Stumping along

Well, to update on past two weeks activities with the Plum tree stump, I have it dug out about 3-4 feet now and have all the roots cut down to that level. The picture was taken on Tuesday, the day after I got it dug down to it's current depth and all the roots sawed or chopped out. The three biggest roots are sitting in front of the hole in the picture.

I took off Monday - Wednesday of that week to support Aimee figuring out how to get around now that she has started college again. Good thing too, cuz I ended up driving her to school once and picking her up twice.

I actually used a hand pruning saw to get the big root out and an axe to get the other two out. The second one with the axe was much easier since I sharpened the axe in between. I bought a yard tool sharpener that is basically a handle with two sharpening blades in the center of it, one for single edge tools, like pruners, and one for double edge tools, like an axe. With one hand on either side of the handle, you pull the tool's sharpening blade along the edge you want to sharpen and it basically scrapes the metal away on either side of the edge. It took many passes on the axe, since it was quite dull, but now I could probably shave with it since it has a very honed edge. It seems like the angle of the edge is a little steep so we will see how it holds up over time.

Here are some other progression pictures, you can click on them to see the bigger picture.

As you can see from the first two pictures here, the hole got deeper quickly. You can also see the big root I had to saw out in the bottom of the last picture. I will probably have to dig out more of that root when I regrade the ground in that corner for the shed that is going in there.

Now all I need to do is find a chain saw to cut the thing out of there and bury the rest of it. Should probably put some root rot stuff in what is left of the stump or will eventually get suckers growing up out of it.

Yard update

Well, I haven't been doing a whole lot the past few weeks, but I decided to finish picking up the debris from the plum tree on Saturday, which resulted in another 1 and a half of the yard debris cans we have from the garbage company. The rest of the other can was filled with grass clippings, since I also got the lawn mowed, and the corn stalks, which I took down due to the fact there wasn't much corn on them. I harvested what corn I could salvage, but the majority of the corn had the top 2 inches eaten away by some kind of caterpillars, one per husk. The rest of the husk was fine after I cut off the eaten part and we have been eating on the 10 or so pieces since then... it is rather good corn.

Then Sunday for some reason, I was out there trying to figure out what I was going to have to do with the stumps and started digging out around them so I could get a stump grinder in there. I want to grind them down below the ground level as far as I can. I need to talk with my brother-in-law and find out what his experience was when he did the same thing to three very large pine tree stumps in his front yard. The second picture is the left over large wood pieces I had to move to get to the stumps. They are all irregular sizes so they ended up in a pile. Aimee had to help me with the one in the foreground that is like 5 feet long.

Anywho... I have about half of it dug out and the rest loosened up before it got dark tonight. Need to finish digging out the loose dirt and find a grinder to rent for Saturday. That is unless I figure out I can get the two small stumps out of there this week without too much work. My little hand axe just may be the limiting factor, so I anticipate needing the grinder.

Surprisingly my low back hasn't bothered me since I started digging on Sunday, but I am being quite careful with bending over a lot. I have been twisting a lot to throw dirt behind me, but that hasn't seemed to bother anything so far. Pray God spares me from any further injury while I work on this.

Oh and this weekend we also made a small lemon curd filled lemon cake with triple chocolate chip frosting, yum!!! We got these cool small cake pans that leave a "dent" in one side so you can fill the "dent" in two of them and smoosh them together to make a filled cake. Click on the picture and you can kinda tell the middle is gooey.

Labor Day Project

I put up the light in Aimee's studio/craftroom. It now has a nice new 58 watt flourescent light with brushed nickle base and frosted globe. Aimee was quite happy to help me hold tools and get others I needed to make sure it got done it one night. Well, at least I got one thing accomplished during this long weekend outside of molding the couch cushins to my back side.

That being said, we did get in a long walk on Saturday, about 3 miles, and a bike ride down the the college campus on Sunday morning, 14 miles round trip. At least we did get some exercise, even if we did spend the rest of the weekend wasting time.

Plum Tree progression pics

Here is the full progression of the Plum tree removal, as captured throughout the 5 hours they were here.


and after I cleaned up the grass and stacked the remaining trunk pieces off of Aimee's flowers and ferns. I wish I would have taken a picture before I had cleaned up, but you can see in the last couple pictures above where the ground is litered with debris.

The brown spot in the grass is covered with plum carnage and mud from plum juice being stomped into the ground. It was amazingly muddy for being a 90 degree day.

Sprinkler controller rewire

So, the deal with the sprinkler controller rewire was that I needed to move the controller and rewire the sprinklers so I would have enough wire to have the cable neatly routed along the ceiling or in the walls, or at the very least, so it didn't drape in front of the garage doors and restrict access.

When I first installed the sprinklers before the 4th of July, it was to get it ready so we could leave to go out of town, so I just barely got it wired to allow us to leave when we wanted. In the following months it became apparent that the controller was not in a very convenient place since I was adjusting the watering time weekly.

**Side Note**
The local water and electric company displays on their site the suggested percentage of water that a lawn will need based on a calibration of your watering system of 1 inch per week or water for lawns and .5 inch of water for shrubs. So for example the setting for this week is 1.1 so I set my seasonal adjustment to 110% and my timer automatically increases the times for all the zones by 10%. When it is not as hot or wetter, the value may be less than 1 meaning my setting would be less than 100%, giving my lawn less when it didn't need additional watering.
**End Side Note**

It would probably help if I had my system calibrated, but I am working on that a little bit at a time, as I have about 20% of the lawn measured for my current settings. I will eventually have a reading for several places around the lawn and can average them to see if I need to increase or decrease my default zone times.

Anywho... I digress as this is about the re-wiring. I decided to move the controller by the inside people door of the garage so it was easier to get to when changing the seasonal adjustment. I bought some additional 14awg electrical wiring for the irrigation pump relay switch connection so I could wire the pump separately from the irrigation wiring. This which allowed me to use the one length of cable for the front yard valves in the garage and the existing wire from the backyard valves was plenty long.

For the backyard wire, I ran it along the house to the back people door and up the side of the door into a hole into the attic space. I pushed as much as I could into the hole thinking it would be easy to get to from inside, but I ended up needing to crawl into the side attic space, where there was barely room for me to crawl in on my belly. It was quite cramped and upon getting back in there I found that my efforts to push as much cable as I could to make it easier had resulted in a ball of wire that I would have to fight to untangle... then my flashlight battery decided it was done and I was in almost pitch black with a little light coming in from various places from the garage.

I used my cell to call Aimee who was inside the house... and called, and called, and called for about 5 minutes when I started to get a little claustrophobic. I started pounding on the rafters and finally got Aimee to come out to see what was going on. Unfortunately, my being in a tight space for that long doesn't lead me to treat her with very much patience and I end up yelling at her to hurry up.

At this point, not only is my wits at their end being up there, but my back is giving me very specific signals that it needs to get out of the contorted position I am forced to be in. Aimee helps me get to the line with fresh battery and helps pull the cable through from the garage side of the attic so I can get to it when I crawl out. I finally get backed out of the attic space a little at a time and am covered in dust and sweat from being up there for about 30 minutes.

So the actual wiring part was quite easy comparedly, and got completed by the end of the night. I am glad to have it finished and as soon as I get the one side of the garage cleared out when I put up the next set of cabinets, I will be able to finish tacking up the wire for the front valves so it isn't just hanging along the wall.

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.

Kitchen Light

Well, since we moved into our house a little over a year ago, I have been trying to do the little projects that just fix the little issues that were in disrepair around the house. One of those items was the kitchen light, which had a broken cover and really wasn't big enough to give good lighting to work by.

We had gotten some coupons from our electric company for $20 off fluorescent energy star fixtures, so we went to Home Depot to check them out. We ended up with a 4 foot light fixture that had 4 bulbs in it. Since the old fixture was basically the 2 foot version of the same fixture, we figured it would give enough extra light.

Well the short story is that we once installed the light got the nickname "the sun". It was so bright that the white cabinets we have in the kitchen just glowed. Aimee loved it, but did acknowledge that it was kinda bright. It was that way for about a day when I decided to take two of the bulbs out to see if it would be less brilliant and found that it was going to be sufficient with just a two bulb 4 foot fixture.

I just bought the two bulb fixture and some other smaller fixtures for the back bedrooms from Home Depot and got the new one for the kitchen installed, the 4 bulb fixture installed in our new office (which is a little larger space without white cabinets and works much better) and one of the smaller ones installed in the room we are now using as the office. We are going to be switching our guest bedroom and office in the next week or so to utilize the larger space for our office that now will be very bright.

One thing I have notice with the new florescent fixtures is that the light is much brighter and definitely whiter, but at the same time not as hard on your eyes. Things just seem crisper with these lights. And when you have the right size fixture for the room, it is quite nice.

New Grill I got

Well, Aimee agreed that the grill was a good investment, especially since it was discounted another $50 when we went to HomeDepot to get some other stuff. They were selling them so fast they didn't have any assembled, but it was probably a little easier to get it home in the big box than assembled anyways. I had to borrow my neighbors truck to go get it since it is so big it wouldn't fit in the car.

It took me this afternoon to put together, but we had steak on it that night and it worked great. It is so nice to have the stainless steel burners, they distribute the heat well and the cooking surface is pretty consistant temp across the whole thing. I also only had to use one side so there is only one grate to clean. Some of the other nice features are a removable drip pan that slides out the back and empties into a grease pan, 4 casters so it is easier to move around on the deck, the two hood design that makes using only part of the grill easier, and the electric ignition switch that used a AA battery to make the arc that lights the propane.

Aimee even brought home a cover for it that day so now it is able to be tucked in at night and kept nice sitting out on the deck next to the old one until I get around to discarding it. Maybe someone would want a overused grill with a fairly new burner.?.

New Tow Hitch

I just got a new tow hitch put on the car. I am wanting to start working on the back yard and will need to remove a bit of dirt from the back yard, so this will make it possible for me to get a trailer to haul it away. I don't think I have enough space back here to just move it around, so it will have to go to the yard debris place.



I didn't have enough time to find the trailer I was going to buy for towing, but went to look at a couple after getting the hitch installed today. The guy tried to sell me on a 2 ton model that had a 3 ton axle and was like $1500.


I asked if they had anything smaller and he showed me some smaller ones that had a 1 ton capacity, which is the most my car can pull anyways. Now I just have to decide between that $750 one


and the one at Fred Meyer for $200 that folds up, is basically just a frame, and would require me to build on a floor and sides to hold stuff.




I didn't get a ball for the hitch since I didn't know what size the trailer I got would take, and it looks like I am going to have to get the guy to rewire the light connector since the trailers I was looking at today all had the same connector as you see in the picture above. I saw him deliberate about which one to put on, but figured his two months at this shop not enough time to give him that insight. The hitch does seem pretty secure though and it looks like he did a good job otherwise. I will have to find time to take it back this week after finding the right trailer.


I was kinda wondering how it would attach to the underside of the car, but it is a pretty clean connection. It seems to just connect with 2 bolts into the frame on either side.