Cold.

Today has been bright and sunny with an icy wind blowing from the north. My first job was to load up the car with bags of metal, wood and general rubbish mostly from taking down the false wall. There are still four bags of broken up plasterboard which can be put one at a time in the wheelie bin. On my way back I did some shopping at Lidl's and Tesco's.

Before I went to the dump I pressure washed a couple of planks in the 'balcony' and a couple on the step area. I did the same again at the end of the day without water appearing by the conservatory. Four or five more days and it will all be done. Having cleared away the bulky shed from the top of the garden I've been getting more and more annoyed by the way the balustrade around the 'balcony' dominates the view from the kitchen. I even spent a happy half hour scribbling away with Paint to get a better idea of what the view would be without the balustrade.

If this was our forever home I would have no hesitation in removing the whole balustrade and replacing it with some chunky planters to stop people stepping off the drop. However I have to bear in mind that this might put future purchasers off and I spent a lot of time thinking how I could at least lower the rail but nothing seemed to work. It was as I was thinking what a shame it would be to cut down the chunky uprights when I had a sudden flash of inspiration. Take out the spindles and replace with a rope as below. That way it wouldn't be too hard for someone to restore the railings if they wanted. All I need to do now is to buy three pieces of rope with fixings as I can't see an easy way to drill out giant holes in the uprights.

In the afternoon I did a couple of finishing off jobs in the front garden. The big plant trough had some bowing to the front when I made it which became worse when I pushed the whole thing along a few inches to fit in the bin store. I knew I should have included a wooden batten along the top to support the plastic cladding and so I planned to do it now. Unfortunately the battens from the old shed were not quite long enough so I could either wait until I went and bought a 2m batten or cut one from a thick plank that had come from the shed. You can guess which I chose. Hand sawing 176cms from a heavy plank took a while but I got there in the end. It was with great satisfaction that I fixed in the batten using screws. I also did a bit more work on the bin store. It was lifting the wheelie bin up and over the front bar at the bottom of the store which had hurt my back last week. I first secured the floor of the plastic store to the timber frame before sawing out the remaining plastic in front of the wheelie bin. Hopefully that will be enough and if not I can cut out that section of the wooden frame too. Ours has got to be the most customised plastic store ever.