2021-06 Back Injury

June in Sweden was amazing. My girlfriend was exploring on her new bike in the summer sun and taking videos and pictures like the one below. It stays light like an evening sunset, throughout the night. So we have blinds on the windows.

Garage Door Repair

The garage side door had been falling apart over winter. I took the garage side door down and rebuilt and repainted it. I filled it with spare insulation which was not perfect, but better than the previous empty fill. To give the door more strength I replaced the inner panel with thicker plywood. On the exterior, I originally painted it a bright yellow but it was a bit too bright. The girlfriend recommended a sandier colour, which made it fit in a lot better. A modern insulated door would be better but I didn’t have the money or skills for that at this time.

Garden Door Repair

I also repaired and painted the garden privacy doors that had blown apart in a winter storm. After they had been blown off, I stored them over winter in the garage. They had been soaking wet when I put them in the garage however, and had slightly warped and twisted as they dried. They were also a little rotted at the bottom. I laid them out and put them back together with big screws. I then repainted them with primer and then the same yellow colour as the garage door. The old wood surface soaked up a lot of paint before there was a consistent finish. At the time, I thought it was a temporary fix and I thought that the doors might survive another year. They are still working fine a couple of years later.

Final Floor Surface

I also put a final layer of extra fine self-levelling compound on the food cellar new floor. I was aware that the self-levelling compound sets quickly and I rushed a little too much. I made the mistake of mixing at too high a speed with the electric drill, which caused air bubbles in the mix. These tiny bubbles made lots of tiny dimples in the final surface, which was annoying. I decided it was good enough, however, and I was going to run out of height in the room if I put any more floor layers in.

Food Making

This is our first time with a proper kitchen and a large amount of storage space for ingredients. My girlfriend has been making more and more types of food and learning. She doesn’t like to photograph it because she doesn’t think it’s good enough, so I have to take sneaky photos. I like the thick cheese breads she makes.

Compost Heaps

We had overfilled our small plastic compost heaps over winter. I purchased some pallets from a friend and we build our first large compost heaps. We move the contents of our plastic bins here and quickly filled them with grass cuttings.

Raised Beds

The potatoes started sprouting in our first raised bed which was pleasing to see.

I got busy making new raised beds. I hand-sieved earth for the raised beds. It was a lot of effort.

I removed a few wooden panels to see what was below the wooden entrance deck. The old metal food cellar roof is still present, and two previous wooden skins around it. There’s nothing wrong with this. It does make it difficult to fully mouse-proof the house due to the complicated multiple layers and joins.

Back Injury

If you read the story of all the concrete removal in winter, concrete bag moves, mixing and laying, followed by all the digging work the next month, then you can probably guess what happened next.

A day or two after the latest batch of digging I went upstairs and watched a movie. I was slouched in a chair. When the movie ended I got up out of the chair and immediately fell to the floor. There was a sharp and massive pain in my lower back. I couldn’t stand or otherwise straighten my back, due to the fierce pain.

I realised this was serious but my girlfriend was outside in the garden and I had no phone I could reach. Crawling along the floor, I then started slowly edging myself down the stairs backwards on my stomach. I was about halfway down when my girlfriend came back and found me. In the end, it took about three weeks to heal from this so that I could walk normally without pain. A year later my back still warns me when I do a lot of digging and now I know to listen. I take care not to sit in a poor position for any length of time, especially after labouring.