Sunday, April 30, 2017

You have to love a scaffold

Perhaps I'm exaggerating.  But one of the best things we have purchased is our own scaffold.  I don't have the scientific proof - but I reckon it's 500% safer than a ladder and 900% more fun!

Ours is a budget number from Synergy Scaffolding and it is absolutely brilliant.  Imagine being able to stand on a flat, level, stable surface 3.5 metres up.  Can't picture it?  Buy a scaffold :)

Mind you, sometimes you need to be a bit creative and resourceful when you're setting it up.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Picketing

I have to say – we do like a white picket fence. Our son-in-law, Simon (yes, that is a familiar name) pitched in and put this together for us. It would look a lot better without the jumble of bricks and building materials around it, but we’re working on that.  

I think one of the “secrets” to a good picket fence is getting the spacing right, which is a real challenge when the width of the (el cheapo) palings varies by up to 12mm. The winning strategy seems to be to mark where the left hand side of each paling should theoretically go on the top rail and then fudging it a bit depending on the individual paling’s width.  

From experience we’ve learnt that you can’t just use a spacer stick between them like BH&G suggest. That would work if the palings were all exactly the same width. Either way, when you get to the last 4 or 5 you need to make some adjustments or the last gap will look totally wrong.