Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Stairway to Heaven

So the keyboard cometh, and thus back to the step. Took a lot longer than anticipated, 'cos the Old Man instead of doing a little light shimming, practically rebuilt the granite step with cement. Naturally that entailed giving it a little longer to dry and, if you look carefully, also offering more opportunities for personalisation...


No, not the building inspector of the earlier picture, but her oppo, Polly. Rest assured I signed and dated her prints before hiding them from sight - although she'd probably have liked a gold star and a whole ceremony outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for preference...

On Sunday a solid three hours work saw the step completed and me left wondering what there was to show for my aching knees. Barely any real woodwork to speak of, the "best" being scribing the edges of the boards to fit the contours of the floor and some tweaking flush with the squirrel tail plane. The latter I found ideal for this one-handed, no-workbench sort of work. Very handy.


Not that I was idle whist waiting for the cement to dry. No sir. First the hinted-at Chicken Pie piff, paff, puff pastry-ed its way into being. Not played with puff pastry before - very exciting watching it explode, er, I mean cook. And no, I didn't make it; I do the contents and Mr Jus-Rol provides the pastry. Mind you I have to roll it out, so it's not quite like using ply...


Unfortunately the bananas didn't do the decent thing and die, so I made a Banana and Honey Tea Bread as well.


So while The Patient's ankle is doing well, we're all in danger of coronary heart disease... 

No, no! Fruit and vegetables are featuring a good deal, it's just a saucepan of peas on the hob isn't calculated to make great blog fare, is it? Or good comfort food.

Meanwhile cabin fever is setting in and I find myself emailing various purveyors of fine tools inquiring about things that really I shouldn't be even contemplating buying ('specially not after unexpected forking out for keyboards). Worse than that - I have a chisel itch again. Sounds nasty, doesn't it? Trust me, the consequences if I succumb are very nasty indeed...

1 comment:

  1. A proper job, Alf, as they say in your part of the World, both on the step and the food. Very nice.....

    Cheers;)

    Paul Chapman

    ReplyDelete

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