What Have I Done?

I had a large “what have I done?” moment this week. I bought a shed.

It might seem a perfectly normal thing to do; I’ve done it before a few times and never had any problems. This time though I bought it off a buy and sell website. I’ve had a modicum of success buying and selling classic cars over the last while so my confidence level was high. The only stipulation, and reflected in the price, was that the “buyer dismantles”. Fair enough I thought, how hard could it be?

Van Hire

I negotiated the price and told the owner I would pick it up the following day after hiring a van to get me down to County Kildare and the shed back up to the North West. I pootled down to Naas with my toolbox in the van and when I got to the house the owner was amazed when I came by myself “It’s more of a two person job” he said. “No problem” I said smiling, I’ve got my screwdriver.

The “shed” turned out to be a 12’x12’ log type cabin with its own 4’ veranda, wired for electricity and very substantial, the images on the advert were a tad misleading.

Roughing it

Three 18 hour days later and two damp, cold nights sleeping in the back of a transit hire van; I finally got the last plank off. Dismantling the thing was an absolute nightmare, if I hadn’t paid up in full before I started I would have left on the first day. There were hundreds of screws holding the tongue and groove roof planks together; the walls that should slot together were fixed tightly with screws too large from my tiny screwdriver. And the floor couldn’t be saved no matter how careful I was, the planks all split. To make a bad experience even worse I couldn’t get everything into the van in one go so I had to do two trips to get everything up to my garage- in one night. I finally got the van back to the hire company at 7:30am on the Friday morning after a sleepless night driving 600miles on the two round trips. 

It’s certainly a case of “buyer beware” as I am quite sure the bloke who I bought it off knew exactly how much work went into setting the shed up in the first place. He didn’t say much but did mention that the 2 lads who set it up only took 2 hours to do it, yea right. He certainly saw me coming.

Now all I need to do is to set it up in my own garden, unfortunately I didn’t really take enough images of it being dismantled so I haven’t’ a clue how it all fits back together. If I’m not careful it could turn out to be an Ikea like assembly without instructions. What have I done indeed!

Cool Bread

Our family is divided on most issues; it makes for interesting debates, or a lot of shouting. This particular difference of opinion needed resolving – bread, does it last longer in or out of the fridge?

I have been convinced for years that once bread is made a chemical reaction starts and unless the bread is frozen, this process is the same regardless of the storage. Julie on the other hand seems to think that putting the bread in the fridge slows down the process. There was only one way to find out so we (I) put one slice from the same loaf in a sealed bag and sellotaped it to the cupboard and took another slice, sealed it up and placed it in the fridge.  After 10 days the results were out. We couldn’t leave it any longer than that because the blue mould in the bag outside of the fridge looked like it was going to take over the house. The slice of bread inside the fridge was still mould free and looking very smug. Of course I wouldn’t have eaten either of them after 10 days and if it wasn’t for the unnaturally high temperatures this week I’m sure the results would have been different. I’m still not convinced but am managing to still be annoying. Sore loser… me?