Tag: DIY

#oneaday Day 384: Catio completio

Andie and I finished off our new "catio" today. I don't have any pictures to share because it's dark now and we didn't take any pictures when it was finished, but you'll have to take my word for it that it looks very good. I say "Andie and I" finished it off, but really 95% of the work was Andie, because she is handy and I am not, but I was slightly useful for holding things up and getting the roof on.

Okay, getting the roof on involved removing some of the guttering from the back of our house, but that's a problem we will confront tomorrow. And by we, I almost certainly mean Andie.

For the unfamiliar, a catio is an enclosed space designed for mostly indoor cats to be able to go outside without roaming. In less than charitable terms, it's a cage attached to the back of your house, but big enough for people to go in as well as cats. That sounds a bit wrong. We're not keeping prisoners, honest.

Anyway, yes, the aim was simply to provide a means for our cats Patti and Oliver to be able to go outside, but stay safe. After we lost one of our first cats, Ruby, on the road, we decided to keep our cats indoors. We don't live in a particularly busy area, but there are some absolute cunts who ride motorbikes up and down the street at all hours, plus we're not very far away from quite a busy main road. Plus none of the cats we've had have ever seemed too interested about roaming.

Both of them have been enjoying the ability to go outside, though. Oliver has been particularly interested in learning what Outside is like in recent weeks, and Patti took some tentative but interested steps out there this evening, too. Patti used to go out in the old catio before we tore it down, but Oliver has only ever been outside under heavy supervision from us. The completion of the catio means he'll be able to go out and enjoy himself unsupervised, which I think is going to be really good for the energetic little bugger.

Yes, we had a catio before, but it was something of an experimental project by Andie, more to prove she could do it than anything else. We tore it down after Meg passed, because Patti wasn't showing much interest in going outside, and it looked a bit shabby. Since then, we've revamped the garden quite a bit — the mostly dirt area that was enclosed by the old catio now actually has a patio under it, so it looks much nicer — and the new catio is of much more sturdy construction than the old one. I'd go so far as to say it looks very professional indeed; Andie has become an incredibly skilled handyperson over the course of the last 10 years, and I consider myself very lucky to be able to enjoy all her good work.

I'd make an effort to be handier myself if I lost some weight — which, as longstanding readers will know, has been pretty much a lifelong struggle — and if I didn't have a hernia — which, as longstanding readers will know, has been a problem for a while. The two are connected. If I fix one, I can get the other sorted, too. I am attempting to work on that. If I am ever successful, who knows? Maybe I will become someone who "potters around in the garden", as the cliché has it.

In the meantime, we now have a nice catio, a nice garden and two cats who appear to appreciate the hard work that has been done for them. I look forward to letting them out for some proper time in the sunshine tomorrow.

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1574: Oh, to Click One's Fingers

In case you missed the news, Andie and I now own a house. This is exciting and etc. etc. but it's also a big ol' pain.

To give credit where credit is due, Andie has been working a whole lot harder on the house than I have been. This is at least partly because I am woefully incompetent at DIY and will normally end up hammering a nail into myself rather than a wall… and that's when I'm supposed to be painting it. Oh ho ho ho.

No, but seriously, I suck balls at DIY. I wouldn't want to put anything on a shelf that I put up, I'm afraid of climbing ladders beyond the second step, I don't know how most tools work and I'm the sort of person that will stand in the paint tray, flip it over so it splatters all over the carpet, then fall on my arse, bringing the curtain rails down with it and smashing the TV in the process.

I hasten to add: thankfully, none of that has happened, and I successfully managed to apply a coat of paint to our new living room earlier without anyone dying. It is quite satisfying to know that I am at least capable of this.

Where the frustration comes from, though — and this isn't by any means exclusive to residences — is when you walk in the front door and it doesn't look like a habitable place to live. (Because it isn't, usually.) The only things lying around are paint pots and various tools, the fridge is empty, there's rubbish everywhere and regardless of where you try to get to in the property, you'll trip over something. It's demoralising to see, and it's something that doesn't really go away until you stop dicking around with paint and start putting furniture in there. Only then does it start to feel like a home; a process that really comes to a head once you get your TV installed. I sometimes just wish I could click my fingers and it all be done.

Things are going quite well, though. The painting is proceeding apace — since Andie has this week off work, she'll undoubtedly be doing some more of that without me over the course of the week — and I'm starting to get a mental picture of what goes where. Of course, there still comes the part I'm really not looking forward to — packing up all the shit in the flat I'm writing this in and transferring it to our new house — but at least this time around we're hiring professional removal people to do all the really hard work. We just have to stick it all in boxes.

I am excited about having a place to call our own, I really am; the trouble is that with the bad news I had regarding my job recently, it's taken the edge off the excitement somewhat. It's hard to be super-excited and positive about it all when you're not sure where your next paycheque is going to be coming from after June.

But I have to remember that I have a few irons in the fire and it's possible that any of them could come to something. The next few months may not end up being particularly easy, but they're probably going to be interesting, if nothing else.

Oh, and did I mention how much I appreciate the hard work Andie's putting in to the new house while I mope around being miserable? I do. A lot. And now the Internet knows it. So there. <3