Category: Abodes

Avatar “Shed Avengers 2” – mini review

A few years back, I reviewed Shed Avengers, a game I managed to complete but found somewhat frustrating. I said I probably wouldn’t play it again.

Well, the same studio has now released Shed Avengers 2, a follow up to the original, where the same hapless protagonist finds the new roof felt he fitted in the first game has started to deteriorate, allowing rain water in to his garage once more. I expect you’re both dying to get your hands on it and give it a go, but I got a sneak preview.

This is a shorter game than the first, since the whole roof doesn’t need re-felting, but don’t think for a moment that it’s going to be easier. Since the first game the garden has filled up with all sorts of new things, including the materials for a half-finished renovation of the flowerbeds and a new log store built up against the garage wall, offering new hazards and problems to solve.

The game opens with the discovery that there is still no ladder on the premises long enough to safely get you on the roof, but now with the added difficulty that the place where the ladder went last time is now home to a log store and a water butt. The only place to put the ladder is therefore down the side of the structure, which is almost a foot lower down, meaning you have to climb to the top of the stepladder and then step on the handle at the top to try and heave yourself up while the ladder wobbles about on its unsteady gravel footing.

Once you’re up on the roof, you find several large tears in the felt, plus most of the clout nails holding down the edges have torn through the felt leaving dozens of little holes. All of these need painting over with a tin of thick rubberised emergency roof repair material, which is viscous, difficult to apply and probably toxic. A thick frost had formed overnight which is only now melting, leaving the roof partly icy and entirely wet.

Maneouvering across the roof is extremely difficult. The underlying woodwork is still fragile and prone to movement, but is now overlaid with felt that is already torn and mustn’t be disturbed any more, in case more tears appear. This makes it difficult to reach all the places that need to be repaired.

I thought I’d mastered this one by the time I’d got half way around the repairs, and it was certainly a much quicker game to play than the first. But it had a final trick up its sleeve – the final level requires that you get down off the roof without sustaining a life-changing injury in order to win.

This is very tricky since you are, by now, freezing cold and can’t feel your hands. The top step of the stepladder, itself not to be stepped on according to the instructions, is so far below you that your feet don’t reach it. By rolling on to your front you can just about get your foot on to the handle which is absolutely not safe to step on, and dismounting involves a careful balancing act so as not to destabilise the ladder and fall. Naturally there is nobody else on the premises to either hold the ladder and help you down, or to find you lying on the ground with several broken bones and call the emergency services.

Like the first game, while Shed Avengers 2 presented me with interesting problems to overcome and puzzles to solve, I wasn’t keen to go back and play it again. However, it was clear at the end that there was still rain water coming in to the garage, which stopped me getting a perfect score, so I will have to give it another go in January. I can’t wait.

Avatar The right way round?

I am at my best a pedant and at my worst a twat.

Have you ever been walking around a shop and something catches your eye for the wrong reason? With the Orb now here on planet Earth it means that any casual shopping either doesn’t exist or can only take place if the grandparents take him for the afternoon. I love my Orb but he’s not old enough to comprehend that sometimes boring chores need to happen. You get them out the way and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s all over. Game over, man. It takes so much longer with a trailing Orb. You take up way more space with a buggy or a pram.

There we were, looking for a new Christmas tree in every garden centre and kind of shop that would sell them. Once it’s done you have a tree that’ll last for a decade (no more flopping around trying to decide what size constitutes as “too high”) and you can get on with your life. Trying to get there can be a long and treacherous hike though; be sure to pack for all weather types.

I can feel my eyes glazing over underneath the artificial lights. My lizard brain screams, “get the one with the thing and the other thing and get outta there,” and I want to agree with it but there are so many options to consider that I shrug it off and carry on browsing. You can’t make a split second decision when fake trees can reach upwards of hundreds of pounds. What if we make the wrong one?

I’m walking past the lighting section in a particular store and I see it. “Wait, what? Nah that can’t be right. That has to be wrong, right?”

Shouldn’t it be ‘rechargeable octopus table lamp’? Why is the Natural History Museum collaborating with Dunelm? Who would buy such a thing and why do I care so much?

Does it really matter? Hardly. With Orb life being the only life there’s very little else going on. If you want thrilling stories and sexy adventures then you’ve come to the wrong place. I have nay nonny no nay none to my name. What I do have are questions about grammar on the boxes of table lamps.

Welcome to middle age. Population: us.

Avatar Retirement thoughts

Now that we’re all middle-aged, there’s the lingering prospect of all the good stuff that you hear about but don’t get to experience until you reach a certain part of your life. Want some examples? How about pains in parts of your body that don’t make any sense (“I never use my little finger so why does it feel as though a lynx is trying to slash its way out of it?”), confusion when entering a room (“wait, wait… I was here to find the… banana, was it?”) or perhaps feeling out of touch in every possible way (“when did people stop using Netscape?”).

It’s inevitable. Though we may joke about being right on the fashions, it’s been some time since I was anywhere near the fashions; I’m barely in the same postcode let alone being right on them. Sigh. Can’t be helped.

There’s no time to sit and ruminate on how unnatural it feels looking through a Reddit post or ask why everyone dancing on Tiktok is going to destroy the human race, there’s so much to do before then. I’ve got to pay off the mortgage first, which means working until I’m probably in my 70’s given that the retirement age keeps going up. There’s also raising my second child (I’m reliably to blame for that one) which is about to begin any day now. Oh, and I still haven’t finished the garden. I think the gooseberry bush is dead.

When the weight of responsibility gets on top of me, I drive a hundred miles out of my way and stop to look at this view. Why? Because one day, I am going to buy it and build my dream home on it.

Now I know what you’re thinking and, you’re right, it is very small. Too small in fact. You have to think outside the box because otherwise your dreams will never come true. The Japanese have been getting by with very tiny pod or capsule hotels for years now. Here’s how it’s going to look:

  1. The bedroom or, more accurately, the standing bed. I think it’s asking too much for the entire building my house will stacked against to turn 90 degrees to the right so that I can have a flat surface, so I will have to get used to sleeping standing up. I’ll nail the pillow to the wall and utilise a slim sleeping bag for maximum space efficiency.
  2. The toilet or, more accurately, the cereal box in the corner. Nothing else will be able to fit in that space except perhaps an A5 lever arch file, and I can hardly three w’s in that now, can I? It’d go everywhere.
  3. The sitting area or, more accurately, the only space left to do anything. I don’t know where all my video games are going to go. I guess I’ll have to put them in storage unless by the year 2055 I’ll have super cool VR goggles where I can play them all using my brain impulses so I can probably lie in my “bed” and play them there, leaving the sitting area for entertaining guests. A snug flat screen TV in the top left-hand corner, a kettle for hot bevs and a shoebox as a coffee table? It’s all coming together.

I’ve got it all planned out. It’s going to look incredible. The only problem is where Vikki and the baby are going to go. I guess I’ll have to purchase the flat on the other side so they can stay there.

That’ll work. For sure.

Avatar Cabinet saga, part 2

Back in May I offered a tantalising glimpse of my next DIY project, which were a set of custom-made alcove shelves. In the two and a half months that have passed since then, you have probably thought about little else.

It’s not yet time to show you the final result – not when I can wring another post out of this story – but it is time to update you on scribing, a new skill I had to acquire as part of this project that would let me cut pieces very precisely to fit the contours of my old house’s wobbly walls.

Read More: Cabinet saga, part 2 »

Avatar Cabinet saga, part 1

This is a new type of post. It is a premonition of an impending Saga. I foresee the beginning of Cabinet Saga.

Don’t misunderstand me. This might be a good Saga, and it’s one I’m genuinely excited to get started on. We’re finally getting round to decorating the living room, you see, and since our house is Edwardian and the living room is the one place with some surviving period detail, we’re doing what we can to restore it to its former glory. I’ve fixed the missing bits of plaster coving and the original window frames. We’re going to find a cast iron fire surround like the one the house would originally have had. And we’re also going to put bookshelves and cabinets into the alcoves on either side of the chimney.

Turns out alcove cabinets are not cheap. It’s just a bookcase, and yes, a Billy bookcase would be very cheap. But if you want a Billy bookcase that is built in, custom-made to fit your house’s charmingly non-straight Edwardian architecture, with detailing that would fit in with the carefully restored features of an Edwardian room, and also ideally has hidden LED under-shelf lighting, that’s not economical. Ikea don’t do it. You have to get a joiner to come in and price it up, and then he quotes you a figure that makes you sit down and concentrate on breathing and dab tears from your eyes, and then when you’ve collected yourself you ask him to leave and never come back.

Luckily there’s an alternative. You can measure every conceivable dimension of your Edwardian alcoves to the millimetre – several times, until you’re really sure you’ve definitely got it right – and then send them off to a company who will design them and supply you with a flat-pack kit of heavy duty MDF parts for you to assemble and install yourself. The cost of this still causes a sharp intake of breath but is much more affordable.

So it was that in March we measured parts of our living room over and over again to pin down its every millimetre, and so it came to pass that on Wednesday a van arrived at our house and unloaded an industrial quantity of precision-cut, pre-drilled MDF.

I’ve been on nights this week, which is not prime DIY territory, but I’m off work all next week and it will be cabinet time. I can’t wait for cabinet time. I like building things – flat pack furniture, Lego, raised beds in the garden, anything really – and this is a big thrilling building project where I get to make something intricate and impressive without having to do the difficult woodwork bits.

This could just be sheer enjoyment from start to finish, but the potential for an impending Saga arises from the need for “scribing”.

Built in furniture, you see, has to be built in to the room. As in, fit it perfectly. Meet it seamlessly. And no amount of millimetre-perfect measuring can achieve that. Instead, wherever your MDF meets the wall, you need to scribe it. Hold it perfectly in position and then trace the outline of the wobbly plasterwork and the skirting board and the extra bit under the skirting board that covers the edge of the laminate floor and whatever else is in the way. Then you need to get your jigsaw out, with its splinter guard on and its high precision fine cutting blade, and cut strips off the MDF pieces you’ve just paid an arm and a leg for. Thin strips. Really precise strips. Really thin, precise strips with awkward shapes and fiddly bits that you need to get right first time on a piece of wood that can’t easily be replaced.

I might be brilliant at scribing. I hope I am. But I’ve never done it before, and there’s going to be quite a lot of it in this project, so while I’m going to have a lot of very enjoyable DIY time ahead of me I’m slightly apprehensive about the potential for it to become a Cabinet Saga.

I’ll keep you updated.

Avatar The best home owner job

We talk a lot about what it’s like owning a house. Kev has been renovating and expanding his vast property empire for many years now, of course, while I have been steadily improving our premises with the aid of a toolbox large enough to use as a double garage. Now that Ian has joined the home owner club we have been doing our best to gently and constructively guide him in his new duties.

But I sometimes think that all too often we discuss the downsides: the amount of maintenance work, the unexpected costs, the speed with which nature will reclaim your carefully tended garden as wilderness. So I thought it might be nice to talk about the good bits of owning a house, because some of the things an Englishman has to do to look after his castle are actually very satisfying.

I will open the bidding with pressure washing.

Pressure washing is brilliant.

I love my pressure washer, but for whatever reason I hadn’t taken it out for a spin for about 18 months. Then, the other day, we’d had a drain unblocked and the drainage gully running through the paving down the side of the house needed clearing of all the crap that had built up, so I got the Kärcher out of the garage and fired it up. And once it was out, that was me set for the afternoon. Everything got jet washed.

The best part was discovering that the paving stones around the front and side of the house actually have a colour, as pictured above. I spent a very happy hour effectively colouring them in.