OneGuyFromBarlick

I may have mentioned this before but if so it's worth repeating. Stand with your back to the WC and look at it between your legs. Don't laugh! Try it, you may get a surprise!

You've got me stumped Stanley, is it for guys only

I think he means looking at the pedestal which you don't necessarily see properly if approaching from the front, unless I'm missing something.

Women can bend down and look between their legs as well! Don't laugh, just try it. You may get a surprise because you are looking at the bowl from an unusual angle and can see bits you miss when looking down.
Ever tried looking at the moon between your legs? It looks bigger.

Little boys and old men have poor aim and sometimes pee indiscriminately, resulting in dribbles down the outside of the bowl. In extreme cases, such as when a man begins to have dementia, enough of it dribbles onto the floor to soak under carpeting or lino. We've had instances where we've ended up having to take up floor covering, clean the floor, seal it and put down new covering. Sorry if that's too much information, but that's life!

I was thinking about the inside of the bowl actually at the back. As I clean my own toilet I make sure I don't dribble. I've seen floorboards round pedestals completely rotten from this cause. Cure is to make all men clean toilets! So that's today's tip..... (I have the cleanest toilet and kitchen sink in town.....)

Hopefully not cleaned with the same cloth!!

Don't worry Liz! I have a bit more sense than hat! Mind you, the way I use bleach it wouldn't be a disaster.
Today's tip won't apply to many of you, only the ones that use dripping in your deep fat fryer. When it comes time to change the fat you have to heat it to make it liquid and that can be death if, like me, you use an old 6 pint milk container to dispose of it. Fill the sink with cold water and pour the fat in while the container is immersed and the water will cool the plastic down so it doesn't melt. Any fat you spill will solidify when it hits the water and can be easily skimmed off to dispose of it. If you've never used pure dripping for deep frying, give it a try. They are just like your mother used to make them and much better for you than dodgy vegetable oils.

The thicker your chips, the less fat they absorb as a percentage of the weight of the chips.....

I've discovered the delights of twice fried chips.... Give them a quick burst to just brown the outside and then let them rest for ten minutes out of the fat before dropping them in again to finish them off. Can't think why I never did it before because I knew about it but never bothered. Well worth the effort!
Same applies to part boiling wedges before frying.....

If you are running a solid fuel stove, don't be afraid of stuffing the firebox full of coal so it doesn't need touching for 24 hours. The rate at which the fuel burns is a direct consequence of how much air you let in under the bars, nothing to do with the amount of fuel in the box. I always run my stove like that, all I do in the early evening is riddle the ashes. Don't even open the door. There is another advantage to this, stoves make more muck than any other form of heating but only when the door is open or you are dealing with ashes. So the least attention you give it, the least dust.

Every time my daughters point out some element of the house that could do with attention I fob them off by saying it's a waste of money because I shall die soon but I have to admit that the carpet in my bathroom has reached its sell-by date. I have decided to bite the bullet and call in on my mate in the Town Square.

Stanley, is your toilet in a separate room or is it in your bathroom?
I'm surprised that you have carpet in your bathroom considering how you like everything to be so clean.
Why not just have washable bath-mats??

We have vinyl and mats, a lot more functional. Silicon sealed around all the edges. Simple maintenance, vac the fluff from the corners and a quick wipe over with detergent and mild bleach and your done.

Cathy, it's in the large bathroom which in the original build was a bedroom (no bathroom, just an outside lavatory in the outshut). Don't forget it is colder here and carpets are a necessary luxury for me. Nothing dirty about them if you are careful, use a bath mat and make sure you hit the hole when peeing! If I was in your climate it would be a wet room.

Stanley 'if needs must ', then I can understand you having carpet in your bathroom.
(It's just that I've seen a few old bathroom carpets pulled up and it isn't pretty.)

We've got carpet tiles in the bathroom. You can take them up and wash them. When a leak from a water pipe flooded our bathroom floor we just took them up, allowed them to dry then put them back.

We had them in the kitchen at Hey Farm, brilliant because you could also swap the heavily trafficked ones round and swap with less worn ones. Vera used to water them once a month which brought the pig bristle nap up again..... I have settled on a heavy domestic maroon carpet with the best underlay. Now I shall have to cut an inch off the bottom of the door.....

The best tiles (and most expensive) used to be Heuga but I don't know if they still exist.

Tizer wrote:The best tiles (and most expensive) used to be Heuga but I don't know if they still exist.

http://heuga.com/

That was what we had at Hey Farm. I first saw them in the office of Houghtons at Milnthorpe who built the bodies for our cattle wagons. Well worth the money.....

This is what I love about OG... Just a few words at the end of a post, in this case about carpet tiles, has generated 9 more posts, and they are all different.

Mrs Tiz's parents had Heuga tiles in their kitchen and were very pleased with them, which is why we followed suit and put them down in our first kitchen. This was in the days when you took notice what your parents did instead of what the advertisers told you!

They were brilliant and hard wearing. You could swap them around to even out the wear and if you watered them last thing at night the nap of the pig bristle had risen by the following morning. They had a pitch back and if there was a spill on one you could take it outside and wash it thoroughly.....