one monkey typing

I've been trying to actually get things done around the house this winter. Having the heated garage helps a TON - I can work out there, use the big saws, paint and stain, etc.

Over the last few weeks I've been finishing the drywall work, painting and I'm in the process of finishing the door frames in the basement and putting casings around things. Still a few days work to go at least down there, but it's looking much better.

Later I hope to give the lab a good going through and sort and organize.

I gave up and bought a portable table saw today. I've been putting off several jobs for months if not years, and doing a few jobs poorly, due to not having one. I actually own a table saw but I ran out of room to hold it and gave it to my brother, who's across the state.

I was considering a sliding compound miter saw, which would have been good for the immediate job at hand, but not as generically useful, and pretty much just as big as a jobsite table saw to store, so I bit the bullet and went from $80 (for the Harbor Freight 10" slider) to $300 (for a Porter Cable jobsite table saw). There are cheaper models but the Porter Cable is the cheapest saw that wasn't obviously a piece of crap.

In the end, it's hard to not want a table saw for a project once in a while, especially if you've owned one in the past.

Now I need to build a crosscut sled for it, for the job immediately at hand.

The Peltier cooler module in the electric cooler failed unrepairably on the last outing, and the cooler module on the older cooler failed but was repairable about 12 years ago. But that repair wasn't that good (I bypassed one row of junctions, leaving it operable but not as efficient).

Back when the original one failed, new modules were something like $38 plus shipping, so I hacked the module as best I could to get it at least doing something again. But now I got two for $10, shipped, from China. These ones seem better than OEM too, they are sealed with high temperature silicon instead of just being open, so I suspect they'll last a lot longer, since my bet for the cause of failure of the other one is condensed water running down inside the junction area.

I got them in the mail last night, and took the opportunity to also lubricate the fan motor, clean the dirt out of the fan that was unbalancing it, replace the rotted rubber isolation gaskets on the motor mount (made new ones from an old bicycle inner tube) and re-glue the seal strip that has been falling out for the last year. It's working quite well now and is much quieter than it has been for a while.

I should fix the old one too while I'm at it, and before I lose the other replacement module or step on it and break it.

For the TV we picked up for the basement, we really wanted a ceiling mount. There are actually relatively few ceiling mounts except for quite expensive commercial ones. I found one for a reasonable price, but it was too long and I'd have to modify it anyway.

Last night I cut some pieces of T iron off of an old dead garage door opener's beam, welded them into a rectangle and drilled them for the 200x400mm mounting holes. Today I puttered around with pieces of junk I had lying around the garage until inspiration struck. Here's the result. Two pieces of threaded rod through the rectangle, four eye bolts into a piece of 3/4" plywood, the bottom two snugged tight, the top two loose to allow tilting, and two U bolts securing it to a piece of 1" iron pipe, which goes into a street elbow and flange screwed to a ceiling joist. Total expenditure was the iron I had lying around, and $28 for the rest of the bits at Lowes. And I guess about 6 hours of puttering around with it or driving to Lowes for parts.


( another couple of photos behind the cut )

Memorial day stuff took up the morning. By the time we got back, and I puttered around online and watched an episode of Mythbusters, it was about 2PM. I tossed the first 7 episodes of Dr Who on a thumb drive for the kids to watch, they spent most of the afternoon catching up on that.

I spent about 4 or 5 hours cleaning and moving things in the garage. I got two new outlets installed on the wall above the new location for the workbench, moved the workbench, installed a new switched outlet in the beams above it and installed a 4 foot shoplight there. I built a couple of small storage nooks in the studwork, moved the sheet goods (a few sheets of plywood) into the now-accessible sheet goods storage area, and built a "short sheet goods" storage rack above that for cut-down sheets that are 2 feet wide or narrower-I have a lot of those sitting around from various projects.

The trailer is now empty--I had used it to hold the plywood and scraps out of the way and out of the rain. So now I can use it to get wood chips next chance I get to go to the recycling station.

We've been talking about getting a patio firepit (one of those metal things probably) - I'll have to lay some patio stones for it but that's OK. I have a heck of a lot of wood scrap that needs to be either burned or thrown away, so I'd rather burn it.

I finished an audiobook and another book, and finally got started reading HP7. I located and ordered a 4GB SD card for $20 shipped; it's NOT an SDHC, it's just SD. You can do 4GB without going to SDHC, and the Sony reader I bought doesn't support SDHC (which I was disappointed with, but decided I could live with it since a 4GB card is still supported and holds something like 5000 books). A higher capacity would be nice but only for MP3 playing, which I probably won't use much (if at all) anyway. It's an awkward size for an MP3 player, and playing MP3s kills the batteries quickly. I also ordered a hard case for the reader; I'm going to be carrying it in a bike bag so I think it's prudent to give it a little extra protection.

I also started listening to Going Postal by Pratchett. When this is done (probably tomorrow or Thursday) I'll have been through the entire Discworld series in unabridged audiobook format over the last 2 or 3 months, at least those that are not short stories, illustrated novels or kid's books. I've been using the L-Space reading order guide.

I got out relatively early and started leveling the new flower garden. While I was working on that, the neighbor called me over. He had picked up a 2.5 gallon jug of concentrated weed stop, and had borrowed a friend's tow-behind powered liquid sprayer. The jug was enough to do both of our lawns twice over so he said he'd do my lawn too. I'd been meaning to do this anyway; I don't mind dandelions in moderation, but they don't understand moderation.

He was towing it with his big quad bike, and had trouble; the hitch was way too high and it wouldn't go slow enough, so I brought my mower over for him to use.

Eventually we got talking about generators, and he's been trying to sell me his 3500 watt unit. He pulled it out to show me and the stupid thing seized up while he was trying to crank it. We wound up tearing it partially down and guessing that he had a stuck ring (it stopped at TDC). So I went and got some of the "chain lube" that I had in a oil can - it's 1/3 30-weight oil and 2/3 mineral spirits. I squirted in about 10 pumps of that and after some coaxing it started spinning again with only a minor hitch at the top which went away later.

We put it back together and it started up, but even after a couple of minutes it was still blowing blue smoke. I figured the oil ring was stuck too so we decided to put some tranny fluid in the crankcase and run it for a few minutes to break the ring loose. I couldn't find the tranny fluid, but I'd been meaning to clean the garage anyway, so he went back to spraying our lawns while I cleaned the garage.

In the end I pretty much emptied the garage onto the driveway (looked like the world's messiest yard sale). I found the tranny fluid, we ran it 10 minutes, then changed the oil and it was running great after that.

Then I spent the next 6 hours moving the shelves that were nailed to the wall and trying to find proper homes for everything. Finally at about 8:30 or so I just started tossing everything back in the garage so the place wouldn't look like a junkyard (also it looked like it might rain). And I had to be able to get the blue car out, I'm supposed to take it in for service tomorrow.

The garage is still a mess but I think I've identified a large quantity of stuff that can be thrown out or given away, and we now have 1/2 of the attic of the garage available for storage that wasn't there before, so there's hope of getting to the end of this with both stuff put away and still able to move around and do work out there.

I got the angle grinder out and ground down the rust and painted the used basketball backboard brackets for the church's "new" basketball hoop. The backboard was quite filthy, a quick pass with the power washer and it's sparkling white again.

Took the dog to the vet for spring heartworm eval, all clear. She growled at the vet, which is fair enough, he took a blood sample. She keeps getting the same vet and I think due to that, he's now the only person in the world she doesn't like.

I drove to Harbor Freight to exchange the roofing nailer I bought; it worked but had an air leak on the trigger valve. Even with the extra trip, it was still worth it for a roofing nailer for $80; others are > $200. This one probably wouldn't stand up to commercial use, but to date I've had very good luck with the < $100 framing nailer I bought there. I've been through a couple of boxes of nails with not a single jam. Also picked up a few odds and ends while there.

Stopped at Lowes and picked up a couple of hardware bits to make a fastener I need, and also 4 sheets of 3/4" OSB - I want to finish prepping the rafters of the garage for storage. I need about 16 sheets but it's supposed to rain tomorrow, and I wasn't sure I could get the sheets up there without help, so I wanted to keep it down for now.

Got home from there around 2:30, the recycling center closes at 4:30 and I need a LOT of topsoil for the new flower bed; I managed to get 3 loads picked up and shoveled into place before they closed. I still need another load of topsoil and probably 2 or 3 loads of wood chips.

Put the basketball stuff back together with L's help, and then took it over to the church and put it up with T's help. Also installed a new presentation remote in the sanctuary computer - I had originally used a Radio Shack RF universal remote which I trained with codes to an Epson projector's HID receiver. That worked but it skipped or bounced sometimes and was huge, plus it was the same remote used for music, and it got quite confusing to switch modes between the audio equipment and the computer. This should be more reliable and easier to use.

I got a bit of stuff accomplished Sunday after a little picking up inside (not nearly enough; the outside stuff getting done is at the expense of the inside going downhill).

The strip of weeds in front of the flower beds in front of the house got tilled up and seeded with grass. The dahlia bulbs got planted in the west bed after pulling the weeds. I don't know how they'll do; some were sprouting, but some were rotted. I'm sure we'll have some. I'll look up when they SHOULD be planted and set an alarm for next year.

I tilled the borders around the two front beds as best I could; they were badly grown in with grass and I took about a dozen passes around the beds, first clockwise then anti-. I used all the wood chips and weed stop that I had around the pond Saturday so mulching that will have to wait until I can get home in time to get to the recycle center for another load of chips.

The 5 new rose plants got planted in an arc behind the pond, I set them in with some dark topsoil (from the recycle center) spiked with "rose food" fertilizer. I intended to set the climbing fence for the peas in the garden, since planting time is coming up in a week or so, but didn't get that done. I do have two 10' treated 2x4s that I didn't use on the trailer project (the existing boards were fine) so I'll probably cut those in half and use them.

I remembered that I had a package of tree spikes (fertilizer) formulated for evergreens, which I bought about 10 years ago and never used, because the junipers were going nuts even without fertilizer. I opened the package, and they were crumbling, so I just dug little holes around all our evergreens and crumbled in bits of the spikes.

While walking back from church through the neighborhood in the morning, I noticed that one of the neighbors has a russian olive bush that's trimmed in a nice way and it looks pretty good, sort of an understory look. We have tons of russian olive in our easement area. It's completely untended, and it's really pretty ugly looking. I'd never even considered that the stuff might actually be tendable, but I thought, I have a new chain saw inherited from my FIL so let's see how it does. It does really well; it's a Stihl 026, which from what I gather online was a light professional saw when he bought it, very well thought of and not a cheap saw. In any case it started right up and ran perfectly, cutting like a knife through butter. The two bushes that I worked on look much better now. I took about 2/3 of their mass out, so the brush pile grew quite a lot. I think we may actually have to burn it later this year.

Also a lot of random pulling weeds back from plantings, the rhododendron lost a bunch of soil around its base again (and isn't doing well) so I packed some more topsoil in there and fed and watered it. The grass I sprayed to make the east garden is finally dying, so that should be able to be started soon.

The clothes dryer is quiet again. A $12 idler pulley and about 10 minutes to install it (would have been 5 but the belt slipped off the drum and I had to reposition it) did the trick.

Yesterday I'd intended to fix the church's lawn mower and mow their lawn. The guy who mows the lawn said the thing was a piece of junk and we needed to buy a new mower. It did have a dead battery, and that was a little expensive (it has the biggest battery I've ever seen in a small lawn tractor) and the bendix was shot so it wouldn't crank over, and the air filter was plugged solid. But those are all standard maintenance items. Anyway, by the time I figured out the bendix was shot, drove into town twice for new parts (I replaced one part and another part of the bendix broke 20 minutes later) and drove around looking for a new battery, I spent a big chunk of the day on it.

Then I brought it home and lubed everything and power washed it. Then it was raining so no mowing got done.

So anyway, $100 for parts (mainly battery) instead of $4000 for a new mower is a good bonus for the church. I'm sure the lawn mowing guy won't be happy at another few years with the 25-year-old Simplicity instead of a new ZTR mower, but tough luck.