Travel DIY?

That's the title of a post on the TripAdvisor Luxor Forum today. I thought that I'd offer the person some light DIY, just to keep his hand in, so to speak, but it wasn't about DIY at all!

I've been a bit busy with my own DIY over the past couple of days, I'll show you later on. Meanwhile, here's a picture that I've wanted to take for some time, only the opportunity hasn't arisen before now:

Suppose that walking on the top of a ladder is sort of similar to stilt-walking, but I think I'll just give it a miss, thank you very much! I well remember the stilts that we had as children, great fun, even if we did pick up a few bruised knees now and then.

These next two aren't exactly DIY. This building, just down on Gold Street, has had men working on it, on and off, for several weeks now. I really am stumped as to what sort of end result they will accomplish with barely enough floor space to have a staircase in it, and being three storeys high! The steel and chicken-wire framework will hold some fancy plasterwork, eventually. Time will reveal all, I suppose.

I didn't tell you about Mohamed Marble, did I? Well, he's the 'stone man' who eventually provided the Aswan granite for the guest apartment kitchen surfaces, a nice, genuine bloke! Well, we've been wanting to do something with the top surface of the cupboard which we use for the guest's breakfast buffet 'cause when the crisp white linen table cloth is removed; it really is quite an eyesore:

We tried the second-hand man up on New TV Street, a while ago, but the stone he had wasn't the right size and I thought it was too expensive for old stuff anyway. How right I was proven to be! Mohamed Marble came up trumps, 115le for the stone (it's the cheapest type, mind you) and 35le for delivery. I complained about the cost of the delivery, but he made a bit of a face and a gesture indicating our 83 stairs, and I relented! (Too soft to make claggy toffee!) In the event, I left Mohamed and the carrier at the street door, as I went and prepared the way for them up onto the roof. After a few minutes, I was wondering where they had gotten to, so started back down. I found Mohamed, two flights down, desperately trying to fill his lungs with enough air to get the oxygen back into the blood which was racing around his overly large body. The carrier had refused to help him up the stairs, and he had carried it himself! I offered to help him up those last two flights, but he wouldn't have it, he'd been paid to deliver, and deliver he would! (Even if it killed him, apparently.)

This new marble top for the breakfast buffet cupboard was only a part of the latest project! Freda has been getting increasingly tired of seeing the ugly satellite dish, which is just over the wall near to the breakfast buffet, so she wanted it screened off, somehow.

Ever compliant, I stepped up to the challenge; "Can we fix it? Yes we can!" (No, nothing to do with 'Jim'll Fix It', certainly not with the latest revelations.) Another sheet of the Islamic patterned stuff, I think! As you know, there's no B&Q or Wicks here, and if you want wood, then you need to find a carpenter who has a tree to cut up, or go to young Mina over the railway and buy his overpriced stuff, which is full of shakes anyway! Good old Abdu, at Karnak, saved the day, yet again. In three days, he managed to squeeze in the production of 15 pieces of varying length timber, to my specification, with which to construct my design.

I started with it at about 4am on Thursday morning? It being the anniversary of the birthday of Muhammad, the Muslims were celebrating in their usual fashion; considerately playing music at full volume while chanting verses, also at full loudspeaker volume, from the Quran ALL NIGHT LONG!

The mitre box I brought from B&Q at Dunston was a real boon, as I had quite a few mitred corners to construct. Like a real DIYer, I nearly had my fore-finger off four times!

As you might notice from the position of the nicks on my finger; I got increasingly faster at getting it out of the way of the sawblade each time it jumped out of the mitre box! My word! That Nu-Skin is grand stuff.

Anyway, here's the first glimpse of my latest efforts, I got it this far by about 11pm on Thursday:

I've purposely left the wood in its natural state, no colour or varnish. Like the air-conditioner covers, I'll let the timber darken naturally, for a year or so, before varnishing; and that's another little job which I accomplished earlier this week, as well, they look lovely! I think I've earned a day off.