I promised photos of what I've been up to, so...

The curly wurly gates. One of them is off it's hinges as it was wet in Portsmouth today so I had to take the gate under cover to paint it. Dratted weather! Further to my rant about Hammerite, I ran out, and when I got another tin, it turned out to be a newer formulation which doesn't need a second coat at all, unless it goes on bare metal, and can be second coated anytime after four hours. So rant withdrawn, and Hammerite is totally and utterly recommended.

The front door looks fab, mainly due to the client's brilliant choice of paint- lovely colour, and Dulux Weathershield. The apparent differences in colour are just shadows. I'll try to get a better one on Monday.
 

Now the business is up and running, I decided I needed something a bit more manageable than a big metal cantilever toolbox, so when I saw B&Q had these half price, I just had to treat myself to one.
As you can see it didn't take long to fill up!

Day off tomorrow, as I was supposed to be constructing a flat pack wardrobe in Waterlooville, but it was delivered with no doors!!! So I'll be building it whenever the doors appear.



Off birdwatching instead...

Maybe see some of these little chaps again: Siskins, Greenfinches and Redpolls, in case you wanted to know.

Busy day today- rubbing down and painting gates. Curly wurly gates that would stretch for miles if you uncurled them. And unfortunately the best thing to paint them with is Hammerite, which is fantastic stuff- primer, undercoat and topcoat all in one, but which has the great drawback that you have to put the second coat on more than four hours but less than eight hours after the first. Fine... but in practice means you can't do the first coat one day and the second coat the next. This morning that meant I had to have the top coat done by 12.30 to be able to recoat before five... and I only started the seemingly neverending curly wurly gate at 12. So no, I didn't finish on time.
I did manage to put the first top coat on the front door- turns out the colour the homeowner has chosen is a gorgeous deep blue which looks fab. Piccies tomorrow, I promise, as well as of the curly wurly gates!
Just hoping the weather holds out ok here in Portsmouth.

No Diva-ing today- out Birdwatching. There are some good bird spots here in Portsmouth, but we headed a bit further afield today... and were rewarded with seeing a bird that's usually really hard to spot (a tree creeper if you're interested) and some that we don't get usually around Portsmouth (goosander and redpoll and brambling). Nice.
Good weekend rest ready for back to work tomorrow- wire brushing gates for painting, my favourite! Fortunately there's somewhere undercover that I can take the gates and prep them out of the rain which is forecast for tomorrow round here.
I'll let you know 

Still trying to advertise and drum up business. Been and put my poster up in a load of community centres in Portsmouth, sending a whole load more to churches in and around Portsmouth to see if they'll put them up in the hall or somewhere.
Also left cards in a couple of shops in North End- got one booking that way already, so worth it.
Advertising is so not my favourite bit of running a business- it's so time consuming, I've done so much trekking one end of Portsmouth to the other, and you don't see an immediate result like you do when you cut some wood or paint something or lay some concrete. I suppose it's necessary though.

I'm trying to keep my facebook page up to date as well as this blog- go and check it out: http://www.facebook.com/pages/DIY-Diva/125470380854933 (hope that works!)

If anyone can think of anywhere else to advertise- online, with a poster, leaving some business cards or any other way, I'd appreciate any hints.

No posts recently 'cause I've been too busy! All good, of course.
Business work, working at work, working at other work... and eating and sleeping in between from time to time.
And then there's the whole business of advertising, putting posters up, adverts on classifieds, and the whole world of search engine optimisation, (which by the way sounds vaguely like it should be something agricultural!).

It was last week I made the curtain pole brackets I blogged about (if that's the correct term) and I promised you photos, so here they are.

I'll post some pics of some other bits I've done, just cause I don't often get the chance to show off!

The magic of a jigsaw, a router and a mega drill bit turn this...

Into this. Simple, but they work and look ok.

I did cheat and use a piece of dowel rather than cut the pole from a piece of wood with my own fair hand, but I think I can be excused!

Oh and a sander, of course. No rough edges, thank you.

Yes, I'm googlable!!!
I'm sure my linguist buddies would shudder at the mangling of the English language, but "I'm searchable on Google" just doesn't have the same ring.

I won't be holding my breath for millions of hits, though- searching "diydiva" pops my site up... on page 16!!!
And searching "diy diva portsmouth" or "Portsmouth handywoman" points you to me, but only very eventually!

I never even imagined the vagaries of search engines- here I thought crawling was something babies and sewermen did, but it turns out search bots (!) crawl websites too. Hmmm.

On a lighter note, got to have some fun this morning ripping a load of defunct BT wiring out along with the multitude of little boxes which were needed before wireless handsets. I did check with the BT engineer who was installing the new line that I wasn't doing anything naughty!!! I feel I want to mention that said BT engineer was female, though I also feel that shouldn't have any relevance at all. Who knows.


No telling what fun I'll be up to tomorrow, but the day will probably start with showing a surveyor our roof before I go to work. Don't know if I can contain the excitement.

Hi all, I'm Sophie Dykes, the DIY Diva, and I'm new to this blogging malarkey!
Not new to DIY though.
Just this morning I made some nice (if I say so myself) brackets for a curtain pole. Always amazing how good you can make a bit of wood look with a jigsaw, a router and a sander.

I'll try to post a photo, (if I can!)