I'm blind!

Last night I was forced into yet another DIY project. Since moving into our new house we've found that at 5am each morning, when the hellish sun rises, our flimsy bedroom curtains have been waving the jovial little morning photons through to pound our unconcious eyelids. It is a cruel awakening.

Is there anything worse in the world than the sun? It wakes you up, makes you hot and sweaty, makes the damn plants release their nasty allergenic pollens, gives you skin cancer and is generally unpleasant. Thankfully this year we've been blessed with almost continuous rain, so the hell ball hasn't been able to work it's usual summer evil.

Our mission was to foil the evil sun. Two young, broke but resourceful people vs. a 1.4 million kilometer diameter ball of burning hydrogen, radiating 1366 Watts per square meter through our windows. That's the equivalent 30 100 Watt lightbulbs being flicked on outside our window every day.

With us being broke, the only solution was to purchase two of the very cheapest blackout blinds that Argos had to offer and install them to block the sun until such time as we could afford something better. You will note the following exciting features:

• Complete blackout.
• Keeps a room cool in summer and warm in winter.
• Side winder action.

Clearly they are perfect for what we need. Normally I'd be trying to avoid any DIY tasks but this one involved drilling holes in the window frame. Let's be honest, no matter how lazy you are, power tools are fun and they are really boys toys. I could hardly let my accident prone girlfriend go up a ladder with a power drill. Aside from the strong chance she'd drill herself I'd feel like I'd gone into a pub and ordered a Bacardi Breezer. Also I've had a drill for years, and have even lent it to several friends, but the only time I've ever used it in anger was to drill holes in a bit of board we were using to hang our dartboard off*. It's not the kind of thing you can use very often in rented houses.

So last night saw me half way up a ladder, drilling holes in our window frame to install very cheap blinds. The instructions said you had to measure carefully to ensure that the blinds were level, but that seemed like a lot of faffing around. I decided I'd just put the brackets up against the top of the window frame, the window must be level mustn't it? I did mark through the holes on the brackets with pencil where I needed to drill though. This resulted in perfectly level blinds. It was very easy. This DIY stuff is a piece of piss.

You'll be pleased to know that they totally blocked out the sun and let us have at least an extra hour asleep this morning. The blinds are very cheap and a bit shit and theoretically will need replacing when we can afford it, but in practice I bet they stay there until they fall apart.

Now what can I use the big fat masonry drill bit on I wonder?

* It turns out we needn't have bothered, we were so bad at darts, and played so drunk, that missing darts hit well outside the large backboard and still covered the door in holes.

Lazy DIY

Why didn't anyone warn me? The literally endless list of minor tasks on the house is getting longer every day. My gf's parents are coming for the weekend so we've had to build an entire spare bedroom's worth of very cheap Chinese pine furniture from Argos. My view was that when they arrived we should present them with the flat pack and say, "there's your bed" but apparently that wasn't on, even though I'm sure they'd be more than happy to help and it'd give them something useful to do.

Having built the cheap Chinese pine furniture from Argos at the weekend we're now in the process of varnishing it. We're using extremely environmentally unfriendly quick drying plastic varnish because it's the easiest. Spending time varnishing seems justifiable because it should mean that we don't need to buy (and assemble) any more cheap Chinese pine furniture from Argos for longer than if we left it as untreated wood. It turns out that varnishing furniture takes way longer than painting the equivalent area of wall because of all the little fiddly bits. Very annoying. Maybe next time we'll buy the slightly more expensive Chinese furniture that's pre varnished. Curse the fact that getting more money to spend on the slightly more expensive Chinese furniture would involve working harder. Or is there another way to do this? Possibly involving some kind of CFC based spray gun, the garden and killing all the grass other than a bed shaped shadow?

As predicted I've become a home maintenance bore, and I've only been in the house for 10 days. Bugger.

10 things I learnt moving house...

1. If Britain's about to have the biggest rain storms and most extensive flooding for 50 years, move at least the day before.

2. If you are moving a very short distance and choose to do a deal where you pay your removal people by the half hour, it could well end up being much cheaper (1/3 the cost of our best fixed price quote in our case) but you'll end up helping them move boxes etc. to speed things up and save money. If you are an overweight desk jockey, this could be v. tiring. Especially if the day before Britain's biggest rain storms and flooding for 50 years is a really hot sticky day.

3. Packing is really hard work. Do a little bit each day in advance (but don't tell my girlfriend she was right about that). Even though we'd done quite a lot before we had our packing day it took us a solid day of hard labour. On the plus side apparently you can pay people to pack your stuff for you.

4. Be organised.

5. Have a little bag to take with you with easy to eat food and drink for when you get hungry.

6. Have some kind of chairs (eg. comfy camping chairs) handy to sit on to eat the above / have a rest.

7. If you are going to pack the tea/coffee and kettle in a very sensibly labeled box so that you can easily make a nice cup of tea when you get to your new house, it'd really help if you put some mugs or cups in the box, it seems my girlfriend forgot that they are an essential part of hot beverage making.

8. Keep all the packing materials and tape unpacked until the end in case boxes start falling apart. "Oh, the rest of it is in one of those boxes on the truck" is not a useful thing to hear when a box starts collapsing.

9. Keep all your tools, alan keys etc. handy. This was invaluable when we had to disassemble stuff at the last minute to fit it in the truck.

10. When you own your own house you instantly gain a never ending list of DIY projects.

Conclusion:

The only lazy solution to moving house really is never to do it, ever.