light, but the roof beams worked out quite nicely.

Other items now gone into loft storage include a sadly broken, though rather frightening Mr Punch/Jester in the box and an old photo.

Though a rather bilious yellow, painting the lamp casing has reduced the glare. I have been dabbing the paint on the bulbs in other over-bright lights but haven’t managed to get in to where the bulb is yet in this lamp.
Have also added a little more red to this side of the space with a non-working lamp and used it to mask some of the LED tilley.

Need to get back to what is left of the garden.  It’s all burnt out and am trying to rescue various plants in the hope that when we eventually get back to some rain, they’ll still be usable one way or another.  Have had them in buckets and bowls of water and now am trying to build up the moisture holding capacity of the soil so they can go back in asap.

(Was just hunting out a link to a definition of asap when came across these, I don’t know if you’ve seen them before?  Who knew there was such a variety of possibilities these days?.)

 

Box room or room box

Lots of bits done but a little hard to describe.

In the belief that it would make more sense if I work from the end result here is one of the more complete bits I’ve been working on.

The first attic space, the one with the wardrobe and wireless, has a bit chopped off because of the slice of house.
This remaining section I’ve sort of dedicated to memorabilia, such as ration books, helmets and the no longer needed cot.

The riddle goes as follows

Now, one could say that this is what used to be described as a box room but, because I’ve still got an itch to be able to get at some of the hard-wired electrics, I’ve also made it as a slot in room box.  I chose this way of doing it rather than creating a removable section in the roof slope to get access.

This attic space lives under the heavily slopped hip on the side of the house, so I started there, building supports for the hip to use

Then other radiating supports were added, including one that should support the hip and the edge of the remaining piece of front slope.
If you stare into the gloom of the attic section on the other side of these beams and look through that doorway you can just about make out the other attic room, which I’ve also started

This view, when the slice of house is removed, shows the shape of the would-be attic space, with electrics running to the space on the far right

where I can still get my hands in to fiddle with a couple of wiring extensions and could add further or replace some.

The slot-in spot

The box has a dangling front edge using ‘L’ shaped moulding so that it can be fairly easily removed from its slot-in space

Parked and awaiting items for storage.

The blank walls, just visible on the right, are the third attic space and you might be able to make out a right-angled decorated section between the room box and the blank space to fill in the gap.

Once I’ve checked again and doubled checked once more, I’m heading towards sticking down the roof slope over it, hoping to get it to match the half of front slope already in place.

Between times, if my never won’t let me glue down that piece of roof yet, I’ve the other attic space, through the doorway, to decorate and dress.  Plenty to nibble on.