The Riddle of the Sanders – Part 1

For once, a post about how to do something, that has been the cause of me quietly losing what remains of my mind.

Sanding the ceiling flat.

Which it certainly isn’t at the moment. The question is, how did the original painters get paint blobs so consistently even over the entire surface of the ceiling? And then, when it came for a repaint about – oh – 20 years ago, why did they leave the original, flaked and chipped paint there, and then paint over the surface, rather than sanding it down flat. You can see that half of the centre of the plank is chipped away, and then rapidly painted over.

And then, to complete the god-awful eyesore, the whole lot is rounded off with a couple of florescent tubes, and a switch wacked into the door-frame, the one original charming feature left?! This is, by the way, a strange and unusual Australian habit: they even have something called an architrave switch which fits into the door-jam.

So, to get the room back to some semblance of normality, I’ve been sanding down the ceiling. It’s been taking up hours of my so called life, and I now know just what it feels like to be a bottom dog.

The phrase Top Dog comes from the convict era, when logs were held in place by irons called dogs, when they were sawn into planks by hand. The chap on the top had the best job – plenty of air, good exercise – while the man on the bottom got all the sawdust in his eyes while standing in a filthy pit.

Which is just how I’m feeling at the moment: to sand down my ceiling planks, I need to stand on the top of a ladder, holding a large belt sander over my head, and watch as this constant stream lands in my eyes. Its of sawdust, mixed with lead paint.

It does however get a lovely smooth finish – which is better than a kick in the teeth by a blind horse.

The mystery of the West Flood

The Barbie had one other major advantage. It spurred me on to give the hedge a haircut. And in so doing I solved a mystery even greater than UFOs, crop circles, the MPC’s interest rate movements, and the Loch Ness monster. Well, maybe not crop circles: it’s still a mystery as to why I spent so much time creating the blighters in the first place, although I am rather proud of one I got into a book.

I digress...

For aeons now I’ve been troubled by a switch marked West Flood. It must have had some major significance to the original native inhabitants back in the olden days (say, ten years back, which in Australian architectural terms is pretty much antediluvian). Indeed, they chiselled ancient runes on the switch plate cover to mark this switch which was in prime position, right in the middle and half way up a wall, so you couldn’t miss it. Indeed, it’s so annoying, it’s rather like the goat in the room.

It is a right pain though – I mean, why put it there? And more crucially to me, why chop out the centre section of weatherboarding to punch through the cables and the switch. To repair these, and restore the walls to their former pre-flood glory (or pre-diluvian  period – meaning "before the deluge"... see what I’ve done there?) I need to take out the entire plank. Which is also easier said than done, because of course, they are tongue and groove weatherboards, and they neatly slot together. To take out one in the middle, you either saw it out, or start at the top, and take everything off.

And of course that doesn’t solve the burning, searing question. What is the purpose of the West Flood? And why isn’t it searing... indeed, why is it very definitely not on, working, or, indeed, visible.

I’ve traced the cable, which is buried under layers of insulation in the loft, and then it runs straight down the wall into the well... from where all was a mystery, until, while working on this, I had an inspiration... and went back to where I’ve hacked down 20 years worth of growth in the shrubbery. And there, lying dormant rather like an out of work adolescent hedgehog, under piles of privet, is my West Flood.

Of course the thing doesn’t actually work or anything, and its rusted solid. But it’s good to have solved one mystery.

Eat, Spray, Love

It’s the morning after house warming day. And rather in the way of a violent thunderstorm, the Barbeque has been and gone. And indeed, that’s exactly what we had the moment our guests arrived. What they didn’t see were the manic preparations beforehand, in the aim for an animal free home, and for something to eat with.

Firstly, a pun. What do you call something with four legs that goes woof? A Barbeque. I reassembled the massive five burner Aldi-Special-offer that has been in boxes for – my! –weeks since moving day. Plugged in the gas bottle, hit the auto-start, hit it again, and on the third time of asking there was a “whump” sound rather like a Qantas engine in mid-flight, and a six foot long sheet of flame toasted any pests within arm-length. Who would imagine that burners can come unplugged? Once I’d finished beating out the smouldering shrubbery and put my eyebrows back in order, I staggered back inside. “It’s all fine love.” Not wishing to alarm “Ready, steady, lets cook”.

“Great, can you wipe down all the spiders webs from the window?

I looked through 150 years of murk at the grimy piece of glass that purports to be a kitchen window, and the ten black widows lurking by the catch. The original owner may have blown 200 punds (as the deeds spell it) of his own cash on this land nearly two centuries ago, but no one has thought to spend a penny on it cleaning it since.

A gallon of free surface spray and the blighters staggered off, quietly expiring. No punds, in ten dead, leaving me with a polishing job. 

The barbecue worked, I’m glad to say I didn’t warm the house more explosively than intended, and the hovel was roundly applauded.

The Bottle of Britain

"There’s not a lot out that way" I remember a chap at a petrol station (Sorry – that’s Servo in Strine) saying when I took the road to the Windsor in 2003. There was far less in 1963 when the chap who cuts hair (calling it a hairdressing salon would be pushing it) has told me it was nothing but a dirt road until you hit (hopefully not literally) the New Road.



Sheepshagger Gold out in the Colonies



Now it’s a major four lane highway, and there’s even a little pull in shopping centre (sorry, Mall) with – woohoo! an off licence (sorry, bottlo).

Now in most Aussie drive in bottle shops (Only in Australia, as they say) if you want decent tasting beer you’re banging your head against the wrong tree.

Indeed, they don’t stock a lot in there, but tucked away down the bottom of the shelf there is a small "European" beer section, with a few well travelled bottles. Very well travelled – some was not even destined for the Aussie market.

Take for example a bottle of Cairngorm Brewery Sheepshagger Gold. It’s been made – as you might expect – from pure highland spring water, but then bottled and labelled in French for the Quebec market, along with deposit marking for Canada. Another sticker was added in Perth, from where it seems to have travelled by lorry to Adelaide, and received SA deposit markings. How it got to New South Wales is beyond me, but I’m grateful it did.

A huntsman riding by

Moving my termites was a bad thing. Not only do my walls have holes in them, it’s also disturbed the spiders. Not that I knew anything about it until there was an ear piercing shriek, and “it was the size of a 20c piece”.

Not that I could see it. I sprayed the bejezus out of the skirting boards, but all that happened was I got a nice shiny polish going on all the exposed floorboards.

“He was over there. He was the size of a beer mat”.

Huntsman spider, post thong 

Fortunately I’ve read the dummies guide to lethal forms of Australian wildlife, and while snakes can drop a horse at a hundred meters, and even cuddly things like platypuses (should that be platipusi?) can take your arm off, the huge spiders found in Australian gardens are generally harmless. Its the ones the size of your thumbnail that you need to keep an eye on.

“Look under the table. He was the side of a dinner plate”.

Bar, that is, their ability to fill your underpants. I’d pretty much given up on spotting the critter when he came galloping around the corner, skidding on the newly polished floorboards, and charging towards me. He was indeed the size of a bull, leaping fully two feet (or perhaps, eight feet, as that’s what he seemed to have) this was a Goliath Bird-Eating Tarantula... or, in Aussie terms, a Huntsman, which never mind how pleasant they look, have a name that chills your heart down to your collarbone. It does, after all, Hunts... Man.

Running right under my feet, I was firmly convinced the end had come... of the sofa. I pulled it apart, but of the spider there was no sign, until I took the entire room apart and upended said sofa. He sat there glowering at me.

Then the god of small thongs landed on his head, and ended his pre-emptive dash for freedom. It then just remained to scrape the remains of the giant bird-eating Huntsman off the antique floor boards before his goo started eating through the wood.

Alas, I’ve now done even more research into the humble Huntsman, and found that many Aussies like them, and instead of whacking the blighters into kingdom come, welcome them because... wait for it... they keep the cockroaches down.

A Glove in the time of Cholera

Hurrah! I have completed a room. Just one room remember, but it’s now looking all swish and rather New England beach house meets shack in the bush.

Therefore, I can looking at which room to work on next, but before that I need to examine my termites. And to do that I need to rip huge chunks of weatherboard of the walls.

True, the pest report said that there were no active termites, but there’s a little distressed wood around some of the weatherboarding. Right now I think it is the home owner that is becoming a little distressed.

The planks just fell apart: it’s quite apparent that it is just the paint holding the place together, and inside the wood is a pleasant track of termite runs where they’ve eaten away my house.

Thankfully the builders who rebuilt this place in 1993 after it closed as a pizza restaurant had some boards cut up to just the right dimensions and profile, and even better stored some in the loft! That’s saved me a fortune from nipping down to the woodyard to get some more cut. Oddly, it’s these new planks that have been nibbled away wholesale by the pesky little mites, and the old 150 year frame and older planks are untouched.

I've been advised to wear gloves doing this sort of destroy-your-house with one tug type operation, however I'm made of sterner stuff: their may be the remains of Cholera in the walls - or at the very least some of these pesky spiders - but they aren't going to come near me.

However, I’d like to protect the lot: among the myriad of termite control solutions are sprays, barriers, and baits. Bring ‘em on – all I need to do is get all my ducks in order and lined up in a row before I shoot them.

The Bonfire of the Vanities

There is a vast pile of furniture piling up in one of the back offices, with desk upon desk, and yet more desks on top of that. Its jolly decent of the guys who flogged this place to leave all their junk behind – but a right pain it is too, getting rid of it.

This Formica has been hewn from the hills of Tuscany, carefully moulded, and then finely chiselled by the best craftsmen known to New South Wales who’ve added shelf units at just the right height to smack you in the forehead, and vanity units in really inconvenient places around odd corners. Oh, and then some pillock has not only built the office walls around it, but put the skirting board in place so you can’t remove the desk, and then to add insanity to injury, painted around the whole thing, and even left the masking tape in place.

I should of course have planned carefully, and since this is the time to “Remember, remember the fifth of November”, gunpowder, treason, and plotting how to move very large pieces of furniture from one room to another, just chopped up the desks, built a large bonfire, and be done with it. After all it is of course one of the most important nights of the year for annual celebrations, Bonfire Night. Sadly, this is one of the many things that is banned in Australia. Apparently it is a safety hazard.

So, with nothing else to do, I’ll have to chop them up for logs, and burn them in the grate. Desks burn really well in winter.

The god of mall things

Yes! I’m very excited. I’ve finally got my hands on the Australian holy grail. I now have a way of providing power that isn’t an instant turn off – my sockets are in. And I now know what the Aussies think of Poms who work on their houses.

Mad Englishmen who work in the midday sun, that’s what.



Clipsal flat brushed aluminium metal power socket 



I had the call to say that my sockets had arrived, and after I wandered down to the ‘Mall’ (As Aussies call their rather small decrepit shopping centres on the outskirts of an equally small decrepit industrial estate) I the usual conversation about “I ordered this” “They don’t make ‘em” “Oh yes they do”. I could see it wasn’t going very well, but I didn’t realise it was going to go downhill from here. The occer kept on assuring me that Clipsal never makes flat plate aluminium sockets, and when he finally did look in the catalogue, and then just about got over his hangover enough to look in the storeroom to find my sockets. He didn’t however move fast enough (it’s that hangover over again... see, it will come up and bite you!) to stop me from seeing the piece of paper with the order on the front. “Order: 5 plates Name: Posh Pom”.

No wonder then that he decided to charge me a totally different price from the one I was first quoted. It started out at $77, then went up to $87, and we finally settled on $83. Nothing like fleecing the tourists.

That really gets up my goat.