The weekend at last, after this crazy week of home repairs and work! Despite the fact that I spent two days this week sitting around waiting for repairmen, I feel like I haven't had enough home time. So I'm looking forward to relaxing.
We do have a few tasks on our agenda. Tomorrow we have to move our gigantic old couch out to the street for the council to carry away on Monday. This is going to be an adventure. Stay tuned.
I'm also thinking about defrosting the freezer, which is once again so icy that the drawers don't easily pull in and out. I don't understand how I managed to go seven years before doing this the first time in 2021, because I had to do it again in 2023 and it needs it again now. We have somehow switched to an every-two-years defrosting cycle! I guess I just waited that first time until it was really, really, really bad.
And finally, I gave Dave a gift certificate to a local cookshop for his birthday back in June and he hasn't used it yet. I'm getting nervous that we'll never use it if we don't do it soon -- it's been hanging on the refrigerator so long it's basically become invisible to us -- so I'm going to apply some gentle, loving pressure to get him to redeem it.
Some graffiti on Finchley Road. "To infinity, and beyond!"
Someone has tidied up the broken bench, removing the rather useless warning cones and sweeping around it. But whoever is responsible still can't bring themselves to remove it entirely.
(Top photo: Colorful balconies on the Barbican estate, last weekend.)
Does "gentle, loving pressure" involve shoving Dave's arm up his back and growling in his earhole, "Spend the ****ing voucher Dave!"? As for the old sofa, do you possess an axe?
ReplyDeleteHopefully gentler than that! We do not own anything big enough to cut up a couch.
DeleteMy father and I once sawed a 9-foot sofa in smaller pieces to fit it in the elevator. (Movers had carried it up 16 flights of stairs.) I hope you don’t have to do that. That bench is an eyesore and a hazard, but it’s fairly well swept.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine having to do that much work! Fortunately no elevators are in our immediate future.
DeleteMost likely, the drain holes are plugged up which causes it to freeze instead of being able to drain away. Another thing I have seen is that the coils in the back of the fridge can get coated in dirt which doesn't allow the freezing/cooling to be as efficient and sometimes giving them a bath will help prevent things from freezing up.
ReplyDeleteI've never cleaned the coils so that's possible. I did do some work to clear the fridge drain and that helped a related problem with water pooling in the base of the fridge.
DeleteSofa. If I have said it before forgive me to be on repeat. A large sofa's ends can usually be taken off making it much easier to manoeuvre it out and about. Trust me: I am not your mother but have large sofa.
ReplyDeleteAs to defrosting the freezer: I am frozen in shock, Steve. Defrosting every few years? That's insane. You either do it every two/three months or invest in a new fangled American one (SMEG) which doesn't need to be defrosted because it does so on its own volition.
Gift vouchers: Just ask what someone would like. Get it. Wrap it - maybe in one of your banana tree's leaves or whichever plant is currently having its day, hand over.
You can tell, can't you: I like to go the way of least resistance; no loose ends left dangling.
Hope your new sofa and rug will live up to expectation. Enjoy,
U
Every two or three MONTHS?! I don't know anyone who defrosts that often. My mom used to do it every couple of years, I think. Maybe annually at most. If it were up to us to buy a fridge we'd naturally get a frost-free one, but this one comes with the flat.
DeleteYou've got your work cut out for you this weekend. Just think how lovely it will be to relax on your new sofa, your feet resting on your new rug - you will have earned your relaxation.
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely true! Unfortunately it won't be possible until Thursday. :)
DeleteGiven your tendency to find treasures out on your walks, I expect to soon see some portion of that bench cleverly incorporated into your garden.
ReplyDeleteHa! Even I can't find a use for that thing.
DeleteI've a feeling the bench will stay until it turns to dust and blows away.
ReplyDeleteIt's looking that way!
DeleteToo bad you don't have open fires now. That bench is nicely dried firewood.
ReplyDeleteI hope we get pictures of Dave stuck in the doorway with the sofa.. The idea of sawing off at least one arm sounds good. At least you don't have to navigate stairs.
It would make good firewood, it's true. If it's still there when the apocalypse comes I may need it!
DeleteSofa arm, I'm adding hastily, realizing what that sounded like.
ReplyDeleteHa! :)
DeleteI really cannot imagine how you're going to get that sofa out of the apartment. Too bad the Russians are no longer upstairs. I am sure they would have loved the challenge AND had the proper tools of destruction.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
I wouldn't have had to lift a finger. Mr. Russia would have relished the thought of attacking it with a chainsaw!
DeleteI wonder, do the flats come with the planter boxes? Gift cards are iffy. I got one back in April and I used it for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Still have a good amount on it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure re. the planter boxes but it does seem like everyone has them. I think retailers count on a certain number of gift cards getting lost and/or going unused.
DeleteThe balconies on the Barbican estate look wonderful. I love a good 'garden in the sky', and I bet the little wildlife do too. I'm surprised no-one has taken the wood of the bench to burn in a log burner, but maybe with Bonfire Night being on the horizon it might disappear then. Don't forget when getting the sofa out to ... 'PIVOT'. ;-)
ReplyDeleteOh, I didn't think of Bonfire Night! That's true. I'd be surprised if it lasts beyond that.
DeleteThe poor old bench is a mess. Why doesn't some one move it ?
ReplyDeleteThat's my question!
DeleteCodex: It's just a couch not a reno. Can't you use the gift certificate? Is Blogger acting up?
ReplyDeleteWell, I bought the gift certificate, so it would be silly for me to use it too. :)
DeleteThat is the problem with gift cards, at least for me, they sit in my purse and I forget about them.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could purchase a small ax and chop up the bench:) In small enough pieces it could fit in the bin next to it, although I can see how a man wandering down the street with an ax might cause some alarm:)
Yeah, I'm not sure I'd want to try that on a public sidewalk. LOL
DeletePerhaps there's a trip to the cooking store in your future too! Something nearby you will enjoy? I'm surprised no one took that one long piece from the bench to turn into a table or some other upcycling thing! (Would I? Well, probably no...) Good luck with the sofa!
ReplyDeleteI guess no one needs a table that bad.
DeleteI look forward to hearing about your sofa shenanigans.
ReplyDeleteShould be interesting!
DeleteThat bench! My first thought was that perhaps some good Samaritan cleaned the area up and did not take the bench away for fear of being labeled a thief. That doesn't make sense though. The cones are gone!
ReplyDeleteIt's in front of a telephone exchange, and my guess is someone from the phone company did it. (Probably their cones, too.)
DeleteA good mix of photos here; love the colourful balcony flowers.
ReplyDeleteWith gift certificates and vouchers, in my experience it is vital to sort them out instantly. When my sister gifted me the visit to ESA in Darmstadt, I looked for a suitable time slot as soon as my birthday party weekend was over, and fixed the appointment right away, although it was only the end of March and our guided tour date was the 1st of September.
I agree. The longer they're left lying around, the greater the chance they'll be lost or the business will close!
DeleteI wouldn't wait too long to redeem that certificate. Places go out of business all the time-- around here anyway.
ReplyDeleteExactly! That's my fear.
DeleteThat bench is now a Historic Situation & cannot be removed. I kind of want a video of you & Dave moving the sofa.
ReplyDeleteHa! A "historic situation." Is that an official governmental designation? :)
DeleteI love those balconies with all the flowers tumbling over the sides. That is one thing I loved on my August trip to London, there were flowers everywhere.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the freezer chore. I actually did that periodically for a year or so because my ice cube trays had leaks in them and layers of ice would form on the bottom of the freezer. I felt like a complete idiot when I realized I could just order new ice cube trays from Amazon have them delivered to my door.
Ha! Yes, definitely easier to buy new ice cube trays! We need some of those too, come to think of it, though that's not the source of our ice accumulation.
DeleteTime sitting at home waiting on service people isn't relaxing, so I can understand your desire to stay home without any other obligations.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's different when there's no expectation!
DeleteI'm sure you two clever men will figure out a way to get it out the door. Can't wait to see the new sofa and rug!
ReplyDeleteI hope so. I have dreaded this task as long as we've owned this sofa. (Which is as long as we've lived here.)
DeleteI'm all in on the video of the Great Move, too. And I want good audio to see what kind of language you two use when you're working on the same awkward task!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how to make a video and move a sofa at the same time, but I'll consider it!
DeleteI suspect wrangling the sofa out to the street is going to take some muscle and juggling. Surely, you have a game plan.
ReplyDeleteDefrosting a refrigerator is something I've never done. I believe I saw it done in a movie once many years ago and it involved using bowls of warm/hot water to melt the ice and remove it from the sides of the refrigerator.
I can totally understand delaying the defrost!
Yes, that's exactly what defrosting is like. It's not hard work, it's just messy and tedious.
DeleteBack in the olden days, before frost free freezers, we used bowls of hot water, and a blow dryer. I'm sure you don't have one, but maybe Dave?
ReplyDeleteNope. No blow dryers around here!
DeleteDoes the gift certificate have a use by date? I have never had a freezer frost up so bad it needed manual defrosting. One of my kids inherited my 32 years old side-by-side fridge/freezer combo and the freezer got iced up so bad there were icicles hanging between the shelves, it was over full so couldn't circulate cold air properly and the door seals had perished too, so a new one was purchased. A year later the fridge died and got replaced too.
ReplyDeleteSometimes they get so iced up that the coils break and they die. Or when they're finally defrosted it's such a shock to the system that they die. (Possibly the same cause!)
Delete