Week 150: Lou & Char

A week of vans, picking up furniture, getting rid of furniture, flood detection, energy monitoring, excellent pub, sunshine, country houses, and fun weddings.

Posted on by Rowan Manning.
Tagged with HouseWeddingHome Automation

  • A dark wood drop-leaf table with four chairs, set into an alcove

    We finally got rid of the large corner sofa which was dominating the living room of our flat. We never used it and it wasn’t comfortable. We’ve replaced it with a lovely table and chairs so that we don’t have to eat off of our laps. I love it.

    I drove a van for the first time to go and pick it up. It went well but highlighted how much I rely on my rear-view mirror when driving, feels very unnatural not to be able to stare into the eyes of the person driving behind you.

  • An iOS notification warning that the cupboard under the kitchen sink is damp

    My Shelly flood sensor arrived and I got it set up in Home Assistant. Now I’ll get alerted if there’s dampness in the under-sink cupboard in the kitchen, so I can stop checking it compulsively every time I go in there 🎉

    As always, I love working in Home Assistant, it’s such a brilliant system. I decided to buy a Zigbee radio for the Raspberry Pi that it runs on so that I can reduce WiFi network load and remove some of our reliance on the Internet being available. I also found that it’s possible to get UK smart meter data piped in so I can use Grafana to chart our energy usage over time. This guide was useful.

  • Thursday pub was delightful, glad I put sunscreen on.

  • On Saturday we went to our only wedding of the year, Lou & Char got married down in Kent, on the grounds of a country house which was lovely. The ceremony was really sweet despite us baking in the sun, the brides seemed to have the best time.

    Despite not knowing a lot of people outside of Charlotte’s family (Lou is her cousin), it was a lot of fun. Various other family members are also considering moving to Brighton; the list of people to visit when we go down just keeps growing ❤️

    A weird small-world moment was meeting someone and discovering they’re the brother of one of my colleagues. I love it when things like this happen.