Alteration on a minimal budget

MARION has this comment on minor alterations:

Regarding the question from Basil of Constantia (December 2 ) I have a standard 3-bedroom, 2-bath room house. I converted the main bedroom (with existing en-suite bathroom) into a separate entrance room. I converted one window into a door using the existing lintel. The job was done by Joe and his bakkie, who had been recommended. From the passage in the main part of the house I pushed a bookcase over the interleading door, making it a reversible separate entrance room.

I probably should have had plans drawn up, but Joe felt this was not necessary. I had neither time nor money to go the architect route. The cost was minimal.

Much as I would like everyone to do everything by the book, this is not going to happen. There are some great tradespeople who operate under the radar. The main aim of the column is to ensure you have as much protection as possible when things do go wrong, and not just from a building point of view, but also health and safety needs. Also ensure the workforce is properly and fairly paid.

Harold has written about swimming pool cartridge filters:

I was interested to see your response about cartridge filters to save water. I enclose brochures for pre-filters for which we distribution rights in the Western Cape.

The MC12 Plus removes the need to backwash the filter, save for fine debris such as dog hair and grass trapped in the cartridge. I’ve been using this filter for three months with outstanding results .

I will look into this and all the other ideas I’ve gathered. I will work out the total cost of taking my home off the council water grid versus the gamble of what rain will fall in the future and how much magic mayor Patricia de Lille has.