Called a real estate agent Sunday, 13-Mar-22 20:53:41 CET

Plaster holiday Sunday, 27-Mar-22 20:53:34 CEST

Sunday, 20-Mar-22 22:06:45 CET

South wall finished

Took down the scaffold on the south side rebuilt it on the north side. Started plastering and painting the ceiling in the washing room.

Monday 14 March

Today we had a regular work-from-home day. It was sunny, and I missed some curtains in my home office. We also need something in our bathroom but would like to create it without drilling, so DW bought suction cups with a hook to try out. I thought I had a go at trying them, so I took a piece of the protective paper and hung it up on the window as a temporary curtain for the sun. Since the paper was curling, I put strips of PVC to straighten the temporary curtain. It blocked the sun, and I was ready to try the construction. The contraption had gained some weight but thought it would work.

I had a really complex algorithmic challenge to work on, so I was in deep concentration when the suction cups let loose, and my temporary curtain fell to the bottom of the window frame with a loud bang. My concentration shattered like exploding glass. I sat there in the sunlight again and considered my naïve approach regarding the curtain.

The daffodils started to bloom in the flower garden, and we moved the sheep again. It was lovely weather.

Tuesday 15 March

I walked to the but and noticed the "eye trees" or grey poplar, Populus x canescens. They are typical for this province. Along roads, the lower branches are cut to ensure that the tree will not get in the way of traffic. The places where the branches are cut develop eyes. We are talking about millions of eyes that are looking at us.

Today I decided to bring my blog laptop, and now I am blogging on the bus. It is purely fantastic to have access to a regular keyboard. I cannot say I know what to blog about, but it feels good. It was a gray morning, and I hope it is a sign that we will get rain soon because the soil is hungering for rain. We could make use of at least ten millimeters of rain.

I managed to blog sufficiently on one bus ride. It feels nice to blog during commuting.

I arrived at work and enjoyed a full day of work in the office. I still feel the time spent on bringing people to the office is not always in the right proportion to the benefit for the organization.

At times I make jokes that I need a social reintegration course. People think it is funny, but there is something in it. I am standing talking to people and wonder: "why are we doing this?". It seems to work, so I suppose I must keep up the pretense.

Unfortunately, the sun arrived, so we returned in nice weather again.

The bus driver was very picky with the mouth shield on the way home. Two passengers were not allowed on the bus because they did not have the shield. They got upset, but it did not matter; they were still not let in.

When I came home from work, I sowed bell pepper. This is a zero-cost, minimum-effort project idea. I collected rolls of toilet paper and tucked them into leftover buckets of ice cream. Filled the rolls with soil.

I saved the ice cream buckets for more than 15 years. Did I get perhaps one hundred of these buckets? I sowed the pepper from a pepper we had for a salad this evening. Then I gave the rolls some water.

 

 

Wednesday 16 March

This was a half-day working from the office, starting with a dentist visit for a checkup in the morning; all were fine. Then I continued to the office and worked there until lunch.

Then I went to the old house, where we cleaned up things and ready the house for the real estate agent. I cannot say it is amusing to clean up things.

Today I moved the printer and the scanner from the old house to the new house. You undoubtedly live in a house when the printer and the scanner move there. Nah, perhaps we are still not living in the new house as long as we don't have the washing machine and, not to forget, that DD can stay over at our house. I still have not turned off the internet at the old house, so we cannot move over the WIFI access points, and I am okay with that.

This evening I worked on getting the printer to work. I had to have more connections to our router, but it only got four UTP ports. The solution is to connect computers via a router, which I got on 27 January. On 12 February, I mounted the switch in the ceiling. It got 48 ports and a tiny little touch screen! The switch worked like a charm.

I think the colors of the UTP cable sound like a poem (Clip behind):

• White-Orange
• Orange
• White-Green
• Blue
• White-Blue
• Green
• White-Brown
• Brown

Especially when coming to Blue, you would expect it to be Green after the Green–White. Then it happens again after Blue–White when Green is coming. I cannot remember this poem; it is a shame. The best mnemonic I found is this "We Ordered Our Wild Grapes, But We Bought Groceries With Tame Tomatoes," where T is for Tan. I have to thank Robert Hummel for this mnemonic. I found it on a forum post in 2016. Funny, now I will see if I can remember the mnemonic, moving the goalposts.

I got the printer working. I can make a little tag that I can tape to the cable tool with the printer.

Thursday 17 March

More daffodils are flowering in the flower garden. The Tragopogon porrifolius that I sowed on 9 May last year has bulbs coming. In Dutch, "Morgen ster." Very few of the other seeds germinated last year. DW says there are two versions, and she believes I got Tragopogon Orientalis. It has yellow flowers. All she knows about plants she was taught by her mother, and her mother got only Tragopogon Orientalis. Since the seeds came from my mother-in-law, it is probably true. That means I need to find the Tragopogon porrifolius and try them.

I worked from our new home today. I was concentrated, and things went well. It is a joy to work from home.

After work, I painted the extra triangle at the ventilation. It will need another layer before it is finished. Perhaps I can do that tomorrow after work. I would also like to clean the windows on the first floor from the scaffold, and then I am ready to take down the scaffold. I am so excited. It is the first time I can test the big doors of the living room how they open with the planks mounted. We started working on the plan for the big doors on 19 March last year. Had I thought it would take a year from making the plan to finally being able to test the plan's outcome? No, I had not thought that.

Friday 18 March

The two Malva Sylvestris are proliferating. I repotted them into bigger pots, and I let them out over the day. It is below freezing point at night, so I have to let them in in the evening. This Malva Sylvestris project started on 5 February when I planted 6 seeds in a pot. Then on 26 February, I put the seeds in the fridge according to the instructions on the package. Already on 7 March, two of the seeds had sprouted. It is such a lovely plant with plenty of big purple flowers. This will be lovely.

The Viola Wittrockiana is flowering! I planted them on 11 September 2021. It was something I found in the supermarket while we were shopping for our groceries.

This was regular work from the new home day. It went really well so that I could arrange that I had the next week off. I can have holidays even if it is not going well, but it feels better for me to reach a target before going on a holiday.

After work, I chased out and painted the ventilation inlet a second time so that it is now finished. Then I cleaned all the windows on the south wall, even those on the first floor. I barely reached the top of the window with a stick, but that was enough to get them cleaned. With that, the south wall is done. I can take down the scaffold!

I will rebuild it at the back of the house on the north side, but one thing at a time.

Saturday 19 March

It was a beautiful morning, again. I could hear a rooster crowing in the distance. I made a cup of tea, and I took a picture of the scaffold. It has been there since the end of March last year. Today I will take it down. Look how nice and clean the window is. Don't worry; it will not take long before it is covered in dirt again.

After breakfast, DS and I worked on dismantling the scaffold. DW worked on the ceiling of the washing room on the ground floor.

According to my experience, it went quickly to dismantle the scaffold. DS likes to sort things when working. If he is doing the dishes, he sorts the knives and forks before cleaning them.

Here he was in charge of sorting the pieces of the scaffold. It had to be put in heaps of similar pieces. This gave him the joy to help me, so it was helpful to let him be in charge of this task. When all scaffold pieces were sorted in appropriate piles, we were done with taking down the scaffold.

This was the first time we could try the big doors in the living room. Now was the moment to find out if our calculations for the planks next to the door were right. Here is a slideshow of the first moment in one whole year that we opened the big doors to find out if the planks plan worked as we intended.

 

Now we obviously need to find a way to keep the door open, but that is for another time.

Then DW and I moved the sheep. We moved their two sheds and hey rack. Then we moved the fence to make the north side of the house accessible. With that… the new phase began!

I started to build the scaffold again. This time on the north side.

I built a more compact version with internal ladders. It was fun to do, and I especially made sure there was a diamond shape in the middle of the scaffold.

Tomorrow I will finish it to have easy access to the roof and the chimney. Then I can let the wood stove specialist come and look at the chimney.

It was a lot of work today, much better than sitting and talking. The weather was good as well. We got a visit from a neighbor with his two kids that wanted to look at the sheep, perhaps even pat them a little. It was scary for the kids to pat the sheep, but the bigger brother dared to pat Hannah on her nose after a while. She stayed adorable while he did, and she even propelled with her tail. A propelling tail is always a good sign from Hannah. Perhaps 5 years old, the big brother could run away when going home. The little sister, perhaps 3, wanted to do the same but fell and hurt her knees. She had to be carried and comforted by her father, and she could choose from two different pacifiers. That did the trick. She was happy again.

Before calling it a day, I rescued the scaffold feet from thieves. If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you perhaps remember how we got robbed of our scaffold feet on 3 September 2020. That is now 1 year, 6 months, 16 days ago. We are always keeping our scaffold feet in a safe place.

In the evening, I took a picture of the full moon. It was beautiful tonight.

Sunday 20 March

DW worked on the ceiling in the washing room. It got a layer of primer. When that was dry, it got the first layer of white paint.

My goal for today was to build the third floor of the tower and climb up to the chimney.

We got a visit from my uncle-in-law and DWs sister. They had not seen the floors so it was a long time ago they had been to our new house.

After their visit, I finished the tower. I climbed the roof and could inspect the base of the chimney. I do think I see where it goes wrong. Unfortunately, I was not brave enough to take a photo of the place; perhaps I will do that another day.

I crawled up to the chimney, but it was not fun. I could see that the rubber around the chimney had slid down slightly on the left side and created a pocket that could let water through. Luckily the ceiling under the roof tiles is tight, so we are not getting any water leaking through. At least, that is my assumption. I could be wrong. I sent my findings to our wood stove specialist. He is an old man and currently having issues with his hips. I think he has even undergone surgery; I am unsure about the details. The outcome is inevitable in any case: he has problems getting up on our roof. I will call him tomorrow to discuss the matter further.

If I am going to do anything more around the chimney, I need to have some kind of reeling to get to the chimney. I think that is possible. That is for another day.

After finishing the tower, we moved the sheep. The ladies got a good area at the tip of the land.

That was what we achieved this week. I am looking forward to next week when I can work on the house continuously.