Lifted right out of the blog of this new guy I'm reading, Eddie. He's over there on the right in a thing called (un)Common Sense. Check him out. He's worth reading.
But here's the video. Very cool stuff.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
an update and minutia
The clients absolutely LOVED the new room I built for them. Enough in fact that they gave me a very nice tip. I was quite touched by their generosity. That extra scratch will really help in our search for a reliable vehicle for Laura.
It is Memorial Day weekend in a state with "Vacationland" on our license plates, and we live five miles from downtown Bar Harbor. Suffice it to say it's been kinda busy here. Cars and campers and tour buses began streaming onto the island early Friday morning and seemed intent upon driving fast in the slow zones, slow in the fast zones, and taking up every available parking spot at the grocery store. Sigh. If it is tourist season, why can't we shoot them?
So we've been hunkered down here for a little while, a friend came to visit on Saturday and took us out for lunch, and that was a real treat. We gave her the cook's tour of the island's more photogenic spots and then hunkered down at home again. I think tomorrow we'll have burgers on the grill. We're focusing on low-key right now. I slept for 12 hours last night. I guess I really didn't know how stressed that job had me until I was able to relax. Phew.
So, today is an easy day. Burn up some scrap lumber, clean up the yard, organize tools, putter without too much urgency. Make potato salad for tomorrow. Breathe. Be grateful. Look for cars on the Internet. Maybe have a beer (O'Doul's). Maybe have coffee. It's that kind of weekend. And I needed it more than I ever knew.
It is Memorial Day weekend in a state with "Vacationland" on our license plates, and we live five miles from downtown Bar Harbor. Suffice it to say it's been kinda busy here. Cars and campers and tour buses began streaming onto the island early Friday morning and seemed intent upon driving fast in the slow zones, slow in the fast zones, and taking up every available parking spot at the grocery store. Sigh. If it is tourist season, why can't we shoot them?
So we've been hunkered down here for a little while, a friend came to visit on Saturday and took us out for lunch, and that was a real treat. We gave her the cook's tour of the island's more photogenic spots and then hunkered down at home again. I think tomorrow we'll have burgers on the grill. We're focusing on low-key right now. I slept for 12 hours last night. I guess I really didn't know how stressed that job had me until I was able to relax. Phew.
So, today is an easy day. Burn up some scrap lumber, clean up the yard, organize tools, putter without too much urgency. Make potato salad for tomorrow. Breathe. Be grateful. Look for cars on the Internet. Maybe have a beer (O'Doul's). Maybe have coffee. It's that kind of weekend. And I needed it more than I ever knew.
Friday, May 22, 2009
The job that never ends... just did!
The sun room is done! I am so tired, all I am going to do is post the pictures. You can admire and tell me about it if you'd like. Please pay special attention to the Jenga-staging. I think it shows a creative use of boards and scrap lumber.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
more progress, and some engineering prowess
Today was just beautiful, so I worked outside all day. The next two days are going to be iffy. I figured I ought to take advantage of the sun while it's here.
So the first thing I had to do was trim those damnable clapboards so that my second piece of trim would fit. I got a piece of scrap and just started at the top, marking the clapboards and slicing or sawing them as needed, all the way down. I picked up the pre-cut piece of trim, wedged it in right, smacked it gently into place and nailed that sucker in place. I was so thrilled, I cannot tell you.
I put two more pieces of trim up at the outside corner, then went home for a lunch break. I bought some solid stain, too, so I am painting the trim before I put up the clapboards and drip paint/stain all over them. Some days I am really clever.
But the marvel of today was the staging I rigged. Now, I have staging on site. It's just at the other end of the sun porch, and it is set up exactly where the metal guy needs it to be. Besides, I'll need it there in a day or two when I get down to that end.
So I needed to get up high today, but not high enough to require my extension ladder. Higher than either stepladder would get me, though. Hmmm. Well, I have some saw horses and some planks... but the ground is uneven, so I'll wedge some boards underneath for stability, then lay the planks across the saw horses, but then I need to reach over there. Hmm. Well, I have a 16-foot staging plank around the corner of the house that I can use. But what do I put it on so I will be able to reach? I know, scramble, scavenge, scramble, assemble, cross my fingers and tada! Staging! Sort of. Hey, it got me where I needed to be. And I could put the short stepladder on the planks on the saw horses and reach the top if the trim to stain it. So there. Nyah. Take a look at this marvel of Yankee Ingenuity:
So I got the trim up and hit it with a first coat of stain, and then I got the clapboards up. Take a look at how my first effort in that regard came out:
Not too shabby, eh? Here's another look:
I am exceedingly proud of my engineering abilities and the fact that I did not break my neck. Depending on what the wind is doing tomorrow (they're predicting 45 mph gusts!) I'll either try to finish siding this side of the sun porch or I will sand the trim inside. The owners are due back next week. I am trying very hard not to panic, and only having moderate success.
Interior trim is done!
I forced myself yesterday to get over my fear of the table saw and do what needed doing and I got the last pieces of interior trim cut, ripped, sanded, planed and installed in this sun porch.
You may (or may not) remember that the rafters are exposed. They were rough and quite ugly where I nailed them to the house, so I boxed that in yesterday. Here's a shot of what they looked like before. You can kind of see where they were toe nailed in over there on the left. Trust me when I say it was not the prettiest job I have ever done. There were exposed nail heads and hammer marks on the rafters. Ugh.
So here are three shots of what it looked like by the time I knocked off at 7:45 p.m. last night, from left to right, looking at the place where the rafters join the house:
I am not a fan of finish work. But I feel pretty darned good about this job. I used the table saw, the chop saw, and the hand plane to make this little beauties fit. I even shaved a quarter-inch of thickness off the underneath piece of trim so it would fit above the metal trim on the sliding doors.
Today I go tackle some of the exterior trim. Wish me luck.
You may (or may not) remember that the rafters are exposed. They were rough and quite ugly where I nailed them to the house, so I boxed that in yesterday. Here's a shot of what they looked like before. You can kind of see where they were toe nailed in over there on the left. Trust me when I say it was not the prettiest job I have ever done. There were exposed nail heads and hammer marks on the rafters. Ugh.
So here are three shots of what it looked like by the time I knocked off at 7:45 p.m. last night, from left to right, looking at the place where the rafters join the house:
I am not a fan of finish work. But I feel pretty darned good about this job. I used the table saw, the chop saw, and the hand plane to make this little beauties fit. I even shaved a quarter-inch of thickness off the underneath piece of trim so it would fit above the metal trim on the sliding doors.
Today I go tackle some of the exterior trim. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Perhaps I'm losing my touch
We took Laura's car to the garage to get it inspected on Friday. We can't go to our regular garage for this because our regular garage does not do inspections. We bought it from him back in November. Nice car, Ford Crown Victoria, drives like a hearse. Big, bad, smooth ride, nice crushed velvet seats, power windows, looks like a cruiser. Guy said it was a solid car. His daughter used it that summer, but he wanted something with all-wheel drive for her in the coming winter. Whatever. It seemed like a nice car. Famous last words.
We paid a couple grand for the car, and then a week later had to dump another three hundred into it for a new alternator. Well, those things happen, we figured. It was still a pretty good car. Then Laura hit a christly frost heave and separated the exhaust, and then something happened to the ignition and it wouldn't start. Back it went to the mechanic, and six hundred later it worked. Only it needed a new power steering line right after that. Well, we bought a used car, you have to expect stuff like that, I guess.
So we brought the Crown Vic to the other side of the island to the other garage. This is the place we had my truck towed to when the wheel bearings went on my way back from Massachusetts back in January. The guys looked under it and saw some stuff that didn't look quite right, so they put it up on the lift.
Holy shit.
First, the original fuel lines had rusted out, so it looks like the first mechanic, we'll call him BH for now, replaced the metal line with a rubber one. Now there is some discussion about whether there is an appropriate high-pressure rubber fuel line for this application (BH says there is such a thing, the other guy says there is not) but what is NOT in question is the fact that the line was run along the frame on the underside of the car not SIX INCHES FROM THE EXHAUST. Yeah. High pressure or not, no rubber hose should be that close to the very hot exhaust. In fact, the hose was LAYING AGAINST THE CATALYTIC CONVERTER. It was actually burned. Not to the point of leaking, but that was only a matter of time. So: hot exhaust, rubber hose filled with pressurised extremely flammable fuel, all adds up to a rolling Molotov Cocktail.
They took some zip ties and secured the thing away from the hottest part of the exhaust.
Well, we decided then that we needed to change mechanics. But the new guy, we'll call him G for now, kept poking around. Uh-oh. Game over, he said. Huh? We looked up as he took the shop light, one of those things with a light bulb in a cage with a hook at one end and the cord at the other, and hung it in A HUGE HOLE IN THE FRAME. Rusted straight through. In two places.
No way did that hole develop in the six months that we have owned this vehicle. We bought a piece of junk that was not safe back then.
And now there is no way that car is ever going to pass an inspection. The fuel lines could be replaced with metal, but there is no way to repair that frame. It's shot. Instead of a car, we now have a boat mooring.
So we're out something like three thousand dollars over six months and a car. If we had an extra five hundred dollars a month, trust me, we'd have a much nicer car than that used one. But we don't. This is what life is like when you live close to the poverty line. We have no cushion. We operate very close to broke most of the time.
Saving money is an interesting theory. It would be nice, but every bit of income seems to go toward getting us something close to caught up. Getting ahead? That's pie in the sky stuff.
So Monday morning we arranged for Laura to borrow a vehicle for the day and I brought the Crown Vic back to BH. I explained my dissatisfaction to him in calm tones and without shouting or threatening. I said I wanted him to buy it back. He refused. He offered to leave it on the lot and try to sell it for me. I said OK. I said I wouldn't be back. He said to have the car out of there within a week.
Friday, I was ready to go in there loaded for bear. I wanted to jump up and down and scream. I had fantastic visions of repeatedly driving my truck through Bar Harbor Auto Repair's office window for putting my sweetie in that kind of danger. I was wild.
But I have been trying to work on my anger. Yes, I know it may come as a surprise to some, but I have anger issues (who knew?). So I did not have a fit. I did not shout or scream or threaten. I did not pound the counter, nor did I drive my truck through the window. Such tactics do not work on mechanics as far as I can tell. They remind me a lot of George W. Bush - incapable of admitting error - and this guy is no different. I went in, said my piece, got NOTHING in the way of satisfaction, and left. Truly, it was all I could do and what I expected to happen.
I have no idea what we might do with that rolling death trap. We cannot afford to go to a dealer and get a car, so we cannot trade it in. I suppose we'll just have it hauled off for a proper burial. That's too bad. It has a nice 5.0 litre engine in it that could make something else run really nice, but the rest of the thing is a safety hazard.
So now we are pinching our pennies and trying to find something within our budget that will not explode or fall apart as we drive it down the road. We're looking at a couple of things, but we're trying really hard not to buy out of a panic mode. It will be tough operating with one vehicle for a few days, but we need to look around and figure out what's best, not just what is the first thing we find that runs.
Am I losing my touch with my negotiating/fit-throwing skills? I don't know. I think I have probably mellowed over the years. I don't think any sized fit would have got what I wanted in the way of satisfaction out of Bar Harbor Auto. We won't be back there. And that's too bad. I liked the young guy who works there. He explained a lot of things to me about my truck. Like how to do a brake job. How to replace the cap and rotor. Cool stuff.
Oh well. If he goes to another shop, maybe I'll go there. But for now I am going to drive to the other side of MDI (30 minutes, easy) to the place that starts with a G to have my work done.
We paid a couple grand for the car, and then a week later had to dump another three hundred into it for a new alternator. Well, those things happen, we figured. It was still a pretty good car. Then Laura hit a christly frost heave and separated the exhaust, and then something happened to the ignition and it wouldn't start. Back it went to the mechanic, and six hundred later it worked. Only it needed a new power steering line right after that. Well, we bought a used car, you have to expect stuff like that, I guess.
So we brought the Crown Vic to the other side of the island to the other garage. This is the place we had my truck towed to when the wheel bearings went on my way back from Massachusetts back in January. The guys looked under it and saw some stuff that didn't look quite right, so they put it up on the lift.
Holy shit.
First, the original fuel lines had rusted out, so it looks like the first mechanic, we'll call him BH for now, replaced the metal line with a rubber one. Now there is some discussion about whether there is an appropriate high-pressure rubber fuel line for this application (BH says there is such a thing, the other guy says there is not) but what is NOT in question is the fact that the line was run along the frame on the underside of the car not SIX INCHES FROM THE EXHAUST. Yeah. High pressure or not, no rubber hose should be that close to the very hot exhaust. In fact, the hose was LAYING AGAINST THE CATALYTIC CONVERTER. It was actually burned. Not to the point of leaking, but that was only a matter of time. So: hot exhaust, rubber hose filled with pressurised extremely flammable fuel, all adds up to a rolling Molotov Cocktail.
They took some zip ties and secured the thing away from the hottest part of the exhaust.
Well, we decided then that we needed to change mechanics. But the new guy, we'll call him G for now, kept poking around. Uh-oh. Game over, he said. Huh? We looked up as he took the shop light, one of those things with a light bulb in a cage with a hook at one end and the cord at the other, and hung it in A HUGE HOLE IN THE FRAME. Rusted straight through. In two places.
No way did that hole develop in the six months that we have owned this vehicle. We bought a piece of junk that was not safe back then.
And now there is no way that car is ever going to pass an inspection. The fuel lines could be replaced with metal, but there is no way to repair that frame. It's shot. Instead of a car, we now have a boat mooring.
So we're out something like three thousand dollars over six months and a car. If we had an extra five hundred dollars a month, trust me, we'd have a much nicer car than that used one. But we don't. This is what life is like when you live close to the poverty line. We have no cushion. We operate very close to broke most of the time.
Saving money is an interesting theory. It would be nice, but every bit of income seems to go toward getting us something close to caught up. Getting ahead? That's pie in the sky stuff.
So Monday morning we arranged for Laura to borrow a vehicle for the day and I brought the Crown Vic back to BH. I explained my dissatisfaction to him in calm tones and without shouting or threatening. I said I wanted him to buy it back. He refused. He offered to leave it on the lot and try to sell it for me. I said OK. I said I wouldn't be back. He said to have the car out of there within a week.
Friday, I was ready to go in there loaded for bear. I wanted to jump up and down and scream. I had fantastic visions of repeatedly driving my truck through Bar Harbor Auto Repair's office window for putting my sweetie in that kind of danger. I was wild.
But I have been trying to work on my anger. Yes, I know it may come as a surprise to some, but I have anger issues (who knew?). So I did not have a fit. I did not shout or scream or threaten. I did not pound the counter, nor did I drive my truck through the window. Such tactics do not work on mechanics as far as I can tell. They remind me a lot of George W. Bush - incapable of admitting error - and this guy is no different. I went in, said my piece, got NOTHING in the way of satisfaction, and left. Truly, it was all I could do and what I expected to happen.
I have no idea what we might do with that rolling death trap. We cannot afford to go to a dealer and get a car, so we cannot trade it in. I suppose we'll just have it hauled off for a proper burial. That's too bad. It has a nice 5.0 litre engine in it that could make something else run really nice, but the rest of the thing is a safety hazard.
So now we are pinching our pennies and trying to find something within our budget that will not explode or fall apart as we drive it down the road. We're looking at a couple of things, but we're trying really hard not to buy out of a panic mode. It will be tough operating with one vehicle for a few days, but we need to look around and figure out what's best, not just what is the first thing we find that runs.
Am I losing my touch with my negotiating/fit-throwing skills? I don't know. I think I have probably mellowed over the years. I don't think any sized fit would have got what I wanted in the way of satisfaction out of Bar Harbor Auto. We won't be back there. And that's too bad. I liked the young guy who works there. He explained a lot of things to me about my truck. Like how to do a brake job. How to replace the cap and rotor. Cool stuff.
Oh well. If he goes to another shop, maybe I'll go there. But for now I am going to drive to the other side of MDI (30 minutes, easy) to the place that starts with a G to have my work done.
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