Sunday Staining

It is 12:43 PM and I have just laid down the first section of stain on the TV Room.

Shortly, I will be wiping off the excess and it will look like this.

I'm getting a bit of a late start but I think the application is going to go faster because the stain is not absorbing into the wood as much as it did with the first coat.

2:07PM: This round of staining is going much faster. As I said, the absorption rate is much less so it takes less stain and it goes on faster. We are allowing the stain to dry for only 10 minutes this time. So here it is a little after 2PM and I expect to be finished by three.

Here's a look at our progress.

Susan was able to finish painting the second porch carpet. 

Now we are finished with our porch projects and another step closer to completing our TV Room project.

Staining - Stage One

Another step closer to finishing this project with the first coat of stain. We are following our staining formula of Minwax English Chestnut, followed by Dark Walnut. 

We got the English Chestnut applied today and will finish tomorrow with the Dark Walnut. Each color goes down for 15 minutes before we wipe it up.

Today we took eight boards at a time and then waited for the 15 minutes to pass.

We started at noon and finished at 3:45.

Beer Time!

TV Room Wall Painting

We are in the midst of a heat wave that usually hits about this time of year. It's been well into the 90's for three or four weeks now. Today is another one of those days. I'm trying to keep on top of watering the lawn.

We are presently preparing to paint the walls in the TV Room. It's going to be what we call Archway Ecru. It's basically a light yellow. Just one more step closer to being finished with this project. We are getting close.

Here are a few more pictures to remember the way we were.

It's been almost two hours and we think we are done. That means, no second coat. But we have to wait until it dries to confirm that. 

Anyway, here's how it looks now.

That's much better. Especially since it is done!

It's time for beer!

Painting the Ceiling

Today and yesterday, we painted the ceiling in the TV Room. We are going to try and start painting the walls during the upcoming week...if we can manage to work up the gumption to do it. We may just wait until next weekend.

With the Labor Day weekend three weeks away, we are on a schedule. We want to be varnishing the floor on Labor Day weekend. That means we have to finish the painting and I need to get the trim and baseboards ready to go into place.

Once the floor is varnished and the baseboards are in, I can finally re-install the radiator. It's been out of service for two years and I don't want to go through another winter with it sitting in the entryway. 

Canoe Day - Finally!

 For the first time this year, and to my shame, I went canoeing today. I feel shame because I have tried several times to go out to the river but have not made the commitment. 

Today I made the commitment. I'm so glad I did. It was a wonderful trip.

And it wasn't that big of a commitment. I went out about 10:30 and I was home by one.

It was a great day and everything went well. I was worried about my ability to lift the canoe by myself and get it in the water. It turns out that I had no problem. The toughest part was getting the canoe out of the water. After dragging it up the short beach and on to the flat ground, that had me gasping for breath.

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I paddled up to St George's and floated back down. It was a great day and I had no trouble paddling as far as stamina goes. So I'm feeling pretty good about that.

About 20 years ago...maybe longer, I made this sign and nailed it to the pole. It has definitely weathered and needs to be replaced.

So I managed to scrounge up a hammer and pull it down. I will sand the sign down to bare metal and repaint it. I'm going to create the same phrase, but probably use a different font. It has held up pretty well for as long as it's been there.

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.