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Decorative gravel in front of the shed in back garden, necessitated ~8 years ago when we removed a huuuge dilapidated greenhouse and replaced with an average sized shed leaving space out the front. Fast forward to now, it’s been abused.. bike wash soak away, builders Stihl saw arena, you name it. Add to that the cheap weed barrier was rotten and it was becoming a muddy mess in places.
So it needed doing but deary me for a maybe 3x3m area I almost immediately regretted starting to sort it out. Tried to wash as much of the old stuff as possible with hose/sieve and (wrongly!) thought my toddler would find it fun.. which she did for all of 7 minutes.. By the time I’d washed half of the gravel, bagged the other half for tip, done tip runs, put new framing around the area, bought heavy duty membrane, split a few rubble sacks in car boot, cleaned car boot, bought more gravel (two runs due to grossly underestimating quantity required), etc. I must’ve been into the job for 10-15 hours at completion, and I put my back out yesterday FFS. Never again with the decorative gravel!
So what DIY projects have you very quickly regretted ever starting?
New loft hatch to let the fitters get the batteries up there at end of month
There's a reason I've put it off for 12 years and lived with a sheet of ply over it.
The old hatch would hit the curtain pole (so you had to take that down first) the Joists were 380mm apart and hatch was 480mm long So I could barely get my shoulders through.
It's now 600wide And 900 long and shifted over 10cm to clear curtain pole
The mess. Dear god the mess....... And I still have all the plaster work to make good and repair the old hole......
Every. Single. One.
Floating chipboard and ply floor with the ply screwed down with impact driver at 150mm centres. Just seemed like it would never end.
Only really gardening. That never actually ends. I hate gardening.
Other things, when you break them down into steps you can see progress happening and I quite enjoy it.
It's interesting working with / observing the trades and how they save time on various jobs.
Not DIY per se but the freezer went down today. A new one has been ordered but I'll need to install a vertical replacement radiator to get the new one to fit. It has the potential to be a dockyard job.
Cutting the grass. So much grass. It feels like a prairie sometimes.
When I put the effort in though it only takes about a day. It's the anticipation that is the downer.
FWIW, Garden is on several levels, everything slopes, lots of hedges, shrubs etc. It's a bit of a fiddly one. But I love it when it's done.
Renovating a 6 bed farmhouse. 4.5 years and c. 100k in. F. M. L.
"Fixing" my 40l Waeco fridge thermostat by copying the YT video.
... I no longer have a 40l Waeco fridge.
3 things:
- buying a doer upper house and digging a flowerbed to find an actual brick wall under the ground! Pulled out about 200 old bricks in a 15ft wide by 1 metre deep area, I wouldn’t mind I only dug down about 1/2 a metre! The benefit is everything’s grown like billyo and I’m the hero for doing it!
- telling the other half “I’ll turn the central square patio we have into a circle by knocking the corners off and grassing upto it…. What a pain in the balls to cut the grass now 🤣
- garden was all gravel, decided we wanted to grass it, good god… it filled around 50 rubble bags and a 1T tote bag!
Cutting the grass. So much grass. It feels like a prairie sometimes.
Robot Lawnmower. Saves me probably 100 hours of manual labour a year and sunburn. And the lawn always looks good. But it's only ~350sqm
FWIW, Garden is on several levels, everything slopes, lots of hedges, shrubs etc. It’s a bit of a fiddly one. But I love it when it’s done.
*Expensive* Robot Lawnmower...
(A colleague bought a commercial one to mow his ~7000 sqm garden/meadow/field/orchard 3 or 4 years ago instead of getting a man in once a month. It now looks like a HUGE, really nice garden, that's got about 9 levels, several hundred meters of hedge, 50+ fruit trees and so on. Took him about a weeks work to get it all set up and started. But now he does nothing but watch his garden being mowed. Apparently it was 40000 Krona well spent.)
Trying to make my bathroom door fit without sticking. Its been off the frame that many times that the hinges now won't fix back up properly. I had it close. Oh so close. The bathroom was re-fitted so I thought time for paint refresh. Now it won't shut. At all. Every time I sand one bit, it sticks somewhere else. Its a god-awful flat panel hollow core door. I've 'surformed' it; planed it (terribly); sanded it. I don't think there's much actual timber left of the panel frame any more or I'd take it to my friendly local DIY shop and get them to trim it 🙁 It was in the house from when the house was built in 1985 and has never fitted properly. There is not a straight line, square corner anywhere in the house. I hate that door, and it hates me back in equal measure.
Pretty much every DIY job I've ever done, or ever envisage doing turns into one I wish I had never started.
There is the occasional job that goes smoothly & doesn't take too long, but on the whole most are a pain in the arse.
The worst ones are the small ones you think will taken an hour, two at the most & then take the whole day or more & you've had to knock plans with the family on the head & have made 3 trips to the DIY shop & still don't have all the bits you need.
If I had the money to spend on getting someone in to do every DIY job that comes up, I would do. I used to tell myself that I enjoy the challenge, learn new skills & it's a satisfying thing to work on 'improving the house'. Now I just think bollocks to all that, I wish I could get a man in......
Every DIY job I attempt - I don't have the patience, so it starts out well but quickly falls apart and things then go wrong due to not doing the right steps in the right order or waiting the right amount of time. However, I do tend to measured 3 or 4 times before execution, but I think that is the only thing I manage to do properly. Everything else just seems to not go to the plan to get the right solution.
A conversation that I imagine must have happened between the original owners of this house:
"You know those two five-bar gates across the drive, the ten-foot, and six-foot ones?""
"Yeah"
"As we're tarting the house up a bit to sell it, shall we just oil them to give them a bit of protection? Or, indeed, just leave them alone, as they are solid cedar, properly good, hardwood gates?"
"Nah, that obviously won't look 'Cheshire' enough, we need to paint them dark grey. Not with a proper woodstain or paint though, we'll just use some kind of crappy 'outdoor colours' emulsion stuff"
"But, given that we live in a fairly weather intensive location, isn't there a strong chance that they'll look a bit shit pretty quickly?"
"Dunno, maybe"
"And won't it mean that whoever buys the house will have to spend hours and hours and hours and hours. And hours and hours and hours, sanding down the gates to get all the paint off?"
"Meh, f__k'em"
"Right-o"
Grrrrrrr......
Didn’t you start scraping the pain of those gates 6 months ago?
I started in April, I finished in July...
Stripping decades-old wallpaper from every room in my current house. Took forever, took half the plaster off with it. Should have just thin-boarded over it and reskimmed the entire thing.
This entire ****ing house. Been in 8 years and every single thing has been a pain in the arse. Didn't help that the last time anything was done it seemed to have been done by Bodgitt & Scarper.
I can't wait to finish off the crappy little bits and bloody sell the place.
Didn’t help that the last time anything was done it seemed to have been done by Bodgitt & Scarper.
I think that's who built ours. Oh, and every internal wall is Paramount/egg-box. Hateful, useless ****in stuff.
Refitting the bathroom.
Putting in the bath, shower, sink and toilet were pretty straight forward. I even quite enjoyed tiling the floor and walls before that.
But screwing down 3 full 8'x4' boards on the floor @ less than 6" intervals was soul destroying. Especially when half way through one, I manage to go through a water pipe. I'd spray painted a line where the pipes were, but in my zoned out, zombie like trance I was in, just didn't notice it
I need to finish my shower, ceiling, skirting boards, stairs, hallway, pointing, patio and general decorating jobs. 😭. I'm making slow progress, might be finished by summer 202?.
The hall at my place is a nightmare, the ex started it 6 months before she moved out. It'll probably need repapering before i finish painting the door frames, boxing in the pipes and putting the skirting in...
6 years so far.
If I had the money to spend on getting someone in to do every DIY job that comes up, I would do. I used to tell myself that I enjoy the challenge, learn new skills & it’s a satisfying thing to work on ‘improving the house’. Now I just think bollocks to all that, I wish I could get a man in……
During lockdown one of our team that lives in Delhi got interested in the fact we all had DIY projects on the go. He decided to have a bash at decorating one of his rooms. He came back saying 'never again, why do you do it'. Because we can't bloody afford to pay a trade for everything!
Almost everything.
My OH is infuriatingly flitting between the worst type of bodger and absolute perfectionist. She'll strip PAINT off walls before painting them. Yet we paid a carpenter the best part of £3k to fit new oak doors everywhere, she supervised, and we now have 13 very expensive badly fitted doors, one of which she insisted had to open the other way and now blocks you from being able to walk to the dining room without having to close the kitchen door. Same story with the bathrooms.
That and she insists that things need doing. we've not finished the hall yet, but apparently the spare room and the dining room need doing. You can probably count one one hand the number of times friends/relatives have been over for dinner and stayed the night.
And...... she has awful taste. everything is painted in really bold colors or wallpaper so busy that it makes your brain hurt. I suggested we just paint the hallway white, like normal people, so that it's at least neutral between those rooms, but she'd come back with 7 samples of very floral wallpaper and sellotaped them to the newly painted walls (which once it's pulled the paint off will in her mind justify why it need wallpapering).
On the other hand I did manage to replace the heater fan, resistor, seat release cables/handles, and electric windows switches in her car at the weekend with only minimal skin loss so sometimes there's a win. OTOH I've been telling her to get the cambelt done for 2 years so at any point that effort could still be in vain 🤣
Taking down 26m of conifer hedge and replacing it with a close board fence on my own.
Getting rid of the hedge waste and lifting 3m long concrete posts with out help is a right bastard. Made even worst by doing it on the hottest weekend of the year.
Another is getting rid of all the decorative stones the previous owner put all over the garden. So far I have moved 6 jumbo bags of the f-ing things!
I relocated a kitchen about 14 years ago - never again, it was painful.
From start to finish took around 6 weeks with me fitting it around work and having to get services alterations done (twice - didn't realise that Ikea kitchens at the time didn't have as services void at the back...).
Ha, I started the job of digging up the slate chips around the patio, washing and replacing them - about a year ago. I also naively thought the kids might help to clean them.
Around this time 3 years ago I'd had enough of the garage roof leaking. Ordered materials and a skip, booked a few days off work for early October. First day, good weather and got the old felt stripped off and found a load of bricks loose that needed fixing. Rained pretty much solid for the next couple of days, had to get the rest done in lunchtimes and the odd weekend day, each time peeling back the DPM I'd had to put over to stop water pouring in then replacing after. Took about 6 miserable weeks. Should have just done it in the summer.
My neighbour in uk has been renovating his house for 10 years now. I quite enjoy watching him work, not in a pervy way....but he works all day in his job, gets home at say 6. Then he mixes up materials, lays about 3 bricks in his front garden, cleans up and that s it. So 3 hours work = 3 bricks.
House looks like steptoes yard, it's embarrassing, his neighbours have spent a fortune on their houses only to look at his pile of bricks.
Note to self - just pay a builder
Reading through all these and I've just had a realisation...when the time comes and I (assuming I do) inherit the parent's house, it is going to need a shedload of modernisation. My dad has no interest in how the house looks or works - providing it works - I'm pretty sure the upstairs was wired up by him about 50 years ago, so I seriously doubt it would pass any modern day regulations now.
So, when (if!), the time comes I'm going to be spending quite a bit of time learning and doing DIY...just having a think now, there will be wiring (and probably moving sockets or adding sockets), carpeting, painting, wallpapering as the minimums...
I'd also would like to get some renewable energy solution sorted - however, on the very edge of a conservation area and solar panels and wind turbines (even the wee ones that can sit on a caravan roof) are not allowed (I suspect that is likely to change given energy prices and cost of living issues), but if so, I reckon it'll be solar roof tiles (Tesla make them) with a battery as well as possible a wee wind turbine on the roof - top of a hill and always a breeze so it should trickle something in...
All will cost a lot of time and money...and I've just wasted 10 minutes thinking about it all...depressing thoughts...
So, when (if!), the time comes I’m going to be spending quite a bit of time learning and doing DIY…just having a think now, there will be wiring (and probably moving sockets or adding sockets), carpeting, painting, wallpapering as the minimums…
Or you could just sell it.
I could but it is a nice house (externally) an ok location and it is much larger space than what I'd be able to buy when it was sold...I'm not needing a huge mansion, but it will hopefully cheaper than doing a house clearance to sell and purchase somewhere else...internally it is ok, but it could do with a complete makeover and modernising...
Take out a loan for the work that needs doing, pay it back with the proceeds of your current place when you move into your newly renovated parents old place?
Reading through all these and I’ve just had a realisation…when the time comes and I (assuming I do) inherit the parent’s house, it is going to need a shedload of modernisation.
My in-laws recently decided to sell their amazing place (amazing as it is in a beautiful location and has lots of land) and the whole family wanted my wife and I to buy it (because of family history and we are the only ones that live close to it) but, at 55 myself, I didn't want to embark on a similar modernisation project to what you describe - there's nothing wrong with it but there's barely anything we would want to keep. Thankfully we managed to convince all that it wasn't for us as we like where we live and have just spent the last 8 years modernising our own 1980s retro house bought from the estate of the original owners who hadn't done a single thing to it since moving in (apart from block the drains with about 10,000 cubic metres of congeled chip fat that we found backing up about 2 weeks after moving in - that was a pleasant weekend's work clearing it all).
Similar to OP. Had a shed put in, 6 years ago. Since then there has been 5m of mud around it. Month ago: "I know! Will buy some setts and do it properly..."
4 weeks later and I have done 2m of very unlevel, wobbly looking but solid setts. Generally in 35°C heat, a few hours a week, not enough to finish the job, but enough to be really dull, repetitive work. My mate came around the other day, and just asked when I was going to put the drainage in?
Sigh.
I’ve a 350m long driveway that needs grading every few years. I don’t have a vehicle for that so normally get someone in for a morning to add a bit of gravel and tidy it up.
Last time we asked the guy to add an extra culvert to help drainage and prolong the period between tidy ups. Inevitably perhaps, as he dug to put the culvert pipe in he hit the water pipe that was inexplicably slap bang in the centre of the driveway about 50mm below the surface. No problem, he Carrie’s repairs and my wife sprinted down to the road to turn off the supply and he fixed it… except the next day there was still 1,000l/hr water loss at the meter.
We couldn't really get the guy back in (he insisted that it was fixed).
So where's the leak on the 350m between valves? (we've got sandy soil so no welling, water just soaks away) I dug up and checked the fix and it was ok. So then walked towards the road a few metres and tried a test only to almost immediately hit the pipe and create another leak... but I don't have any joins to fix it. Off to the hardware place to get parts to fix at least two breaks.
Only after I've fixed this and fitted a valve so I can isolate sections of the driveway does my wife mention that she thinks she saw the grader nudge the valve at the top of the driveway!!!!
Dig up the drive right next to that and guess what? There's the leak. Amazing how that much water can just soak away.
My en-suite. The shower started leaking through to downstairs about 5 yrs ago. I’ve got as far as taking out the old enclosure. The tiles were proving dIfficult to remove so I gave up and have never got back to it. Drives my wife crazy but life just seems to get in the way.
Giving myself a tattoo
mrs_oab came home with wee rounded mosaic tiles for the en-suite shower.
No. Just no.
mrs_oab came home with wee rounded mosaic tiles for the en-suite shower.
Ha!
I thought those were supposed to come on a sheet, rather than individually?
My neighbours place.
That been under renovation since before my kids were born.
It's also changed hands as the neighbour had to leave the country in a hurry. So his son owns it now. And is having to redo/undo a lot of his dads cost cutting hacks and bodges.
Like the master bathroom (25sqm) has had to be retiled and refitted, except it was originally fitted with those 60x90 cm marble tiles... But wasn't done properly, so it leaked like a sieve into the living room ceiling void.
Kitchen has also had to be redone, the outside rendering has started to blow off after only 6 years, as he left the original, slightly manky, cladding up. So that's an ongoing task. The front door wasn't specced properly, so that's had to be taken off (including the frame) and stripped/refinished. The door step (huge granite tiles) has had to be removed because istead of having a solid support he's just propped the ends of the tiles on to block work and filled the space with gravel and sand, which has now settles enough that a couple of the tiles have cracked.
This has also exposed a hole in the wall beneath the door that is big enough to let a child crawl through, and it's a void that shouldn't be there...
Intention was for his son to move in, finish the building work then sell it. I doubt it'll ever be finished at this rate.
(They are basically 10 or 11 years into the renovation and starting the second or in some cases the third attempt at some of the building tasks!)
All of them.
Nothing ever takes 10 minutes
Some absolute absolute corkers here! Thank you for the replies and laughs all, I've had a right giggle at some of the stories. And sorry for delayed response, it's been a busy month or two.
The posts about DIY stuff in the loft has reminded me of the absolute world of pain waiting for me in my own loft.. insulation is patchy at best, it's not boarded, it's tiny as house is a dormer and there's about 100 boxes all finely balanced on the woodwork. I'm going to have to ignore it for now as can't face another project especially crawling around in a dirty confined space for hours on end!
My front garden/drive is all red gravel, except where it's random other stones. The drainage is crap and the gravel wasn't too well done, it's quite sloped and has barrier cloth too near the surface so the stones are always running downhill and creating bald spots.
So, I decided to carve out a better soakaway, sort the cloth, and generally reshape it all a bit. And I'm 9/10ths of the way through, and I had a method that was working really well but it only works with dry ground, because of how I was sorting/sifting the stones. And it's not been dry for a month. I think if I'd dedicated 2 or 3 hours more to it before The Weather, it'd be done. Instead, there is a big hole in the ground, which fills with water and which I've fallen in twice.
Also got an endless/possibly doomed car diy project, to rip the manual transmission out of one old rusty bucket Subaru, and stab it into my nice rust-free autobox Subaru. Finally finished the "tear it apart" bit, probably halfway through the "sell the leftovers" bit, the derelict shell should go away tomorrow so I'll no longer be bringing down house prices in the area... But the sheds are all full, and I've got The Fear since the next step is to cripple my daily driver without a completely clear idea of how to wire it and whether it'll actually work without a whole aftermarket ecu, so they will stay full til spring probably. In the meantime I need to swap the engine in my mx5 so that I've at least got one running car. And of course the "putting it in" bit is harder than the "taking it out" bit and yet the "taking it out has taken, oh, 2 years or so, on and off. Mostly off.
On the plus side, the donor car doesn't owe me a penny, since the bits I've already sold have paid for it and there's still a fair bit left. But still.
Wow, that is whole lot of graft you've just described there. I don't think I could deal with a full driveway of gravel.. my 3x3m patch was enough for life! Never EVER again.
I don't know where to start with your car projects other than to say GOOD LUCK!
I think the worst one I have done was insulating the flat. On my own. Its an attic flat so I was crawling around in a eaves space cutting sheets of celotex to size and stuffing it in every gap. filthy horrible work in confined spaces
I thought those were supposed to come on a sheet, rather than individually?
They do.
Try both laying them flat, cutting to shape around anything, cutting narrow sheets off and then, the real piece de resistance, grouting them in a way that looks good *and* is actually waterproof. Instead of 4 lines of grouting per 10cm2 you have 200 curved lines of grouting junction per 10cm2....an absolute pain in the....
To also add:
"Let's just replace a couple of windows and doors, and the downstairs bedroom is small" conversation escalated quickly.
Bathroom:
Shower tile grout kept cracking. Tried all kinds of solutions. Ended up putting a new tray in again. Retiled.
Cracked again.
Ended up taking the whole bathroom out. Pulling floor up and replacing two rotten joists and new floor boards.
New bathroom in.
9 months later compression fitting behind the shower (airing cupboard) gave way randomly. Blew tiles off the wall as it ran for a good hour.
All ok now. Just can't be arsed to paint it.
Garden I've been doing the garden for 2 years. Still no lawn.
Everything now is so damn expensive which doesn't help.
Outdoor winter cat shed. Fully insulated, utterly bomb proof, safe and security for sheltering in the worst of winters. Built in the stud framework method, the same way you'd build a timber framed house, so its pretty complex. insulation is between the frames, at least 50mm thick of multiple layers of foil coated bubble.over clad in osb, waterproofed,and a final felt over the entire structure.1" thick floor covered with extra warm 10mm closed cell foam. Multiple 5mm thick perspex windows and a 2 way cat door to the front, wide enough for even the tubbiest of pussy cats.
Its a flat slightly sloping roof, felt covered again, suitable for lounging on.
Has the little furry bugger ever used it ?. Has he £$%& 😡
I wish I'd never started. Cost twice the cost of a shop bought affair.
Digging a pond - during first lockdown I replaced a sandpit I made for the kids with a small pond, decided to go bigger and have a 15ft x 8ft x 4ft deep pond in same location in corner of garden. Had to cut down a 25ft holly tree so getting rid of the roots of that was a nightmare, we also back onto woodland and I keep hitting other roots, the soil is really stoney too and is a very solid crust after about 2 feet. This is all being done by hand as can’t get mechanical digger into garden. Massively underestimated how much soil I’d need to get rid of too so size and depth of planned pond is getting smaller by the day. Hoping to get it all dug before winter sets in, only able to do about half a day every weekend and then complete it in early spring, hopefully by which time the Thames Water hosepipe ban will be over. Surprised there isn’t gym equipment that replicates effort and motions of digging as it is bloody hard work
See that's where you've gone wrong, you're digging a pond when you're supposed to kinda dig the awkward silences
Thank you all for the deep sense of schadenfreude I have experienced during breakfast, you've said it all between you.
I seem to run on pent up frustration and swearing, seasoned with the unrealistic dreams of the other half*.
And so escape to work to get away from it all, except I'm a self employed handyman...
*Oh God the decorating choices. The bathroom has a dark grey theme. The bedroom has a dark olive green theme. It looks as though we are sponsored by the Army & Navy.
Digging a pond – during first lockdown I replaced a sandpit I made for the kids with a small pond, decided to go bigger and have a 15ft x 8ft x 4ft deep pond in same location in corner of garden. Had to cut down a 25ft holly tree so getting rid of the roots of that was a nightmare, we also back onto woodland and I keep hitting other roots, the soil is really stoney too and is a very solid crust after about 2 feet. This is all being done by hand as can’t get mechanical digger into garden. Massively underestimated how much soil I’d need to get rid of too so size and depth of planned pond is getting smaller by the day. Hoping to get it all dug before winter sets in, only able to do about half a day every weekend and then complete it in early spring, hopefully by which time the Thames Water hosepipe ban will be over. Surprised there isn’t gym equipment that replicates effort and motions of digging as it is bloody hard work
I feel your pain. Over the hottest part of summer we hand dug a 19x8x4ft pond for a load of inherited carp. **** my life. There were six of us over several weekends - like you we couldn't get a digger in and had three wheelbarrows on the go with I think 5 builders skips in the end. If the digging wasn't bad enough, it's the pushing of the barrow up the ramp to get it into the skip that did for me.
I reckon it’ll be solar roof tiles (Tesla make them)
@DickBarton they allegedly make them. I’m unsure if they’re available at all in the U.K. I signed up on the Tesla mailing list in 2017 for ‘more info on availability’. Not a peep yet.
I read they’re not as efficient as regular panels. Would’ve put that aside if we could have had the slate-like ones laid on our roof. I drew a blank on anyone local who had seen one. We’ve gone for regular panels but aren’t in a conservation area. Good luck.
DIY you wish you’d never started? 🤔 most things as there’s always a complication due to house age, previous poor work, or just … something.
The one I nearly gave up on was removing 2 excess doors from a bedroom. At one point the house was flats. Doors off. Frames out. Battens placed. The walls around the holes were not flat or even so had to make a ‘best fit’ with the board. Skimming was a challenge as the board and meeting points had very different ‘suck’. Plaster also fell off the adjacent wall on one so had to replaster that too. Should have just gotten someone in and had the whole room relined.
Easiest job. Kind of. Was rejigging the garage lighting wiring. Some interesting work from the previous folks. Lots of cable. A good wiring plan. And Wago connectors and boxes made it much simpler than using those old-stlyle junction boxes.
All of them.
See that’s where you’ve gone wrong, you’re digging a pond when you’re supposed to kinda dig the awkward silences
very good Northwind, a Hold Steady lyric for those not familiar with their work
@prettygreenparrot and @dickbarton
I reckon it’ll be solar roof tiles (Tesla make them)
@DickBarton they allegedly make them. I’m unsure if they’re available at all in the U.K. I signed up on the Tesla mailing list in 2017 for ‘more info on availability’. Not a peep yet.
Can't remember where i saw it, one of the green tech sites i would guess. But those tesla solar tiles are unlikely to see the light of day in any sort of volume, too expensive to make, not hugely efficient, and Mush has pretty much lost interest.
This thread has reminded me of IHNs Two Rules of DIY Jobs:
1) Any job that should only ten minutes will take at least two hours.
2) Any job that is going to be a bit of a palaver will be done in ten minutes.
@holdsteady, I agonised over whether to go with that or with a constructive summer reference, it became a diy project of its own.
Building a new patio, rockery, pond and walkways over the summer. Done every weekend over a 2 month period in weather ranging from +40°C to driving rain. All whilst suffering from a hernia and torn meniscus.
The damn thing is nearly finished, but I hate it so much that I don't want to be near it. Ever.