Petestack Blog

To cut to the chase, we’re talking about a good day yesterday (something I’ve wanted to do for a long time) marred by stupidly knocking an unsecured camera bag containing my Lumix GM5 + 14–45mm lens in the water when I got out the packraft and almost certainly killing both! (more…)

It’s been a while because I’ve been doing other things too, but the store is now finished bar a cabin hook to hold the door open, and my attention is now turning to Fly and catching up with the garden. But first a quick rundown of my Sea Kayak Oban ‘Confidence Builder’ course on 6/7 April… (more…)

Now we’ve covered the kayak store concept, posts, drainage, framing, cladding and sarking and door, what’s left? Really just the roofing and trolley, but the trolley can wait while I catch up with other things like fitting out Fly for the season, so today we simply complete (or nearly complete) the main structure with most of the roofing after heading briefly off-topic for my third and fourth Nevis Canoe Club pool sessions… (more…)

So I’d got the cladding and sarking done and the store now has a door, which first needed a finished doorway to measure up and fit it to… (more…)

Following on from my framing blog of two Saturdays ago, the store is now weatherboarded and sarked and the long drain is finished. But first a quick résumé of Friday’s pool session, where I chose to practise wet exits again counting lengthening times before releasing the spraydeck and getting out the boat as well as heel-hook assisted rescues. (more…)

Yes, the subject’s ‘framing’, but let’s talk a little more about drainage first…

Sunday was a good day for digging and my materials weren’t coming till Tuesday, so of course I dug! There’s 11m of pipe beyond the ‘hippo pit’, so the drain is > 11m long, a shovel wide and as deep as the top of my wellies, which is to say 400mm (this depth chosen so there’s no uphill to get out of the pit, but handy to have a quick measurement system like wellies!): (more…)

So I talked in my last blog about standing water and drainage in our neighbourhood. Basically, we live on a hill, the ground sometimes gets wetter than it can cope with short-term and we all (through inevitability rather than intent) dump water on our downhill neighbours. Agreeing where and how to pass this water on is about all we can reasonably do about it… (more…)

(See my previous blog for a quick rundown of the concept and image from my SketchUp model.)

While I was already planning to get building the store in preparation for a probable sea kayak purchase and had taken delivery of the first batch of materials (posts, gravel and concrete), the project gained added impetus from actually buying said boat (about which more another time) on Thursday. So I got to work pronto in some varied February weather, but let’s start with said materials arriving last Monday. (more…)