Weekend outing

We took a small hike up to Corstorphine Hill this morning. The raspberry bushes along the trails are starting to put out fruit, so we can't wait to come back in 2 weeks time and have a proper meal along the way! Marius absolutely loves his backpack, and we've had to put it away in the closet when he's not looking, otherwise he gets really upset. And when we open the closet, he starts crying if he sees the backpack and we don't take it out.

Our friend from Nashville, Sonali, has been here the past two weekends, so we've had a nice time reminiscing about Tennessee. She's off to London tomorrow, and then Paula and the family come August 4th. I'm so excited about the Nettleships, I can't stand it! I just wish our bathroom could have been done. Oh well, it's good to have people see the before and after I suppose. I just hope our decrepit toilet hold up for another month!
We have been totally lazy about the house stiff lately. Other than getting a plumber to bypass our cold water supply so it doesn't come from the lead cistern in the loft/rafters and the subsequent call back due to a small leak (that stained our dining room ceiling! Urgh!) in said pipe, we've been pretty much just enjoying the fruits of our past month's labor. But I have been thinking a lot about how I'm going to put in the molding around the Edinburgh Press and then installing the floor skirting. I have backed away from buying a circular saw, and instead think I may just opt for a miter box so I can cut 45 degree angles for the molding corners, although a saw would be SO much faster. We need paint too, as all of our skirting boards are super banged up from the guys who sanded the floors. And the carpet in the kitchen (yes, the lady here put carpet in the kitchen and the newspaper underneath it is from 1996!) needs to go, but I first have to sand the floors a bit and the paint them... But I keep telling myself I'll do that eventually. I'm not sure what day of the year eventually is... but if you know, would you let me know so I can start planning that job? Thanks!

Legos!

Yeah, enough said. Actually they're duplos but we call them all legos, and he can sort of say lego so we haven't changed. We just got this huge box of them from a colleague of Simon's and Marius is absolutely loving them. He's been going to sleep while holding them in his hand. Too cute!

more painting results

Here are some pics of the painting in the front room. We've finished with the ivory paint and after painting the feature wall, we've decided we don't like it! So, I need to go to Home Base today and buy some new paint. I tried a few test pots of paint yesterday and we've decided on a color called Cookie Dough. It's a browny tan and I think it will go nicely with the ivory and white already in the room. Then we can move furniture in here this weekend and finally be settled. Well, that is settled until we have our onslaught of house guests and then start to plan the new bathroom. Then it'll be Christmas before we know it! Amazing how time flies when you're busy isn't it?

DIY and driving updates...

We've put on the first coat of ivory paint for three of our lounge walls. Next we'll get the second coat up (totally needed) and then paint our "feature wall" a lovely shade of olive! So exciting!!!! This has been a long time coming, I can tell you that. Next I need to call in a joiner (that's British for a carpenter) to put in the skirting and molding around the Edinburgh press that Simon so wonderfully opened up the other day. The next round of video should be really nice.
Oh, and we're now officially not supposed to drive in the UK... Our foreign licences were only good for one year, and I arrived here on July 5th. Simon got his provisional licence already and will have to take a written and driving test before he's legal again. I'm still waiting for my provisional licence (and passport that they made me give them!) to get mailed to me. Then I'll have to take the tests too. But in the mean time, provisional licence holders can't drive on the motorway (British for freeway) ever, and we can't drive period without someone who has had their UK licence for at least 3 years! So, I've been studying up on UK driving regulations, and man this test is so much more comprehensive than the ones in the US. Plus there's all of this crazy stuff in there like knowing the difference between various types of cross walks (called Zebra, Puffin, Pelican, Toucan, and Pegasus crossings - no joke!) and how to use roundabouts.

Encounters with British electricity

As if the lead tainted plumbing still in existence over most of the country wasn't bad enough... You would not believe how crazy the electricity here is! I thought that I was pretty DIY savvy. I knew how to throw a switch back on if one was thrown off, and even though I have never seen a old school fuse box, I'm sure I could easily pull out a fuse and replace it with a new one if I had to or even use a penny to temporarily fix it, as I've replaced fuses in cars before (thanks to Phil's Nissan truck).
So, I took this bravado with me as I decided to change a light fitting in the new flat. I switched off the main power point with the fuses in it and then unscrewed the light fitting to take out the old wires and put in the new ones for the new light. But the old wires didn't really jive with my new light, so I'll need to get a DIY book from the library to figure that out, but I'm thinking it won't be so hard. In the mean time, I decided to try and isolate all of the fuses in my fuse box and label them with little stickers so I would know which were which in case anything ever blew. That's when I gave our fuse box a good hard look and realized it didn't look anything like I had ever seen or heard about before. So, I did what any good internet surfer would do, I googled "how to change a fuse" with Google UK. And this is what I saw...
Amazing video showing how the UK is still in the dark ages when it comes to electricity!
Can you believe I have to make my own freaking fuse? It's not just some pull out thingy that you buy at Home Base. I mean, I'm a fairly competent DIYer and I'd have to say an all around bright person, so I'm sure I can do this. But I HAVE to, as that's how things are done here! You'd think with all of the lead pipes in this country, the general population wouldn't be smart enough to figure this thing out without blowing themselves up. But, for some reason I don't hear about people getting killed while changing fuses, so apparently either they just don't blow that often, or people grow up knowing how to wire their own fuses. And it's so normal here to unscrew your plug and change it if you need to. But I've NEVER heard of anyone in the states doing that sort of thing. They just throw away an appliance if something goes wrong with it. So, I guess in some sort of health and safety sort of way it's a bad thing, but in an environmental or sustainable way it's a good thing. It was just a shock to my system when I saw this video and realized that I needed to go and buy fuse wires in case of a blow out.

Taa Daaa!!!!!

OK, so I know this has been a long time coming. We've been busy busy busy with the new flat, but it's FINALLY ready for viewing. Here are some videos of our finished work and an in between showing of our final room to redecorate. In the past few weeks, I've had our kitchen tap water analyzed for lead because we have a lead lined cold water tank in the loft/rafters that feeds the flat with water. The water is pretty contaminated! So, that means we need to completely gut the plumbing in the flat to rectify the problem. Normally this would just be expensive, but since we share the building with three other flats and one business, this makes it extra expensive and complicated... Needless to say I've have just about every plumber in the city over to look at our place and they all tell me a different story. Some want to replace the tank with a plastic one, some want to take us off of the tank and install a pressurized cylinder, and some want to bypass the tank and hook up off of the mains water pipe for our cold water but keep the tank and contamination for the hot water. I haven't a clue what the best option is, but we have another plumber coming today and another one again tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. I'm not sure how the UK managed to be considered a first world country with the horrible plumbing system that they have. The pressure is really bad, and they still have tons of lead all over the country! It's a wonder anyone in this country grows up to be smart, as lead contributes to lower IQ in developing babies.

Time is flying by

I can't believe it's already June. I've almost been here an entire year!! We're still pretty busy with the flat. We've torn most of the wallpaper off of one of the front rooms, and now we just need to get off the old glue and tiny traces of paper before we can prime it for painting. We were supposed to spend the day there to knock out a lot of that, but Marius came down with a slight fever last night, so I'm staying home with him and Simon's unpacking stuff. I hope the boy's fever is just a 24 hour thing and doesn't turn into anything worse. He seems absolutely fine, he's just a bit hot. We had the most beautiful day yesterday. It was sunny and warm -- Absolutely amazing! Now it's a bit overcast and in the low 60's but that is still shorts and t-shirt weather here! I hope this nice weather gets more frequent now that it's summer, so our visitors don't think we live in the arctic trundra!