Many renovations

[johnridley]

Our utility trailer is due a major rework. The wood floor and sides are very weak; they were just interior grade plywood to start with and they're very weak now. The rims and tires were from a junkyard, and they're rusty and rotten. One of the fenders got destroyed in an incident with a badly loaded load a long time ago. It hauled a sheet of drywall today but it wouldn't do the work I have planned for it this year.

A friend suggested Tractor Supply for fenders and he was right, so that's in hand. I priced tires and wheels at Belle Tire, so I'll order those this week. I'll get 5/4 lumber when it gets warm enough to actually work on the thing. I'll strip it down to the metal, possibly sandblast it (that would involve buying a sandblaster, but they're cheap and it's probably worth doing) or maybe just cleaning with a wire wheel, and giving it a good coat of Rustoleum, then put on a whole new set of wood, new wheels, and the new fender. I think I might spend $30 and get some LED tail lights for it too; the current lights are the very dim round cruddy lights and they're about 4" from the road, and practically invisible, and the wiring is vulnerable down there; I think I'd rather put some rectangular bright LED lights and weld a bracket for them up closer to the top, if I can decide how that will work with the truck tarp we use on it when we go camping with it.

I finally had enough of the aquarium lights; they buzz like crazy. Turns out the ballasts in there were "sound class C" which is actually listed as "outdoor use only" which means they are noisy as hell and designed that way. So I ordered up some electronic ballasts, which should be entirely silent, and save energy and start faster too, and cause less wear on the lamps when starting. Those should be here late this week or next week. I might attack the air pumps after that; I'd love for the aquaria to be entirely silent. I'm thinking getting a larger, silent air pump (if such exists) or putting the air pumps together and building a noise-absorbing box for them, then putting that downstairs in between the floor joists. It may be necessary also to put a buffer tank down there too; I'm thinking making one of a few feet of 4" PVC pipe, capped and with baffles (and maybe some polyfill stuffing) to eliminate the sound coming down the pipe.

I started working on the basement again; I had to move a bunch of stuff to get to the walls. I was hesitant to get drywall because there's no way to store it; I have to get it when I know I can use it that day, which is hardly ever. Also the mudding took forever because once the stuff is mixed I had to use it up in an hour or so, and I wasn't sure I had that much prepared, but finally I decided to try to mix just a little. It's kind of a pain to mix just a little because the electric mixer paddle won't work and you have to mix it by hand with a knife, and it's tough to get it smooth, so sometimes you hit lumps when you're working, and that throws things off.

I got a piece of red oak to use on the railing on the stairs eventually. We may wind up using some of the cheap doors from upstairs down there, and starting to put solid red oak doors upstairs. They're very pretty. The downside is that of course that's a slippery slope that won't end until all the woodwork is replaced, but I guess that's OK.

As soon as it gets warm, all the small engines in the garage need oil changes, the tractor/mower needs lubing, and sometime this year the generator REALLY needs a rebuild; it blows oil like crazy. I grabbed some ring compressors from my FIL's stuff before mom moved out of the place so I should be able to do that in an afternoon; I'm assuming the rings are just stuck. I'd like to find a muffler to put on it too so you could be within 100 feet of it without feeling the percussion of it running in your chest.

Then of course there's the aforementioned major repair of the garage floor, which also involves moving everything out of the garage and reorganizing the whole thing, and I'd like to take stuff out of the rafters too, finish tying them all to the roof for support, and lay down plywood and make the entire rafter area into a proper storage area.

Then there's the pond I want to dig. And the gardens I'd like to expand...

Lots of ideas, it'll be interesting to see how much actual energy I can muster for all this.