strumming and what not

I have made inroads with the  mended violin.
I can now muddle my way through a few tunes and it is sounding less and less like a cat strangler.
I finally bought new pegs for it as nothing seemed to get the pegs to stay put.
The new pegs were much much better and it now stays in tune.

It was sounding quite tortorous until I realised I had been using too much rosin.
Now it is getting quite smooth.
I was watching Yehudi Menuin play and discovered his 'body sway' thing and it really does help to get a smoother sound because sometimes it is the bow moving over the strings and sometimes (with the sway), it is the violin moving under the bow.

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Oh has a guitar and a Mandolin ,both of which he bought himself new and I fancied trying out guitar ,so I gave it a go with a little disused guitar  that he owns.
We bought it for him about 18 years ago and it is quite small with steel strings.
My poor likkle fingers! The strings are hard work to press down.
OH doesn't use it ,deeming it rubbish.

Looking in the shed where I thought there was another, much older guitar, I came across the remains of the one that his family had owned and maltreated.
This guitar is bigger, more a normal size for an accoustic guitar.
It had almost all its strings broken and on further investigation (once I had extricated it from the tools and bits of old table, I found its bridge was almost completely removed from the body.

Once in the house, I discovered that there were no pegs to keep the strings in, instead someone, it was OH, had pushed the ends of felt pens in to the holes.
They fitted but were all bent up or sheered off.

I took them out .

A new set was about £3.50 on ebay so I sent for some and a new set of strings (£3.99).

I cleaned the poor old guitar body. It was grimey.
There were a couple of places where the body was parting company with the sides but only just, so I ran PVA into the cracks and clamped them shut.

The bridge needed sanding and the place where the bridge had come off was sanded so there was a rough area for the glue to key to.
Then I pushed a lot of flower pots up inside the body of the instrument and eased a thin piece of wood on top so that when I weighed the bridge down to get the glue to stick, it would not break the guitar.

Once all was glued, I blackened in the fingerboard between the frets with a black Sharpie.
It was like a magic wand and once I reblackened the bridge, it looked so much better.
The new pegs and strings came and I strung it using OH's guitar as a guide.

I found a tuning guide online and tuned it and now have quite a nice guitar to learn on.

Looking inside,the label says Madrigal which I think are made in spain.

OH doesn't remember who originally owned this instrument , he cant remember it being bought so it is likely from the 1950's or 60's and purchased for  his father .

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On the flat let side...
We have had a first small payment from the agents.
We had it about 3 or 4 hours and then paid the electrician who had installed the new bathroom extractor and moved a light fitting.
It paid for half his invoice.
So the first income from the flat is -£130