What's a Washer Worth?

Just a quick job….

One of the kitchen cupboard door handles parted company with its fastening. On inspection the handle was fixed by a flanged machine screw which had sheared off, luckily without blocking the threaded hole in the handle. Not having a thread gauge or any other way to identify the bolt, whether imperial, metric or otherwise, I turned to a micrometer which I had bought a while ago on a 'that could be useful' impulse. A bit of twiddling and a consultation with Wikipedia identified it as an M4 x 30mm; one screw and one washer required. With no suitable replacement lurking in the toolbox I set forth for B&Q at the next available opportunity. So far so good.

On arriving in the fastenings section of the local store I found myself in front of a Perspex panel into which had been sunk one of everything so that you could check the required size against the actually items. I say, 'had been' and 'could', as two-thirds of the items had been pried out/fallen off. Nevermind, I knew what I needed and found a bag of 10 nuts, bolts and washers…. for £4! I couldn't face the rip-off and beat a retreat.

Fortunately the next day took us past the Screwfix counter where for the princely sum of £1.81 I purchased 25 screws and 100 washers.

Forty-five seconds with a screwdriver and JOB DONE.

Where to start?

OK, why bother with a blog? And what's it for anyway?

We moved into our house about seven years ago and between work pushing my nose into the grindstone, developing a brood of tykes and getting the mortgage paid off, the original idea of moving from an '80s Barratt box into something with a bit more character and durability got a bit lost.

This old house has got a bit run down in the meantime. But now the mortgage is sorted and the tykes can mostly fend for themselves in the bottom wiping department there should be, and needs to be, some time available to be spent on the place.

With that in mind I thought it would be interesting (for me at least) to commit my adventures in period property land with all the problems and inevitable set-backs it will entail to record, and at the same time learn about blogging and so develop my shockingly poor writing skills.