Porches & Critter Vanquishing

It is Sunday and directly after church, here's how I started my day.

A quick dip in the pool and then drying off in the sun as I listened to an audio book.

I checked out the porch this morning and I am very satisfied with the results. The problem now is that it is too nice to use.

Now I have to do some real work so I can justify returning to the pool later today.

The job: Critter Vanquishing!

The skunks have been living in this hole under the garage for several years now. I have never had the opportunity to plug the hole when I knew it was empty of skunk.

I am reasonably confident today because of the tricky thing I did with flour. I spread it in front of the hole to see if it would be disturbed by comings and goings. It has been undisturbed for a week. 

So I am going to fill it up with whatever rock & flotsam I can find.

Half an Hour Later: That went much easier than I thought it would. There were lots of chunks of cement from the old walkway that I was able to slide down into the hole. 

After that, I waited a bit to see if there would be any reaction from whatever might be living down there. There was no reaction and, more importantly, no smell.

So I continued to throw dirt and large rocks under there. I went into the garage and broke up the edge of the cement that had been lifted by tree roots and blocked the smooth opening of the door. At least now, we can squeeze in there if we ever need to. That would be on the occasions when the garage door would not open due to power failure or brokeness.

It is now a former hole and hopefully resistant to skunk digging. They are very good, tenacious diggers so it remains to be seen.

However, I am declaring the skunks evicted!

Susan has decided we need to go out and do some touch up on the porch. I have agreed because it makes my life much easier in the long run.

Back in the Fall of 2018, we had a big Russian Elm tree cut down next to the garage. That tree is the reason all the cement around the garage has heaved and lifted.

As you can see from the picture above, that tree refuses to die.

I'm going to let that little sprig continue to grow for a bit longer. I'm not convinced that it generated by the tree. It's possible a seed fell down between the stump and the bark and that is what is growing. 

My suspicion is it is the tree simply refusing to go away.

Porch Second Coat

We got the second coat of paint down on the porch today. The weather has been hot for a couple of weeks now but today it's just a bit cooler and with a little humidity. That might make the drying time a bit longer.

Other than that, which took us about an hour and half from start to clean up, we've had a lazy day. I did my watering rounds for the yard and even did some pruning.

Susan is working on a dress she bought but didn't like the fit. 

It must be getting close to beer time.

Goodbye White Elephant

Today was the last day of business for a store that is a Spokane icon, the White Elephant. It's been around since the 40's and I can clearly remember going there for my first baseball mitt.

Susan and I went there today just to check it out. They didn't have much left unless you wanted any memorabilia from Expo 74. They had lots of programs and ashtrays, a few posters and banners.

We will miss you, 'ol Elly

Porch Painting Day

Well, here we go.

We are getting another late start (12:52PM) but we think this part will go pretty fast.

We are planning on getting at least half of the porch painted today. That's the larger half shown in the picture. However, painting usually goes surprisingly fast and it would be great if we covered the whole thing. We don't want a lot of pressure on us, hence the meager expectations.

3:45PM: 

We coated the whole damn porch. As I suspected, it went really fast.

We even have paint left over. Not a lot but enough to do some touch up tomorrow. I'm going to order another gallon because we will want to have it on hand for the next poor owners of this house when they paint the porch.

The great thing is that we did the whole thing in one day. That frees up tomorrow for whatever we want to do.

Squirrel Bungy Corn

Back in March, I posted a couple of items about the Squirrel Bungy Cord we acquired. To recap, it is a long chain with a springy rubber band in the middle and an eye bolt at the bottom. I take a corn cob and screw it into the eye bolt. Then I set it so it is about 18 inches above the ground.

The squirrels love it because it is food and it is fun entertainment to watch them jump up and grab a kernel.

Tonight, while watering the flower bed next to the Bungy Squirrel, Susan noticed some weeds coming up in the garden. She pulled one up and it had a kernel of corn at its root. 

The damn squirrels are burying the corn and it is germinating and growing. We pulled up most of the sprouts but left one to see how big it would get.

It's hard to determine whether the entertainment value of the Squirrel Bungy Cord is worth the mess the squirrels create.

Primed Porch

The porch is primed and ready for paint. But that will have to wait for next week. Here are several pictures of what we accomplished.

We even got it done in a timely manner. I think we started around 11 and had it complete by 2. Now we have the rest of the day to kick back and enjoy the day.

Ideally, we would like to go over to our neighbors pool but there are a bunch of kids there now and we don't want to intrude with all the Covid going around.

Porch Primin'

We drove to the outskirts of town last night to try and get a look at the Neowise Comet. It's supposed to be visible for the next few days. From the pictures I have seen, it looks like a smeared star. Nonetheless, it would be cool to see it only because I will not be around when it returns in six thousands years.

However, the adventure was a bust. we saw no comet. Perhaps we have to go out later in the evening than 10:00. If that's the case, I'll wait the six thousand.

We cleaned off the porch today. I blew it with the leaf blower and then Susan mopped it while I wiped down the rails. Then we taped up all the edges. That took a while. 

When we finished, we debated as to whether we should continue or wait to complete it tomorrow. Waiting almost won out but we overcame our (my) laziness and soldiered on.

We got half the porch primed, covering only the areas of bare wood and the wood putty. We already see indications that the wood putty was cracking so that might have not been the best idea to put it down. 

However, we have and now we are sealing the wood putty beneath a thick coat of primer. Side two is scheduled for tomorrow.

I would like to show you the little areas where I laid in the thin strips of wood to fill a big hole, but I can't find them.

I think this might be one of the spots right in the middle of the picture. It's hard to tell which means I did a good job.

Mo Porch Work

One of my fixes on the porch worked and the other did not. 

This one worked. I was able to hit it with the sander and make it flush to the porch

This one did not work. The glue did not make good contact with the adjacent boards and I was able to pull the whole shim right out. I 

re-glued and added another very thin shim to the group. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if it will work.

Upon inspection of my caulking skills, I see I need better skills. Or at least, caulk that does shrink so much. I did a third round of caulking today and I think that should do it. I will look at everything tomorrow and give it all a light sanding.

It took three tubes of caulking to do the first round. It took only one tube to complete rounds two and three.

Porch Work

It took us a while to get to it but we had a productive day.

We worked on the porch from noon until four. Susan sanded the wood putty area she did last week and then continued puttying the other half of the porch.

I dealt with Round Two of the caulking. I am filling such a large gap, and the caulk shrinks so much, I may have to engage in a Round Three.

We have a couple of spots where the wood decking appears to have rotted away and requires filling with wood. I used the strips of hemlock that I cut off the bottom of the TV Room baseboard to fill the gaps. I dry fitted them into place and then spread some wood glue on them and slid them back in the gap. I made them ride a little proud so we can sand them flush.

Grass Report

For the first time since we have lived in this house, I am mostly pleased with the parking strip grass on the west side of the yard.

For once, it's not dried out and crappy looking. 

On closer examination, it's not that great. It's not that it isn't green. It's that it is not really grass. It's an amalgam of green plant life that poses as grass from a distance.

See what I mean?!

Anyway, I just wanted to comment on it while it's still nice looking.

Wood Putty and Caulk

The weather today and in fact, all weekend was perfect for a Holiday weekend. It has been raining so much lately that we haven't really expected much of the weather.

I didn't really even think about it prior to the weekend and so it had nothing to prove against me...like the weather is against me.

Susan spread wood putty over the porch today, smoothing it into the cracks and crevasses that abound on the deck. She is hoping it will help smooth things out but is concerned the wood putty will just crack and peel after a couple of years. I guess we'll find out.

I did a search on the Blog today to find out when we last painted the porch. It turns out it was almost 11 years ago. August of 2009 to be exact.

I think that 11 years on a surface that takes quite a beating is pretty good. Hopefully, I'll be dead by the time another 11 years comes around.

I spent the day prepping for caulking and then caulking.

This is what I had to deal with. There are gigantic gaps in the 100 year old tongue and groove decking on the porch. Plus, there is a tremendous amount of dirt that gets down in there. I had to pull out all the old caulking, scrape out the dirt, and then vacuum up what was left.

Here's a before and after shot.

It requires a great deal of caulking. I used three of these tubes. There is a lot of waste because you put down a bead, screed it with a putty knife, and you end up with a wad of caulk that the putty knife picked up. I tried to make the best use of the excess by pressing it into other cracks. 

It's a messy operation. But...it is a messy operation that is complete!

It's Still About Sanding

When we stopped working last night, we were quite tired and sore. I believe I expressed those revelations in the previous post.

We got up this morning, somewhat revived, and continued with the work. I had to leave first thing in the morning to open up our church to a group of do-gooder sandwich makers. These folks make about 300 sandwiches with an assortment of other lunch items and then distribute them to anyone who wants one. They position themselves around parks and bridges and the like.

Anyway, I open up the building and then leave them to their operation. This has been going on for a couple of months.

I returned home about ten to find Susan on her knees with a hand sander working on the edges and corners we couldn't get to with the big floor sander.

I managed to get through a light sanding with medium grit sand paper and then another with fine grit.

The floor looks and feels pretty damn good. We got through the sanding part.

Because we sanded the front porch too, we have added another project that will keep us from the TV Room until we paint the porch. I'm hoping that will be next weekend. But that will require some evening work out of us over the next week.

We'll see. We're clearly not on a schedule.

We returned the floor sander and got charged for 24 hours plus 4 hours. That was a grand total of $105.00. I haven't figured out yet how much the sand paper cost us. Somewhere around $75.00 I surmise.

Susan continued to work on the porch when we returned. I did a bunch of vacuuming and then got to work on my second coat of stain for the baseboards.

All my staining is now complete. Our next project in the TV Room will be painting the walls, followed by staining the floor.

Oh, the joys of old home ownership.

It's About Sanding!

It's the Fourth of July Holiday weekend and that means big plans for the house.

Of course, out in the world, it means big protests for what a horrible country we are and how we are fundamentally racist. Back in my world, I wonder why so many people risk everything they have to try and sneak in to such a horrible, racist, unfair place.

Enough of politics because that is not what this is about.

It's about sanding! Shortly I will be heading for "The Depot" to rent a floor sander. The objective is to gently sand the  front porch and coarsely sand the TV Room. Down to the bare wood, as it were. And we want to do it in 24 hours. 

The sander costs $65.00 a day plus several sheets of sand paper at about eight bucks a sheet.

First, I must make a comment concerning a new discovery Susan made last night. We have a skunk that lives under the garage. She has been there for quite some time and not really caused us much trouble. I can confidently use "she" as her personal pronoun, because the one has become six. I'm one of those people who claims that only "she's" can have babies.

There I go getting political again.

The little skunkettes are adorable. They follow Mom around and wrestle and play, all the while looking for a tasty mouse. 

We saw them last night about 8:30. There was still enough light to see them easily but late enough where they decided to venture out.

7:26PM: Whew! What a day. We are both beat. But we sure were productive.

We started with the front porch because we are just giving it a buff. We're painting the same color so it doesn't need to go down to the wood. Thanks God!

The TV Room took almost five hours and there is still some work to do around the edges.

It's really tough work moving that sander around. It naturally wants to move to the right so when you want to move left, it's quite a chore. My shoulders are really sore.

I did a pretty good job of getting it down to bare wood. I need to do a little additional hand sanding on a few spots and around the edges.

Tomorrow's another day and we have plenty to do.

Staining Baseboards

I have finally completed cutting all the baseboard for the TV Room. I can't say I'm thrilled with the job I did on the coping corners. I only needed to cut three corners. Some look better than others. Thankfully, they are in the corners and they are dark.

I'm starting the staining process today. I've just painted on the wood conditioner and I'll begin staining in about 15 minutes. 

I'm staining the smaller boards today. If everything goes well, I might be able to devote some attention to my two really long boards...but I doubt it.

Above is the only picture I remembered to take during the staining process. The good news is that I was able to get all my boards treated and stained. So that gets me that much closer to having the baseboards ready to go.

We are planning on refinishing the floor this coming weekend. It's the Fourth of July so we have a three day weekend. I will probably have a four day weekend, which is a whole day better.

Once the floor is completed, we will be really close to finishing this project.

I am pretty happy with my efforts to match the north facing board with the curve in the floor.

I ended up making three passes to get it where I was satisfied. The final pass closed the gap even more than shown above.

Baseboard Part Deux

I think I have solved the baseboard problem.

I took my construction pencil and laid it on the floor with the lead up against the baseboard. Starting at the left end where the gap was really big, I drew the pencil along the board and created a cut line that followed the contour of the floor. 

I then used my jigsaw on the board, cutting right to the line, which created an arc that presumably matched the bow in the floor.

It worked! The board now sits much more snugly and flush against the floor. I ended up doing this procedure twice and I have gotten the left side to where the base shoe covers the gap. I might run it one more time to really snug it up.

I'm happy.

TV Room Base Board Predicament

I'm trying to figure out what to do with the baseboard I have milled for the TV Room.

The problem is shown above in the picture that shows the problem.

There appears to be a high point in the floor that does not allow the baseboard to lie flush to the floor at the left edge.

The other edge is not much better. However, the gap is small enough that the base shoe would cover it.

The gap at the left end is an inch high. The base shoe slides right under it.

I am thinking the way to solve this problem is to mark the midpoint of the board where the high point is and cut a straight line from the corner to that midpoint, about half an inch from the bottom. Then I would continue the cut at a slight angle towards a second mark further down the board and then straight for the bottom corner at the right end of the board.

I am essentially cutting a crude bow to match the floor. The base shoe will then hide the bow cut and the gap.

It doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to be better than it is.

The Hunt Begins

I found a junk box at work that had an assortment of promotional items in it, including a rain gauge to place in the yard. I screwed it to a fence post on Friday. Upon checking it this morning after yesterdays' rains, I measured .35 inches of moisture within the capture tube. Isn't that exciting!

It looks like it could be another day of rain but we don't care as we have begun the hunt for a couch in the TV Room.

We went out yesterday and found the style we are looking for although not the color or price range. The couch pictured above is basically what we are looking for. The two sides recline. The seat in the middle does not. This one was priced at $1,500.00.

We found a couple more, equally as nice and comfy at a furniture store close to us on Monroe. They had a similar couch that reclined electrically for 700 bucks.

We are going to continue the hunt today. Since we are a good ways off from finishing the room, we are not in a panic to buy.

Dumpster Day

It is a rainy wet Saturday so my plans to work outside are in the dumpster. I had a good mostly rain free day yesterday which allowed me to get several of the baseboards cut to length for the TV Room.

I decided to work on a minor little problem that popped up. When removing the plaster and lath walls, we left a chunk of plaster at the bottom of the wall. While it was close to being flush with the floor, it was not flush with the wall. The baseboards would not have fit up snugly to the wall.

So today we chipped out the plaster. It turned out to be quite a mess. However, it is done now and one more impediment removed to being done with this two year project.

I think my next move is to start sanding the floor. We are saving the main sanding for Fourth of July weekend but we can get a good head start by sanding the edges of the room. Since I have a couple of hand sanders, it should be no problem.

We are heading out shortly to look for a new couch for the TV Room. The La-Z-Boy store sent us a flyer concerning a sale that ends today. Probably not the best time to start looking. We're not even sure what we are looking for. Only that it reclines, is at least a three seater and is no more than eight feet long. Cup holders would be nice, but not mandatory. It's going to have to be comfy because I plan on logging a lot of time in this unit.