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Showing posts with label grey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grey. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

How To Lay Lino When Renovating and Renting Or Renting Out

Laying carpet and lino is easy. Easier than you might think.

I watched the carpet layers. Roll it out along the edge of the room. Get out a Stanley knife and cut.

Fasten the sides and under-door strips with the metal strips sold for that purpose.

The fastening strips have upright spikes to grip the underside of the carpet. Three holes for nails or screws allow the strip to be attached to the floor.

Should you lay new lino over old?  One person says, "That's amateur." I disagree.

You are sure of a soundproof and soft undersurface.

Rip it up, and you may find it is attached with glue so you spend hours trying to remove it and get lumps left behind.

To flatten the floor you would have to hire a heavy machine which could damage your doorways, steps, cupboards, bathroom fittings.

How to fit around bathroom fittings? Easiest is to use carpet tiles or line tiles. Take a piee of newspaper and draw around the baths and basins on the reverse. Cut to fit and adjust your pattern. use the pattern to transfer the lines to the underside of the carpet. Be sure any mirror image pieces are the right way around.

Add bathroom mats to conceal any gaps and be sure drips are caught by the mats or carpet and not forming mould.

Or should you rip lino up and start again - doubling the price?

If you have read my previous posts on laying driveways and carpet, you will know I am suspicious of any attempt to double the price after the work has started. I also don't like the damage and dust.

Which Colour - Light Or Dark?
What of the colour? Colours go in fashions.

The current fashion is for dark colours. Grey granite wet rooms. Dark tiles.

I hate them. I have great wall tiles and grey bathroom tiles in Singapore. The place always looks like it has mould. You never know if it is clean.

Grey is depressing, the least popular colour is many surveys. I like white.

Clean white. Hospital white. Healthy white.

Clean Cups?
I learned long ago that you can see if your tea cup or coffee cup is clean if it is white. Brown or grey inside a cup or mug is a disaster, a health risk.

Carpeted Bathroom?
In London I wanted to use spare carpet for the bathroom. What with men and boys not aiming at the toilet, or dripping, children splashing in the bath. The flat dwellers did not like that idea. They thought lino would keep cleaner and be quicker to clean.

Advantage of carpet? Lee likely to break a dropped glass tumbler used for leaning teeth. Less likely to slip and fall - good for the elderly and children. If you do fall, a soft landing. Warm underfoot at night or day.

HELP!
Big DIY stores have leaflets you can consult whilst working. The YouTube videos train you and tell you what you need to buy. You might not have thought of knee pads. Or testing for damp on the floor, or turning off the bathroom heating the day before.

Wash the floor the day before - and the toilet as you will be kneeling next to it.


Many people comment that, unless you are a hospital, no need to glue down all the vinyl. Also it is easier to remove later if you do not glue it all over. Just use the double-sided tape at the edge.

You might need either a buddy or a stick to help unroll a long sheet of vinyl.

In Singapore in the bedrooms and living areas we have vinyl imitation wood tiles - long oblongs like planks, which slot together. Near doorways they slide apart and leave gaps. You would get around the problem of gaps by having a one piece imitation wood roll of lino.

B & Q UK has this helpful video
UK Video on Laying Lino in Bathroom
(Most of what they show applies anywhere.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDUD36VPD_U
diy.com

American Video On Laying Lino I Kitchen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BO3k9j1Q3c
Apart from the accent being American, the only other difference is that the names of the stores mentioned in the comments are American.

What to buy:
Vinyl large enough for room with a little edge
sealant +
+ edging strip
knee pads
knife
backed tape
silicone seal
spray ?
washing up liquid
working gloves
hammer (to hit any protruding nails)

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.


Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Learn Your First Ten Words in Portuguese: Colours (start a monthly learn a language plan)

Problem
I need to learn Portuguese for my next holiday. Portuguese is used in Brazil and Madeira. What should I learn?

Answers
On Tinycards by Duolingo I can learn colours and foods. That takes time every day.

Some of the questions are annoying. You seem to get asked to guess a colour before you've been told it. One reason is that it's really a revision card for what you have already learned on Duolingo.

What has gone wrong? You might have rushed on to the test question, forgetting previously to click to reverse the card to see the translation.

I'm short of time so I'm typing into Google translate my favourite words in the order I want to learn them. I then order the words from Portuguese into English, followed by English into Portuguese.

Any popular phrase book does the same thing. You can pick groups of words to learn, sometimes at the start or end of the book, such as numbers, days of the week. If I were to learn 10 words a day, and keep adding, in a month of 28-31 days I would have a basic vocabulary of 280-310 words.

Which words will I need most? I can select 28-31 sets of words. Let's make it 30 for neatness, and add another 10 or do a revision on day 31. If I am busy one day, my cumulative list will help me catch up. Add one to three whole sentences.

Earworms by Berlitz does something similar. You can play it in your car to help you learn words for your next holiday.

1 Colours
2 Food
3 Wine bottle labels
4 Days of the week
5 Months
6 Numbers 1-10
7 Travel brochure /website
8 On the plane
9 At the airport
10 On a ferry or boat
11 On a bus
12 Walking
13 At the hotel
14 In a restaurant
15 On a tour
16 Shops and prices
17 Speaking to a museum guide
18 Emergency
19 Verbs - to be (present), to be future, walk, run, stop, go, like, can,
20 Recipes
21 Clothes labels / washing instructions
22 Sewing and repairs
23 Pharmacy and doctor
24 Police and theft
25 Driving and traffic signs
26 Greetings and meetings
27 Time
28 Numbers 10-20
29 Celebrations
30 Weddings: bride, groom, photographer
31 Feelings: happy, sad, hungry, full, angry, worried, busy, tired, keen, need, want
Question words: where, how much, how many

Once I have worked out the words I need, I can use the same set of English words to learn any other language. Obviously the words you need on a ski holiday are different to those on a beach holiday.

This would keep me organized.  However, if I want to learn out of sequence, such as doing colours today, I need to re-structure my list, or create a draft of all 30 days of learning.

Here are colours:

English - Portuguese
black - preto (p and b are like upside down or each other; pret-end to be invisible wearing black)
brown - castanho (like a brown castle)
blue - azul
green - verde (like the Italian verdi but the I-tal-I-an has i and Portugu-E-s-E has E) vinho verde green wine
orange - laranja (like the Spanish naranja but L shape Portugal which is long has laranja)
pink - rosa (rose pink)
purple - roxa (r in purple)
red - vermelho (like vermilion)
white - branco (like blanco but with an r as in PoRtuguese)
yellow - amarelo (the endings rhyme; spelling like the town Amarillo simplified, imagine yEllow amarillo - amarElo)

O and A endings
Five of the words end with the letter O, (preto, castanho, vermelho, branco, amarelo).
Three Portuguese colour words end with the letter a: laranja, rosa, roxa.
One word ends with e, verde.
One ends with l, azul.
...
grey
striped
patterned
plain
bright colour
darker
lighter
navy
lovely colour
to match this colour

Portuguese
Preto
Castanho
azul - azul
verde
laranja
Rosa
roxa
vermelho
branco
amarelo
...
cinzento
listrado
padronizado
avião
Cor brilhante (cor rhymes with more, but cor short for colour, brilhante like the English word brilliant)
mais escura (mais is more, escura obscured - darker)
isqueiro
marinha
linda cor (Linda is wearing a lovely colour - cor blimey, that's a lovely colour, Linda)
para combinar com esta cor (to combine with this colour - for combining with this colour).

Five of this second set of letters end with o: cinzento, listrado, padronizado, avião, isqueiro. Three end with a: escura, marinha, linda.

Now you can write to your friends called Linda and tell them they are lovely - in Spanish and Portuguese.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English, learner of 12 other languages.
Please see my other travel blog:
http://www.luxurytravelforless.co.uk




Saturday, July 22, 2017

Learning the colours in Welsh. From black to yellow. And sing a rainbow song.



Problem
How do you learn the colours in Welsh?
Supposing you want to buy a red dress?
What do the words sound like in Welsh?

Answer
Look the words up in google translate. Learn with Duolingo. The easiest words are those which are exactly the same to read. Brown. Turquoise. Same in Welsh and English. Duo lingo includes a symbol for sound you can tap on to hear the words. I read through the forums and eventually I found the answer to my question. the sounds on Duolingo are computer generated. It would take too long and be too complicated to record every word.

If you want to hear languages spoken by native speakers, try YouTube. If you want to learn whole sentences in the spoken language, learn from courses which are mainly or partly on discs. The easiest and quickest is Earworms which is a sub section of Berlitz.

Story
I was looking through Duolingo, the free website. They make you stick to the system of lessons in order. They are quite right too. Otherwise I would skip to the end and never complete the course, lose track of what I'd missed.

However, I could not resist reading through the headlines in the middle of the red buttons. I spotted colours, the lesson which would be most appealing to me. Colours is the one I could practise most - every time I saw anything coloured I could keep repeating the Welsh.

You Tube Welsh Colours Video
When I googled 'colours Welsh' I immediately and unexpectedly found this handy video. I wish the children would smile. The colours are not very clear. The children seemed to be shaking the cards instead of holding the cards still. Visibility improved when I switched to full screen by clicking the symbol in the lower right.

I decided to write out the colours in my notebook which I always carry in my right hand pocket. The easiest colour to remember is pink, spelt p i n c .

English - Welsh
colour -l l i w
colours - l l i w a u
black - du
blue - g l a s (I think of blue eyes like glass)
brown - brown (looks the same but the r is emphasized)
green - g w y r d d
grey - llwyd
lavender - l a f a n t
orange - o r e n
pink - p i n c
purple - p o r f f o r
red - coch
turquoise - turquoise
white - g w y n
yellow - m e l y n (I think of mellow yellow M E L  Y; also Mel is wearing Yellow and LYN is wearing Yellow, which is M E L Y N in Welsh)

Welsh - English
blue - g l a s
brown - brown
coch - red
du - black
g w y n - white
g w y r d d - green
l a f a n t - lavender (I think of a laughing ant on the lavender plant)
m e l y n - yellow
o r e n - orange
p i n c - pink
p o r f f o r - purple
turquoise - turquoise

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, teacher, tutor, workshop leader and speaker about English and learning foreign languages. See my other posts on destinations and languages such as French, German, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Russian, Welsh. Please share links to your favourite posts.