past three weeks

Well, the biggest thing that has been done over the past three weeks, is the plum tree in the back yard getting taken down. Granted, I didn't take it down since it was under power lines and the electric company sent out a crew to cut it down after we waited almost 6 weeks. You can see the pictures on Aimee's blog.

Other small things that have been done are:

1. Trimmed the evergreen shrub outside the front door
   which let more light into Aimee's studio.
   
   
2. Got another dose of fertilizer on the lawn
   to kill the mass of little moth-type insects that were coming in the windows at night.
   
3. Cleaned the pond last weekend
   and Aimee trimmed the pond plant to manageable size, to the fish's dissatisfaction. They now spend most time together under the little bit of plant still there. I guess it has at least brought them closer together. :)
   
   
4. Got the center speaker inside the middle section of the entertainment center
   this required me to unscrew the stand the TV sits on, put the speaker in and the screw it back down.
   
   
5. Moved the sprinkler controller over to by the inside door and re-routed the sprinkler wire so it was not hanging across the garage doors
   I didn't have enough cable to run it along the ceiling when I first installed the controller (and I had clotheslined myself a couple times bringing things into the garage). But, I will go more into the effort involved in this one in a later post.
   
6. Finished varnishing the inside the garage cabinets and got the first coat of grey paint on the outside of the cabinets
   still have to put second coat of grey on cabinets and sand and put final blue coat on doors.
   
7. Assembled the kit trailer I bought before I went on vacation.
   still working on getting the lights wired and found out I have to license it for the same price it costs to license a car.
   
   
8. moved the office into the bigger bedroom.
   this was done over two weekends and is still not completely finished. Parts of it were sped up by the 2 day visit of my mother-in-law which required us to clear the guest bed off so she could use it, and hastened the moving of part of the shelving from the other room to hold said clutter from guest bed.
   Existing Office:
   
   Old Office After:
   
   New Office:
   LOTS OF SPACE!!!!!
   
9. Fixed the shower in the master bathroom
   which had an extra spray direction out the back of the shower head which would hit the wall and was also hastened by mother-in-law visit so we wouldn't have to share the main bathroom with her.

The main big projects I want to get finished soon, and may get tackled this Labor Day Weekend are:

1. Finish cleaning up plumb tree mess in yard.
2. Fluorescent light installed in Aimee's studio.
3. Trailer wired and ready to accept license before use.
4. Paint French Door I had installed last winter before it becomes a problem.
5. Plant new tree in back yard, after Aimee picks it out.

Lumber Cart finished

Well, the lumber cart is put together, now with all 4 casters. It rolls around really well, even though it probably weights about 75 pounds itself. Even with the two sheets of plywood, plywood partial sheets, and some 2x4s, it rolls around like it isn't loaded, really smooth.



I did have to take the top off it to turn it around, see pic above, because I didn't pay attention to the way the base was oriented when I put it on the first time. There is a stop along one side of the base for the sheet goods side to keep the sheets from slipping off the cart. I had it on the shelf side, which doesn't do it's intended purpose. I got it turned around and screwed back in without a problem; well, there was a little wrestling I thought I was going to have to have my wife help me win.

Here is the finished picture with some lumber:

PTO - Day 7, last day

Well, it is my last day of vacation today and I almost got the lumber cart finished. I got up late today again, about 11am, so I got a late start. It was also quite hot out in the garage, so I took many breaks to come into the house and cool off since I had the air conditioner turned up to High. It was about 70 inside compared to the 85-90 it was out in the garage.

The cart is standing on end in the garage, waiting for the last two casters to be put on. It is just too late and I need to get up in the morning for work. The batteries for my drill were expended and so was I after such a warm day.

I will post pictures tomorrow, since I didn't think to take any today.

PTO - Day 6

Aimee decided to take the day off today and stay home with me. She was getting caught up on stuff at work and even though she took off two days last week, just decided to take another day to herself. So, I get to have some company today, which is great since she also cut my hair.


I ended up shuffling my feet all day and not getting a lot accomplished. I have been really excited about doing this lumber cart, however, it occurred to me that this was the first one I saw and I have since found another plan that had more options and had more versatility in holding lumber and cut materials. I can't find the second one though. I have been scouring the magazines I subscribe to, both print and web, which I can only imagine would have been where I saw it. Nothing!!


So I will build the one I have plans for tomorrow and call it good, until I find that it doesn't meet my needs and/or I find the plans for the other one and find it has features I would find more useful.

PTO - Day 5

I stayed up way to late last night; almost 3am again. I can't do that more than a couple nights or I sleep in until 11am like I did this morning. I hate sleeping in like that since I feel I am loosing half a day, but it is good I am on PTO since it doesn't matter. I just could not pull myself out of bed whatever I tried... 7am, "I should get up with Aimee... oh, she is already up, when did she get out of bed?"... 9am, "I should get up", then fell asleep mid thought; 10am, "I really should get...", next thing I knew it was 11:30 and I actually got up.

It took a little bit to get going today, and then I screwed up one of the grooves for the i-beam and had to wait for Aimee to get home tonight to get help ripping another piece of plywood. Once I got that piece cut I put it all together and got the i-beams on the saw horse workbenches and the lumber stacked on it with stickers in between. It should dry nice and straight now. Hopefully the couple days on the floor didn't hurt it too much.

You can see the i-beams I made at the bottom of the stack, with a piece of 1/2 inch plywood on it to just keep it together. I ended up putting stickers on top of the plywood to allow for air to get to them and probably should have used a smaller sticker than I did, but they should work fine. I put the rest of the plywood and a sheet of particle board on top to add some weight to keep them straight as they dried and it also keeps the sheets off the floor; out of the way. I now have half the garage to work in.

Now I have room to start on the lumber cart so when this is all nice and dry, I will have a place to stack it out of the way. And now I am going to bed so I don't end up sleeping away tomorrow. Aimee has the day off also, so we need to get up and get some stuff done.

PTO - Day 4

I looked around for the plans for the i-beams and only found a reference to an article the guy from the Popular Woodworking blog had written for Woodworking magazine but didn't give any dimentions or how to make the i-beams and set of boxes he used for that support system.


I needed to goto Home Depot for some of the hardware I forgot yesterday, so Aimee went with me and we ended up looking at and getting some red cement paving stone for putting next to the deck so it is easier to mow. They weigh about 39 pound a piece and it loaded down the car pretty good. You can tell from the picture it is almost bottomed out. There is usually about an inch or space above the tire when it is unloaded.


I figured I would just make the i-beams 6 inches and had Aimee help me with ripping the sheet of plywood into 6 inch strips. That went really quickly with her help and I set out to setup the dado blade to cut the groove into the two side pieces.

That afternoon I ended up finding the article about the support system on the Woodworking magazine website and decided to buy the digital copy of the issue it was in so I would have the actual plans. My size ended up being almost the same size as the plans he had worked from, his being 4 3/4" compared to my 6". The cool thing about these is that you can use them for supporting your work, for cutting plywood by setting them on their sides and cutting through the ends of the i-beam as you cut the sheet of plywood, and I am sure there are many other uses. The set of boxes that were also included in the plans had three different dimensions so you could use them low for assembly of projects, just below workbench height for planing and stuff that requires you to exert some pressure on the piece, or at workbench height for normal woodworking. You just lay the boxes on a different side to get the three heights. I am still working on getting the i-beams glued up since I ran out of glue tonight and stores are closed until tomorrow.

Onion Rings Batter

These are the best Onion Rings. My wife and her family have come up with this recipe, which has been refined over the years. I have made this to batter Walla-Walla onions, cut to about ¼".

½ Cup flour
½ Cup cornmeal
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp oil
2 beaten eggs
½ Cup milk

Skillet 350 degrees. Let drain on paper towels and salt right away.

PTO - Day 3.5

Part of the lumber I got was 12 foot 2x4s that I needed to cut in half for a benchtop I am putting on a rolling workbench. I got them cut tonight and realized they were really wet still and would have to dry out before I planed, glued and screwed them together to form the workbench table. I knew I would need to have a flat place to stack it all so it could air dry and acclimatize to the garage environment.



This has been a problem since I first started working with wood in High School and has been a point of agitation since any wood that got stored in my parent's garage would end up bowing and curving really bad as there was not any good place to store it flat while it dried.

The solution came to me as I remembered an article I had just seen on the Woodworking blog about a project in which the guy had used a set of I-beams he had made from plywood. I realized I could use those to set across my set of folding workbenches and would make a flat platform for me to stack the lumber while it dried. I ended up needing to use one of the sheets of plywood I bought for the lumber cart to cut the strips needed to make the i-beams, but I can always go get another sheet.

PTO - Day 3 - the weekend

Saturday morning, I picked up the garage again and made sure all the painting stuff was put away and found that I have a lot of scrap wood, part sheets of plywood, etc from past projects that was just stacked in inconvenient places. So I started looking through web sites looking for an idea for a lumber cart that I had seen within the last couple months and found it on Popular Handymanclub.com website: http://www.handymanclub.com/Projects/Project.aspx?id=21069

Aimee got home from out-of-town around 12:30 and took about an hour before we were ready to go to my company picnic at a big park downtown. It is only about a 20-30 minute bike ride and the weather was really nice, so we biked down there. We ate BBQ chicken, shredded BBQ pork on really soft and fluffy rolls that were really, really good, then settled in to people watch and walk around the carnival type booths they had set up.

I was really surprised that I didn't really recognize anyone there, and didn't talk with anyone. No one from my group at work was there and I guess I just don't interact with many other people at work cuz I didn't even really recognize people who I may have just seen walking around or in the cafe, etc. That was really weird. We only stayed about an hour before heading home.

We got home and I went to Home Depot to pick up the wood for the lumber cart and the benchtop for my cabinets. I borrowed the neighbors truck to haul it all home... a 2 and a half hour trip in all. We got it all unloaded and again I realized I needed to get that lumber cart built so that I wouldn't have to be tripping over wood while trying to do stuff.

Something to start tomorrow.

PTO - Day 2

Today I got a little more accomplished. The first task on my list was to get the garage cleaned up from the mess it got in when I started painting the new cabinets and from moving stuff around to get to the irrigation pump and sprinkler valves. It was quite a mess. I got most of that stuff moved around and straightened up, but I realized I just need to get the cabinets finished so I can put stuff away and have room for working on projects.

So after cleaning, I got to painting the first coat of grey paint on the garage cabinets and finished the polyurithane on the insides. I still have to finish the last sanding of the insides, but need to wait 48 hours for it to totally cure. So onto the next project...

First Day of PTO

For my first day of vacation, I ended up staying up til 2 or 3 am this morning, playing around on my computer. Aimee is out-of-town to visit her parents and help out after her mom's hand surgery; so I stayed up. Needless to say, I didn't get up really early this morning. I had some appointments and by the time I got home after it all, it was time to eat and there was nothing in the house really to eat. Aimee was out-of-town, so I just went to get Wendy's, brought it home and vegged in front of the TV and played on my computer again.

Needless to say, I had a great relaxing first day of vacation. No projects attempted, but ready for tomorrow.

New Trailer

I ended up getting the less expensive folding trailer, and unfortunately, I have to assemble it myself. I picked up the two boxes from Fred Meyer the same night I got the grill last week, but I ended up going to the other Fred Meyer branch on the west side since the branch by my house had 3 in stock but were not able to find them in the stock room. It was a little annoying since it was like 9:30 at night and I was borrowing my neighbors truck and needed to get it back.

Anywho... I still have to put it together and it looks like I am not going to get to it until later this week when I am on PTO, vacation for those of you who don't work in a corporate environment, and Aimee is out of town. I will have plenty of time to work on my project list and get a lot done. I am really looking forward to it since it is the only real vacation I have had in about 6 months of really aggressive projects at work. They don't stop while I am away, and I don't look forward to needing to catch up when I get back, but it will be nice to "forget" about them for a week.