Suburban garden dog town

The Skater, on some trumped up pretext, had already swung by Petunia Girl's office to have a sneak preview of the project. Apparently after a few suggestions he left satisfied. No doubt putting a few last minute touches to the 'skate' element of the program.
Ever since small The Skater has had pretentions as to being the designer for the garden. His initial ideas involved having an exit directly from his second floor bedroom via a near vertical ramp dropping down into a 'dog town' style Californian summer drought emptied swimming pool that occupied the whole of the rear garden. Since, his ideas have matured and been tempered by the increasing wisdom of his years. He is now wondering wether or not it's really fair to his parents to go off to college next year leaving them with a 'half pipe and street' area taking up most of the garden.

Circumvented

I have been bypassed by The Client. Given my procrastination on the garden design (and works) she has decided to call in help from a professional. This is definitely a wise move on her part. From now on Petunia Girl will be looking after things. I am proposing my services as Project Manager just to keep myself in the loop.
Petunia Girl has been breaking my ears for years now, telling me that Landscape Architects do the old vegetable and paving thingy better than Architects. So now she'll have the chance to prove it. 

Garden

Having just plucked up the courage to shift 15 cubic metres of site waste from the back yard, I am seriously thinking about turning the space into a garden. Blogging it just might be the best way to work up my enthusiasm.
The Skater tells me he knows how to build ramps and bowls in reinforced concrete. I suggested he draws a plan.

Must see in Dublin

Bridget O'Rourke

Köttbullar

I have been witnessed saying that I will never go back to Ikea - in fact all of the Ikea furniture that had survived since our 'young couple' days was either burnt or given away when the old house was demolished.
But humble pie tastes good and italian designer kitchens are for boom times. When the budget's stretched and you have the intention to DIY, Ikea does present the ideal solution of a system that takes everything into consideration at a reasonable price (no I'm not sponsored...yet).

So off we went, bravely.

It's not up there with moving house, or getting married/divorced or renewing your expired carte de séjour or any of those other traumatic life experiences, but it's not far off. A Sunday buying your flat packed kitchen from Ikea is up there in the top 20.
When we arrived, smugly clutching our Ikea Home Planner printout, with 20 minutes to spare before opening time, we were quickly taken down a notch by the sight of a good two dozen brave souls already installed in an orderly queue before the entrance. These people must be the experts. They had that hardened look of those that have seen frontline action before. They had what it takes. They hadn't gone for that extra 5 minutes in bed after the alarm went off, or that second cup of coffee. When the doors finally opened our worst fears were confirmed. We followed blindly behind, realising that we were in fact like new born lambs to the whole thing. These people before us, bunched up in a fast moving scrum and rapidly disappearing behind a distant line of Billies, had already discovered the Swedish furniture shop equivalent of the Northwest Passage. Borrowing routes previously only known to the yellow and blue clad indigens they led us on a trail behind 'babychange facility', across '25m² studio for cash strapped student', through 'finance waiting' directly to Faktum Land and a numbered ticket. All this without the use of any visible hand held navigation system. (GPS doesn't get a signal in Ikea).
From the front door stampede at 10am to the obligatory post trauma cup of tea it was 7 hours of hell without the help of a phrase book or even a break for a reindeer burger.
The overall experience was akin to having been the unwitting victim of a Walace and Gromit style assembly line without the advantage of a conveyor belt.
Eventually we were spat out onto a 1 in 8 loading bay ramp with 250Kilos of flat pack on a runaway trolley in search of our hire van.

The Client drove, and I was Mr Shifter.

Don't forget to tighten the screws.

ticking over

Not getting the respect you deserve at home? take some advice:

Man Tools

Remember it'll soon be Xmas.

Wave goodbye

This is the last photo taken before the larger than expected wave took me by surprise and permanently compromised the circuitry of my camera.

This, amongst other things, in part explains the recent lack of posting.

Interior joinery is now underway. The Skater has a partition and door to his room. A real kitchen has been promised for Xmas. The actual kitchen is made up of IKEA 'faktum' base units with no doors, which prompted the following heartfelt sarcastic comment from one architect’s SO (significant other) that visited recently: ‘oh, you’ve got an architect designed kitchen!.

The first furniture has been ordered by The Client. She has white card (carte blanche - ours avec moi) on choice and colour – the trade off for giving The Architect a free hand on the house itself. A lot of self doubt has been expressed since the order went in but I’m sure it’ll be just fine. We have 8 weeks to wait.