mybigadventures.com

Today we visited the castle - it was awesome. We rocked up about midday after a bit of breakfast at Starbucks and were immediately struck by view back across the town. We had a wander through the Royal Scots Greys museum charting the history of the cavalry regiment with a good deal of information and antiquities from the battle of Waterloo. It was appraching 1 o'clock when we came out of the museum and people were beginning to gather for the firing of the 1 o'clock gun. I got a few photo's including a pretty blurry one from when it actually fired - it was so LOUD!

We had a look at the old prison cells including looking at some of the amazing creations that some of the skilled prisoners created and sold whilst locked up. We also caught a talk with a guy dressed as an executioner in the great hall. He talked all about the quite gruesome punishments that were handed out to criminals of the time. The castle offers fantastic views of the surrounding area and the weather stayed nice throughout the day.

The castle is good value with a lot to do and we were there until late afternoon. We stopped for a bit of tea and cake in the castle cafe before heading off back to the hotel. Headed out again after dinner to get a few photos of the lit up buildings. Enjoy the new photos. 

There were two main jobs to complete today. First we needed to get the extra wood for the shelf back panel, cut and fit it, and secondly we needed to get some paint. We ended up buying another full sheet of MDF and geting some shelves cut, as the size of the piece needed for the back panel required the bigger sheet. Whilst there we had a look at the paint colours as they are in the middle of a 3 for 2 offer. We saw a Farrow and Ball paint colour, "Pigeon" on the colour chart that we quite liked, but B&Q didn't have it in stock, so we ended up coming away with nothing more than a couple of colour charts. On the way back we also picked up shelf supports from Screwfix for our new shelves.

Back at home we decided to make a trip over to Homebase as they tend to have a larger stock of the Farrow and Ball range. Sadly they didn't have any tins eiither, we did ask about ordering it in, but it was going to take 14 days, so the assistant suggested looking online. Back at home again we found we could order the paint from B&Q with the 3for2 offer and get free next day delivery - winniner! With the paint ordered, we made a start on our other job, cutting the back panel. This ended up being a massive faff, with a height difference of more than 10cm from left to right, this was in addition to cutting the angle away from the back. It took a long time but we were really pleased with the final result. We added wooden blocks to the rear or the backpanel and then secured it in place screwing through the underside of the shelf from inside the cabinet into the blocks. Finally we added decorators caulk along the edge where the MDF met the underside of the eave, and the job was complete.     

After a spot of bowling, we got back to work on the project. Today seemed a little less productive but involved a lot of trial and error. We started off by cutting the shelf for the top of the units. We were really keen to get a nice finish, but neither wall was exactly straight so in order to get the finish we were looking for, there was a lot of measuring, cutting and remeasuring before it was right. 

With the shelf in place, we had decided to make a back panel rather than leave it open to meet the corner of the eave, it was also hoped this may give the illusion that the storage is shallower and less intrusive in the room. We only had enough wood to make half the back panel, but as it was that took the rest of the day. It was quite a complex cut with the angle of the eave having to be trimmed from the back and the the angle at which the roof sloped along the width being taken into account, not to mention the angle when it met the wall. 

It seems we'll need to make another visit to B&Q tomorrow, and we haven't picked out any paint yet!