Progression

The “moving house” project has taken a lot of my time and will continue to do so. However this is a change in the phase of this project now. The primary moving exercise is now complete. The title of home has moved from the old house to the new.

The old house, I shall call is “Alpha”, is now empty, on the market and time will reveal how quickly it sells. How much effort is required to make that happen is also yet to be revealed. There is still stuff stored in the garage and sheds though.

The new house, is “Gamma”. The title of “Home” has moved from “Alpha” to “Gamma”. The in-laws are installed, as is “R”.

Did leaving “Alpha” after ten odd years of calling it home hurt at all? A little, yes, but there was a lot of associations of pain there, especially with the passing of parents and then the passing of a friend. Besides, “Gamma” is so much better in many respects. “Alpha” can pass to a new family and discover new adventures. She served us well.

Did the In-laws seem sad to leave their old home? Apparently not. It has served them well but now they want to move on, to be by the coast, and enjoy adventures new.

The in-laws old house, call it “Beta”, is still viable. I live there with “H” during the working week, while “H” completes her education. For most weekends we commute make to “Gamma”.

The project has three parallel phases, running together, at this time.

1. Remove the last items that are stored in the garage at “Alpha”, either to “Beta” or straight to “Gamma”.
2. Selectively move items from “Beta” to “Gamma”.
3. Sort out stuff at “Gamma”, install more storage space, install new equipment.

For items “1” and “2”, this occurs once a week and moves as much as an L200 can muster.

This weekend has been productive –

• The SMEG oven has been repaired. I reported the fun had in my previous post, bu to recap. It has two ovens, large and small, and while “Small” worked fine, there was significant problems with the control gear of the large oven. It has seriously overheated with damaged caused. To fix all this I completed the following –
  • Straighten the buckled liner plates.
  • Replaced the blown interior light bulb.
  • Replaced the door seal, which had melted.
  • Replaced the defective thermostat entirely.
  • Replaced the defective “Mode Selector Switch”.
  • Modified the cooler unit to detect the oven operation sooner and remove the hot air from the control space.
• I managed to sell the “Hot Tub” that we really didn’t want. We are not into “Hot tubs”, the power and water usage costs were just not worth it. However a local family really liked the idea and to be fair they got a cheap hot tub. Its good it sees a new life as if it hadn’t got sold then it would mean the disk cutter.
• I fixed the TV reception (I hope). We had a number of problems with the reception to begin with due to the antenna distribution cabling being all wrong. Having fixed that we had some channels that worked, some channels that occasionally worked but also paxilated. Some channels that the tuner couldn’t find at all. Today I connected in a mast head amplfier, which was already in the attic space but not in use. This seriously improved the situation. The tuner moved from 45 channels found to around 160. All receive okay.

Back to the oven I have the manual for it now and found out that we can have all sorts of fun with its FIVE elements and Fan. I have no idea what these modes are used for but there is another adventure to be had.

Tomorrow I work from home, then “H” and I catch the 1800 ferry back to “Beta”. We’ll be back to “Gamma” on the following Friday.

This is the main project for the first quarter of the year. There will be new projects ahead, but little time to address them right now and, in most cases, the weather isn’t on our side yet.

Major projects ahead –

• Install the wood burner, which is already in the living room at “Gamma”. There is no chimney, so a project there.
• Build a workshop on the site of the old “Hot Tub”. This is to integrate into the existing “Summer house”, which as it is north facing, is pointless in that roll.
• Get “Project Thunder Duck” on the go again. There is no excuses this time, we are under a mile from the sea!
• Get out and explore.
• Forge new friendships.