It’s hot and it’s summer party time.  If you are in the Poitou Charente region Dept 79 near Caunay, then come to the Mad Hatter’s Kitchen.  You can have a meal and enjoy some live music by a local band from Bellac.

Playing lots of favourites from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s from artists such as The Kinks, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, T-Rex, Beatles and more…

Live Music Poitou Charente 30 Jul

See full details here

Keep Music Live!

This year it’s get the garage organised.  Since we moved in stuff is everywhere and nothing really has it’s place.  If money wasn’t an issue, I would just call in the local handy man and ask him to build me some storage.

As we don’t have that luxury, it’s a case of DIY.  I spotted a local advert for someone selling up and moving out so went down to see what was to be had. 

Fortunately for me, the house had a workshop which used to be an old forge.  Inside was a very rusty grey looking metal frame but perfect for shelving.  Only problem was it was 2m x 2m.  Not even the old Volkeswagen was big enough for that.

Not to be outdone, we (the current owner and I) went through the process of undoing every nut and bolt holding it all together.  Unfortunately, the old forger had done a better job of building the frame than we thought and each side piece was welded together by a piece of sheet metal over the top so we had a very nice 2m x 2m metal frame!

So out with the angle grinder and after lots of persuasion and sparks flying, we broke each of the welds.  Into the van went a pile of rusty pieces of metal and as I drove home with all this old metal jangling in the back I could only shudder to think what Steve would think of it when I got it home.

Stage 2 – wire brushing the worst of the rust and good a covering of Hammerite black paint.  Took me about a day to do that, but at the end of it I had a number of quite decent looking  pieces of metal.

Stage 3 – Putting it together was a bit of a challenge.  The whole thing, when bolted together, was not something you could easily lift into place.  So I cleared the area where it was going to stand and laid everything on it’s side.  Having been ”hand made” meant that not all the shelves fitted into all the slots.  After a bit of swapping and positioning the shelves finally got put into the right place.  In with the bolts and with the help of Steve, we lifted it  into place.

Stage 4 – Making the inserts.  I’d been given a few pieces of chipboard and I persuaded Steve to get his hands dirty and get the jigsaw out.  After a simple process of cutting 99 x 39 cm pieces, each one slotted very nicely into each section.

There it was, a pile of rusty old metal transformed into a good sturdy set of shelves – very satisfying.

Restored shelves in place