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!

A work in progress

The floors are sanded and look really nice. Now, we just need to thoroughly wipe down every square inch of wall, floor, ceiling, radiator, molding etc... as there is a super fine layer of dust over everything in the place now. Also the ugly fake brick thing in the last video series is now removed and in the back bedroom in pieces. What we discovered behind it is quite interesting. We found a bricked up old fireplace and an Edinburgh press and lots of holes in the plastering. So we have lots to do in this room still! Yikes. But the good news is that the wall paper is coming off fairly easily. So lets hope that it stays that way. Anyhow, here's a peak at the new floors and our mess of a wall. Also there's a clip of our garden. I just ordered my compost bin and it should arrive in the next few weeks! I can't wait to take out the row of plants between our plot and our neighbors (don't worry we'll salvage the azalea and other nice plants) and put a row of super fertile compost in there to grow some veggies. I'm already envisioning a lovely wall of peas and squash on a trellis. But that will be next spring.

Flat update

Well, I have seen the sanded floors and they look really nice. The only problem is when the removed the ugly faux brick thingy, it revealed a old fireplace which was bricked up. So, now we have some exposed wall timbers and bricks.... But, it also revealed a hidden Edinburgh press. That's a built in shelf that most older flats in Edinburgh have. It's really nice, but it was plastered over, so now it's exposed from waist level down. We'll have to brake through or cut out the top portion of the wall there to make use of it. But that will mean totally redoing the plastering or drywall on that whole wall to make it even.... urg! I'm sure that will be a good £1k or so! We didn't anticipate that, but in the end it will be a lot nicer. I'll call some people on Monday and have another week of quotes and workmen over at the flat. Urg! Oh well, the upside is that I didn't get the job I interviewed for, so there's no worry about finding a day care or juggling my time.

OUR NEW FLAT!!!!!

We got the keys to our new flat on Friday! Yippie!!! Here are tons of videos showing you around it. The carpet is pretty god awful, so we're having it taken out and sanding the pine floors underneath. It'll be rustic by American standards, but that's just the way most flat here look - gaps between the floorboards. Anyhow, I'll post an after video when it's done.
This week has been a little stressful. Simon flew out to New Orleans for a week long conference (yeah, I know, it's a hard hard life!) on Monday. I had three contractors come over on Monday to give me quotes on the sanding, then I ran over to a job interview which I subsequently bombed... I was way too nervous and I've gotten so used to being around kids I had forgotten all of my three syllable plus words! I think I sounded like a moron, so I think Marius will likely be enjoying more mommy time in the immediate future. But I digress... Today I ripped up the ugly red flowered hallway carpet, had two plumbers come and give me estimates on replacing a lead lined cold water cistern, and dropped off our 30 days notice on our rented flat. Tomorrow I need to go let the sanders into the flat and jet over to New Town to drop off some more paperwork for the rented apartment and some paperwork for our home insurance.
The upside to all of this running around and driving back and forth across town is that I am now not nearly so afraid of driving through the heart of the city like I used to be. I finally feel like I know my way around a bit. I still get a little worried if there's no car in front of me to follow when I get to a 5 or 6 way intersection. But I'm a lot more confident in the car now!
Enjoy our flat! PS, all the plant stuff and furniture in the stairwell were left my the little old lady who we bought the flat from! Wasn't that nice of her?

Wonderfully Warm Weather

Oh my God!!!! It has been so nice this week. For the first time since I moved here in July, I experienced what it feels like to be warm! We've had spectacular weather and it should hold up until the weekend. It was 70 degrees yesterday, and today is around 65. I've been walking around in sandals and a skirt today and loving it. When Marius wakes up, we'll take a walk over to the playground so he can enjoy the warmth a bit outside. We went to the beach on Monday (a bank holiday here, meaning it's just a random holiday with no name or meaning) and Marius loved it. Here are some pictures of our afternoon there. It was still a bit cold though when the wind came up, but nice enough to dip your toes in the water at least. Marius ate a few handfuls of sand though! Gross! But it really didn't seem to bother him at all. It seemed to pass through his digestive tract just fine though, so perhaps he is needing some minerals like quartz and mica to keep him strong and healthy.