Home bar under way

If you have been reading this blog, you will have been reading about how I have been fixating about the possibility of having a home bar. I came up with some home bar ideas and put them to my wife the other night and she was actually really excited about my plans.

So today work started on the project. I went out and bought most of the pieces I needed, and ordered some things on the Internet. I then started getting things ready for construction, we have a carpet in there, so I have taken that up around the area that is going to be the bar area and I’ve also now ordered the things to change the outside in the patio area as well.

So things are underway and it’s really exciting and I’m glad it’s happening at last because it’s sort of obsessed me the past few weeks and I think it’s been a good distraction, but a little costly at times because it has taken my eye off other things I should be doing.

But now it’s underway I don’t have to sit around thinking about it any more, I can just do it in my spare time over the next couple of weeks and hopefully get it finished. I’m then aiming to have my family round to have an evening meal so they can see how my work has gone.

Work is going really well at the moment, I’ve actually got so much work coming in that I can’t keep up. I have a queue of work to do that is more than two weeks long now, with some road tests being booked in for up to 6 months in advance, which is great because that’s easy work and I can plan other jobs around that regular income.

So all in all, things are falling into place and things are good at the moment, and thankfully I haven’t had to use this blog yet to really moan about something or be upset about anything. But I’m obviously aware that life can turn around and bite you very quickly and so you have to get on with today and live for today, because tomorrow might never come, and that’s exactly why I’m now starting to get on with things and be more positive and upbeat than I have for a long, long time.

Watching a man fall off a van

I saw something really funny today although it could have been tragic had it happened slightly differently.

The bloke over the road is having some work done on his house and the workmen turned up today in a large van. One of them climbed on top of the van to pass down a ladder that was strapped to the top of it, the other guy took it, but as the guy on the top of the van lent forward with the ladder, he slipped and fell forward, the ladder went over the head of the guy on the ground and crashed to the floor with the guy from the top of the van holding on to it.

Thankfully this was on the edge of the road and they were passing it down away from the road. If it had been the other way around, he would have fallen straight into the road, and there were cars going by. So although it was quite funny, because he got up and was evidently okay, if a little embarrassed, if it had happened even slightly differently it could have been tragic and observing it could change my life as well..

It made me think about life and how slender our grip on it is at times. We take it for granted daily, but at any time something could happen to bring it to an end, even something as seemingly innocent as falling over like that.

It certainly made me think a bit and I have been a bit melancholy since, as I’ve basically been considering my own life and thinking about some of the things I’ve not yet achieved but would really like to.

I thought about my wet bar design and how I’m going to put it all to my wife tonight. I got some home bar ideas together and really made a good presentation and I’m going to show her exactly how I want to make this entertainment area from our dining room through to our garden. I think it will be really good and I’m feeling really positive, and watching what happened today has made me realise that you just have to get on with things in life, it doesn’t matter how silly they are, if they mean something to you, you have to fulfil them as quickly as possible.

Painting walls is so incredibly boring!

I’m painting the spare room and I’m finding it incredibly dull. There cannot be anything as tedious as having to mask off everything in a room, and then do an undercoat and then a couple of top coats to get a nice finish. It’s so boring and time-consuming. Then you have to do all the edging and then having to also do the ceiling makes it even worse.

Within an hour of starting I’m wanting to kill people and not even the radio being on helps. I’ve been doing the spare bedroom for nearly two weeks in short little bursts and I just want to give up. The problem is that I get covered in paint and so I get bored and have to wash it all off when I have hardly done anything.

My wife is refusing to get involved because she said I’m the one who wanted to do it and so I have to deal with it. I really want her to bail me out and she knows it. So I really already know it’s down to me and I’m going to have to get it done because it’s going to drive me nuts soon.

But it’s all about motivation and I’m struggling with motivation at the moment. I’m working a lot of hours on cars and we have a young child and things just get a bit tiring. So I’ve got to find extra energy from somewhere and I simply have to knuckle down and get it done, so that I can then get on to the next thing I want to do.

In more positive news the plans for the entertainment area are coming along. I’ve had some home bar ideas, printed them off so that I can show them to my wife and hopefully get her agreement on everything tonight.

I’m really excited about that, because unlike painting walls, I think that will be fun to do. I do like building and creating things and this will be something that can be there for years. None of my friends have a home bar and so I think it will be something that people will talk about positively.

Right that’s enough from me for tonight, I have to get on and I’m not sure that blogging about not having time is helping and I’m sure there is an irony in that.

A bad day in the life of a car mechanic

I hope this blog is going to come into its own tonight because I need to get this off my chest, it’s been a really bad day and I don’t want to sit and moan to my wife about it because she’s busy doing things and dealing with our child.

But basically, it’s been a long and stressful day, I had to get three cars through MOT’s for clients, which meant a lot of driving around and trying to get the parts I needed and feeling really pressured. It didn’t help that one of the cars actually broke down while I was out, and it took nearly an hour to get it sorted out at the side of the road.

So I felt like I was was rushing around a lot and I didn’t get time to eat and to be honest none of my clients seemed particularly bothered, they just gave me the money and went. I like to build up a personal relationship with people and I think I was expecting a bit more of a positive thing when I told them about the effort I put in.

So I came home a bit unhappy tonight. But I’m hoping that I will calm down after writing this and I can have a look at some more home bar ideas, to progress my plan is to have an indoor and outdoor entertainment area that is unified from the dining room to the patio. So I am going to have to look and see about the home bar generally.

One idea I have had is to have the home bar outside on the patio. That would be great, but the problem is half the year it probably wouldn’t get used. But perhaps I could create one that was movable or portable in some way, but then how would I deal with under counter appliances. I think that’s probably all getting a little bit complicated and getting far too advanced for what would be just a nice centrepiece for occasional evenings of entertainment.

Anyway, that’s enough from me for now, I need to go and do a few jobs and help my wife for a little while and then I will get down to this home bar idea because I’m hoping to speak to my wife about it and show my vision to her in the next few days.

I’m looking at home bar ideas

I think I have already admitted that I can drink a bit, and this probably isn’t the greatest idea but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and we do have the space in our house to do it.

Basically I’m thinking about having a home bar, in our dining room. So I’m looking at home bar ideas online. I’m looking at all the things that I would need to do, I need a wet bar design and I would need to work out how it would be laid out.

I probably need some under counter appliances as well, I’m not sure what yet but I think I’m starting to get some ideas even from just looking on Google images.

My wife seems fine with the idea, I don’t think she thinks I’m going to be standing there every night on my own drinking like it’s a pub, so it should be fine, I just like the idea of having a focus point for fun when we have friends and family over for food and drink. I suppose it’s a throwback to my days of being in pubs and because I can’t now do that because of my home life getting in the way, I suppose it’s just in my head as a little way of clinging onto a bit of that old lifestyle.

Apart from thinking about making a home bar, I’m also thinking about putting a new patio down outside the dining room as well. Then the dining room and bar can lead out through the patio door into an outdoor dining and entertainment area as well. That will be really good and it would make my house the focal point for entertainment with friends and family, which none of my group of friends and family really have, as I think it would be good.

I think my wife is fine with it all, but I want to reassure her so she’s really happy so I am going to put together a plan of all, with images of how the home bar bar and patio would look and then sit down with her and explain it in more detail, so she can get a proper idea of what’s in my mind. I know it probably sounds a bit ambitious, but I suppose I’m just looking for an outlet in something to do in my spare time for a few weeks.

Welcome to my new blog

I used to blog many years ago but stopped when I had a child, and work began to get more time-consuming, it’s something I wanted to revisit the years but I lost track of where my old blog was, which is a shame because there was a lot of interesting stuff on there about my life at the time.

Actually, it might have been quite depressing reading it back, thinking about it, because I was going through some turbulent times, I was bouncing around in different relationships and I wasn’t very happy and I was probably drinking too much alcohol. I probably drink a bit too much now, and that’s something I’ll probably talk about a bit later on in this blog.

I have a lovely little boy and he is doing really well and I’m very proud of him and everyone says he’s like his father, which I’m actually not sure is a good thing, but he is generally quite a grounded and intelligent little lad it seems.

My wife Mary is my rock. She helps me in many ways and has helped me through some bad times, and helped me to be a decent man now. She’s stuck up for me ways nobody else ever has and despite things been turbulent times with her, we have got closer than ever recently.

I love my job, I am a car mechanic, and it is something I have really developed a good skill for. I’m self-employed so I can work when I want, and I have worked hard to build up a base of clients who now keep me going without me having to market myself at all.

This blog is really being written about me, for me. Obviously if somebody finds this interesting then that’s great, but it’s really a place online for me to get my thoughts out there, sort of an online diary really, just like in the old days where people would have a personal diary they would write themselves and then hide it away. So it’s not really meant as entertainment or a source of information.

I know people blog for different reasons, some blog for publicity, some to make money, some to explore thoughts and feelings like me, and others to entertain. But I think many personal bloggers are probably just doing it because they are a bit bored with their life, or want to share their life online in some way.