Gareth Harrison

I know generally posts in my blog go on about how busy I am with work, and how tired I am(!) and that’s still true, and I may touch on that in a moment!

But I thought I’d write something that happened on Sunday that was a bit dodgy… I’d noticed recently that the mains switch for my shower could get quite warm sometimes, but assumed that it was normal, and just made sure I only switched it on when I was actually using it. But when I flicked the switch on this Sunday, it made a bit of a crackle, which I thought was odd, and then a few minutes later it did the same without me even touching it.

So I turned the power off and removed the plate to look behind the switch, and discovered that the live wire from the shower had welded itself into the terminal, and had burnt quite badly, and that the earth wire had melted through the plastic covering of the live!

Now I’m not an expert on house wiring but I’m guessing that’s not particularly safe! A quick trip down to B&Q to buy a new switch, and I now have electrics that hopefully won’t burst into flames! What is a bit worrying though is why it did it in the first place, and also why the mains didn’t trip when the earth melted into the live wire… need to get that sorted really.

Work’s still incredibly busy… have got quite a few projects on the go at the moment, and I’m desperate for some time off! I want to try and get some work on my house sorted but I just haven’t had the time. Hopefully next month should be a little bit quieter.

Right – need to get on with some work that was supposed to be done yesterday! Have a possibly interesting weekend ahead… may post about that later…

I’m really, really tired. I could really do with some kind of holiday, but now that I’m freelance, I just don’t like turning down work, which means I never seem to get any time off. Maybe in a few months I can grab a break, otherwise I’ll end up running myself into the ground!

I’ve been down in London this weekend filming some stuff for NuSkool. It was a performance of urban dance in Acton Vale so that I can produce a promo for them at some point. It was a very long day, but the kids seemed to get a buzz from it, and the community centre was packed on the evening which was great. I stayed at Prince & Laura’s flat last night, and then drove back today, stopping for Sunday lunch at mum’s on the way back up!

Today, the annual 10K run took place in Manchester, and I’m so glad I didn’t enter it this year! I found the training really tough both times before, and it really stressed me out in the lead up to it last year, although on the actual day I suppose I was glad I’d done it again. I guess the main issue is that the reason I did the run in the first place wasn’t really for the right motives… the only reason I signed up to do it the first time was to try and impress a particular person, and to give us something in common – and that obviously worked really well! And then the next year I just ended up doing it again and my heart really wasn’t in it for various reasons. Oh, well… I’m older and wiser now. Maybe.

Other stuff… last weekend I finally got round to fitting new skirting boards in my dining room around the chimney brest, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job even if I say so myself! Hopefully I’ll get a change to paint them this week, although I know it’s going to manic with work for at least the next two. I need to get round to sorting out a kitchen extension as well because I’d really like to try and get that moving before the autumn.

You may remember that about a year ago I had a slight disaster trying to put up some shelves in my dining room, and I managed to pull out chunks of plaster, and basically mess up a recently finished wall.

Anyway, in the last few weeks, I had a go at trying to patch up the wall (which has just had holes in it for all this time!), and then repainted it all, and now you can’t really tell that there was a problem there.

To be honest, the wall is pretty rubbish – it’s pretty crumbly underneath the plaster skim – so I managed to find some shelves that weren’t as heavy as the ones I tried to put up before, and that had a bit more support.

So this weekend, I attempted for the second time to put up shelves in my dining room, and it seems to have been a success! I’ve used much longer screws and better raw-plugs, so hopefully they should stay up! I’m not planning on putting anything too heavy on them, so it should be okay.

I’ve still got loads of stuff that needs doing on my house – but I have started getting things done after a long period of doing nothing! I want to get my kitchen extended this year as well, so I need to get some plans made up, then will try and get all the rest of the work that needs doing done at the same time.

Also, had a really good time down at VideoForum with James. I saw so much cool kit (that I would really like, but can’t afford!) And we also went to some seminars on lighting and I learnt loads. Now just need to save up some cash so I can buy loads of video stuff!!

I’m in a foul mood now.

Decided to put up some really smart IKEA shelves on the chimney brest in the dining room – they’ve been waiting to be done for over a year now – so I started with the first one, which was a bit tricky to do on my own but I eventually managed it. I had another two to do, so got the second one ready, and decided that to get the spacing right between the two, I’d use a couple of box files to get the gap right, and place the next shelf on that to mark on the wall.

I did that, and turned away to get the end brackets and a pencil, when suddenly there was an almighty crash as both shelves went tumbling to the floor, hitting the old concrete hearth below.

So now I have two dented shelves with scratched chrome end brackets, but much worse I have trashed the wall, which was newly plastered last year (which cost a small fortune). The rawplugs have pulled loads of plaster out, and cracked a large section around each hole. I don’t know what I’m going to do because I can’t see how I’ll be able to do a patch-up job without it being obvious. So now I’m really fed up.

Also, I haven’t done any training this weekend at all – I planned to go out today, but I just couldn’t get myself to do it. Arghh – why is life so rubbish?

Finally got round to putting my venetian blind up in the kitchen this weekend! I bought it last summer and it’s taken me this long to sort it out! It’s a silver one, which goes well with the rest of the kitchen, but it needed cutting down quite a bit to fit in the window. It wasn’t too difficult to do the width, but to get the height right I had to remove about half of it, which meant dismantling it and cutting of loads of cord – and it was pretty tricky with only on pair of hands! And then I had the added complication of not being totally sure how to put it back together again! So after a few attempts that just didn’t work, I took a trip to B&Q to try and get a look at a similar type there and see how it was made!

Nothing else exciting has happened really… got a phone call from Jamie on Friday afternoon and he was asking if I was busy because he was at the hospital for a MR Scan on his shoulder (‘cos he keeps dislocating it!), but he didn’t realise he was supposed to take anyone with him. They were saying they wouldn’t do it if he was on his own – which would mean he’d probably have to wait ages to get another appointment. Luckily I wasn’t too busy at work, so I was able to pop out for a couple of hours to just sit in the corridor whilst they did it, and then to follow him home in my car (because he wasn’t really supposed to be driving, but it’d have been really difficult to collect later – and he felt okay to drive anyway!) Didn’t mind though ‘cos it was good to get out of the office for a couple of hours!

I’ve been stripping wallpaper all weekend – but this time not at my house, but at Jamie’s! He became a houseowner on Friday and he’s redecorating the whole place, but needs to do it pretty quickly because he’s got Dean moving in at the end of the month, and he’s got to rent out the third bedroom as soon as possible.

We started ripping down some paper on Friday night, but had to stop when his neighbour came round to say our noise was keeping their kids up! But I went back yesterday and today and have managed to strip two bedrooms, whilst Jamie and his parents got on with other jobs that need doing (like knocking holes through walls!). I took some ‘before’ pictures on my phone for him, and for the time-being, they’re here.

Doing the work on Jamie’s house has kind of made me think I need to do some on my house as well to try and get stuff finished! It’s kind of harder because my rooms are full of furniture and things, whereas Jamie has the advantage that his house is pretty empty at the moment! Might try and do something next weekend – though I’m not guaranteeing it!

Early yesterday evening I went into my kitchen, and as I turned on the light, my finger brushed past the screw on the switch and I felt a slight sensation as I touched it. So I turned off the power, and checked that the cable was okay behind it, but couldn’t see any problem.

Then shortly afterwards, I started doing some washing up, and noticed that when I touched the stainless steel sink, I was getting a bit of a tingling feeling. So I gave Dave Ciezynski a call (because he’s an electrician and knows what he’s doing!) and he said I could borrow a voltage detector to check it out. So I went and picked it up, but when I got home, I was able to touch the sink and screw without feeling anything. So I thought that maybe it was just some static or something so thought I wouldn’t worry to much about it.

Then this morning, I was using the sink again, and the tingling sensation was back! I tried checking it with Dave’s detector, but I wasn’t convinced I was using it right! But because the feeling was continuous, I was now sure it wasn’t static electricity from me. And also, I found that if I was wearing shoes, I couldn’t feel anything, so I was obviously earthing the sink when I was bearfoot.

Dave & Ceri came round early this evening, and he discovered pretty quickly that the sink was kicking out 50 volts! Eventually we managed to track it down to a problem with the lighting circuit, and then found that there was a slight nick in the live cable to a light switch I’d changed on Thursday, and that it had come into contact with the metal back of the switch box, so was causing the earth to be live! The only reason I noticed it in the kitchen was because it’s a solid floor in there, but basically every earth in the house would have had voltage on it! All fixed now, so now I can venture into the kitchen without fear of death!

I’m the Wallpapering King!

I’ve spent today putting up some paper on the walls and ceiling of my landing to give me a decent surface to paint on – and it was the first time I’d ever attempted the art of hanging wallpaper!

Mum and Elaine have come up for the weekend, so they were giving me a hand with it – though to be fair, mum was taking more of a ’supervisory’ role! (Though I have got a cleaner bathroom now ‘cos she blitzed it whilst we were getting covered in wallpaper paste!)

I’ve decided that it’s actually quite difficult to hang wallpaper well, though I was definitely getting better the more I did! Unfortunately the very first piece I had to do was on the ceiling and had a light fitting smack bang in the middle of it – which was probably not the best thing to have to deal with when your doing it for the very first time! And there are still quite a few air bubbles which I couldn’t get rid of, but I’m assured that they should disappear as it dries out… not totally convinced to be honest!!

One thing which is pretty rubbish is that I’ve got a leaky roof, and it looks like a lot of water has seaped into my walls – the ones in my spare room are soaking at the top, so that room will need re-wallpapering, and maybe even part of it will need re-plastering once I’ve managed to get the roof fixed. And also, my central heating died a couple of weeks ago, so that’s another thing I need to get sorted… arghh!!

The decorating’s definitely coming on!

I’ve finished painting my dining room (apart from the woodwork) and have moved the furniture back in so I can actually use my downstairs rooms again! The other things that need to be sorted in there is some shelves need putting up, and I need to get a new carpet for the room and stairs, but I think I’ll wait until I’ve had the fireplace in the living room finished, ‘cos I don’t want it to get ruined when I get the builders in to do that! I’ve got a day’s holiday off work today to do some work on my kitchen… I’ve undercoated two walls, but there’s still a bit of wallpaper that needs to come off the other two, and I need to paint the ceiling as well. Don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done today, but at least I’m getting something done!

Other stuff – supposed to be going camping this weekend with Jamie. Not sure where we’re going yet… were talking about heading off to somewhere in the Lake District so we can do some walking and stuff. Hope the weather improves though… after a really hot couple of days last weekend, it’s been miserable this week. We’ve had thunder and lots of rain – I know some parts of the country have had floods as well, so I’m really hoping it gets loads better by the end of the week!

I now have smooth walls in my dining room! The plasterers finished it all this afternoon, and I’m hoping that it will have dried out enough by the Bank Holiday weekend so I can get painting it. The carpet is totally trashed though – covered in plaster and stuff! I was planning on changing it anyway – but now I’ll have to do it a bit quicker!

Went for a run up to Parrs Wood last night. To be fair, I probably only actually ran about half of it – the rest was more of a fast walk because my foot was hurting a bit – and I worked out that I did about 4 miles… that’s nearly 6½ km, so it’s on the way to the 10K on Sunday! Can’t believe it’s only a few days away – it’s going to be so hard! Think I’m going to try and run a bit tonight as well, although the later it gets, the less enthusiastic I am. If I can get out before half eight…

I’ve had the whole Easter weekend off work, and it seem like absolutely ages! Probably because I’ve managed to get a lot done with the house. Jamie came round on Friday and Saturday to help with doing some DIY stuff, and I’d have got nowhere near as much done if he hadn’t been here! We basically did some work on my dining room, and bricked in the old fireplace, boxed in all the pipes, moved the ceiling light so it’s now over the table, installed some spotlights, and added some extra plug sockets in there! The only hiccup was when we added the extra mains sockets – it looked like there was an old spur cable of the socket we wanted to link from – and we checked all over to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere, so we just cut that and used it for the new one. Brilliant… until the next morning when I went to run some hot water for a wash… and no hot water! The realisation soon kicked in that that cable that seemed to make no difference whether connected or not was actually powering the boiler for my central heating!! I left it until the this morning to fix because I went for lunch yesterday with Jamie and Ryan, and didn’t get home until pretty late. So I got the boiler working again this afternoon, and have now also built a new bottom step for my stairs, after taking out the old one because it was far too big, and the wood on it had split anyway. So I got loads done on the room, and it’s not too far off getting someone in to plaster it all… then it’s just the finishing touches!

The only other thing I’ve done this weekend is that I went to see The Passion Of The Christ yesterday morning. I know it’s been out for a while, but it been the first chance I’ve had to see it. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect because of all the hype around it – but I wanted to make up my own mind about the film. I guess was suprised at how much the fact it was subtitled throughout didn’t bother me at all, and visually it was stunning. There were one or two bits that I thought weren’t quite right, but have made me think about stuff. And the portrayal of the violence wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. I guess that’s more of a reflection of how we become desensitized to things nowadays, but I think it was more that the violent stuff was pretty much never-ending, so I guess the shock is the amount of it rather than the level of it as far as I was concerned. But all in all, I thought it was a really good film.

The person who invented woodchip wallpaper should be shot…

Now I know that may appear to be quite a harsh statement, but you’ve not spent the last two days trying to get woodchip paper from my back bedroom ceiling!

I decided this weekend to clear all the junk out of the room, and give it a lick of paint, but I noticed that some of the paper on the ceiling was sagging so, I thought it best to pull it off, and just go over it all with some textured paint to hide all the cracks! Well, what started off as a simple idea has turned into a nightmare getting this woodchip stuff off! I’ve managed to do about half the ceiling now, but have now had to come to work, so hopefully I’ll get time this week to finish it. I’ve got to seal over the damaged plaster when it’s done, and try and fill a few holes and cracks before I put the paint on, but then it should just be a case of chucking some magnolia emulsion on the walls to give the room a fresh look. Why do jobs like this never turn out to be as simple as you first thought?!

Foot update: exactly nine weeks until the Great Manchester 10K Run, and my foot is feeling a little bit better since I’ve bought some things to push up the arch of my foot in my shoes, but I saw another doctor on Thursday, and he said that I must make sure I don’t do any running on it for a while or it could damage it more, making it take even longer to heal. So I am pretty worried that the run is getting closer, and I’m not able to train for it. Looks like it’ll be an intense few weeks beforehand, or it could end up being a 10K Walk instead!

Thought it was about time I did another update! Not much has really happened in the last few weeks, apart from doing a few odd jobs on the house! Did my first bit of tiling in my kitchen on Saturday which was a learning experience! I’ll be discovering the joys of grouting later this week! I’ve also replaced some of the end panels in there, and painted all the cupboard doors white, which makes it look cleaner and bigger! Now in the process of ripping the wallpaper down so I can give the whole room a lick of paint! I suppose I should also do something about getting my other downstairs rooms finished, considering I started them about a year ago, and they’re in a very unfinished state!!

Sarah and Emma came round for some food on Thursday night, which tested my culinary skills ever so slightly!! I thought I’d try and cook something that I hadn’t done before, so I found a couple of recipes that required me making my own herby breadcrumbs and marinating vegetables in olive oil, garlic and herbs!! I actually surprised myself because it tasted pretty good!! Makes a change from the usual meals I end up having!

Also, some of the guys from Reach are talking about going skiing in the New Year, and I’m kind of tempted to go too. I’ve never skied in my life before, so that could be quite difficult, but I reckon it could be quite a laugh. The only things I need to look at is getting the time off work, and also whether I can afford it ‘cos it’s slightly more expensive that the holidays I usually go on! I think I’ll try and make a decision sometime this week.

I’m off down to Tamworth for the day tomorrow – mainly for a dental appointment (arrggghhh!!) – but it’s quite good timing ‘cos it’s Vikky’s birthday on Wednesday, so I’ll be able to see her when I’m down there. The only downside is that my appointment is at ten past nine, so I’m going to have to leave Manchester at about 6am! I think I need to try and get an early night tonight!

It’s been an absolutely mad few weeks! I’ve had to produce a TV commercial for United’s USA Tour which has been a real nightmare! We’ve done this thing with a group of cheerleaders in a virtual studio to make them look like they’re on an American football pitch, followed by some Manchester United football action. The making of the commercial wasn’t too bad (it’s tough having to direct 5 cheerleaders for an entire day, but hey, someone has to do it!!) – but it’s just all the paperwork and stuff that I then need to do for clearance and the like! At a normal place, you’d have a whole team of people doing it, but here, it’s just me! Anyway, it started running on Sky on Wednesday, and runs on Granada sometime next week!

The house is still the same! Actually, the builder’s been in touch with regard to sorting out the fireplace, and he’s going to ring me when he can come around and re-quote me for the work. I really want to get it all sorted, but it just takes up so much time – and I really don’t have any of that at the moment!

First day back at work after getting back from stewarding at Spring Harvest, and I really didn’t feel like doing any work at all! It was a really tiring week over in Skegness – we were having to get up at 6am and finished at about 1am, with only half an hour break in the day to get lunch! It was a really good group of guys there this year, and I’m going to try and keep in touch with some of them… although I am the worst for keeping up-to-date with emails and stuff!

I got back to Manchester on Tuesday night, and was in bed by eight o’clock… the earliest for a very long time! And I didn’t get up until Wednesday lunchtime! I think I’ve just about got over the lack of sleep now.

I’ve just arranged to get a broadband connection fitted next month (although it’s got to wait until I’ve got the living room sorted) so it should be easier updating my websites and all that. I’ve got to update the Skeggy Stewards site soon with all the photos from this year’s event – I’ve just taken my photos in for developing so will probably scan them at the weekend.