Pet gripes

[Flo]

Sell the ones you don't want on eBay or whatever is your equivalent?

[Weedo]

Houses as landfill!
Just down the road is (was) a row of 10 1950's 2 bedroom cottages; timber framed, corrugated iron roof, brick chimney and fibro cement clad. The cladding contained asbestos which was duly removed and packaged by specialists and the cottages industrially vacuumed to remove any possible asbestos dust. The site was declared clean and the demolition crews moved in with excavators, pulled them down and sent the whole lot to landfill! Doors, windows, cupboards, appliances, framing , roofing, bricks etc. everything went into tip trucks. The framing and flooring was black cypress, a local species that is slow growing, very strong for weight, termite proof and nearly unobtainable these days.

[Weedo]

Flo
I offered them to my mechanic who swapped them for two fuel filters for Mrs W's ute.

[Skippy]

Houses as landfill!
Just down the road is (was) a row of 10 1950's 2 bedroom cottages; timber framed, corrugated iron roof, brick chimney and fibro cement clad. The cladding contained asbestos which was duly removed and packaged by specialists and the cottages industrially vacuumed to remove any possible asbestos dust. The site was declared clean and the demolition crews moved in with excavators, pulled them down and sent the whole lot to landfill! Doors, windows, cupboards, appliances, framing , roofing, bricks etc. everything went into tip trucks. The framing and flooring was black cypress, a local species that is slow growing, very strong for weight, termite proof and nearly unobtainable these days.

That doesn't surprise me at all. I had thirty odd years in the building industry before I started up on my own as a handyman and have worked on some niice big jobs. One place I never felt really comfortable working was banks. On a refurb on a bank we would be waiting until they closed up and then we would have to move in and rip everything out as quick as possible often so they could open again in the morning or at best on a Monday morning. And by rip out that's just how it was done , crowbars and sledge most of the time , nothing was unscrewed or removed carefully because there simply wasn't the time. Removing carefully would have lengthened the job for no financial gain , at least not in the eyes of the banks. I've seen skip loads of hardwoods , glass screens , carpet tiles and furniture all just gone as quick as possible and it was ripped out there was very little left worth salvaging. I tried my best to save stuff but the waste was galling.

[doofaloofa]

Bloody pets!!!111

[Weedo]

Carp tool steel! Doesn't anyone make decent tools anymore? In particular thing like spades and axes are now made out of some strange material that is either very soft or very hard and usually weighs twice what they should. What my father used to call "dead steel" is the norm these days; dull, lifeless and won't take a decent edge. The handles are no better, timber you would think about twice about before using it for firewood - full of knots, gum veins and shakes, lifeless and badly shaped.

Actually, it is hardly economical to replace a handle these days -Two (former) quality brand long handled spades now retail for around $28 - $30 while a replacement handle retails at $26. Given one needs to spend a couple of hours reshaping and fitting a new handle it is easier to replace the whole thing.

[Green Aura]

My OH would definitely agree with you Weedo. Although, for us, it's cheaper to get a new handle sent through the post than the whole thing.

[Flo]

The local post office being full of grannies posting Christmas cards at the moment. If you want to do anything else there at the moment you need a speed the granny up machine.

[Viper254]

That is true... there were some spectacular queues at my post office yesterday

[Viper254]

A "stew pack" of veg in the local supermarket - a swede, parsnip, carrots and onion in a plastic tray and then cellophaned.

Wrapping paper is also very annoying.

[Green Aura]

Oh, Viper, we have many long threads about unnecessary, unre-usable, unrecyclable, single use plastic packaging. (Sorry, most those words probably don't exist ).

[Viper254]

I know... I've seen them...

Yet it's so hard to avoid in this town, without a greengrocers.

[Flo]

The only way to avoid packaging on vegetables is grow your own.

[Weedo]

I don't know about up your way but packaged, pre-prepared vegetables and meats - sliced and diced ready to cook - are becoming more common down here. What's next? Predigested foods to save the time and effort of preparing, cooking and chewing?

Enough gripe for today; I think I will just plug lunch into my I.V. cannula and have a lie down.

[Odsox]

What's next? Predigested foods to save the time and effort of preparing, cooking and chewing?

Well that's more or less already happening up here when you can buy ready made mashed potatoes and ready made omelettes.