When not attending to garden tasks what other things have filled your day?

I'm now 100% sure that one day Zigs is going to build a shed, in which his entire house will fit!

 

On my return from shopping this afternoon, I had to back into our drive, carefully avoiding a skip parked in the road opposite our house. Our crescent is quite narrow.
It looks like the owners of the house are going to have an extension, as workmen have filled that with rubble and another skip arrived this morning, was parked in their drive and they are filling it with soil.
They have the left-hand house of the two semis. There's another extension being built onto the left-hand house of two semis next to them and a third one on the left-hand set of two semis next to those!
The problem is going to be parking, as the owners all have more than one car. Fortunately, they aren't there during the day as they're probably at work. But there's a lot vans, parked all day and big trucks arriving delivering materials, so it's all a bit chaotic and sometimes difficult to get out of my drive.
As is common with these small building projects, the contactors will be working on more than one job at the same time. So on some days, there's no work being done on one or other of them, at all. So the inconvenience will last longer than necessary.

 

Mainly firewood so we won't have to trudge down the garden in the middle of a wet winter. The new shed will be next to the Bothy

That's what the big shed is for

Ta Mr Riley

Yep, once i've finished painting the frame I'll put slates under it as well.

 

Good to hear from you Oreti

 

On the subject of wood burning stoves..

Our youngest son was an estate agent for different companies for more than a couple of decades, but that job became harder as the internet business steadily reduced his earnings.

So two years ago he went on a training course to become a chimney sweep.

It was the best decision he ever made. He now has a very profitable business. Most of his customers have wood burning stoves. These must have their chimneys swept each year. It's a necessary requirement by insurance companies. So he has a lot of repeat business and those customers often recommend him to their friends.

He has a little white van with his name, phone number and website on the side.
Sometimes he gets waved down in the street by a potential new customer!
He only works in the Peak District where he and his wife live, as there's as much business there as he can handle.

From his website.




Of course, there's no mess when he sweeps a chimney as everything is masked up and the soot ends up in a special vacuum cleaner

 

God bless him @Doghouse Riley , that's a dirty and danger riddled job.

 

Growing up here, I was often very disappointed in childhood that we don't have any concept of a chimney in the house - I felt like I was cheated out of an adventure.

My father who had lived in UK for several years as a student, told me that if we lit a fire in our homes over here, everyone inside would end up getting roasted alive, (such is our climate for most of the year) - That's why we have exhaust fans in the kitchen, which by western standards would be considered industrial size, (which we see as normal).

So this is all I had to go on. Just pop the tape inside the VCR.

 

Thanks for that. But it's not like it was "back in the day."
As it's mostly wood burners, there's no mess and customers have no need to cover anything up. He has special screens that contain the fires and he always wears a mask. He limits himself to no more than six jobs a day, each taking no more than an hour. He charges £65 for just a sweeping, so work that one out. Anything else is extra, like chimney inspections, by sending a camera up the flu. It would be worth a bit of discomfort, but really he says there's none.

Like his dad, he's good at DIY so in the quiet period during the summer, he does several little jobs, many for his sweeping customers. He wishes he changed jobs 20 years ago!