Isolation Activities

May 4, 2020

lockdown

house

DIY

culinary

My friend Sam told me about Corona Bingo. Fortunately it isn't a neighbourhood window bingo event because I'd definitely feel like I had to participate in that and it would be cold. Corona Bingo is where you tick off all the things you're doing that you thought were unique and creative, but in fact the entire country is baking banana bread and 90% of it is better than yours.

I keep making things. On the surface, this sounds ok. But it's become a bit of an addiction and there's only so many shelves someone who has no clutter needs. Does that radiator need a radiator shelf? Do we need a shoe rack? (Actually yes. I stand by the shoe rack). Could my work-from-home desk be extended to also fit my laptop?

I'm going to paint it but you need to save some things to look forward to.

It's slightly nicer than a pile of shoes. I'd quite like to build a step on top of it to use the space to the right.

Leftover wooden slats from the cupboard doors

This space desperately needed a shelf. The slats even almost fit perfectly.

Luckily the laptop weighs them down enough to stop them bowing in the middle and springing out (ALMOST perfectly).

When I ran out of places to fit shelves, I made a spice rack for aforementioned Sam (I feel like she gets a lot of mentions in this blog and I'm NEVER mentioned in hers. Just saying.). You too can make a spice rack if you have some wood, an old shower-tidy that you were going to get rid of but then the world shut down, some spare curtain hooks that you refused to throw away because they looked like they might be useful, and assorted paints and varnishes.

This leftover piece of wood in the shed was plentiful, and just fit my ground cumin, which, by virtue of having a broken seal, gets marginally more use than my Chinese Five Spice.

This was a terrible shower tidy because it hangs off one hook. Put one bottle of shampoo on and the whole thing tips over. Worse, take one bottle of shampoo OFF and the whole thing tips over. But it was useful for thin metal rods, once I chopped it up.

Measure it up for optimal herb storage.

Originally I planned to drill holes for the rod barriers, but the piece of wood was only just wide enough to hold Chinese Five Spice, so that wouldn't do. The rods would have to go on the outside. And glueing them would be a travesty. Fortunately when we bought a curtain rail, it came with these curtain hooks that we never used but looked so handy.

I broke 4 of them (Only enough in the shower tidy for 2 rods) and took off the little hooks.

Chop all the pieces to size. Elated by my success at cutting them the correct lengths first go, I attempted to freehand a curved top with the jigsaw. It came a bit straighter than I'd hoped, but not terrible.

'Please don't use the angle grinder on the front step. Our next door neighbour is 96 and it is a very small space.' Dan, the buzzkill, was right. So I had to drag all the stuff down to the garden to angle grind off the sharp edges on the rods where'd I'd cut them off.

I broke one of the pads :( I dropped the angle grinder when the pad was on the bottom of the workmate and it snapped in half.

Undeterred, I went about sanding down the wood.

Painting the rods black was a nightmare. Fortuitously I had black all-purpose paint in the shed (this is the first time I've used it, but it was already open, so I assume it was left by the previous owners). It took forever because I kept having to leave two little bits dry to stand them. The wood got varnished my fave - light oak.

Screw it all together (and glue it. And make a glue paste out of flour to fill the gaps). I actually have nowhere in my kitchen to put one so please nobody ever give me a spice rack.

Fortunately Sam did. She owns too much paprika.

But my most resounding success so far is my banana loaf.

"I don't have a loaf tin so I'll just improvise" was a gross overestimation of my baking skill.