New Grass

My neighbor down the street is having some major landscaping work done on her yard. They’ve put in a new sprinkler system, leveled all of the yard, and today started laying sod.

I went down this afternoon and asked one of the guys if they had any scrap pieces they were throwing away. He pointed to a palette over on the curb and said,  “Have at it!”

I came back with the truck and loaded up a bunch of pieces. 

I’ve been wanting to do something with my little triangle corner of grass over on the corner of Waverly and Wall. I’ve tried several times to replant grass there but nothing has taken.

So, with the help of Cole Anderson from down the street, we (Cole) dug out the old crappy grass, leveled the ground and then we (us) laid the grass in.

It’s the best it has ever looked!

It makes the rest of my lawn look like crap!

  

Yard Sale Day

 As promised, it’s supposed to rain today. When we started setting up this morning, it started raining. Not too bad, but stuff was getting wet.

By the time we got the tents up, it had stopped raining and so far, the rain has stayed away.

We’ve had some pretty good crowds and we think we’ve made about 100 bucks so far.

The main thing is that we managed to unload this old Hammond Organ that we had in the Carriage House for the last 15 years. It doesn’t work but the guy who’s coming to get it knows about these organs and can probably fix it.

I also sold my old golf clubs that were my Grandfather’s. I got 15 bucks for the bag, a complete set of 50 year old clubs and about $20.00 worth of new golf balls. I’m happy!

Corbin Park Yard Sale 2025

This Saturday is the Annual Corbin Park Neighborhood Yard Sale. We don’t participate every year but this year we decided it was time to unload some of our crap…I mean, underutilized items.

So all this week we are prepping for the sale. The last two days, we’ve been tearing into “the Hole”. It’s an upstairs storage area where we stored lots of boxes when we moved in twenty years ago and then forgot about it.

We are pulling out a lot of crap…stuff we will never use. Interspersed, there are little gems that I forgot we had. Books, like my old Yearbooks, pictures, fun little niknaks, and some stuff we’re finding is kind of valuable. Cool!

The weather has been spectacular for a good month. It’s been hot but not too hot. The tradition of the neighborhood yard sale is that we always manage to pick the weekend in June when it rains.

I was looking at the forecast today and here’s what it shows.

Let the tradition continue.

FAN-TAS-TIC!

I would like to take a moment to comment on our kitchen fan. 

Our gas cooktop is located on the island and it required a downdraft fan. We were able to locate a nice GE brand fan for about 800 bucks.

Susan is making Split Pea Soup. She is currently boiling the hambone left over from Easter.

The pot is on the burner, simmering away, and I was noticing how the steam was gracefully being sucked into the fan.

The fan vents on the back of the house.

I went out on the front porch to enjoy a beer. While sitting on the porch…at the front of the house…I distinctly smelled ham.

That’s quite a powerful fan. I’m feeling better now about spending that 800.

Steinway Come Home

After five months and three days, our piano has returned.

It left us last November 25th, for sound board repair. It was now returned all shiny and new. Unfortunately, it is completely out of tune. I mean, it is not even close.

The Tuner will come on Friday and try to clean it up a bit and then will be back in another couple of weeks to finish the job.

The strings have to acclimate and stretch a little before they can be properly tuned.

Anyway,  she’s back.

Almost A Wrap

 Okay! We are going to attempt (again) to finish getting all the tiles up on the kitchen ceiling. After that there is some caulking that needs to done but that shouldn’t take long.

The wall has been patched and painted. 

We only have three tiles to go. It’s 2:43PM.

2:53 PM: There’s one tile up. It’s a really tight work space. 

3:05 PM: There’s the second tile in place. We’re down to the last one. The final corner piece has to be cut on two sides, so it’s a little trickier than the others. We starting with a cardboard template.

3:39 PM: VICTORY! That last tile took some ciphering. The corner is totally not square.  Here’s a picture of the last placement.

But, the tile portion is done.

Me happy! Susan says it’s not done.

Five Tiles To Go

 We are working on the last five tiles for the ceiling. We really want together this finished. It’s been going on since January.

This is how the last unfinished space looks. It is 12 noon right now. Let’s see how long this takes.

It turns out it won’t take so long. But we’re not finished.

I’m on my way to Sherwin-Williams to get a quart of the wall paint that has hardened up on us. So that took us 20 minutes to get to this stopping point.

1:10PM: I’m back from the paint store and I was able to get a quart of the paint we need. Susan has filled in the gap on the wall above the cabinets and now we need to wait for it to dry. 

So, unless we finish this tonight, I think we’re done for the day.

I’m going out to do my first mow.

So Close

We completed another row of ceiling tiles today. Just one row left. That last row will probably take longer because every tile will need to trimmed and some of the spots are going to be difficult to access. The oven cabinet and the one above the fridge are 36” deep which makes it hard to get the tile measurements and work in the tight space.

I still have a little prep work to do too. This final row is where the soffit was for the old kitchen cabinets. There are some uneven areas on the ceiling where the soffit connected to the ceiling. I pulled out a putty knife and started scraping. It’s making a horrible mess of drywall chunks and dust. I tried holding a dust pan to catch the debris but it’s still pretty messy.

This and That

We have both been pretty productive over the last couple of days.

Yesterday I did a little yard work. I cleaned up the leaves in the front gutter, I emptied the pond in the east back yard of all the water and leaves, and I emptied some unwanted paper stencils from the top floor of the Carriage House. 

Back when we painted windows, we would make stencils if there was a logo or lettering we had to do. I always saved them and that actually paid off a couple of times. 

But we are now done painting windows for the holidays so it’s time to get rid of these stencils.

I backed my truck into the alley, positioning the bed under the alley door, and tossed all the stencils down into my truck bed. I have some other crap I’m taking to the dump so that trip will be in a couple of days.

I took my scissors to the chive shrubbery and cut it way back. I want to see how quickly this thing will recover

I also got a shot of my Sterling hops. I have documented it here before but it’s really amazing to watch how fast these things grow.

I will bet that little sprout will be up to the decking on the back porch by May First.

Susan got out her mud bucket and did some spackling along the side wall of the kitchen where the ceiling meets the wall. We had substantial gaps that would still be exposed once we tiled the area. So, just to make sure, she filled in this gaps. She will do a little touch up painting tomorrow and then we will be ready to finish the last two rows.

Let the productivity continue!

Closing In On the End

We got up another row of tile on the ceiling. And this row is momentous because it was the last row we had to contend with obstacles. We had to deal with two lights and I’m happy to say that everything went quite swimmingly.

We only have two rows to go but I think we have a little work to do where the south wall meets the ceiling.  There are some sizable cracks that the tile is not going to be able to hide.

We’ll get up one more row and then try to figure out what our next move is. The crack shown in the picture above is probably the biggest problem we have to deal with.

Difficulties with the Difficult Part

We managed to finish the other two panels where lights are but we ran into a little problem with the western most island light.

The box in the ceiling that we hang the light from is not in terribly square. That means that one of the screws that the light attaches to is a little higher than the other. When we tried to reattach he light, that one screw was barely showing through the face plate of the light.

So, after a brief diversion to the Hub, we had to run over to the General Store and get an inch and a half 8/32 screw. That set me back 25 cents.

In the end, it all worked out. That first light is the one I’m talking about.

We still have to finish the rest of the row to the west. That’s only 3 and a half panels. 

Then, only four rows to go. We’re getting close.

The Difficult Part of the Ceiling

We got started on the difficult part of the ceiling today. We didn’t get a whole row up. We had a late start because Susan wanted to complete some caulking.

While she was doing that, I removed the middle light above the island in anticipation of placing our first light hole cut tile there. The light came down easily, as I expected it would and I did not electrocute myself as everyone is expecting I will.

Our first tile placement for this row was between the lights. It has worked out quite well that there is a full tile in between each of the lights. Having a tile edge to measure from makes everything easier.

We used a cardboard template to locate the hole and make sure we liked the placement before we cut an actual tile.

It all went just as planned. The most difficult part of the whole operation was holding the light up while I reconnected the wires. That wore me out!

I expect we will finish the whole row tomorrow. The first two tiles we will lay will have the light hole cut outs. After that, it’s smooth tiling.

The only other concern is that we have enough tiles to finish the job. My math says we do. However, I can feel the hot rancid disapproving breath of Mrs. Bridge breathing down on me.

Mrs. Bridge was my fifth grade math teacher. Fifth grade was the year we learned fractions. I was lost. Didn’t have a clue. It seems so funny now because I turn fractions around in my head with no effort at all.

Half Way Finished

Today, we put up the remaining ceiling tiles on the north end of the kitchen.

My concern was covering the hole patch I did the other day. It wasn’t quite as secure as I had hoped it would be. It had a little more movement to it than I would have liked.

But, it served its purpose.

We only needed four tiles to finish the row. They all went pretty smoothly. Even over the patch. We had to add some extra glue in that area and it ended up working well.

We got down to this final piece in the corner. It was tricky because we had to make two cuts. It ended up fitting nicely and we are quite happy with the results.

Now we move on to the difficult part. The area with all the lights.

Caulking and Patching

We had to take a break from ceiling tiling today to get a little caught up on a couple of aspects of the project. 

Susan wanted to caulk all the seams from the tiles we put up this past week and I had to patch a hole in order to finish the remaining tiles on the last row at the north wall.

My plan didn’t work out exactly as I had planned it but I was able to make the patch and I think it will work.

I’ll know if it worked for sure when we place a tile there and you can’t tell there was a patch there.

And so, we wait.