A day in the life...

[Stumpy]

then I saw Shutree's chainsaw at Baht 13,530, FFS!

bit of a quandary.

So Mendy..... You are an educated fella.....Do you want to work smarter...or harder and have less time for yourself? I referred the GW's set up to Shutree sometime back when I posted pics of the one I got. I use it frequently to trim up trees and amazingly you do not need one of the silly bamboo ladders that are death traps. The hedger attachment is very nice as well. You can find deals on Lazada on their big month sales. While I can appreciate your frugal approach to things, then you cannot openly complain you have no time for anything, have blisters on your hands and ants biting your feet. Maybe its the Isaan water

If there is another stump event, next time I recommend to wet the area around the stump a day before, then add water a bit on and off as you dig. In the pics that dirt looks like he chiseled it out of cement. The hole he was digging to get it out looked nice and tidy so bonus points for that.

[Edmond]

I'd have drilled some Eddie holes in it at the hacking points too.

Though it's pretty clear at this stage that Sir Mendy is a masochist, that has now installed a system to video record the pain.


#nothing.wrong.with.it.

[malmomike77]

I can appreciate your frugal approach to thing

what about a Christmas Mendip Bush Trimmer -Go Fund Me, i'm in for 1K

[Stumpy]

what about a Christmas Mendip Bush Trimmer -Go Fund Me, i'm in for 1K

Are we talking body shaving the sasquatch type trimmer or are we talking yard tools still.

[malmomike77]

The Wahl clippers might have been better than the gardener at liberating Mendips stump

[Reg Dingle]

you need to go give the present early in the morning, it works if you walk round to her side of the bed and tap your trunk on her nose, she'll

...think the wooly mammoth has made a comeback

[Topper]

The Wahl clippers might have been better than the gardener at liberating Mendips stump

Didn't Mendy say at some point he enjoyed the gardener liberating his stump?

[Mendip]

^ There's no call for that, Topper.

...think the wooly mammoth has made a comeback

Well... I'm not one to boast of course...

To be honest a woolly mammoth is no different to an over-size elephant, after a once over with some Wahl clippers.

[Stumpy]

So are we doing a GoFundMe for Wahl trimmers for Mendy the fur ball or a GoFundMe to buy him needed tools so he doesn't get blisters and cry.

[Mendip]

^ I already have the new Wahl trimmers which may or may not make an appearance in Looper's 'Manscaping' thread, it depends on how much I drink at the weekend.

And to be fair, I didn't complain or cry about this awful blister I have on my thumb, I merely pointed it out as an observation.

But, if I have any say in the matter I would like that Greenworks chainsaw/hedge trimmer that Shutree recommended.

[helge]

And to be fair, I didn't complain or cry about this awful blister I have on my thumb, I merely pointed it out as an observation.

Believe you

That's the one good thing about marriage.

You'll become very tolerant to physical pain

[Mendip]

^ And mental torture... but that was last year and this is this year.


I started the New Year as I mean to carry on... with a morning swim every day. The water's a bit cold at 26 degrees but I'm used to it now.



In fact, if my diving gets any better I may well get involved with the Paris Olympics thread.



Along with the fitness regime and drastically cutting down on alcohol, another New Year's resolution is to cut out all the smutty innuendo from my threads and to keep them clean.



And look at that... the hat stayed on throughout. Always a bonus!

[Joe 90]

Reminds me of a colder version of the Xmas Brighton swim.

[Edmond]

The pool and area looks lovely Mendo

[helge]

The pool and area looks lovely Mendo

It actually does

[Edmond]

Yeah. It does look like quite a nice place in the sunshine, when all the dogs are away laying on his bed or on the dining table or wherever.

[Shutree]

In fact, if my diving gets any better I may well get involved with the Paris Olympics thread.

More likely to be in the Manchester United thread.

[Mendip]

^ I hear they could do with some new players as well, although I don't think my diving is that good.

While on the subject of sport... local badminton rules are that a let is played when the shuttlecock hits or gets stuck in a palm tree. The daughter beat me yesterday by claiming lets when the shuttlecock was obviously not even going to be close to clearing the net.

Bloody cheat.

So, drastic measure were called for today.

[hallelujah]

#competitivedad

[Mendip]

^ It's too hot for badminton at the moment, sadly.

In fact it's too hot for anything. I've been home for a week and a half and have been getting a bit bored... it's just too damned hot to do anything. My gym and treadmill have remained unused and even a swim in this heat is hard work. And I've noticed the alcohol intake to be going up.

Today I decided that this is no good and to start 'operation shower'!

The daughter's a couple pf months from being a teenager and she needs some privacy. The downstairs toilet is unusable (to anyone not born in an Isaan hovel) and so the daughter has been using the master en-suite shower in the mornings before school... at around 5:30 am. The reason for this is that the shared upstairs bathroom has a bath and no shower.

It seem ridiculous now, but when the house was built 17 years ago I thought it a good idea to have a bath, and there's a second one in the en-suite, but at least that has a walk in shower as well.

I can't recollect ever using the bath in the past 17 years, and it's certainly never been Christened, if you know what I mean, so today I decided to start a new project and turn the bath into a walk-in shower.

The wife was against the idea because, 'maybe she wants a bath sometime'... despite never having used it (or the en-suite bath) in 17 years. So I over-ruled her.

I forgot to take a pre-project start-up photo, but luckily the gardener took one a few days ago. I was hoping he could try and get one of his building friends interested in the job... but it seems he can't It is amazingly difficult to find anyone to do small building jobs around here.

So today I said, 'fuck it, I'll do it me bloody self.

The gardener's pic of the never used bath, a bit out of focus unfortunately.



In fact I do remember it being used once... for Dan years ago when she was very sick and needed bathing in special medication. But that was at least 14 years ago.

Prior to starting the project today I'd had a search around all the old storage areas and found a load of tiles left over from the build.

There's certainly enough matching floor tiles for the job, although a few will need cleaning up.



But not enough wall tiles. I have no idea how easy it will be to find matching tiles after so many years, but that's a bridge to cross in a few days time.



I broke ground around 10am, and by 10:15 wondered why the fuck I was doing this. It was of course baking hot and airless, but also bloody hard work.



This partially solved the problem... but I was still drenched in sweat. I guess a good alternative to the gym?



I soon encountered all manner of crap that the builders had stuffed into the cavity all those years ago... par for the course here, of course.



The banging and clattering and swearing embarrassed the gardener into helping, and with two of us progress sped up considerably. The routine was to fill up a 20 litre paint tin with rubble, sand and other crap and take it downstairs to be tipped into a wheelbarrow. Today a total of five barrow loads were deposited at my hardcore storage area.

I want to preserve the wall to the left and so made the vertical gut with a grinder. The wall is strong, double brick in width, and I am hoping to build up on the preserved section.



And the end of day one... around three hours work, which was enough to be honest. There's no great rush.

I plan to build up on the wall to the left, to a level just below the window. It won't be a perfect job, the shower controls can stay down low to save re-tiling that area, but it'll do the job I reckon.



It currently looks as though I'll be doing the wall building and tiling... I've done tiling in the past but am slow and it certainly won't look as good as a professional's job. My hope is that during the next day or two that it should take to clear the area, the wife will come on board and attempt to find a neat tiler. The guy that tiled our sala and spirit house stand, and also plastered my snake house and the catfish tank, was excellent. I seem to remember that he charged 500 Baht per day for him and his wife, and I sorted out all materials. But... we've lost contact and they were a pretty old couple, but fingers crossed the wife can put out her feelers. I would happily pay 1000 per day for that team to get a nice job done, and save me the ballache. And I reckon, 3 or 4 days work, tops?

[Joe 90]

Tiling is pretty straight forward if you have a decent cutter and grout, I did my bathroom and kitchen 20 years ago.

Actually, now I come to think about it. There's a reason I haven't retiled with a more modern look.

It's a fvcking ballache of a job.
Using up half a dozen tiles just to tile around one light switch, arggg.

[moose65]

just do a good job of the waterproofing and use a non-slip tile on the shower floor.

[Looper]

It's a fvcking ballache of a job.

Removing tiling is indeed a coonty of a job. I had to rip old broken tiles off the wall to re-tile the area round the bath I installed.

Show us your bodgy DIY

When I was pulling them off, big chunks of plasterboard were sticking to them and breaking off leaving big holes in the wall.

It was a bodge of legend proportions to repatch the holes using polyfilla to bind together lolly pop sticks to create a new surface to place the new tiles.

the daughter has been using the master en-suite shower in the mornings before school

This is why I would not be good parent material. I would have let dear daughter use the existing shower that is plumbed in to the back of the bath taps and hanging over the bath. I might have stretched to adding a shower curtain for female teenage propriety.



When I was a kid we had a house with 5 bedrooms and 1 tiny bathroom. The numbers of bathrooms and general ablutions facilities in houses these days is bonkers. One of my student rentals has 4 bathrooms.

[Edmond]

Top stuff Mendo. Love a bit o' renovation.

Tiles and tilers here are so cheap it's almost criminal not to use one. Just make sure they leave enough space between them or the tiles will do a cyrille and all pop up in the middle of the night.


Does your place have subsidence issues?



A ruler and pencil can mark out say 50mm going across that crack, note 50mm and the month and year next to it, then can go back to measure to see if it's grown in later years.

[Joe 90]

Does your place have subsidence issues?

He's not putting up shelves