Done Deck Deal

We officially closed the Deck Painting Debacle on Sunday. As you can see from the picture, we done good!
If you go back and look at my post from June 18th, you can see what we started with and how much we have done to get it to this point. That's the main reason I started blogging. Now I have a place to keep a record of stuff we do and when we do it.
These may very well be the last pictures that I post for a while because my camera seems to have gone tits up. I guess I have to start looking for a new and more durable one. I only spent about $100.00 on this little Kodak thing. The lens won't pop out when I turn it on. I'm quite certain it is not worth the money to take it somewhere and have it fixed. What a throw away society I am.

The Busy Weekend of Many Activities

We have made it one day beyond last years record for keeping the heat turned off. The weather does not appear to indicate that it will be cooling off dramatically soon. That is good news for us as the longer the furnace is powered down, the more money we have to spend on beer.

I did preform a winterizing chore today. I removed the air conditioner from the window in the Master Bedroom. I used it one night last week but didn't really have to. Before that, it had been weeks since we had used it.

We are closing in on being finished with painting the deck. Susan did some work today and I did a little work this evening after returning home from working at the bar. Tomorrow, I hope to wrap the whole project up. Plus, we'll be working on the bathroom.

Finally, I have one project remaining to preform before I can power up the furnace. I have to cap off those pipes that used to go to the upstairs bathroom radiator.

I decided I would feel much better if the pipes were capped off in the basement where there is access to them, rather than under the bathroom floor were there is none. The pipes are cut but I have some issues with removing the elbow joints so I can use existing threading to cap the pipes. The issues involve not being able to remove the elbow joints. They are screwed down very solidly. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by pipes that are still solidly connected after 98 years.

If I am unable to remove those joints, I have to use this semi-funky system of PVC connections that will cap off the pipe but look like they have tremendous potential to not seal properly.

I guess I'll have to see what I end up with and then I can provide pictures which will describe it better than I have here.

The Return of the Heating Game

Last year about this time, we began an informal contest to see how long we could go before we had to fire up the boiler and turn on the heat. We only lasted until September 14th. I have much greater faith in our ability to undure further into the approach of Autumn. Not because it is staying warmer this year. And not because we have developed thicker skins.

No, this year the difference is a network of regionalized space heaters that will allow us to heat just the areas we occupy rather than the whole 2,800 square feet of the house. We are hoping that this will substantially drop the gas portion of our heating bill, which can go as high as $300.00 in December or January.

I should add that it got down to 36.4 degrees at 3.41AM. Also, I had to turn on the heat in my car on the drive to work this morning.

Moving on now to Spokane Interstate Fair News, Susan and I can now claim that the wine
coming out of the Waverly Place Winery are "Award Winning Wines".

I was totally amazed to walk into the Beer & Wine Booths at the fair yesterday to discover that both our entries had won Third Place Ribbons.

It is the first time we have entered beer and/or wine in the fair so I was not expecting anything. Especially since I was not thrilled with my beer and the wine is just barely in the bottle.

However, I must assume that all the Judges are Professional Wine Drinkers and their decisions must be respected.
Here is a shot looking towards the Midway as the sun sets on a wonderful Sunday at the fair. We had a Fair Time and I got to eat all kinds of unhealthy fair food like Corn Dogs, Elephant Ears, and Greasy Blocks O'Fries.

Oh, by the way, we have not finished painting.

The Terrible Conflict

On Saturday's, I work at a local bar from 8:00 AM to 5:00PM. We serve breakfast and get a fair crowd in for that. Now that Football has returned, we are much busier for lunch and then throughout the afternoon. At least, that was the case today. We were slammed pretty much all day. I am quite tuckered out at this point and don't really feel like going out on the deck to paint. I only have about another half hour of good light with which to paint with remaining.

Susan was not able to finish today. She came close but there is still about two hours of painting to complete the job. Well, it's not getting done by me tonight.

And yet, I feel guilty and conflicted that I should be doing some painting out there.

I think instead, I will do some work on the bathroom. I don't need the sunlight to accomplish that and it will salve my guilt.

Painting goes On and On and On and On and...

We are still painting! We have been out every night after work this week getting in as much painting as light allows. We don't have far to go. Susan should be able to finish up on Saturday and then after I get off from Bartending, I'll go over everything for some touch up.

It really is a tedious job. Getting paint into all the nooks and cranny's of a railing is drudgery at its finest. Add to that all the arbors up above, and there is a lot to paint.

In the meantime, we haven't done ANYTHING to the bathroom this week. I am going to try and get the radiator pipes capped off tonight. If that goes smoothly and there are no leaks, then I can finish the sub-floor. Then we can get to work on the shower and then the tiling which will hopefully then be followed by the end of waking up in the middle of the night and going allllllll the waaaaay downstairs to use the toilet.

We will be going to the fair on Sunday so stand by for pictures and results of our entries into the Beer and Wine Judging.

Finally, I would like to add that my Weather Machine is now fully operational. I had to wait for a mounting shelf for the rain gauge. It came the other day and I finally got it installed on my Weather Machine Mast last night.

I have been poking around the Internet for like-minded Weather Junkies such as myself. I am gratified to discover that I only have a minor Weather Fetish as compared to others. There is a whole network of people who have Weather Machines like mine that are perpetually connected to their computer and delivering their local Weather Machine info to anyone who wants (or needs) it via the World Wide Web.

In fact, thanks to this kind of information, I can tell you that it is currently 76 degrees out and the wind is out of the South Southwest at 1mph. Furthermore, the Humidy is at 25%, the Dew Point is at 38 degreesand the Barometer is at 29.88 inches and steady.

That's the News and Weather together from RadioBlog KSJB. Film at Eleven!

On Schedule to be Late!

As I was working out in my head what I was going to write in today's blog, I fully expected to talk about how sore I was from the previous days' activity. I was writhing in Soreness ALL NIGHT LONG. I had no idea how I was going to get up and do all the stuff we had planned to accomplish.

But I got out of bed about 8:00 and started doing stuff to get ready for the day, and the soreness kind of went away. Besides, I'm not one to complain. (10.5 on the Sarcasometer)

We did okay today even though we are light years away from completing this project by tomorrow. I don't really care. It was a nice day to be outside, we were working on the house and we were progressing towards the completion of a worthy goal. Besides, the only real issue with getting the painting done is whether or not it is going to rain. By tomorrow, that won't be an issue for us because we will have painted all the critical areas that might be setback if it rained.

The Great Under-Estimater

It is Day One of the Labra Dor Weekend and we are about two-thirds of the way through the prep work on the deck. We got a late start, around 10:30 or 11:00 and sanded and scraped until 4:00. The prep work sucks! It seems to take forever. But we had a nice time doing it, drinking an occassional beer and listening to the Washington State Cougars as they lost their first game of the season. I am still holding out hope that we can finish this project by Monday.

Tonight, we are riding our bikes downtown to enjoy "Pigout in the Park". There are a bunch of restaurants with booths set up in the park as well as a multitude of Bands to listen to and many Perveyors of Assorted Crap.

End of Summer

Well, here it is. The start of another long weekend. I always find this particular Holiday Weekend a bit lugubrious as it signals the end of Summer. However, now that I have been out of school for 30-some years, it doesn't have quite the same impact. At any rate, have a Happy Labra Dor!

We will not be working on the bathroom. We will be painting the deck. It needs it BAD! We bought the paint the other day and now we are ready to rock. There will be some scraping and some sanding but for the most part, we will be ready to roll in the morning and I expect to have it complete by Sunday.

There are lots of events we want to take in this weekend as well as completing some work on the house. There is "Pigout in the Park" downtown and the annual Labra Dor Concert in Comstock Park on Monday. Aside from those events, there will be sleeping in for three days in a row. That will be great!

Finally, I would like to announce the arrival of my latest toy. It's the Oregon Scientific Mega Weather Station 3000. It keeps track of indoor and outdoor temperatures as well a Relative Humidity, Wind Speed and Direction, and Rainfall. I will be mounting the mast for all the components on the roof tonight. I still haven't figured out where to put the actual unit itself. Susan has definate opinions concerning where it will NOT go...which severly limits the choices.

Last night the Unit was saying it was going to rain. The forecasts on TV were talking about scattered storms with lightning but they did not really say much about rain. I told Susan about the impending rainfall and she wasn't very impressed with the accuracy of my new toy. She was singing a different tune this morning when she got up and saw it had indeed rained.

I'll be looking forward to all the information I'll be getting. I think maybe I should start a low wattage Corbin Park Radio Station where I can broadcast all the local news AND weather. Radio Station KCP, or KWAV, or KBRK, or KSJB. I always liked KRAP for call letters.

LATER THAT SAME DAY: The clouds were pretty ominous looking on my drive home and all the Weather Forecasters were going nuts with a Severe Storm Warning for the early evening. I managed to get my mast up for my Weather Machine Components before all hell broke loose. Frankly, not much occured here at the house. Other parts of town got wind and hail and lightning and rain. At left is a picture from up on the roof looking west with my new anometer in the foreground. There was a little lightning so I was glad to get off the roof under my own power. The wind gauge worked great and I recorded some excellent gusts of wind...some reaching speeds of more than 10 mph.

Countdown to Deadline

As I have already related here, we will not make our Labor Day Deadline for the completion of the bathroom. We have decided that Labor Day will be spent painting the deck. Susan wants to put down the Duration Paint from Sherwood and Williams, which I'm sure is going to cost us a Pretty Farthing.

In bathroom news and progress, the wiring is complete. I do have to do a little framing to install the sconce lights that will be on either side of the mirror, but all the wiring is in place AND it works. That's always a huge relief for me when I finish a section of wiring, flip the breaker to power it up and it doesn't spark, spit, sizzle or flame.

A Time to Reflect

I am contemplative today as I celebrate the first anniversary of this Blog. I haven't done a very good job of keeping it current. I have only posted 80 times out of a possible...oh let's see...well, about 300 days. That 's less than 25%.

I got the important stuff down though and that was my goal with this thing.

I had a pretty good night of wiring. I'm not quite there but I am close. I still have to run wire for the heater and the fan and then get it all hooked up. Plus, I have to put in the lights that go on either side of the mirror.

And now for my "Construction Tip of the Day!"

When you are remodeling and you go for the total teardown gut the room remodel, you will find a number of nails that need to be removed. The most difficult nail to remove is the one fuzzily featured in the photograph above. The Lath Nail. The Lath Nail is not hard to remove. Generally, it pops right out. The problem is that there are so many of them. I have thoroughly scoured the bathroom for these little devils and I know there are still more there. We will find the stragglers when we drywall.

Attic-a Attic-a

A great deal of progress was made last night in the wiring of the bathroom. I should have everything pretty much wrapped up tonight. I have most of the wire run and I got the main light hooked up to the switch.

It turned out to be a good thing that I couldn't find my staples. I bought some yesterday and I bought a style that is much easier to nail into place. I pulled out a bunch of ugly staples and replaced them with the new bitchin' staples.

Below are a couple of pictures of the attic. I have not included any attic pictures to this point so this should be very exciting for you. If you are excited by these pictures, get a life!

What I like about these pictures is all the dust you can see in the air. That is from the insulation stuff spread around the floor. As soon as I go up there and start moving around, it begins to fill the air. If I'm doing a lot of activity up there, it can get pretty thick. You can also see all the wire we've run up there. The picture on the right even shows some of the old knob & tube wiring running along the floor.

Still though, you should really get a life!

Can't Find Nuthin'!

I wonder how much time I have wasted throughout my life because I can't find stuff. I'm not terribly organized and it seems as though I have never been able to establish a rhythym here at this house as to where things go.

I am speaking spacifically about tools. I have them in various places around the house. I have some tools out in the garage. I have some tools in the basement. And I have a variety of tools spread around the house...right now near the bathroom, since that is the current construction zone.

I bring this up because I was working on wiring the bathroom last night and I spent a good portion of the evening looking for stuff. I ran a bunch of wire for the light switches, fan, heater, and outlets. When it came time to staple up the wire into the rafters and walls, I could not find my jar of large staples.

I finally gave up and decided to buy more staples today, as well as wire and a couple of boxes. Of course, when I get home tonight, the missing staples will be somewhere right in front of me.

The good thing about my search was that I found a couple of other things I had been looking for. My wind up Emergency Radio/Flashlight was in a cabinet that I never use and my coffee from Sunday morning was down in the Laundry Room.

Two Weeks to Deadline

I do not believe I am going to beat the Labor Day Deadline for completing the bathroom. We have a long way to go and a lot of money to spend.

I have had a slow week in the Bathroom. I got a little wiring accomplished but nowhere near what I wanted to get done. I guess my biggest accomplishment of the week was figuring out the circuits that I will put the lights, outlets and heaters on.

I also put a call in to my Radiator/Boiler guy but he never called back. I'll call him again today. I am trying to decide whether to keep the pipes to the radiator and use them for a towell warmer or just cap them off. I have gone on-line to find towell warmers and they are available but they are incredibly over priced. The thinking must be that if someone can come up with the concept of putting a towell warmer in their bathroom, they must have a crap load of money to throw away. The most basic model costs $1,200.00.

Did We Get Screwed?!

The Plumbers have come and gone and we are now $1,200.00 poorer. I have talked to a few people who think I was hosed. One was Mark, who recommended these guys. Another was Phil, who has been helping us with all the technical building procedures that I cannot do...like swinging a hammer. Here are a couple of before and after pictures.

Anyway, I have no idea what this should have cost. Twelve Hundred does seem kind of high for an Under-the-Table kind of job but it is three hundred dollars less than the worst case scenerio bid he gave me at the start. I know Plumbers get paid a lot. I didn't bother to get other bids because I thought these guys were going to give me a deal. And still, I don't know that we didn't get a deal.

Anyway, we put the sub-floor in yesterday and now I can mostly walk around in the bathroom without fear of falling through the Living Room Ceiling.

I would like to add that I have the most recent Skunk Report. The accuracy rating is at plus or minus two skunks. I counted five of them Saturday night. That Accuracy rating is wrong right off the bat cuz I know there is not a minus two skunks. There are five! There is one large "Mother" skunk and four smaller utility skunks, also known as "the Kittens."

I really need to trap these guys and re-locate them, but they really haven't been a problem. I will get the occassional skunky smell in the yard but other than that, I would not even know they are there.

Back in the bathroom, this week I will be working on getting the room wired. We will also do a little framing around the shower.

Clean Up & Plumbers

As you may recall from my last entry, I have this area to clean up in the back corner of our property. If you compare this picture to the one in Tuesdays entry, you can see that I have accomplished almost nothing in cleaning this out. This picture shows 1,200 pounds less of detrious material, but it sure doesn't look like it.

My problem is that it costs too much to dump this at the Waste-to-Energy Plant. There's too much non-detrious material mixed in to make it good compost, so I am charged the garbage rate. I have been calling around about fill dirt but I'm not having much luck.

The Plumbers are coming on Friday. I think I'll wait around for them tomorrow morning to get everything started and make sure they know what they're doing and where they are doing it.

I still have to buy a shower fixture. I was hoping to get something cool and fancy with body sprays and oscillating rotors, but one needs a second mortgage to afford those things. I'm going to get the basic chrome single handled fixture and up grade the shower head later.

How I Spent my Day of Rest

The Bathroom is on hold until the Plumbers show up. I hope to hear from Craig the Plumber today. I hope he will be telling me that they will be in today. More than likely, he is going to tell me, "Not Today!" Then I will pout and furrow my brow and quiver my lower lip.

So I worked in the yard on Sunday while Susan did her cleaning thing in the house. That Bathroom Project is creating more dust than the Floor Sanding Project ever did.

This was one of the items I planned to accomplish on Sunday. This was a footing for the old Wheelchair Ramp. I had to dig down about two feet.

This was the other project I wanted to accomplish. I didn't even come close. What you are looking at there is a pile compost composed of leaves and grass that was left by the previous owner. That's YOU, Dave! The pile was much worse when we first moved in. You couldn't walk through that space. The pile has been there, decomposing for at least five years...probably longer.

It actually is very clean fill dirt. The problem is that there are chestnut hulls that are mixed in, along with bits of plastic, your occassional shipping peanut, rocks big and small, twine, parts of old toys, a pipe or metal fence post, and a former lawn chair.

I over loaded the trailer by about 300 pounds and it cost me $77.00 at the dump. I have to find a hole somewhere.

Gutted Shell

I was talking to my neighbor, explaining what I found in the bathroom with all the cement, and he said that was a Mortar Bed. They put that down so the tile had a good solid foundation to rest on. So, there is that question answered.

The bathroom is now ready for the Plumbers to come in and spend a lot of our money.
Here is a dusty shot of the bathroom as it stands now. We vaccuumed out a bunch of plaster and plaster sand that had fallen down between the joists, as well as about 90 years of general crap. You can also see that we have removed a portion of the wall on the left. We hope that creates the feeling of a larger space. I could not of course, remove the whole wall because of the Plumbing Stack that goes up through it.

This weekend will involve general cleaning around the house and a few loads to the dump. I am trying to clean out an area next to the Carriage House. Once I have that area cleaned up, my next job is to evict the skunks.

Three Inches of Concrete

It is Sunday and there will be no rest for us this day. We are on a mission to take some crap to the dump. We have a bunch of stuff in the backyard that has to go and we have a bunch of stuff from the bathroom that has to go. I feel like I should be making a joke about the bathroom and having to go but I can't think of the proper sequay. So I won't!

Under that tile floor, the builders built a sub-floor between the
joists . . . about half way down the width of the joists . . . and then poured concrete into that space. I am not sure of the methodology behind this. Nobody I have talked to has ever heard or seen such a thing. I guess it makes for a very solid barrier between the second floor and the main floor ceiling. Other than that, I can't think of any good reason for having done this.

I do imagine that there are some long deceased builders who are having a laugh right now because this cement is in our way.

Susan and I had a very productive day today. I rented a trailer and we made TWO (2) trips to the dump. The first load was all the debris in the backyard from the demolition of the Wheel Chair Ramp. The second load had the remaining Wheel Chair debris and a shit load of concrete.
Here is a great picture depicting the cement between the joists. That covered the whole area of the bathroom floor . . . on the SECOND FLOOR. You've got to have some pretty good faith in the quality of your structure to put a load of concrete ON THE SECOND FLOOR.

A Visit from the Plumbers

Through my friend Mark, I have contacted two competent Plumbers named Craig and Dave.

They came by the house a few weeks ago, before the demolition of the bathroom began, to survey the situation, find out what we wanted to do and give me a worst case scenerio bid. That bid was $1,500.00. That was within our budget, so I have picked them. As far as the quality of their work goes, a recommendation from Mark is good enough for me.

Craig told me that they are not available to do anything on the bathroom for another week and a half. That means we are looking at around August 6th before they do anything.

That works for me cuz we still have a shit load of work to do before they can get started.

The first thing I am going to do is make some beer.

I am using a recipe that is different from anything I have ever made before. As I write this paragraph, the wort (my Beer) is boiling. It contains some water, some syrupy malt extract, and a half ounce of Polish Lubin Hops. That mixture has about 20 more minutes to boil before I add a quarter ounce of Crystal Hops. After five minutes, I will add a quarter ounce of English Kent Goldings Hops and let that boil for another ten minutes.

Just before I end the boil, I will add a quarter ounce of U.S. Ultra Hops and then remove the mixture from the heat.

Now comes one of the unusual steps with this beer. I will add a mesh bag of Indian Sassparilla Bark to the wort and steep it for an hour.

By then it will have cooled enough for me to pour the wort into my Primary Fermenter and top it off with water. When the temperature reaches the exactly precise temperature of about 70 to 75 degrees, I will add the yeast and let the magic begin.

What follows are a procession of pictures from the brewing session.

The picture at top left shows my cooking apparatus. As you can see, I am cooking my beer out on the deck. It is much too hot to be doing this on the stove in the kitchen. The middle picture shows a pan with a cup of Malt extract. I carmelized it and then added it to the boiling wort.

Here I added some Hops. Also pictured is the bag of Sassparilla Bark and then the Fermenter filled with the wort and topped off with water and ready to receive the yeast. It should be bubbling away when I return from work tomorrow. More pictures to come at that time.

40 Days To Go

We took a little time off last week to visit some friends who where staying at Flathead Lake in Montana. We had a great time. We ate a lot, drank a LOT, and I still lost 2 pounds. THAT's a good vacation.

Now we're back and it's back to work.

While we were gone, Phil continued work on the destruction of the bathroom. The floor has become a problem. Under two layers of linoleum, was the original hexigonal tile floor. Check out the picture of a large chunk of tiles we were able to save. It was imbedded in about 6 inches of concrete that was just poured into the floor joists. That floor has been holding up about two tons of concrete for nearly 100 years.

I haven't talked to the Plumber yet but I think we need a substantial portion of the concrete removed before he can lay the new toilet line. Hammering the concrete out will be a bit of a problem for the Living Room ceiling. Cracks are forming already and chunks are probably going to fall down. We are making arrangements to collect what debris we can. WE will eventually cover the plaster ceiling in drywall so whatever falls is not a concern. Unless it falls on the piano.

On a side note, Susan and I are participating in a protest this morning against the Mayor. He is running for another term and is hosting a "Breakfast with the Mayor" event in the park.

The city recently changed our Garbage pick up from the alley to the streets. Many neighbors are quite pissed about this and have already been riding the Mayor in e-mail and phone call form.

Basically, the city bought new trucks that they say are too big for the alley. So rather than buy trucks that fit the neighborhoods, they have decided to re-design the city.

This is a very small issue that will probably not get a lot of sympathy from others. Hell, it sounds stupid to me to complain about such a small thing. This hardly effects me at all because I live on a corner and don't have to move my garbage very far. But, alleys are MADE for service vehicles. Ours is a historic neighborhood with lots of trees that will be pruned to accommodate these trucks. This is not something that the neighborhood is going to let go of.

It should be a fun breakfast.

53 Days To Go

Bathroom Demolition continued last night as we removed the sink. We didn't really run into any problems and it all came out rather smoothly...except for the dent I put in the stairway wall when carrying the vanity out.

I don't think I will repair that until I have the shower/bath tub out.

It Begins Again!

And now for the Bathroom.

We started on Sunday with a whimper. I wasn't really in the mood to work on the house. It was approaching 100 degrees outside and it was just too darn nice to be inside.

Still we wanted to accomplish something so we began by removing the built in cabinet and drawers in the anti-room to the upstairs bathroom.

They came out quite easily in two pieces that we put into the garage and will use for storage.

My original plan was to remove that wall entirely in order to make the bathroom one big room. Unfortunately, that wall is what we call in the construction and remodeling business as a "Wet Wall". It contains the water lines and the drain and ventilation for the toilet. It cannot be moved.

So what do we do with that space? One possible possibility is to possibly put the toilet there. We could create a little private water closet. We would probably have to move the back wall a few inch back to make the room large enough to be comfortable and that means we would loose some room in the closet behind the wall.

Another plan would be to put the sink there. Here's a picture of how that might look. I think it is a workable alternative but we still have some mulling to do.

However, the main thing I wanted to state here is that the bathroom remodel has begun. And I expect it to be finished by Labor Day. That is 54 days away.

What a Country

Susan and I had an excellent Independence Day!

We started by not starting. We slept in until 9. That was great!

Then we had a delicious breakfast on the front porch with coffee and mamosas and lots of cheese eggs.

We have some friends coming to stay for a couple of days so Susan had to finish her scrub down of the house. I went to work outside and did some work on the deck. I finished the decorative railing. The picture on the left is the railing that was already there. The picture on the right is of the work I did. I had to make two of those and they came out okay. Not great, just okay. They'll look better after they're painted.

About 3:00 and 98 degrees, we went out to the Little Spokane River and floated. It was just absolutely perfect. There were a lot of people floating the river but we were all spaced out and therefore, we felt like we were all alone.

Until we met this guy.

We floated by quietly and as far away as possible but he didn't seem interested in us at all.

There was a lot of wildlife activity on the river. Along with the usual ducks and geese, we saw two beavers, some muskrats, and a Partridege in a Pear Tree. Oh, and a Moose.

Armoire Construction

Susan worked late last night so I did some straightening of my lumber pile and then made dinner so it would be ready when she walked in the door.

After dinner we went upstairs to begin "ARMOIRE CONSTRUCTION".

It did not start well. We didn't have any glue and my Allen Wrenches are not metric. The unit comes with a little Allen Wrench but I thought that two would make it go faster. No such luck!

After a quick dash to the store for Elmer's Glue, we proceeded with the assembly. It took a moment or two to get our bearings and figure out what we were doing. Plus, we had to find all the parts. The various top, side and bottom pieces were not labeled. You had to indentify them by comparing them to the drawing.

We got the main case together and we'll finish up tonight. Then we start the staining.

Down Time

With the Summer Solstice Party successfully behind us, we are enjoying a few days to inactivity before we dive into remodeling the bathroom.

We have some friends showing up briefly next week and decided that having the bathroom gutted would not be the best way of saying, "Welcome! Come on in. Watch out for nails and loose boards. If ya gotta go, just pee down that hole."

So we are passing the time by doing little things. Last night, I started cleaning up the big pile of lumber in the back yard. I'm going to cut it into smaller lumber and then throw it in the fireplace this winter.

Later in the evening, we started a batch of wine.

Tonight, I will continue with my lumbering efforts and then we are going to put an armoire together that we bought several months ago at the unfinished furniture store. It's in a large, heavy box and needs to be totally assembled, then stained. We put off doing any of this because it was easier to have the box in our way than an unstained armoire. Now that we are finished with the bedroom, we can figure out the color of stain to apply.

So we will continue with our little projects for a few days and after Independance Day, the bathroom will fall.

By the way, if you were wondering how the Summer Solstice Party was, below is a picture of me taken about 1:30 on Sunday Morning. I think it says it all!

...And the Livin' is Easy!

The Summer Solstice has commenced so now it is time to get down to Summering.

My Annual Summer Solstice Party is Saturday. The deck isn't really in shape to receive a party. It needs to be painted which will not happen before Saturday. I spent last evening doing some wiring. I put five can light into the soffet where the new roof extension is. It went well but I tore the crap out of my fingers in the process. That outdoor wire is really difficult to strip.

But, I must have done something right because the lights came on and the house did not burn down . . . yet!

I must say that I am pleased with my method of routing the power up to the lights. I used the existing wiring that powered a spot light on the deck and channeled it up through the dead bug encrusted soffet and over to the new lights. I put 60 watt bulbs in each can, and boy is it ever bright. I'm going to buy some lower wattage bulbs today. Depending on how that works, I may consider installing a dimmer switch.

Raining from Above and Below on the Homeless

It was a cloudy Sunday that threatened to drop rain all day. That seemed as good a day as any to do some Power Washing on the deck. I mean, if I'm going to get wet, I might as well really go for it. I started about 11:00 and I finished up at 4:00. You would think I could do it faster than that considering how most of the paint was hanging on by a single paint molecule. But some of it was rather stubborn. Plus, I stopped a lot to have a refreshing sip of beer or tell homeless people they could rake my yard. By the time I was finished, I was soaked and covered in white flecks of former paint. As time passed after I finished, I realized how sore I was too. It's hard to hold that wand for all that time.

Anyway, it all worked out beautifully as referenced by the picture below.

Clearly, I still have some scraping to do, followed by sanding, re-scaping, more sanding and then some painting. I also have a nasty rotten spot on one board. You can see it in that dark spot at the top of the second board. I'm hoping there is an easy way to replace it. I have a couple of ideas but I don't know how it will effect the structural integrity of...well...everything.

Back to Homeless People.

At one point, I took a break. I grabbed a beer and walked across the street to the park to sit on the Hyslop Bench and take in the neighborhood. As I crossed the street, I noticed a bicyclist turn the corner at the end of the block and slowly ride up the street towards me. She was riding slowly and looking the houses over pretty closely, as if casing them.

I continued out to the park, sat on the bench, keeping a surrepticious eye on her when she stopped in front on the house and went up to the door. Since Susan was gone with her sister and I was across the street, I had little doubt that anyone would be opening the door.

But I decided to see what was going on and started walking over. As I approached I realized that she was a He. Long curly hair cascaded around his spacey stare.

I said, "Hi, I live here. Can I help you?" A fatal mistake. It turns out that I could help him.

His name was Brian and he began to tell me his hard luck tale of Woe. He needed some money to hold him over for a couple of days and wondered if he could do some yardwork for me. While I was impressed with his initiative, it was at that point that I realized he was riding down the street, looking at houses, stopping only when he came to a place that looked like it needed some yardwork done.

In my defense, all I can say is that this is not the Year of the Yard. We have lots of work to do out there, but for now, I keep it watered, mowed, raked and free of dandilions. Beyond that, the Yard is the Yard.

I told Brian that I would pay him $20.00 to rake out the beds and pull the weeds in front of the house. I figured that was fair for a couple of hours of work that I didn't really need done.

I got out the tools he needed and then I went back to work on the power washing. I had been working for about 45 minutes when Brian appeared. I climbed down from the ladder and he told me he was feeling kind of queasy and needed to quit. He seemed earnest and really wanted to return to finish the job the next day. I gave him $10.00 and told him he would get the rest when he finished.

I kind of doubt I'll see him again but he did get everything raked up into little piles. He even got a couple of the little piles into the garbage can before the queasiness kicked in. Perhaps he is allergic to work.

We shall see what developes from this.

Before & After

I'm very big on before and after pictures so here's a big one of our first finished project in about two years.

I cannot for the life of me, figure out why this picture is coming in so poorly. I tried re-uploading it several times in various resolutions and it always looks like this.

Oh well, you get the idea!

Nothing to Say

I have been on such a great roll lately with posting to this site that it seems a shame to let a day go by without some sort of report. Almost as big a shame as wasting somebody's time to read this.

Prepping for a Sister Visit

We have been on a mad cleaning jag for the last few days in preparation for a weeklong visit from Susan's sister, Margaret. Well, Susan has been on the "jag". I have been trying to do little touch up projects and get the bedroom and landing finished. There are still a few things to do but they are minute and it is going along nicely.

Margaret arrives Friday so we still have a couple of days to get everything done. I think we are doing fine but Susan seems to disagree. However, we also have a continuing disagreement on the definition of "clean".

Because I am just doing small touch up and clean up jobs, I am officially declaring that the Landing and Master Bedroom Project is complete.

Next we will be tackling the upstairs bathroom but that will not start for a couple of weeks.

Approaching the Finish Line

It was a long and busy weekend with many accomplishments to talk about.

Friday, my niece Samantha graduated from High School. She attended a small Christian Academy and there were se7en graduates. The whole family went to dinner and then the two and a half hour graduation ceremony. It was a little long.

We got home around ten and that pretty much was the end of the day for us.

Saturday was our annual neighborhood yard sale. This was the third one that we took part in and it was pretty successful for us. We made just south of $100.00 and got rid of a lot of crap.

What we had left over went to Goodwill on Sunday Morning and what they wouldn't take went to the Dump.

Then Susan went into "Operation: Massive Cleaning" in preparation for a visit from her sister, who is coming for a week from Iowa.

To keep out of her way, I went to work on the Landing and Bedroom doing all the little finishing touches. I wanted to be sleeping in our new bedroom on Sunday night and I was not going to be deterred by anything.







There were lots of things that tried to deter me. I was four feet short of baseboard for the bedroom. I ran out of nails for my airgun in the middle of putting in the baseboards. I ran out of beer. However, you can see from the pictures that I prevailed.
So now, we have just minor items to take care of. Most of those items involve the trim and some touch up painting. My plan is to take care of that tonight and then be able to help with Susan's "Operation: Massive Cleaning".

Working Out & Finishing Touches

Last nights' activities involved the installation of baseboards in the Landing area. Since I am not a professional, it required a great deal of effort and ciphering on my part to accomplish this arduous task.

I placed the chop saw down on the front porch because I didn't want to create a mess on the landing or risk scratching the new finish. So for every board I placed, I had to measure it and then put it in place to make sure it fit. Then, when it didn't fit, I had to run downstairs, re-cut it, run back up the stairs and then place it again.

I figure that for every board, I had to cut it three or four times. With 17 pieces, that means that I went up and down the stairs a minimum of 51 times.

I had been upset with myself for not having run lately. If I have any more nights like this, I should ripped in no time.

Everything is on schedule and I am still planning on moving furniture on Sunday.

The Home Stretch

The floors on the second floor Landing and Master Bedroom are now complete. They are not perfect, but they are one helluva lot better than they were. I am happy!

With any luck, we will be sleeping in the new bedroom on Saturday Night. Actually, no! That would be pushing it. Let's say Sunday Night.

In order for that to happen, we need some smooth sailing for the next three days. That means that the baseboard installation in both rooms needs to go well. The touch up painting on the walls in both rooms needs to go well. The Neighborhood Yard Sale on Saturday needs to go very well and then be ignored in the afternoon.

With precision timing, steely nervousness and some luck, I think we can make it all happen.

Stage C, Part B

It took us just over an hour last night to lay down another coat of varnish. Tonight will be the last coat. Then it needs about three days to completely dry before we start putting furniture on the floor. During that time, we have some minor touch up painting on the walls and the baseboard can be installed.

We have noticed two spots where there are glaring gouges that we missed when we filled with wood putty. One is right in the center of the landing floor. It's going to be covered by a carpet but we can't believe that we both missed such an obvious repair spot. The other spot is in the bedroom, right at the door. it is less obvious. It's more of a waviness in the floor, presumably caused by sanding. It just didn't stand out when the floor was naked.

It seems odd after two years to consider the possibility that this project is almost over. And yet, I'm willing to consider it!

Reflections on Polly (polyurothane)

With Stage Two (the Staining) out of the way, we were able to proceed with Stage C (the Varnishing) last night.

The whole project took us about two hours. Most of that time was spent preparing the floors. That involved a good thorough vaccuuming, followed by wiping the whole thing down with tack cloths.

To apply the varnish, we used lambswool pads on a mop pole. We started together but it went so fast that we ended up with Susan doing the application while I looked on and drank beer.

Actually, I had to mix up each quart can of polyurothane we had. We had purchased quarts because "the Depot" had a sale on them which made it cheaper to buy quarts than gallons. What we didn't consider is having to mix up a quart every 10 minutes. There's a thick goo at the bottom that must be extensively mixed in as thoroughly as possible. We used a gallon for the first coat.

With all the imperfections (Character) in this floor, I am very happy with the result. We have two more coats to put down which means two more nights of sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the Living Room.

The pictures I took don't do justice to how good the floor looks. However, here is one anyway. The urothane is still wet so it looks much more glossy than the satin finish it dries to. I like this picture because I have never seen this floor reflect anything!

The Adventures of Susan & Stan the Stainers

Both Susan and I had to work at our various and assorted extra jobs on Saturday. So not much was accomplished by us during the day. However, we got ourselves geared up to stain on Saturday night. It took us about two hours to get through 500 square feet of staining.

We got up the next morning and I was not very happy with the results of our first coat. We had some repairs to do before we put down another coat. The repairs required using the belt sander to remove blemishes, paint drops, and over flowing wood putty.

Once we fixed the boo-boos, we went to work putting down the second coat. This we did in much less than two hours and I was much happier with the results. The picture above shows the bedroom half way between coats one and two. I could almost argue for another coat, but that might make it too dark and then we would have to start over. The photograph below shows one of the repair areas.

The second coat filled the whole house with fumes so we left for a little bit and went to ArtFest. ArtFest is annual event held in a park with lots of artsy craft venders. I actually made a purchase of a hanging hammock, which I intend to enjoy on the back deck. Some day!

When we returned, we found the house still full of fumes (don't light a match) and the floor still kind of tacky. We had hoped to put down a coat of Polyurothane before the end of the night but that was not to be.

So, that is our goal for tonight. Get down a coat of Urothane. Then, we have to completely block off access to the upstairs from the cats and ourselves and sleep on an inflatable mattress in the living room.

Tune in to our next episode to see how we do.

Stage One Complete

The final sanding went smoothly. Get it! Sanding?! Smooth! Golly, I'm good!

We had a slight problem. The wood putty was somewhat resistant to the fine grit sand paper I was using and I didn't see fit to purchase any of the heavier grit paper.

So, Susan went off to "the Depot" while I continued sanding with the one sheet of 60 grit paper we had. I manged to get the bedroom completed while she was gone and got started on the repair section pictured below. That was the most difficult area to sand away as we had completely coated that area.

I think it looks pretty good and once it's stained and covered with a rug, it'll look fabulous.