Organizing and Framing Up

So, between shopping for a car, fixing hydraulic leaks on the new (used) tractor, working, and entertaining visitors, I've not accomplished much around the house until this past week.  But it's coming along again. 

I managed to clean all the rain gutters.  I assume this was the first time they've been cleaned since I found roofing nails and bits of shingles in them.  I also repaired a seam in one of the rain gutters that was dripping onto the deck and ruining the eave.

I had a 5KW garage heater installed, because we store canned goods in the garage, and I'm not sure how well the garage refrigerator would work when the ambient temperature got lower than the temperature I want my food kept at.  So I set the thermostat for forty degrees.  I hope that works out!

And lately I have been (finally) trying to get the shop a little bit more organized.  It's a huge process, because half of what's in the shop either doesn't belong there, or needs some storage.  However I have made a start!  I wanted to begin by setting up my workbench and organizing the tools somewhat.

Before:

 

After:

For the record, I am NOT a fan of pimped-out, polished diamond deck cabinets for my crap.  I think that's a relic of the housing boom easy-money years.  I'm miffed that I can no longer buy cheapie cabinets like these - just eye candy that costs 10 times as much.  Thanks a lot, you Martha Stewart shop rats.

 

Lastly, there is a big 15x30 foot room in the basement that we are having finished.  The exterior walls were not framed, so that is in progress.  After the electrician addes a few outlets to these new frames, the drywall can go on.  

 This will be a storage/exercise room after we have it completed.  I would have tackled this job myself, since I think I have the skills to get it done.  However, between work and the holidays, we would be halfway through 2013 before I would have managed to get it completed.  Instead, I hired the job out, so it will be completed in another week.

 

We want to paint the new walls, coat the floor with an epoxy, and add baseboards like so... 

 

...and then FINALLY get all these boxes out of the garage!  Ugh!

 

September-October Update, Part 2

The summer and fall seasons here, like much of the nation, were very very dry.   Up here in the forest, drought has more serious consequences than a lost crop.  If the dry forest catches fire, it can easily burn your home to the ground. 

In fact, there were a couple of nasty lighning-sparked forest fires upwind of us in the Okanagan and Cascades.  Most of the summer was miserable with smoke from fires over 200 miles away from us!  Nasty air...



Because of the drought, I became worried enough about how close several trees were to the house.  The recommendation is to clear trees for 30 feet, and to thin them out to 100 feet.  So I got going with the chainsaw.  I now need to re-sharpen the chain and remove the fallen trees.

 

We grew a tomato plant this summer from a small seedling.  It grew a lot of tomatoes, but they weren't ripening quickly enough to get any before the first frost would arrive.  We put the plant on a roller cart and started bringing it into the garage each night.  As a result, it was able to provide us with some wonderfully tasty tomatoes, and it still has a few ripening up!

Autumn arrived, and the fall colors have been beautiful.  I haven't had the opportunity to stop and take a picture of any of the aspen groves around here, but I did take a couple of the tamarack pines on the property.  I never knew any pine trees turned yellow and lost their leaves...

 

September-October Update, Part 1

I see it's been a while since I've posted anything here.  It's not that there isn't anything to post, but that life has been a bit full lately!

One of the big items we had to take care of recently was getting a new car for Corie.  She has never driven in the snow in her life, and I felt the need to get her an All Wheel Drive (AWD) vehicle before we get snow that sticks.  In addition, the old Explorer was having some issues that would be expensive to correct.  The differential was howling, and a damper inside the dash had come loose from its hinge.  The damper didn't reliably direct hot air onto the windshield, so the defroster would become a huge issue in the winter.

So we spent a lot of my days off in September and October test-driving new cars.  We also spent a great deal of time researching.  We test drove a Kia Sportage and Sorento, Ford Edge and Explorer, a Honda CR-V and Pilot, a Mazda CX-9, and a Dodge Durango.  We were almost ready to buy a Durango, when Corie spotted a Dodge Journey.

The Durango is a little bigger and taller, and felt a bit beefier.  However, it was based on a truck chassis and therefore was heavy and needed a larger engine.  We decided on the Journey over the Durango, primarily because of its better mileage and lower price.  Otherwise they were quite similar.

The dealership was trying to get rid of their last 2012 models, and so we got a great deal on a loaded R/T model.  It has way more gadgetry than any car I've ever owned, and it's the first new vehicle I've ever owned.   All the functions are accessed from a touch screen, which I find distracting.  On the bright side, it has a slot for a thumb drive, so you can play your own music. 

I'ts not a color I would have picked out, given more choices (metal flake black, LOL), but it works.  Life is full of compromises :)

Timber Terror!

I had 2.5 days off, and they (yet again) were full.  On Thursday afternoon before going to work, I mowed the lawn.  Afterwards I tried to mow the massive long weeds along the driveway, but eventually the big rocks broke my lawn mower and the blades quit working :(

Friday we cleaned house in preparation for visitors from Hermiston.  Saturday we entertained our visitors, and the kids really had a great time, while we chatted with the parents. 

Sunday was church, followed by a trip to Silverwood Theme park.  Grace told me that she wanted to go on the "Timber Terror" Rollercoaster.  It's clear that she had no idea what she was getting herself into, because she was terrified after the first drop...   She was close to bursting into tears, but she held it together!  Now she can brag about it, but I don't think she will be getting on a coaster again anytime soon.

After that we stuck with the log ride and shot rubber balls at the Battlezone boats :)  It was fun because she could fire shots at the plexiglass right in front of the boat driver's face, hahaha!  And in turn he could fire a little water cannon back at her.  Good stuff!

We had a pretty good day, and that's as much fun as I've had in a while!

The opposite of long change

I'm  currently in the process of working seven straight 12 hour days, some of which are nights!

Before that however, I had 2.5 days off.  After getting off of nights, we took Grace to the Orthodontist to get her fitted for a palate spreader.  Then later on I helped a co-worker move his refrigerator to his new house.

Wednesday we prepped Grace's room for painting and applied the first coat.  Thursday we got the second coat on, removed the painters tape and got her moved back in.  Quite the whirlwind...

At some point, I would like to be settled in and get back to doing my two favorite things:  Drinking beer and playing WoW :)

Here we are going from some ghastly color to a nice light blue color (her pick).   And today I'm back to work with speckles of paint on my eyeglasses :)

Petz

We have a new kitty that we picked up from the shelter in June, as well as a Dachshund that we got from the Hermiston Pet Store right before Christmas.  They give each other hell.  The dog tackles the cat and the cat tackles the dog.  It's fun to watch.  Yesterday the dog had all her toys piled under the cat's platform.  She so badly wants the cat to play with her like another puppy...

Seven off, minus 3

I just completed my seven days off.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to accomplish a lot in that time.  The week off runs from Friday morning to the following Friday evening.  I lost 3 of them because I had to work two nights, which ruined the following day.

We had visitors from Hermiston my first day off.  It was great to see them again.  I hope they come back soon and bring their kids, whom Grace is good friends with!

Before our friends arrived on Friday the electrician came back to add a light in the garage.  There was a little area off to one side that needed some light, and so we got that installed.  I only noticed the darkness when I finally got around to hanging all the brooms and mops on hooks, and realized I could barely see them without having the door open.

Also I had a HVAC guy come out to give me an estimate on a LPG shop heater, one which would hang from the ceiling and blow hot air down, yet have the exhaust vented outside.  He said $2900.  Not including the propane line and tank.  Ouch.  This is what I had in mind:

But I think it will have to wait, because it's certainly not a critical item.

We have a lot of deer in the area.  I have been feeding them corn and recently started putting out water, since we haven't had rain in a month.  They are always hungry and thirsty...  Monday morning, a mama deer and her fawn wandered into the back yard.  They ate, and then the fawn laid down in the grass.  I suppose it was cooling off, since the grass was still damp from being watered.  It had more spots than a leopard, and was about the size of a labrador retriever.

The next three days (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) I got sorta busy with making the house more live-able.  Now that we finally have the basement carpet in, I bought a TV for downstairs, and hooked up our Wii.  And we had some lawn chairs, but no furniture for this room. It's kinda odd, like furnishing three houses.  It looked pretty friggen pathetic, with a cheap folding table and lawn chairs.

So we got some recliners, book shelves, an entertainment center, and a Blu-Ray player!  Rock on!

We still have A LOT of pictures and drapes to hang, books to fill those bookshelves, and crap to put up on the plant shelves.  But at least now we are finally getting there.

We had the most stunning sunset one day this week.  I suppose it's due to the wildfires in the Okanagan and at Cle Elum.  Hopefully we don't have any here.

Yesterday I put together a heavy-duty shelf for the garage.  We've been walking around piles of junk on the floor since we moved in.  Since we have been unloading boxes, we finally had some wall space free in the garage, so I put up this shelf.

I liked it so much (and we have so much crap to store) that I bought 3 more shelves.  They are not yet assembled, as we need to unpack more boxes.
 

And today, I got up a little early and installed more drapes for the dining room and our daughter's bedroom.  Then we finally located the hardware to install the mirror on the guest bedroom dresser, so I took care of that.  Not sure why the photo has a streak across it.  It's not in the room :)

Hopefully, the wife will spend the next couple of days unpacking the book boxes that I brought in from the garage and getting some of the pictures hung.  Then we can bust out the antiques and for the first time in two years, it will start feeling like we live in OUR home.

Not alot...

Another 2.5 days off, coming off nights, as usual.  I didn't get much done, alas.  I was wiped out and slept half the day on Friday.  Then I slept half the day on Saturday.  In the afternoon on both days we drove to Coeur d'Alene and either shopped or test drove SUVs for Corie.

We test drove a Kia Sorrento, Ford Escape and Explorer, and a Honda CR-V.  I liked them all, although the Fords seemed pretty pricey, considering they were base models.  We may drive a Honda Pilot next.

We are looking for an AWD vehicle for Corie before the snow flies.  She has no experience with snow driving, and I think AWD will help her a lot. 

Although we didn't decide on a vehicle for her, we did get some drapes installed.  It was (and always has been) an ordeal.  It's all overhead work, and I usually have to do it a couple of times to get things exactly how she wants them.  Meh.  At least most of them are up.

Keeping my job during snow season...

The title of this post explains why I bought a tractor.  Its a nice little Japanese tractor called a Yanmar 1300.  Yanmar now makes all the smaller tractors for John Deere.

I've always wanted a tractor, and now I finally have a really good excuse.  Due to the odd hours I keep at the power plant, I didn't feel comfortable relying on a snow removal guy to keep my driveway cleared at 5:00 AM every time it snows. 

It's a pretty small tractor, but it shouldn't take very long to clear the driveway.  As you can see in the photo, it has a loader and the thing on the back is a rotary tiller.  Chewing up soil to set up a garden next spring is gonna be a snap!  It also came with a rear blade, which should handle the majority of the snow removal.  It was really important to have a tractor with a loader for when we get a really big snowfall, and I have to actually remove snow to a pile somewhere.

It's a nice little tractor with a live PTO, 4x4 drive, and a 3 point hydraulic-lift hitch.  So although its a small diesel tractor, it's the real deal.  Besides, if I need to get between trees (likely), it's way more practical than one of the cool old antiques I was interested in. 

Like the Farmall Super H:

Or the Deere Model B:

Both are beautiful classics, but unfortunately they are way larger than I need, and are not practical for using with a loader :(   I may someday pick one up for restoration and for fun though... I just love how they look!

Dachshund Blocker

It didn't seem like I did a good job of explaining my little dog gate, so I took a couple of photos this morning.

This is a picture of the front side of the gate.  It's pretty low, so less of a trip hazard.  Still keeps the dog out though!

Here is a picture from above.  See how it clamps to the center piece of the door frame?  If you look carefully, you can see the felt dots I installed to keep the wood from scuffing the door frame.

Lastly, here is a picture from behind.  Here the felt buttons are easy to see.  I slotted the back rails so that they could slide over to remove the gate.  It's not a pretty piece of work, but it's practical and I thought it was cool enough to share.

Come and meet my little friend...  The Ridgid TS2424