Because nothing particularly interesting has happened in my life over the last few weeks – I mean, aside from us moving house after nearly a decade in the old place and my best friend Katherine giving birth for the first time (*hello 14 day old baby Joe!*) – I have been unduly excited by the discovery of covers for outside rotary washing lines.

They’re big plastic covers which sit on rotary washing lines, preventing the clothes from getting re-soaked every time there is a sudden but brief downpour — there are some clear ones that can be left on all the time, ideal for the UK where it goes from blistering sunshine to torrential rain and back again constantly throughout the day. I tell you – unduly excited – I can’t believe I lived three decades without knowing about them. It’s like the broccoli stalks revelations all over again.

The basic concept seems simple enough to make myself from scrap materials – I need a sheet of heavy-duty but flexible waterproof material, ideally clear, in the shape of my rotary line, some extra length to be sides (to stop sideways rain) and possible some cane or piping at the edge between the “roof” and the sides to give it some structure. We got a new mattress when we moved in here and I’ve kept the giant plastic bag that came in, which is a good start, and I’m tempted to befriend a local carpet fitter for some more similar stuff, which they get wrapped around the rolls of carpet. An old tent or gazebo covering would probably work too. Any other suggestions?

Has anyone made something similar for non-rotary washing lines? Once my eyes were opened to the concept, I started Googling around and found these Isle of Mull dryers which combine the cover and the hanging space in an inverted V-shape. Any other ideas?

After a month of frantic renovation (which is nowhere nearly finished but a lot of the dirty work is done), we’re finally moving into our new home today – hurrah!

Until the weekend, we’d been focusing on the renovation stuff – pulling down ugly fake walls, cleaning out sooty chimneys and ripping down plasterboard in preparation for damp-proofing work (the last thing resulted in the discover of a secret new room, it’s sadly unusable without a lot of expensive work so we’re leaving it for now) – and so hadn’t given much thought to the finer points of today’s move, such as working out where all our stuff is going to go.

We’ve got a giant (120cm/4ft square) frameless mirror above our fireplace in the living room here (acquired from a shop changing room refit apparently) and I think it will probably be relocated to above the fireplace in the dining room of the new house – but I think its lack of frame will look odd there.

How can I make a frame using recycled materials and/or repurposing other stuff?

My first thought is to try something make from reclaimed wood because the fireplace’s mantelpiece will be an old building joist – I’m not an expert woodworker but willing to give it a go. Heh, actually, perhaps I should make a frame using my existing craft skills and knit one ;)

Any other suggestions?

As I mentioned last week, we’ve finally, FINALLY, got the keys to our new house and are frantically doing some essential works before we can move in. One not quite essential but desirable thing is for us to fence in the wild bit of the garden – ultimately so we can have chickens* and use the fences to grow things up/along.

One side of the garden was previously dry stone walled but a lot of the stones have been pilfered for use elsewhere in the garden – we’ll try to reconstruct as much of it as we can but I think we’ll have build some sort of fencing for the rest.

John’s dad has suggested using wood from pallets to make simple horizontal-slatted fences. There is also the option of live fencing – growing some sort of hedgerow or bramble bush – but that’ll take time to grow in.

So any suggestions? Having a garden needing this sort of work is new to me so any ideas would be gratefully received!

* the chickens will need pretty high fences or a covered run. We haven’t quite decided what we’ll do with that yet but we’ll try to future-proof the new fences so we can add to them in the future.

(Photo by betacam)

Regular readers of Recycle This (and my personal Twitter feed) may have spotted me talking about an impending house move for the last few months. To be specific, it took five months from our offer being accepted to getting the keys in our hands but the latter finally, FINALLY, happened last Friday afternoon.

We’ve not moved in yet because there is some damp-proofing work needed in our office and since we both largely work from home, it would be good (from logistical and breathing points of view) to have that sorted before we move over. We’re also using this short window to do other jobs that’ll be easier without us, all our stuff and cats there. Expect lots of “How can I…” style questions about house moving, renovations and decorating from me over the next few weeks ;)

First up, I’d like to make a sewing table/bench. There is, wonderfully, enough space for me to have dedicated craft station in the spare room for sewing etc – no more having to use the floor for sewing and pattern cutting, joy!

I think it would be good to have a drop-leaf/expandable table style worktop so it might be worth keeping an eye out for an old/broken dining table for that. Someone has also suggested covering a worksurface with lino/vinyl floor covering to protect it so I guess I should keep an eye out for that too. I already use some old (skip-dived) CD shelves for yarn and am tempted to yoink the shoe rack John doesn’t use for instant shelving – two layers of shoeboxes or ice-cream tubs for holding stuff.

Any other suggestions for useful features or things to make it with? What have you used? What about for storage of those countless tools and random supplies?

We’ve had an email from Janey:

What can I make a lampshade out of? I’ve got the cable and fitting from an old lamp and want to make something cute for my home office.

While it’s not specifically recycled stuff, I saw a paper cutout lamp shade on Craft last week which I thought was a great gem of an idea that could easily be adapted for recycled paper or the like, and customised regarding what shapes are cut from the paper. I wonder if it would be safe enough to use a big old fizzy drink/soda bottle for the inner layer… I suspect not but I’m overly cautious regarding electricity – anyone know for sure?

There have been a number of “make it into a light shade” suggestion in reply to posts on Recycle This over the years and I’ll try to add some links to those in the comments below – but the one that most obviously springs to mind is using photo negatives.

Any other ideas? Anyone know any safety guidelines to minimise the risk of fire/melting?