tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72707555180023944172024-03-14T03:40:45.406-04:00House of Frost2 little boys, a teen daughter, one crazy dog and 2 parents trying to keep their poop in a pile. Welcome to the Frosthaus.littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.comBlogger953125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-45176187208516366862016-01-21T23:07:00.003-05:002016-01-22T09:54:13.383-05:00Cuba City ScenesWe are not lie on the beach and get a tan people. Well, that's not true. We are those people, but not for days on end. Our family will last for a day on the beach, but then we want to go try something different before coming back for another day on the beach. What I am saying is that we like time away from the resort as much as we enjoy our time on it.<br />
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Since this trip was in Varadero, there were three cities we decided to visit:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Varadero town - this is really just a tourist trappy sort of place that offers little apart from trinkets for sale, resorts, and vacation rentals. On the edge of town there are some oil wells and a refinery, but apart from that, the only real industry is tourism, so you won't get a feel for the culture and heartbeat of Cuba here. </li>
<li>Matanzas - Matanzas is a working town about 15 minutes from Varadero. Many of the resort staff live here, it has a number of factories and farms. A small university, and is a real city. We did a bus tour of Matanzas but only got out at the town square for about 15 minutes. </li>
<li>Havana (AKA La Habana) - The capitol of Cuba, Havana is a longish drive from Varadero. It took us about an hour, maybe a little more to reach it. The highway to Havana is a rural freeway, but the mix of vehicles along it includes everything from donkey carts to Russian built trucks. The city itself is as vibrant and busy as any large city anywhere.</li>
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<h3>
Varadero</h3>
Since I have dedicated the entire previous post to the resort and Varadero, I am going to give it only a very brief nod here. If you like straw markets and taxis, then Varadero is a good place to visit. It's a pretty town and everything looks nice.<br />
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One of the things I keep wanting to do in Cuba (but never have) is to get off the resorts and rent a room in a <a href="http://www.casaparticular.com/" target="_blank">"Casa Particulaire"</a> These privately run B&B's utterly litter Varadero, and are a real budget option to staying on resort. For around $30 CUC per day you get a nice room and sometimes a meal. You can negotiate additional meals into the room for a fee. If you see this symbol on a house, it has tourist rooms for rent (text optional):<br />
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Of course being a tourist town, old American cars are everywhere, running as taxis. Rates are highly negotiable, but generally get higher the farther you are from town. Between our resort and town the drivers would start by asking for $15 CUC but could be negotiated as low as $7 CUC. These cars are the epitome of beauty being skin deep. Often they have been re-engined with diesel or japanese engines, have a subframe from a different car, and generally are cobbled together from whatever is left over from other cars. Be careful getting into one for a long drive. Seatbelts don't exist, floors may or may not be solid, steering and suspension may or may not work. Most have an inspection sticker on the windshield, and if the inspection is more than 2 years old are considered stale dated. This does not prevent drivers from continuing to use them.<br />
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In downtown Varadero there is a childrens' playground. One thing that can be said about Cuba is that they truly value children. A cute kid will always get to jump cues, get little gifts, and get special attention. The country is madly in love with kids. The boys also loved Cuba and all the attention they got. Also note the chicken in the park. Chickens are everywhere in Cuba.</div>
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We stopped at a restaurant to give the boys a pee break, and while I waited for them, I snapped this picture of some backyards. I always think you can tell more about a town by what is behind the facade, and this gives a good feel for life in Cuba. Varadero backyards look a whole lot different than the front yards:<br />
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I'm going to leave Varadero with that backyard shot and move ahead - we tend to put a 'Canadian' view on this and see poverty and dirt in that backyard, but you can't impose the ideas of Canada on a tropical place with a communist government. Lets leave it at that and hop ahead to Matanzas.<br />
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<h3>
Matanzas</h3>
The trip we took included a half-day excursion to the <a href="http://www.mycubavisit.com/attractions/Cuevas_de_Bellamar.html" target="_blank">Matanzas Caves</a>. We only realized this once we had booked our trip, so it was a nice surprise. The caves are very nice, and the tour guide was quite good. I think I enjoyed the caves on our trip to Shenandoah better, but these were still very cool. The preservation rules and visitor protection were very different between Virginia and Cuba - that was to be expected though.<br />
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I love this next picture because to me it shows the progression of the Cuban economy through the vehicles on the streets. First the era of US investment and the 'playboy' attitude toward Cuba, then the stoic soviet era where survival was the only thing that mattered, and finally the here and now of new Chinese/Japanese investment, reopening the economy, and the general spirit of optimism the island seems to be in. For sure, the times are changing. All this on a colonial Spanish cobblestone road.<br />
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While we're talking cars, a lot of people go to Cuba just to see the lines of old American cars. I don't blame them, there are many around. There are also a lot of Soviet era Ladas and Fiats. Mostly you see the old American cars lugging tourists around and living a hard life as taxis. They are expensive to drive and maintain, and often the only original parts are the body. According to our tour guide, a good condition 67 Chev would fetch a price of around $80,000 since it is a guaranteed money maker. More if its a convertible. I also believe our tour guide was manufacturing a lot of facts on the fly. Regardless, if you have an old American car you can make around $100 a day which is a very big number by Cuban standards. Russian cars though - they tend to be not-taxis, and more utilitarian.<br />
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This picture was taken in the main square of Matanzas. Our tour bus is in the background. The two young people walking toward the camera are students. Many workers in Cuba wear uniforms, and all students wear uniforms to school. Elementary/junior grades are blue, College is brown. There is a university just outside the square where these two likely study.<br />
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Policy in Cuba is that as long as a student can maintain a high GPA, their education will be paid up to two doctorate degrees. The onus is on the student to maintain a GPA that qualifies them to continue in their studies. It is illegal to hire a child under 18 yrs old, so kids who drop out of school or don't maintain a high GPA are left in limbo. I am not sure what becomes of them. This education/work policy is a big contrast to Canada where college/university is expensive and many kids go to work to raise college money, then never return to school. FWIW, Cuba follows international standards in its degrees, so although it is a poor third world country, its education system is on par with most first world nations, and its literacy rate is higher than most. Cuba produces more doctors than it has space for, and deploys them to other countries on humanitarian work.<br />
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This next photo is in the town square in Matanzas. Since Cuba has been through multiple regime changes and internal wars within the last 100 years, war memorials and statues of heroes abound. Dictatorships love reminding their people of the greatness of the leaders, and Cuba is no exception. Everywhere you go there is another statue celebrating another hero of the revolution. Momma and I had a corny kiss here.<br />
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The building below is a old fire station from the 1880's. It needs some restoration, but it looked really cool, so I snapped a shot. The traffic geek in me loves the painted island though. Around here a plow would tear that mo-fo out in the first snow. Also, the radii on the departure curve seems a little tight...<br />
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I think Matanzas was probably the kids' first exposure to poor Cuba. Some of the neighbourhoods here really showed neglect and a need for some work, but we never saw anyone begging or anyone who looked unhealthy. Yes some of the roads were coming apart, and the electric grid has a certain charm, and yes there is certainly less 'stuff' than we have here, but although there are many poor Cubans, there is little poverty in the sense that poverty is a state of spirit while poor is a cashflow situation. Many windows in Cuba are covered in steel bars - this is a throwback to island architecture and not a crime issue. The bars were originally incorporated in the architecture to keep pirates away and were wooden. Then the french came with steelwork and it became a prestige symbol to have ironwork on the front of the house. The bars are now largely decorative - and they are everywhere.</div>
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On the edge of Matanzas sits the baseball field. Every kid in town wants to make it to MLB - and this is where those dreams come true. Here the Matanzas team plays. All amateur, no paid players (a point of pride). All of them dreaming of making it to the big league. Baseball is Cuba's national sport, and the fandom is as feverish as it is for hockey here.<br />
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Leaving Matanzas, we aim for Havana (La Habana). On this drive was saw all manner of vehicles, and drove through heavy rain. It is not uncommon to see trucks such as this one with families seated around a table in the back, or a crowd of workers in them. Often they whistle and wave as they go by.<br />
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La Habana (Havana)</h3>
You come into Havana along a beautiful boulevard, than go under a tunnel and emerge in the city. Within the city three layers of post-European history emerge - the old Spanish history, the newer American era, and then Castro's Cuba.<br />
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There is much propaganda. It makes me wonder how the transition to trusting Americans will work. It seems that most Cubans are eager to see American money, but care little for the culture, the investments, or the people. In the words of tour guide "America will only bring us MacDonalds and Rock and Roll. What good is there in that?" another zinger - "The only reason you need American dollars is if you are going to defect. Anyone collecting US currency is a traitor. Don't give it to them."<br />
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And Havana is bustling with tourists without Americans. The queue of cars below are all taxis booked for the day by foreign tourists. Here, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malec%C3%B3n,_Havana" target="_blank">along the Malecon</a> the taxis sit and wait for their clients to return. Drivers lean on each others cars and a staccato Spanish fires up and down the lines of cars as the drivers compare notes. On the seawall, young men fish, and tourists promenade all day long walking along the famous strip. As we walked, the oil vent in the background burned, an English cruise ship came in to port, and a foreign tanker left. Yes the blockade prevents trade with the US, but not all trade; and Venezuela, China, Russia, and others are poking enough holes in the blockade for this experiment to continue to work.<br />
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Streetscapes in the city range from opulent to run down to abandoned. Being visitors we don't understand all the change here, but wondered what to make of the various buildings and their condition. Especially in sports like below where a brand new apartment block sat next to rows of crumbling buildings.<br />
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In the photo below, you see the line-out of cars again showing the various eras of control. I love these pictures where the traffic is so mixed. Also, the countdown pedheads showing 70 seconds - and thats just part of the phase. </div>
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In old Havana we visited Hemingway's bar and the cathedral. We saw the national Hotel (beautiful!) and were overall impressed with the city. Unfortunately it rained a lot while we were in town, and Cubans have a fear of catching their death in the rain. This lead to some complications with our tour guide, an ubrella, and the boys. (Save the children!)<br />
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Eventually we were lead to the rooftop terrace of a hotel where we could see over the city. We were supposed to be impressed with the view of the old fort and the city from here, but Momma and I both found ourselves snapping shots of the backs of the buildings that were "uninteresting". This had the tour guide perplexed.<br />
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We took a family photo at the National Hotel. Havana's National hotel is quite beautiful. It is where foreign dignitaries and diplomats come to stay, and has all the lavish outfitting appropriate to such a hotel. But it also has the 'famous room'... which was a little... weird? In this room there are giant cardboard sheets with all the famous people who have visited the famous room - going back to pre-blockade times - many national leaders, cosmonauts, singers and dancers, artists, etc. Just pictures of heads, with a name and title under them. Bill Murray was there, as was Leonardo DiCaprio, among others. Its sortof a National brag book of all the people who have come to Cuba. Strange. Many of the famous people there I had never heard of, but nodded solemnly when the tour guide pointed and said their names. </div>
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The Havana tour was cut short when the boys got tired. So we all made the long drive back to Varadero and the resort, arriving back in time for dinner. In Varadero, Momma made a stop at the flea market for some trinkets, then we went to our room and packed up for the trip home.<br />
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At the Varadero airport, James snapped this picture of planes on the runway. the big plane had just been loaded for a domestic flight. Since Varadero is advanced, they used a bus to carry guests to that plane - in other airports we've had to run across the tarmac to the plane. International flights from Varadero board at the gates per normal. Varadero is a "very modern" airport. having been built in 1989. It even has 2 x-ray machines!<br />
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So that's it for the Cuban cities we visited. I'm not sure whether I'll add a third piece to this triplog or not. still thinking about where I'd go with it and what I'd say that hasn't already been said.</div>
littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-81028123448018026152016-01-18T21:46:00.000-05:002016-01-19T07:19:05.196-05:00Cuba - Third time's the charm!We are just back from our third Cuban vacation. This time we elected to take the boys along, and as usual Cuba proved to be fantastic. Unfortunately, the weather and the resort were not, but Cuba is a charming place regardless. Our original plan had been to wait until summer, then make a trip to the southern US, but with the political turmoil down there, and our weak dollar, we decided to do a winter vacation to Cuba instead.<br />
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I think I'll break this trip report into bits - first on the resort and cute kid pictures, then old cars and Havanna, and then maybe a little politics and emotion, but first - the fun stuff. Resort life.<br />
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We flew out of Toronto with Cubana airlines headed to Varadero - a small tourist town featuring some 50 or so resorts strung out along a sand peninsula into the straits of Florida on the north side of the main island of Cuba. Flying with Cubana always produces 'interesting' meals, and this time was no exception.</div>
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I present our airline breakfast:</div>
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That's a greek salad, chicken breast, dinner roll, orange juice and coffee. I think the orange juice is what makes it breakfast. Not sure. Of course its still better than what they serve on Sunwing flights (nothing).<br />
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We landed early in Varadero, put our bags in the luggage locker, and headed to the beach and the hotel pool/snackbar.<br />
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The resort itself was very pleasant. The layout has a 'quiet section' and a main hotel. The quiet section is far from the shows and noise of the main hotel, which is good if you are travelling with boys. If you come to Varadero to party, this is not the section of the hotel for you.<br />
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It didn't take the boys long to figure out "Uno pina colada por favor" and soon they were best friends with the bartenders all over the resort.<br />
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Buddy adopted this banana tree, and checked every day to see if the bananas were ready for picking. If they had of ripened, I'm sure he would have had them for lunch.<br />
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Unfortunately, it rained A LOT while we were in Cuba. That meant it was hard to get in beach time, but we made the most of it when the weather improved to overcast, and had a really good vacation with lots of beach time and lots of trips into town, and even a few volleyball games.<br />
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We did some hiking on the beach, and found coral and shells, and we jumped and dove in the waves too! Unfortunately, the schedule at the resort didn't allow us to catch many of their shows - although we did see an animal show with dancing puppies and a cheeky pony, and a monkey.</div>
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It rained so much in Cuba, that the rooms below us were sometimes flooded out. Despite this, guests continued to be put in them. I can't think of much that would ruin your vacation faster than having your room flooded, and when I say flooded, I'm not exaggerating. This is the baggage car between our rooms and the next wing of the hotel. It is on the cart path. Luckily we were on the second storey.</div>
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In fact there was a lot about the resort that suggested we could have picked a better spot. Things like only hand towels in the room (no shower towels at all!), no beach towels until day three, very late meals, and then long lines to get in, beds with only one sheet on them, no pillows to speak of, many sick guests (food handling??), and so on. Its not a resort we'll return to.</div>
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Despite all this, the vacation was really quite good. we rode a Cocotaxi into town, and did some shopping, and we took an old car for a ride. There were bands playing music all over, and the bartenders were always friendly.</div>
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So what made the trip good? Well, a mix of things. We made friends with some really great people, and we brought along some card games that are really a lot of fun for all of us (seriously, get <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Mayfair-ASI5712-Saboteur/dp/B013FAC1JO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453171244&sr=8-2&keywords=saboteur+card+game" target="_blank">Saboteur</a> - everyone loves it!) and when the weather was really bad, we just laughed and ran in the rain. Sometimes, that's all you can really do!</div>
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littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-52939526648206527332015-11-15T00:00:00.001-05:002015-11-15T00:00:31.524-05:00The Laundry Room RevisitedIf you've been reading along on this post, you may remember that waaaay back in 2012 (three whole years ago!) I moved things around in our laundry room so that the <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2012/11/dryer-vent-relocate.html">dryer no longer vented to the garage</a>.<br />
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Well, by way of confession... I never completely completed that job. I mean, the dryer vented properly, but I never patched the drywall where the previous owner had butchered it, and I never properly plugged the hole to the garage where the dryer had been venting. Instead I filled up the hole with plastic bags and pushed our dryer in place to hide it.<br />
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In the past few months though, the dryer that came with the house has been getting slower and slower to dry clothes, and the washer has been leaking and thumping around a lot. We decided its time for a new laundry pair.<br />
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Then when bought the machines, we were shocked to find they wouldn't fit in the old spot and had to be stacked. Once they were stacked, the cord for the new machine couldn't reach the plug for the old machine, and long story short, it was time to finish the job I started three years ago.<br />
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I wasn't going to bother blogging about this for two equally good reasons:<br />
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<li>I've become blase about blogging. Basically I don't any more.</li>
<li>Blogging about moving wires is about as boring as it gets. </li>
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but then I opened up the wall and was immediately BLOWN AWAY by what was in there, and just had to. Aren't you lucky. Basically this entry begins with a photo of a wall that's been opened up and cleaned up a bunch so you miss the whole dryer buying/stacking/attempt at plugging in and start right in with the good stuff.</div>
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The scene of the crime. You may be wondering why there is a white square around the area I am working. Its because the previous owner decided to just cover this mess with an oversized slab of drywall, then paint the wall. I guess that was an easy way to do things because all he needed was 6 screws to slab over the hole in the wall.</div>
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You may also have noticed that a stud has been cut about 5" above the floor and is being held up by... well, nothing. I guess the drywall screws are what's holding it. For those who haven't taken an engineering course, this is a bad thing. The bathroom above exerts a distributed load on the ceiling below which transfers that load through the studs to the floor in here. First priority - fix the stud.</div>
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Harder to see is the lint in the stud bay. Lots of it - from the dryer vent not carrying all the way through the wall. Lint means moisture, moisture is bad. Especially on a garage wall. But we've been through all that before. </div>
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The yellow insulation column on the left of teh picture is the vent stack for our gas water heater. There is a piece of metal strapping across the bottom of the picture - once upon a time it held the vent in place on the stud that used to go to the floor.</div>
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This is a double wall. It carries the main drain stack and venting for utilities in it, so luckily there is a lot of room to work in here. before i took this picture I used some extra insulation from the basement to stuff in where the insulation had been removed for teh old dryer vent. </div>
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Let fix the stud!</h3>
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Hey fancy! I used the subheading autoformat tool! Anyways, in order to fix the cutaway stud, I needed to sister in new wood. You can see the stuff I used next to the drill in the photo above.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3gi3a5S4g3mlPK-D8Px_ZnZyMiyLGPmNhhgl8orZHgorJe2S7GQ2WqWmNODEvetYEc1YZS2EnZDK1rkc4eXs7rUh-LBqtpbEjvPrQgqVOURQb8GgpL21XwrEYGRLpMfZBzB2OaHPxgF4v/s1600/DSC_0320.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3gi3a5S4g3mlPK-D8Px_ZnZyMiyLGPmNhhgl8orZHgorJe2S7GQ2WqWmNODEvetYEc1YZS2EnZDK1rkc4eXs7rUh-LBqtpbEjvPrQgqVOURQb8GgpL21XwrEYGRLpMfZBzB2OaHPxgF4v/s640/DSC_0320.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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I like to hold the wood in place with a clamp to do this. It frees up a hand, and lets me line everything up before I use any fasteners. To prove I am not the ultimate handyman, I looked through my collection of odds and sods in the basement and got a bunch of 3" wood screws to pull teh boards together. They didn't match. If anyone asks, I'll say the previous owner did it.</div>
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Once that long board was in place with three screws through into the old stud, I put in a shorty below.</div>
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Apparently I also undid the screws holding the junction box for the laundry as well. Anyways, the little piece of wood was cut a little long to take the load from teh stud, and screwed to the new wood. Then both were screwed to the floor in opposing directions. Very solid.</div>
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It's time to get started on electric stuff...</div>
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Playing with Junction boxes - before reading any further, go turn off the breaker to your dryer.</h3>
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Step one in this portion of the show is disassembling the existing box. The previous owner in his wisdom had used wood screws to attach the cover to this box. That was a bad idea for a few reasons - the pointy ends of the screws could have pierced a wire, they fit poorly, and they ruined the threads on the screw holes. Luckily though, he got the outlet wired properly.</div>
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The dryer outlet wires are just poked in holes and then screws are tightened up to sandwich the wire in place. Its a sort of vise. Super easy to assemble and disassemble, but also super easy to screw up the wire positions. So before proceeding any further, get a sharpie (your breaker is off right?) and label the wire positions.</div>
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Two seconds now will mean no sparks later, and you really don't want to fry the board in your new dryer. With that done, get out a red Robertson screwdriver and loosen - don't remove - all the screws. The wires will come free as teh screws are loosened, and you will be left with the box in one hand and outlet in the other. Put the outlet someplace safe, and repeat teh procedure with the ground screw and the clamp on the side of the outlet box. Save them if they are useful. If the previous owner used woodscrews and stripped the threads on your box, toss it out. With vigour. Curse you, previous owner!</div>
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On Junction Boxes</h4>
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Back when I worked in hardware stores as a kid, the odd time someone would come by and unwrap a mystery you never knew existed. Here goes... stuff you didn't know about electric boxes.</div>
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For the dryer I got a common square junction box. Its a pretty boring thing. You've seen dozens of them. But look closely at the sides...</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXc8aHsqIpLTJT_k5bW0IG6bJJVLrhpdLaiDCEzM_yduTNJr3sCeHWLYosIFZ1SRKTI4024e2sGoFzxZ00zVts2REoUFhYkQP9dlPhRWg5DcvlxllF3z3MsjmBytP2bOJANyxyS88MdJK9/s1600/DSC_0324.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXc8aHsqIpLTJT_k5bW0IG6bJJVLrhpdLaiDCEzM_yduTNJr3sCeHWLYosIFZ1SRKTI4024e2sGoFzxZ00zVts2REoUFhYkQP9dlPhRWg5DcvlxllF3z3MsjmBytP2bOJANyxyS88MdJK9/s640/DSC_0324.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Free Mount Side</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdp0BhpnSrxhdYhqHPxECi6sX4bdZu9Wsjeq3UfhsbADxjz5gBgaV6PdvmFNlF4AQyvv0o7REcXcnfRrQr7BQ2g72VBZZwTny_QEQ7XaoTLUskxVqvcCeu0-4Hdeewmr8h4CGXREOQNFP3/s1600/DSC_0325.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdp0BhpnSrxhdYhqHPxECi6sX4bdZu9Wsjeq3UfhsbADxjz5gBgaV6PdvmFNlF4AQyvv0o7REcXcnfRrQr7BQ2g72VBZZwTny_QEQ7XaoTLUskxVqvcCeu0-4Hdeewmr8h4CGXREOQNFP3/s640/DSC_0325.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drywall mount side</td></tr>
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On one side of the box, the screw holes are halfway back in the box. This side of the junction box is what I call the "Free mount side" you can mount this box anywhere and line it up with anything. It has no locked position.</div>
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The opposite side of the box has a pair of little tabs and the screw holes are at the bottom of the box. This is the drywall mount side. If you bend out the tabs and rest them on a drywall stud, the space from the tabs to the top of the box will exactly equal the thickness of a sheet of drywall. (Be amazed now) and you will have 4 drill holes instead of 2. (Be even more amazed)</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMUUTKPXKPyNQZAwdyuIh-lcIKSSj1wMjveqKBhqe8D_0EKWCpqDqG2EQe0Bs85fewDg7DinuwALQzkxgOzEaiu23WaB9Mfp3SyMwaEYogDLeovaOhEFXgVgQjITzafr7X6jgvGf9Q0n_g/s1600/DSC_0327.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="423" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMUUTKPXKPyNQZAwdyuIh-lcIKSSj1wMjveqKBhqe8D_0EKWCpqDqG2EQe0Bs85fewDg7DinuwALQzkxgOzEaiu23WaB9Mfp3SyMwaEYogDLeovaOhEFXgVgQjITzafr7X6jgvGf9Q0n_g/s640/DSC_0327.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My camera refused to focus on the box. Oh well.</td></tr>
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Now that the tabs define which side of the box will be against a stud, we can go ahead and knock out one of the knockouts on the other side to accommodate our wire.</div>
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This is also a good time to talk about the wire clamp. The wire clamp in the top right corner of the box does two things. First and most importantly, it prevents teh wire from being cut by the sharp edge of the box. Second, it prevents teh wire from being pulled or chafing. It does these things by going arounds the wire, and then inside the knockout of the box. As you tighten the screw on the clamp, it will press down on the wire, expanding the outer ring of the clam, and holding itself against teh box. If you can move the clamp around, its not working right. Especially in a laundry room where there is a lof of vibration, you want to get this right - otherwise one day you will be surprised by magic smoke coming out of your wires. </div>
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At this point the electric is 'roughed in' If you paid an electrician to rough in a dryer hookup, this is what you would have (minus the markings on the plug)</div>
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With the electric roughed in, I could switch trades and put away the electrician tools to take out the drywall tools. I hate drywalling.</div>
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Drywall Time!</h3>
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Before I actually start doing drywall, I want to talk cutting tools. First a drywall saw.</div>
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This is one of my drywall saws. I think I have about 3 of them. They come and go. I don't pay them much attention. You can pick them up for a couple dollars and all seem to work about as well as any other. Drywall saws have pointy tips and are great for stabbing into a sheet of drywall to cut a hole in the middle of it. Because they are so thin, you can cut tight circles with them. I used one of these to cut out the <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2015/10/two-tubelights-twinkling.html">tube lights </a>holes in the dining room ceiling. The trouble with these saws is that they tear aggressively at the paper backing on drywall and make a big mess of dust. For rough work in spots that will be hidden, they are a great tool.</div>
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Another important tool to have is a sharp utility knife. This one from sears has been with me for years.</div>
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Right now it has a hook blade in it from working on the roof. The nice thing about these knives is that the blades in them are interchangeable - and they have on-board storage for spare blades. Often they come pre-loaded with a half dozen spare blades.<br />
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For a blade change, you just undo the centre screw, take it apart, and swap out the blades.<br />
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This one was left out when I did the roof and all the blades got rusty - but the knife is still fine. <br />
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Cutting drywall with one of these is super easy - you just mark a line and score it with the knife...</div>
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The with a quick snap, fold the drywall to make a book, and use the knife to score up the paper.<br />
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The drywall will break where the knife cut as long as you are mostly in a straight line. The edge of the drywall will be a little jagged though, so its a good idea to 'shave' along the rough edges after cutting. I have a drywall rasp for that, but a small job like this didn't make it worthwhile to dig it out, so I just ran the blade along the edge to smooth it out.<br />
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Taking the drywall into the laundry, I lined up the dryer box and cut out its sides using the drywall saw. Then using the knife, I scored the bottom, folded and cut away to make the dryer box's spot.<br />
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A few screws, and we're ready for tape and mud... But wait - a test of the dryer cord isn't looking good. It still won't reach! (Insert swear words here)</div>
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Luckily I hadn't cut the excess wire to the junction box. I used the drywall saw to cut a hole in the wall and move the box up the stud bay...(Those are the drum stabilizers in the bag taped to the wall - won't lose them that way).</div>
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And used the old plug with the marks from when I disconnected everything to get it all wired up. It fits good!<br />
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The drywall patch is simpler now too! I just used the offcut from the first patch, and with a little trim, I had a good fit.<br />
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Magic with mud, and its looking good. After this I was able to hook up the dryer vent and Momma got started on laundry - the new machines are much quieter, I think we'll like them! Tomorrow I'll sand and finish mudding but I need this first coat to dry. Heat from the dryer should help.<br />
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For my next job, I need to build a cabinet to hide the laundry venting and to allow Momma a spot to put her laundry baskets - these new machines are a lot bigger than the old ones and we lost all our storage!</div>
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littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-34325029499778484072015-10-12T22:41:00.002-04:002015-10-12T22:41:57.064-04:00Past due for a tool post... A new LatheIf you've been following this space, you may be wondering why no cool new tools have been featured lately. Its simple - I'm hoarding my cash away in ETF's and reassuring myself that long term gain is more important than new toys. WHICH IS TRUE.<br />
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But every now and then I slip up and buy something because - WOW! Shiney!<br />
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Which is exactly how I ended up with with a Beaver/Rockwell lathe in the garage over thanksgiving weekend. You may wonder what I am going to do with this lathe, and honestly, so do I. But lately I have been tinkering in the garage - I even made a coin bank for Buddy, and a thing that makes a galloping horse sound because... WOW, Shiney!! Lookit that lathe!<br />
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(BTW a galloping horse noisemaker in the hands of boys can get very annoying.)<br />
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So anyways, I was thumbing through Kijiji on a slow day and came across an ad from an estate sale for a lathe and tools for a good price, so I went and had a look. The seller was a retired school principal whose Dad had recently died, and they had sold everything off, but this lathe. The more of the story he told, the lower the price got, and the more stuff there was that got thrown in.<br />
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There were two tool rests, a sanding drum, a pile of tapers - some with centres, some without. a threading die, chisels and gouges and parting tools.<br />
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Most of the tools are made of Sheffield steel or german steel. The newer tools are from Eatons, made here in Canada. Some of the handles are in rough shape. Old chisels get like that.</div>
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Once the lathe was home, it took some work to clear out a corner of the garage, but I managed to fit it in. It looks small and forlorn over there. I need to install the motor properly and rewire the switch/cord. Then we'll see what this tool can teach me.</div>
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littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-29612851969242475072015-10-04T10:18:00.001-04:002019-10-17T18:06:28.354-04:00Two Tubelights TwinklingSO I spent the last few weeks working evenings and weekends to put a new roof on the house. And a new roof meant I FINALLY got to install Solar Tubes to light up the dining room, which has been decidedly gloomy since we moved in. This has been on my to-do list since, well, forever.<br />
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Mind the mess, focus on the lights. In the ceiling.<br />
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The cool thing about solar tubes is that they take a gloomy room (like our dining room) and bring in natural light from outside un-gloomify it. You'll find these things marketed as suntunnels, Solar tubes, tube lights, etc. all over the place. We paid around (GASP!) $350 per light for ours at Home Depot. The install isn't especially difficult, and tool-wise you only really need a jigsaw and a screwdriver. Some basic roofing tools don't hurt, and you should understand how to install a roof vent since the technique is about the same.<br />
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So here we go...<br />
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For the first step, determine the spot where the tube lights go. Pick a spot and put an exploratory hole in the ceiling. This hole should be small enough that you can hide it with a dab of caulk. Now get a rod-like object (Piece of dowel, coathanger, wire) and poke it up through the hole and into the attic above.<br />
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In the attic, measure 11" around the hole to make a circle. See if there is anything you will hit if you cut out a circle that big. You may find wires, framing members, or pipes up there. If you do, you will have to adjust the location of your hole or relocate pipes and wires (which sucks). Luckily, all I had around my hole was insulation, which I just cut away.<br />
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Now that you know where the centre of your hole will be, take a plumb bob and suspend it from the underside of the roof deck. When the bob hangs right over the centre of your circle, drive a nail or screw up through the roof deck above. This will mark your lights location outside.<br />
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Once you have things marked out, have your wife stand in the room below holding up a vacuum, and with a drywall saw, cut out the circle in the ceiling. With luck, the vacuum will suck up most of the drywall dust before it makes a mess. As the dude in the attic, you will enjoy the fresh air that arrives once the hole is cut out.<br />
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Sadly I have no pics of these steps since time spent in the ceiling is uncomfortable and not conducive to photography. Sorry.<br />
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Now its time to go up on the roof...<br />
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Since I was re-roofing, I took all the shingles off the roof until I had a clear roof deck. You don't have to do this to install these lights, but it is probably easier to do the install without working around old roofing. Dunno.<br />
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I marked the nails with a blob of white paint so they'd be easy to spot. Then I laid out the cuts for the shrouds that go on the roof. The cutouts are an arc top and bottom, with straight sides spaced at 14". In order to be safe, I cut out a small section of the markup. This means I could work on the roof without worrying about falling through the open hole, but I would remember when to stop roofing to install the lights.<br />
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Once I reached the holes, I got out my trusty jigsaw and cut out the rest of the hole. With that done, I shingled up to about half way over the hole. With the hole cut out, I smeared the back of the flange in roofing tar, and placed the hood over the hole, then tested how the next row of shingles would align.<br />
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... And checked the alignment of the hood to the light below...<br />
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With everything lined up, I went ahead and installed the screws to hold it all in place. The tar gooed out of the edges and through the screw holes making a nice seal.<br />
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With the hood in place, I got out the tubes. The tubes come in three sections, but I found that we didn't need the lower piece. Careful measurement is needed to set the tubes to just the right length. Peel away th eprotective coating on the inside and admire the shiny reflective surface, then put them through the attic.<br />
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The pieces are slid together, and tape goes over the joints. Our length of need was 37". Since the tape is all you have to hold things together, and to insulate the whole thing, use it with vigour. Finally slide the tubes into the shrouds from above, screw the lids on, and voila! Suntunnels!<br />
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We have a mess to clean up - roofing is messy work.<br />
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With the lights in, the dining room is notably brighter. At breakfast this morning we were noticing the difference and overall we are pleased with the results of this. Hopefully this will reduce the daytime electric use, although I imagine it will take a long time to recoup the cost of these tunnels. We'll have to see how they fare over time.<br />
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They are definitely a good thing though, the natural light is a nice thing that back room!<br />
<br />littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-21920677718232859152015-09-07T21:01:00.009-04:002015-10-12T22:42:53.301-04:00Oh ShenandoahSo we just got home from a week in Shenandoah national Park in Virginia. This is mostly a photo dump until I get around to writing a post about the trip...<br />
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<br />littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-22928594488791338582015-08-13T18:51:00.001-04:002015-10-12T22:42:53.308-04:00Backyard CampingLately there has been much chatter between online friends about tents and camping and gear and so on. This got me thinking - we take our kids camping a lot, but are they actually camping, or just bumping along. So when I got home tonight, I pulled out our trusty old tent and tossed it in the backyard. Then I told the boys that if they set it up they could sleep out in it.<br />
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When they came asking for help, I told them I was eaten by a bear. Here is the progress...<br />
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Step 1 - unpacking. No help needed. Fo' Sho'<br />
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Step 2: "Dad, he won't do what I say" Too bad. I was eaten by a bear.</div>
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Step 3: Assembling poles. The shock cords make this super easy. Even if you're seven and your four year old brother keeps pulling the other end.<br />
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Step 4: Assembly. here I had to step in to show him the tent was upside down. After that, feeding the poles through the sleeves was a non-issue. He did it without any prompts.<br />
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Step 5: Erection. I had to show him the way the poles fit in the corners, but then he put it up on his own. It was helpful to have a little brother stand on the opposite corner to keep the tent from moving.<br />
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Step 6: Getting the fly on took teamwork since the tent is taller than the boys. When they did get it on, it was upside down.<br />
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Hammering pegs in takes loads of work. But he got 'er done.<br />
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The little brother helped clip the fly on to the tent.<br />
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Time to furnish the palace. I'm not sure how many blankets, sleeping bags, stuffies, pillows etc. are out there. Many trips were made.<br />
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And here we are ready for bedtime! I guess this means Mom and I have the house to ourselves!<br />
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<br />littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-82008889264041940662015-07-30T10:25:00.002-04:002015-10-12T22:43:37.788-04:00Game-Changers. <div class="MsoNormal">
On another blog, a challenge was issued to think back through your life, and record the big game-changers. The moments or events, or decisions that brought you to who and where you are, with a focus especially on the positives. Here's my list. I could probably make a second one of the 'Family Game Changers' and I could make a third list of the negative choices, but I'm trying to keep it positive. Some of these were heartbreaking at the time, but lead to positive outcomes...<o:p></o:p></div>
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#1. Being in awe as a kid with Jacques Cousteau and his
voyages and discoveries - he was a strange role model, but I began to research
and realize in about grade 5 that he was really a normal guy and anyone could
have great adventures.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#2. In around Grade 6 doing a class field trip to a local
nature centre, and writing down turn-by-turn the route the bus took, then
retracing the route a week later on my bike. This was my first time sneaking
out of the house and my first 'expedition' that I put together on my own. I
remember calling my Mom from the nature centre and her freaking out about where
I was (it was a good 20km from home)<o:p></o:p></div>
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#3. Taking the Junior Leadership course in Cadets when I was
around 15. Its hard to explain to people who haven't been through it, but this
course basically destroys every facet of who you think you are, then forces the
kids to rebuild their self image from the ground up - add to the stresses of
the course that I was one of the unpopular kids, and you have a helluva tough
summer that transitioned me from saying "I can't." to "How can
I?"<o:p></o:p></div>
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#4 - At 19 serving a Mormon mission. I am not supportive of
the church now. At all. But this experience forced me to question the faith and
see through the veneer of "Do it for Jesus" to how a church-business
operates. It also fine-tuned my bullshit meter to hyper-sensitive, and gave me
an opportunity to develop some really strong persuasion/public speaking skills.
I remember sitting on the balcony of our apartment in Dallas GA and mapping out
where I wanted my life to be at 20-40-60 yrs ahead. I still reference those
notes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#5 - At 23 - My first child's birth. The incredible weight
of responsibility, pure love, and fear that mixed in the room that day was
palpable. I have had more confidence and more understanding with the kids that
followed, but my first child was an incredible rush of emotion when she was
born - mostly because I was so unprepared. I still am, so is she. We're all growing together.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#6 - At 25 - My first divorce. Two things came of this -
always have a plan b, and nothing is forever. Even the idea of anything being
'once-in-a-lifetime" is laughable to me. Also, you can't be in control of
everything, least of all the decisions of another person. I made a lot of
mistakes in that relationship, and likely the biggest was to not see the goals
of my partner as being as important as my own. I work hard in my current marriage to make sure this doesn't happen again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#7. - At 27 - Returning to school for Architecture, and
coming out with a Civil/Transportation diploma. Nothing has been as large of a
game changer as making the conscious decision to chart my course back to school
and into a professional career. It was where I met my wife, where I took
control of my destiny, and where I excelled for the first time. In the 4 years
I was in school there were a lot of 'out-there' achievements that I won't
detail here, except to say that I really did some awesome things in those
years, while raising a kid, holding a mortgage, and maintaining an honours
average, and building a relationship with SWMBO.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#8. Waiting 8 years to marry my wife. It was a long wait, but she
stuck it out. And when we did marry, we were firmly set in our relationship,
had a good community around us, and were familiar to family. We had an
incredible wedding, and our marriage is strong, even if it has rough spots from time to time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#9. Deciding to give up my dream home in the country for a
nice house in the city, and engineering both of our careers to be within
walking/biking distance of the office. It’s amazing working so close to home,
and is something I have never experienced since leaving grade school.<o:p></o:p></div>
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#10 Going on strike - Last year we were out on strike, and
quickly discovered who our friends were and who was like-minded to us. We also
got to see just how fragile our household economics were. That lead us to some
changes in lifestyle, and eventually to frugal living and saving. Currently we are working hard at building wealth.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The most critical thing I have found is that as long as you
are making controlled, conscious decisions and not just going with whatever is
easy, then you are going in the right direction.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I'd love to see others' lists. What in your life made you a better person, and how?</div>
littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-41198598145263200882015-05-27T21:45:00.001-04:002015-05-27T22:05:34.542-04:00Spring 2015 - Life Returns to the Backyard.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm going to act all nonchalant like no one noticed that I haven't blogged since, what? February? And I'm going to pretend that everyone is deeply distressed about the space being quiet for so long. But its all pretend.<br />
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I'm posting today because the backyard is looking incredibly green and Alive after a very long, very cold winter.<br />
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In case you haven't been following along, here is what our yard looked like a couple years back, when we moved in (Taken from the real estate listing - April 2012):<br />
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And then a year later, in full construction glory, it looked like this (May 2013):<br />
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And after much effort to build retaining walls, put in a new deck, liner and plumbing for the pool, things started taking shape and it looked like this (Oct 2013):<br />
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And then last summer things finally started to feel 'right' (June 2014):<br />
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So as our gardens emerge this spring, I am happy to see the gaps beginning to fill in, and to have a good sense of what things are going to shape up to be. Its starting to feel like what the back yard was intended to look like. Sure we still have holes where the hardy hydrangeas haven't emerged yet (they are so pokey!) and we need to get more under-story going in a few spots - and I just relocated a lungwort, that's still pouting about it. But overall, the shape is emerging...<br />
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I present the spring expectancy for the gardens, 2015 edition.<br />
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<Begin Drum Roll Now><br />
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In keeping with tradition, I have not tidied the yard before taking pictures. I mean, why stop when the mess of toys has come to be expected.<br />
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First off the Great Weeping Hadrian Wall of Dreams. Its still standing, not showing any hint of movement. And it looks good too! The orange rope keeps dogs and kids on the lawn and out of the plants.<br />
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The railing still (STILL!) isn't in place. This is because I'm suffering through design anxiety. I know the look I want, I just don't know how to get there. And now that <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2014/10/the-shed-has-doors.html">the shed is done</a>, I feel like I have to tie the designs together, and they really, really don't jive. Drama. I need to just do it.<br />
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See the Jam Jar lights on those poles? They still work after 2 years, so I think I got the <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2013/05/digging-down-building-up.html">wiring all waterproof!</a> Also, 3 X 100 watt bulbs right at the pool does a better job than 1 X 1200 watt bulb mounted to the house 30 feet away.<br />
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The day-lilies and iris are putting out massive greenery, and buds are just forming. I think we'll have a flood of colour shortly, but I am getting some root rot in the Iris. I should thin them and look at soil drainage.<br />
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Behind the pool, the espalier has jumped up to the top of the frame. Soon we'll reach the top of the fence, and then I'm not sure what we do with it...<br />
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The only thing actually in bloom right now are our Iris Siberica "Shaker's Prayer" (Siberian Iris) - I used it in the top pic, and it is a very good plant. Slow spreader, beautiful blooms, impossible to kill. They put out 5 blooms per stalk, and have pretty good staying power for an early plant. The other Iris are coming on soon though, and the peonies are full of buds. I'll have to update with another garden tour in a week or so. We also have a few tulips hanging on but their days are numbered.<br />
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Early in the spring I was excited when some chickadees checked out the birdhouses, but I guess they didn't like them so much. We have no tenants. Its too bad, the boys had a good time making the houses with me. All of our neighbours have commented on a decline in the number of birds at feeders this winter though, so I guess maybe its not just our houses that are the problem. I know the siting of the houses is less than perfect, but I was still hoping.<br />
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In the shady corners of the yard, the espalier is a lot shorter - no surprise there. I expect it will catch up eventually. Patience. There were a lot of blooms on the trees this spring, which is a good sign. Now we'll have to see how many were pollinated, and if the fruit sets, and finally, how much damage the squirrels and raccoons do before the fall.<br />
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Fingers crossed that they leave us a couple apples.<br />
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So all this brings us to the Seuss Tree.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM-OK9dZiePK0Hr3TjcY8pKbVjR_-p8m2uhUL0n50cZG6gUxMxMP2kTIqpAWdi_P2dSP35cB7UwL0W3NbDj6KOQ_EMbH5wE8rAtEQcvu3GRm6Fhy-6UFs-VUK8sLALt-kws8xYEMwUbLIF/s1600/DSC_0028.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM-OK9dZiePK0Hr3TjcY8pKbVjR_-p8m2uhUL0n50cZG6gUxMxMP2kTIqpAWdi_P2dSP35cB7UwL0W3NbDj6KOQ_EMbH5wE8rAtEQcvu3GRm6Fhy-6UFs-VUK8sLALt-kws8xYEMwUbLIF/s640/DSC_0028.JPG" width="422" /></a></div>
I know its supposed to be a Blue Spruce, and I know they can be a little... quirky? But this? Its got a reverse curve in its trunk. I'm not sure what to make of it. If it grows to maturity it will block the path between the gate and the yard. I think its got to go. I think we're going to end up replacing it with a laundry tree. Maybe I'll write up that project next. Or sometime. I mean, its going on 4 months since my last post, so I wouldn't get too excited waiting for the next one.littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-84994674844113666572015-02-15T13:07:00.001-05:002015-10-12T22:43:10.539-04:00Installing Hardwood flooring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtcs7fkd4oZahVkQBTXz6O_dUGZ0uTimsB87Vu1PKBRvMcoIt5UP77NN8ELo7HPM_YlPY8x0Sm1yehFWtJ6ByDBZjmjeCjzGLcUq60Dfc-Mmclao43BePxKdLs5TU4QvsvogeF_fNve94i/s1600/Cover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtcs7fkd4oZahVkQBTXz6O_dUGZ0uTimsB87Vu1PKBRvMcoIt5UP77NN8ELo7HPM_YlPY8x0Sm1yehFWtJ6ByDBZjmjeCjzGLcUq60Dfc-Mmclao43BePxKdLs5TU4QvsvogeF_fNve94i/s1600/Cover.JPG" height="640" width="422" /></a></div>
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This space has been quiet as we've lapsed into hibernation mode, but somehow despite the cold, and sickness and everything else that comes with winter in Canada, we've managed to get a hardwood floor install done in the spare bedroom.<div>
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Before starting on this, I got my heart set on doing a picture frame floor. There are some risks associated with stretching yourself into this sort of utilitarian art, mostly that once you start you can't go back, and that whatever flaws come up because of stretching will negate the awesomeness of everything else you do in the project. Nevertheless, I wanted to try, and so we now have a spare room (rarely visited) with a pretty cool floor... and a few small hiccups that will be covered by furniture. Forever.</div>
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Months ago we tore up the carpet in this room, only to discover some <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2015/01/floor-fixing-preparing-for-hardwood.html">rot in the subfloor</a>. That took the wind out of our sails and feeling woebegone, I stalled on the project for months. This post picks up where that floor repair left off.</div>
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The first step in laying the floor is to prepare the subfloor. In our case that meant finding the high and low spots. We used a 6 ft long straightedge, and made a grid of marks one foot apart. Then with straight edge up on its side, we used chalk to mark where the floor was high or low.</div>
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Many online instructions advised raising the low spots by filling with a leveling agent and lowering the high spots with aggressive sanding.</div>
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I used my Triton Sander <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2014/03/tool-review-triton-palm-sized-belt.html">(review here)</a> and sanded down the worst of the high spots, then rechecked with the level and found that the floor was mostly flat. This brought relief since I didn't want to mess with a leveling agent. The sanding kicked up a lot of dust, and the sander really heated up from the aggressive use, but it all worked well.</div>
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With the floor mostly level, I started putting flooring screws into the floor to eliminate squeaks and stiffen the floor. At some point, someone before me had done this same task but with nails. I decided to just put a screw between each pair of nails in the floor. I went through a lot of screws. Once I was done, the floor was noticeably stiffer, and silent. If anyone ever lifts this hardwood, they will find 3 different sets of flooring fasteners. I wonder if they will add a fourth.</div>
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After all the screws were in, the high spots were even lower, and the floor was very flat. It was time for Kraft paper. Putting down paper under a floor is an object of some debate. First there is the debate as to what the purpose of the paper is in the first place. Historically, the paper was meant to block out dust and light from seeping through the hardwood into rooms below. There are stories of NY tenement apartments where the pinpricks of light from upper stories filter down through the floorboards, and of sweeping dust "through the cracks" to apartments below.</div>
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Today, that really isn't an issue, since most folks have ceilings. Some people claim the paper acts as an airbreak, preventing heating from escaping to upper stories. Some also claim it prevents the hardwood from scraping against the subfloor, creating squeaks. Some say it is a relic of days gone by, and does nothing at all. I have no opinion on any of these ideas, but I had a roll of rosin paper and a roll of tar paper, so I figured what the heck, no reason not to lay the paper since it wouldn't hurt anything. I asked online about the advantages of Tar vs Rosin paper for this, and opened a furious debate. In the end I went with rosin paper since it was the smaller of the two rolls and I hoped I would finish it off and free up some storage space. (I didn't) My helpers were very helpful working the staple gun and very-sharp-knife.</div>
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The one tip I can offer about laying paper for hardwood is to lay it so it is perpendicular to the flooring. This means that the pieces of flooring won't catch on the seams in the paper.</div>
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With the rosin paper down, and the floor leveled, I could finally start laying out the floor. I marked the floor joist locations on the walls, Then checked the walls for squareness. The advantage of a picture frame floor is that the frame eats up whatever out-of-squareness you have in your walls. The disadvantage is that you end up needing to make some very precise cuts and pre-thinking a lot of the layout. It is not a difficult thing to do, but you can't just start slapping down the wood.</div>
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Using a stringline, I laid out a 90° corner two strips of wood out from the wall. A trick to be sure things are square is to use a 3-4-5 triangle for your layout. This means that a triangle with sides measuring 3 ft and 4 ft will have a hypotenuse 5 ft long.</div>
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A<sup>2</sup> + B<sup>2</sup> =
C<sup>2<br />
</sup>3<sup>2</sup> + 4<sup>2</sup> = C<sup>2<br />
</sup>9 + 16 = C<sup>2<br />
</sup>25 = C<sup>2<br />
</sup>5 = C<sup><o:p></o:p></sup></div>
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Once my string was square, I set to cutting and placing the corner pieces and locking them in. to do this, I got some cheap MDF and laid it in line with the string line. The MDF would act as a guide to lay the hardwood to.</div>
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I used a mitre sled to cut all my angled cuts. The trick of a mitre sled is that it has a pair of fences that form a 90° angle. The angle is very nearly bisected by the saw blade, but doesn't have to be right at 45° since the included angle will always add to 90° as long as the fences are kept square. By cutting two boards , no matter what the angle on either side of the blade is, the two boards will always mate flush to form a 90° angle with no gap.</div>
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With my corner pieces cut at 90°, it was time to actually start laying hardwood!</div>
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Here I made a mistake. I thought that using brads to hold the edge boards in place would be strong enough. I know that you are supposed to use screws, but I thought that brads would be less intrusive and reduce risk of the boards splitting. I was wrong. Trust me, use screws and avoid much frustration. See how nice and tight the corner is up there? See how perfect it is? Well, every board I put in bent the brads and drove that corner out of square, and there was no going back to tighten it up. Lesson learned and an 1/8" gap now lives in that corner. I have a dresser to put over it.</div>
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Luckily, working around the closet doors turned out much better.</div>
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With the first rows set in place, I started working on the field, which goes pretty quick. Its just a matter of setting boards in place, snugging them up, and whacking the flooring nailer with the big-ass hammer. </div>
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First row with the floor nailer. Yay, this is fun!</div>
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Almost halfway through and the glitter is starting to tarnish</div>
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Satisfying corner work looks all professional and stuff.</div>
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<br />Regular vacuuming keeps sawdust and debris at bay. Even so, the house is full of sawdust and debris. By this point laying hardwood is no longer fun.</div>
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Once I started getting close to done, it was time to sweat over the last side of the picture frame. because I am a DIY guy and not a pro, I found myself in trouble. My layout was off by 1/4" which meant my picture frame would be unperfect. I couldn't put a 1/4" sliver of wood in as the last row of hardwood, so I was flustered, and left off work for a week.</div>
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During that week I hung out on a beach in Cuba and thought about what to do.</div>
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<br />Inspired by Rum Punch and Cubatas, I returned home to finish the job. First I laid out a bunch of boards to replicate what the corner would look like when it was completed.</div>
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<br />With that done, I marked and cut off a board to approximately the right length for the corner. </div>
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<br />I used a scrap of wood behind it to support while I nailed and pinned it in place, Then finished laying in the field.</div>
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Being off by 1/4" on the angle gave me enough clearance from the wall that I could maintain my 2 board picture frame, but slide in a 1" board against the wall. The trim would hide the narrow board. I had a good plan and went with it.</div>
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In no time the whole floor was complete, and now we are ready for baseboards and transitions. I am still deciding whether to continue into the hallway (I hate the flooring out there) or do another bedroom next. I think it will be the hallway, but that is a pricey proposition with all the bullnosing I would need around the stairs. For now I'm focusing on finishing up the baseboards and trim in this room, and patching the drywall in the closet.</div>
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<br />In any case - all done - here's to the new floor in the spare room!</div>
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Yay Floor!!</div>
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littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-31508835930419340912015-01-04T15:15:00.001-05:002015-10-12T22:43:10.531-04:00Floor Fixing - Preparing for Hardwood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We bought hardwood to install upstairs in our spare bedroom a while back, then the project stalled out when we found ourselves on strike. After that the project moved forward just enough to see the carpet torn out and a rotten spot found along an exterior wall.<br />
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The rot scared me off the project for a long time, but I've decided to tackle the hardwood as much as I can, while patching the rot and then I can return to the problem spot as part of a bigger project. This blogpost will show how we patched the subfloor and prepped for hardwood, with the hardwood install following in a later post.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEkX1wcLQo0BtDOvnKCSt8EReA0YMr-Eawvx1o-EsovbN41gFB5hwVHQxhdGFBDmnPJV9sNAlcwTGMpUluPMUHuxJUAYwmEgSulYO2RRYwW4vrlLlShjYaOgOfKEm8G973ePzlVpOtz_hG/s1600/_DSC0813.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEkX1wcLQo0BtDOvnKCSt8EReA0YMr-Eawvx1o-EsovbN41gFB5hwVHQxhdGFBDmnPJV9sNAlcwTGMpUluPMUHuxJUAYwmEgSulYO2RRYwW4vrlLlShjYaOgOfKEm8G973ePzlVpOtz_hG/s1600/_DSC0813.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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Meet the problem.This is the back corner of a closet. The wall to the left (being attacked by a crowbar) is the rear exterior wall of our house. The wall to the right backs onto the chimney, but is also an exterior wall.<br />
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A tiny air gap in the corner of the wall has allowed moist exterior air to come into teh house. Once inside the air is trapped by the vapour barrier plastic, and absorbed by the wall framing and floorboards.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn9uyDrQTAW6CPC9TFi6NOvcq0pMjwAbQ4wa8HePjqY60CaXjKaT22G-s7teYnKlRwfuTP7_lIr2pdm0ITuwMXcvVt8H8m0_R2MvFiyT0jMsm947ZoWulioALt4keFiwoEP61Q4pOKhvBe/s1600/_DSC0814.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn9uyDrQTAW6CPC9TFi6NOvcq0pMjwAbQ4wa8HePjqY60CaXjKaT22G-s7teYnKlRwfuTP7_lIr2pdm0ITuwMXcvVt8H8m0_R2MvFiyT0jMsm947ZoWulioALt4keFiwoEP61Q4pOKhvBe/s1600/_DSC0814.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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In order to put the brakes on the rot, I needed to block the air infiltration, and in order to fix the floor I needed to replace the rotten plywood.</div>
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First order of business is to pull up the plywood and see how invasive things are.</div>
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Using just a prybar in the rotten sections, and a skilsaw in the solid wood, I removed the floor from the closet. This made for loads of little rotten wood flakes and some sawdust. It was tough fighting the nails in teh good wood, but the rotten sections just crumbled apart. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFRi8xrvqKAErPEMNQTTvhNvnIGiihrxSc9-ynVXBrHw9kHwVUS8quuYHx0MBsJ2BZyvSuVPQI2WsH7pZX-GfJ4l2fTzXI16Fv7ILJFM6szwPSc_3fG7G0MX6viREy8Qy3FRIJAJ-rynfw/s1600/_DSC0815.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFRi8xrvqKAErPEMNQTTvhNvnIGiihrxSc9-ynVXBrHw9kHwVUS8quuYHx0MBsJ2BZyvSuVPQI2WsH7pZX-GfJ4l2fTzXI16Fv7ILJFM6szwPSc_3fG7G0MX6viREy8Qy3FRIJAJ-rynfw/s1600/_DSC0815.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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With the plywood out, I used a handsaw to clean up the edges of the hole, and tidied things up. My next step was to stop up the airflow by using some expanding foam to fill in the gaps and holes. I boogered things up pretty good and left it to set up overnight. The next morning I cleaned up the over-flow and took this pic:</div>
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There was huge change once the airgap was sealed. Amazing how a detail like this can warm up a room! Ok, a closet. But still...</div>
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With the air gap sealed, I turned to installing cleats to mount boards on for the new subfloor to screw into. I found some scrap cedar left over from my shed build this summer, and predrilled holes to accept a 1/4" X 2-1/2" lag bolt. The ledger boards were lagged to the solid framing to give a spot for the subfloor to attach to. This was needed because when I cut away the subfloor, I missed cutting on a joist by about 5". The cleats would create a shelf for a board to sit on to act as a support to the edge of the plywood where I had cut it away.</div>
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My helper started the lags in the cleats...</div>
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And then I installed them and the board for the subfloor to sit on.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3owRJcHEcIuLSsH0d1eL5HNTlkLy55vd7Dk7FywcuLtBZI3pekMs1Lkp-oNWGLjfhbP6dAWcUjtbusnS4F-pqumRIIbTf5fOvoWAV40jiNTUHlEARx-6UMLAKgZNMhHlzZH-liGa6MHal/s1600/_DSC0819.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3owRJcHEcIuLSsH0d1eL5HNTlkLy55vd7Dk7FywcuLtBZI3pekMs1Lkp-oNWGLjfhbP6dAWcUjtbusnS4F-pqumRIIbTf5fOvoWAV40jiNTUHlEARx-6UMLAKgZNMhHlzZH-liGa6MHal/s1600/_DSC0819.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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If you look closely in that pic, you can see that I marked the top of the joists so I would know where the cleats are. This way, I was able to lag through the new board into teh cleats to hold everything snug and tight. The hardest part of this step was getting the board to sit in place and to pull it sug against the existing subfloor. Lag bolts acted as a clamp to pull things up tight. They were removed once everything was set up. </div>
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At this point I was ready to start installing new plywood. Step one was to get a piece of tar paper and lay it into the space. I stapled it to teh floor to prevent it from moving, then using a utility knife, cut out the outline of the missing plywood.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3QIhWUx82AGweAEdWQUfjhqzoCwz1ckpYVrtLsUZXMcJOQ68AUr7UWsY6sfCFdnEd3u3cB-8-4HZ5vop34G5CcEHMg493nFVNmVRcPEdbAzLXF731eKYOo2h9ojFxPu-h0QQcI2HdYZKn/s1600/_DSC0820.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3QIhWUx82AGweAEdWQUfjhqzoCwz1ckpYVrtLsUZXMcJOQ68AUr7UWsY6sfCFdnEd3u3cB-8-4HZ5vop34G5CcEHMg493nFVNmVRcPEdbAzLXF731eKYOo2h9ojFxPu-h0QQcI2HdYZKn/s1600/_DSC0820.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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The outline came out messy, but for the mostpart it showed the path I had taken when I freehanded the cut with the skil saw, and the imperfections in the house.</div>
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I stapled the template on a piece of plywood and took the whole thing out to the tablesaw. 15 minutes later, I returned with a nearly perfect patch for the subfloor.</div>
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When I came in, I found that my helper had marked up a scrap of wood I left out. It made me smile that he had copied my markings and on the opposite side had marked the board the way I mark them to go through the planer.</div>
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Anyways, with the patch cut, I brought it up stairs, used a jigsaw to adjust things a little, et voila - a perfect fit!<br />
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With things fitting so nicely, I was able to drive a pile of flooring screws into the patch and the surrounding boards to pull everything together , and I have a floor that is solid and ready for hardwood!<br />
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I will need to get a long straightedge out and mark high and low spots on the floor, then do some leveling and tightening next, and at last it will be time for hardwood!<br />
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littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-32269166039872361102015-01-01T14:53:00.002-05:002015-01-01T15:01:31.818-05:0014 for 2014 - A retrospectiveLast year I set 14 goals for our household. Trouble was each individual goat had subsets and lists and so my 14 goals was really more like 1400 goals by the time I was done. It was a hefty list, and I found that by August/September I had tripped over so many goals by trying to complete other goals that, well, the list was definately not going to be completed. Luckily there was some low-hanging fruit early on in the year to offset the stuff that we got waylaid on later. We also started into a bunch of projects that weren't on the list at all. Those were great starts but offered nothing so far as checking off boxes on the list.<br />
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Anyway, enough drivel. Lets begin...<br />
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1. Open up a doorway between the hallway and Dining room. </h3>
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Score: 0/1 = 0%</h3>
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Cumulative Score: 0%</h3>
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This is a total fail. I often look at the space and think I should start, but alas. It will jump to next year's list. Right now that space looks like this:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP3kZXZWP5uzfwNwS5mdrDQW5nsJTHCV8HNJYjEsL1BZfALT8oDpoafBuIIOhF3AzXfLRouPLT7s9od5w-cN0yx9uDquxuzdKbl8SQLXNDuGRxDaHAXwvfrGnqqsn9xYKDLdrh7_z7fu3B/s1600/_DSC0812.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP3kZXZWP5uzfwNwS5mdrDQW5nsJTHCV8HNJYjEsL1BZfALT8oDpoafBuIIOhF3AzXfLRouPLT7s9od5w-cN0yx9uDquxuzdKbl8SQLXNDuGRxDaHAXwvfrGnqqsn9xYKDLdrh7_z7fu3B/s1600/_DSC0812.JPG" height="640" width="422" /></a></div>
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All stuff, no door. The door is waiting in the garage, so there really is no excuse on this.</div>
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2. Family Escapes</h3>
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Score: 12/12 = 100%</h3>
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Cumulative Score: 50%</h3>
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We came through with family getaways for every month up to October. Then we realized that the trips were more stressful than staying home and decided to take the rest of the year off. Which we did. I count this as a success. What trips we did do produced some really good times. We spent a lot of time in Algonquin Park, camped in Ontario Parks, and tried staying in a NY State park for the first time ever. we even did a big trip on a cruise, which the boys still talk about. And I snuck in a charity race - the Warrior Dash - with a bunch of friends.</div>
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3. Build stuff</h3>
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Score: 3/7 = 60% (Sortof)</h3>
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Cumulative Score: 53%</h3>
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My list here is very different from what actually went down out in the garage/shop area. I did make a lot of stuff, and some of it was pretty cool. Some of it was firewood too. But facts are facts, I never built the reading wall for the master bedroom, and most of the rest of that list wasn't completed. But there were some other wins too - it turned out that SWMBO never really wanted crates in the bathroom (good thing - they turned out awful!) and a workbench for the garage was given to me by a friend. What I did make was fun and I learned a lot. I'm calling this a win despite not holding to the list. I could adjust that score upwards, but I wont.</div>
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4. Finish Stuff</h3>
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Score: 6/8 = 75%</h3>
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Cumulative Score: 59%</h3>
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This list went down fast and I got a lot done! Especially noteworthy was finally getting closet doors up in the boys room and redoing the kitchen knobs. Small things that were good to get out of the way. </div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BhMHAdlgSH4/UuRx821RxSI/AAAAAAAADpU/4znPaJ07FPU/s1600/IMG_20140123_193329.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BhMHAdlgSH4/UuRx821RxSI/AAAAAAAADpU/4znPaJ07FPU/s1600/IMG_20140123_193329.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
5. Re-Knob-inate the kitchen.</h3>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Score: 1/1 = 100%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 67%</h3>
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<div>
To be fair, this was a cheater goal on many levels. When we set the goal, I already knew we were go to replace the knobs, and I doubled up and put this same goal in 2 categories. I'm still taking the points to boost my score though. </div>
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<div>
We went through a long process of elimination to come up with our favourite knobs out of an initial set of about 40 patterns. Actually installing the knobs took little time compared to the process of selecting them. We are happy with our new knobs.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie-Oafs1wJSkpxPc6aZ1fJ1Nz5csQBDLEWOfdfQ742BZb6CYFIe0BE3mK407rubX7dfiV87pNADF8MwGnzqF0BvloSicRiU9iQA1jA-4marPaK64Tr2yMioLq4GIjdIGO3vjRhbwDA2AyB/s1600/IMG_20140104_165028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie-Oafs1wJSkpxPc6aZ1fJ1Nz5csQBDLEWOfdfQ742BZb6CYFIe0BE3mK407rubX7dfiV87pNADF8MwGnzqF0BvloSicRiU9iQA1jA-4marPaK64Tr2yMioLq4GIjdIGO3vjRhbwDA2AyB/s1600/IMG_20140104_165028.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
6. Clean out the garage, and create a working floor plan.</h3>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Score: 2/2 = 100%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 72.5%</h3>
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<div>
Ok, so this really was a big deal. In order to be effective in the garage, there had to be flow and workspace, and all the things we associate with a real room. I also needed to be able to move stuff around and protect space to park a car in there. Although there continues to be chronic issues with sawdust and I have just tackled the last of the lighting issues in the past week, the room is now functional. I went with a galley design, and put the tablesaw facing a garage door so that long or large pieces can be machined by opening the door. So far this winter a small space heater has been able to keep up with the cold as long as I put sawdust along the floor at the garage door to block drafts. </div>
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<div>
For Christmas, SWMBO bought me a set of anti-fatigue mats for out there, and the last piece left to tackle is storage of offcuts and templates/jigs. The space actually works really nicely right now for the sort of stuff I'm doing. I need the discipline to keep things neat and tidy!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhkNCB02iyhJNzNzR9uvvwOT9oUiVHVUv5SY67dUNlmVXb6xGbx9zb4xOQBvId_mCNyn0Axk5jDQDL6uciDSEg95zWzVRgp3piJFe8ri9jFfTM0YhXIksW-Z0Twetd1QgqXIB2MT3Hfe1f/s1600/_DSC0703.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhkNCB02iyhJNzNzR9uvvwOT9oUiVHVUv5SY67dUNlmVXb6xGbx9zb4xOQBvId_mCNyn0Axk5jDQDL6uciDSEg95zWzVRgp3piJFe8ri9jFfTM0YhXIksW-Z0Twetd1QgqXIB2MT3Hfe1f/s1600/_DSC0703.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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7. Get the old (new?) car functional.</h3>
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Score: 1/1 = 100%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 76%</h3>
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Nothing says panache like an ancient Mercedes W123 Diesel wheezing its way up the street. Ok so I got this old car and it looked like fun. It is fun, but a frustrating sort of fun too. I love this car, but it is older than dirt and barely alive. It took until summer to get it going, but now its on the road and acting as my daily driver - unless there is snow or ice in which case I share SWMBO's car. But anyways, the diesel runs (today) so the goal is accomplished. Don't check back tomorrow. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gNUCj935rG2GMAJYXMDM5isdeVvvsR7vNfuTnxjzYwQ9pGgsEiwTkEteAqNkKOgtKiHZ-NdLLk97j15aMe8DuDBQjAbyVDPKANqMWpmRUmAuOeJA3aNetez__4OLX3EvySp1p3QebO3i/s1600/_DSC1004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8gNUCj935rG2GMAJYXMDM5isdeVvvsR7vNfuTnxjzYwQ9pGgsEiwTkEteAqNkKOgtKiHZ-NdLLk97j15aMe8DuDBQjAbyVDPKANqMWpmRUmAuOeJA3aNetez__4OLX3EvySp1p3QebO3i/s1600/_DSC1004.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
8. Add a gas stove hookup in the kitchen and heat in the garage.</h3>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Score: 0/2 = 0%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 67%</h3>
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<div>
After I wrote this list, SWMBO was surprised by this item - until she saw the new gas stoves with a griddle in the middle. Griddle in the middle rhymes and makes us giggle every time we walk past the gas stoves at department stores. We are easily entertained. Anyways, we came dangerously close to accomplishing this goal late in the fall when the pool heater stopped heating, but then instead of repairing the pool heater, we closed the pool and left it for spring. Now we've realized that insulating the gap in teh bottom of the garage door is all that's needed to heat the garage so the goal may change, although a more permanent garage heater may still be on my list of wants.</div>
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Griddle in the middle. He he.</div>
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9. Re-roof the House.</h3>
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Score: 0/1 = 0%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 59%</h3>
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Didn't even come close. The roof looks pretty tired up front though. This may soon turn from a want to a need. I keep an eye on it and I'm a little concerned. Maybe in the spring. Maybe fall, but I think this will have to be done next year. I'm still up in the air on whether to DIY or hire it out.</div>
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10. Sell the Boat</h3>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Score: 1/1 = 100%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 63.5%</h3>
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<div>
This became critical in the middle of summer when SWMBO and I found our income sliced by 70% due to a strike at work, and needed to cut costs. I sold the boat at a big loss, but have had few regrets. The boat was a lot of fun for me, but also ate up lots of time and money. I tell myself I can still go sailing on OPB's (Other people's boats) but also know that I likely won't. Time to move along to other things. </div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="Newfie & Iris at the start" src="http://miatadude.com/sga/Cup2010/Day1/content/images/large/DSC_0274.jpg" height="640" width="427" /></div>
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11. Make some (any) progress on the basement.</h3>
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Score: 0/1 = 0%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 58%</h3>
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<div>
Well, as little as I got done - nothing more than napkin sketches - I have come up with great ideas for what I want to do. Soon I'll get going on this, but first I need to wrap up other things that have progressed until they stalled out. Believe it or not, the work stoppage mentioned above affected the basement progress through a cascade failure. I bought hardwood flooring to install in our bedrooms the week before we lost work. When we had no income, I sat on the hardwood in case I needed to return it. Now I have a couple thousand SF of hardwood to install before I even think of starting on the basement. Oh well, at least I have 2 new goals for next year now. There really is no excuse for not having the hardwood installed yet.</div>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
12. Paint the master bedroom.</h3>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Score: 1/1 = 100%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 61%</h3>
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We nailed this one so hard! SWMBO and I even agreed on colours for it, and then we got it all done lickety split! its so much nicer in blue than it was in dingy brown. Once I get that reading wall done and replace the missing trim... well, more for next year I guess, but the goal only mentioned paint. Score!</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkKfzH-MtGDVlclmh0Nz1G1lVfv0QN1ZIvB8S_4EhdPo_No0J8ChK3Iah41fMpQNnUk5pXC8j-IugDyzOWpPB2vnJhIS9liI4n51S9HT-XaQk51pGdfJJssLGUmzcs0zsvLP4cLGgf9aV8/s1600/_DSC0340.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkKfzH-MtGDVlclmh0Nz1G1lVfv0QN1ZIvB8S_4EhdPo_No0J8ChK3Iah41fMpQNnUk5pXC8j-IugDyzOWpPB2vnJhIS9liI4n51S9HT-XaQk51pGdfJJssLGUmzcs0zsvLP4cLGgf9aV8/s1600/_DSC0340.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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13. Fence the pool</h3>
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Score: 0.5/1 = 50%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 60%</h3>
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<div>
I'm allowing half-points here since I got the posts wrapped and lighting working, but I still have to string wire and put in railings. I was unhappy with the way the railings were going, and Stopped short of completion. I'm hoping to finish this off early next spring, but at least it has taken shape. half marks allowed just for how much of a pain its been.</div>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
14. Involve the kids.</h3>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Score: 1/1 = 100%</h3>
<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Cumulative Score: 63.2%</h3>
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<div>
I think we've done a great job of giving the kids a great year of experiences. Whether it was outdoors in a yurt or canoe, in the shop building stuff, snuggling and telling stories, or going to World Juniors Hockey Tournament game we've exposed them to a load of different environments and ideas, and now see them trying things, challenging things and doing things they might not have a year ago. Moving forward we need to get them more hands on and to build their confidence. I think they'll be fine.</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73GMON2t0vJ1cfxZKY2IHhbP5CxgsmlmBAx_dTTcbqSXDutv8dwbD9NGQdPCVRRUZgghzPLunQLsCQ1sk4v5n14IqE1TteOn4Tzn3_hfay8U9CZvJvbJQYVfcoeBYeV_asDi7R2ys_Wb2/s1600/_DSC0125.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73GMON2t0vJ1cfxZKY2IHhbP5CxgsmlmBAx_dTTcbqSXDutv8dwbD9NGQdPCVRRUZgghzPLunQLsCQ1sk4v5n14IqE1TteOn4Tzn3_hfay8U9CZvJvbJQYVfcoeBYeV_asDi7R2ys_Wb2/s1600/_DSC0125.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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<h3 style="background-color: white; color: #221818; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
Its a Passing Grade!</h3>
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<div>
With a total grade of 63.2, we get a pass, but not much of one. </div>
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<div>
What this summary doesn't show is all the challenges we overcame, and all the successes that weren't on the list above. In 2014 we survived a 3-week long strike at work, which really was a game-changer for us. In fact we didn't just survive, we excelled, bouncing back and regaining our losses through hard work and sacrifice within 90 days. </div>
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<div>
We did a lot of projects that weren't on the list above, and fit in a lot of quality experiences. We had one of the best Christmases ever with a house full of old and new friends, immediate and extended family, and a fantastic dinner. If 2015 comes close to 2014, I'll be happy. Our score may be 63%, but it feels like it should be in the high 80% range!<br />
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Happy New year to whoever reads this, and I hope your year is as good to you as 2014 was to us!</div>
</div>
littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-76564149147569096312014-12-18T14:26:00.000-05:002014-12-18T14:26:36.566-05:00Throwback Thursday...For throw-back thursday I point you to one of the best posts I have ever written...<br />
<br />
<a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2010/05/the-great-chicken-coop-relocation.html">http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2010/05/the-great-chicken-coop-relocation.html</a><br />
<br />
Give it a read, then read the next day's post too...littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-9239559437731701782014-11-20T11:01:00.000-05:002014-11-20T11:01:31.249-05:00Etsy - a new adventureSO at the encouragement of my little sister, I've been giving Etsy a go. I can't say I'm much of a marketer, and especially not an internet marketer, but at least it gives me an outlet to share the stuff I'm making in the garage. Lately its been recreating the wooden train set my Grandfather gave me when I was very small, but I have plans to make more stuff in the next few weeks that will get away from just train stuff. I've been spending gobs of time in the garage making sawdust lately - I've even assigned myself the title of <a href="https://twitter.com/Whittle_Bits">'Chief Sawdust Maker'</a> on twitter.<br />
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<a href="https://img0.etsystatic.com/056/0/10218212/il_570xN.681882646_51q1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://img0.etsystatic.com/056/0/10218212/il_570xN.681882646_51q1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />
But trains are fun to make. And they are great for kids to play with. In fact, the 35 year old train that I played with as a kid has the same appeal to my guys as it did to me - which is why I started making copies of it in the first place. So far I've done engines and tenders, but I'm hoping to have some cabooses made up by the weekend. The boys each will get one of their own, and then my original can get put back up on the shelf as the pattern-maker going forward. Right now it is being well loved - and a little bit abused.<br />
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Back on topic... I'm not sure how an Etsy store gets traction. According to my sister, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/makingfriends?ref=ss_profile">her online business </a> grew more or less organically. It started with friends showing support, and then grew with inventory attracting customers and reputation leading the way. A twitter page and a facebook feed now sell her products as fast as she can make them. The Etsy storefront seems to no longer be the heart of her business - it seems like now its just another marketing tool. I'd like to get to that same place and build a business that supports itself on reputation and product rather than depending on an outside source of customers. It looks like that will take time, and I'm impatient.<br />
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My first listing on Etsy was <a href="https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/211927739/40-piece-mixed-wood-block-set-with?">a set of blocks</a>, it was an eye opener:<br />
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<a href="https://img1.etsystatic.com/050/0/10218212/il_570xN.678228939_m38o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://img1.etsystatic.com/050/0/10218212/il_570xN.678228939_m38o.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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When you go from making things as a hobby to making them in a the context of a business, you start tracking time and materials and tooling. Suddenly you are acutely aware of how much it costs to make a simple thing, and how much time you have invested. It is an unfortunate reality that many online shoppers are hunting for the lowest price - the race to the bottom. And its easy to get sucked into dollar point competition where you devalue your time and materials until you are giving away your product.<br />
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I figured out that based on the value of the time and materials I put into the block set above, I had to sell it for about $55.00 to make a little under minimum wage. I can buy similar sets made in China at Toys R Us for less. Details like relieving corners and squaring the sides on the blocks are more easily done in a mass-production environment than a home workshop. It seems like that race to the bottom is a tough question to answer when it comes to right-pricing items online.<br />
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Where I am super-weak though is marketing. I am not a salesman, and I am not a deal closer. By trade I am a machinist-turned-engineer. I have never had to come up with catch-phrases or market to a broad audience. I can negotiate on a position of standards and safety, or based on what the math shows. Many of my posts here are more about 'what happened next' than 'what I want you to do next' and the few sales pitch type posts I have put up for things like <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2013/09/walking-to-school.html">Walk to School Day</a> or<a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2013/07/tpoh-giving-project.html"> donating to worthy causes</a> have some of the lowest hitcounts of anything on this blog.<br />
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Oh - and my sister's dolls are adorable, which is maybe the very best marketing tool of all. I need to embrace cute. Being a guy who is out of touch with mainstresam, I'm not sure how to do that:<br />
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So I'm turning to people like you for ideas - how does one go about marketing an online business? How do you attract the core group that will keep coming back and then spread the word? How do you avoid the race to the bottom, and encourage someone to buy handmade/homemade/quality items?littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-57275282550317303182014-11-10T21:22:00.002-05:002014-11-11T16:01:05.745-05:00Tire Storage on a Shoestring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimJjmmtXKlxzStNFQfioN5yh62-C2EQ-0HoHk_AS5m0inolFlFrqirEDYXXywEREixES2JwAmOCvj1SAe9PR_fkJwfWpwX_buaqc57vcpeouWSMW_2LBKa8-x7Mb07pYthPvLTFYiJaXpi/s1600/Title.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimJjmmtXKlxzStNFQfioN5yh62-C2EQ-0HoHk_AS5m0inolFlFrqirEDYXXywEREixES2JwAmOCvj1SAe9PR_fkJwfWpwX_buaqc57vcpeouWSMW_2LBKa8-x7Mb07pYthPvLTFYiJaXpi/s1600/Title.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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So here's the deal, you live someplace where the roads are covered in ice for 5 months of the year, and being a safe driver, you go out and buy a set of winter tires. Then every fall you go to the local wrenchtwister and have him swap out your summer tires for winter tires and vice-versa.<br />
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He charges you $50 - $75 to change the tires and store them, and you know that there has to be a better way to store these things than paying him $100 a year for 15 minutes work, but you don't want them underfoot in the basement or garage or hall closet.<br />
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Well, fear no more. Here is a storage solution you should be able to scrape together for a pittance. Mine cost about $2.50 since I had a lot of the material on hand as scrap from other projects. Yours may run a little more, but surely not as much as the off-the-shelf tire racks at Canadian Tire (currently <a href="http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/motomaster-wall-mount-tire-rack-0090078p.html" target="_blank">$100.00</a> - <a href="http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/michelin-adjustable-tire-rack-0090058p.html#.VGFvUfnF_p8" target="_blank">$160.00</a>)<br />
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Materials:<br />
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<ul>
<li>3 Motorcycle tie-down straps (Use old cam-straps that are past their service life - they aren't holding a lot of weight, and won't see any shock loads. Avoid ratchet straps since they are less adjustable for this application - <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-6-ft-x-1-in-Locking-Tie-Downs-4-Pack-FH8381/202340307?N=5yc1vZc2dn" target="_blank">new cam-straps are $10 for a 4-pack at home depot</a>)</li>
<li>Piece of pipe or hardwood dowel 4 feet long and strong enough to take the weight of your tires. (I had an old pipe lying around that I used for this. <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Mueller-Streamline-1-in-x-48-in-Steel-Sch-40-Black-Pipe-585-480HC/100141320" target="_blank">A new 1" black steel pipe runs about $16.00</a> If you want to go with something cheaper, <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Waddell-1-3-4-in-x-36-in-Round-Hardwood-Dowel-6354U/203706857" target="_blank">dowel is about $9.50</a> A fibreglass pole or a piece of lumber may also work. Look around, be creative.)</li>
<li>Two pieces of 2" X 4" lumber, each of them should be about 3' long. I used scrap, so should you.</li>
<li>A plywood or drywall 'scuff plate' to protect the garage wall from tire scuffs and give extra strength. A 48" X 12" scrap should be adequate.</li>
<li>Two <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Crown-Bolt-3-8-in-3-1-2-in-External-Hex-Hex-Head-Lag-Screw-87546/205026621" target="_blank">3" X 3/8" carriage bolts</a> with washers, and<strike> <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Crown-Bolt-Multi-Storage-Assorted-Hooks-Value-Pack-10-Pack-18046/202305564" target="_blank">2 Garage storage hooks</a></strike> or <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-5-16-in-x-4-in-Zinc-Plated-Lag-Thread-Screw-Eye-806926/204273852" target="_blank">2 screw eyes</a>. <EDIT - The garage storage hooks are a bad idea. 3 years after install, mine stretched straight today and gave up the ghost, taking out the bandsaw as the tires came down. I replaced them with screw eyes. ></li>
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I had all of this except the storage hooks and carriage bolts on hand, so my setup ran about $2.50. But even if you have to buy everything on this list, you are still only spending about $20 - $25. Not bad at all. Even the <a href="http://www.homedepot.com/p/HyLoft-48-in-x-24-in-1-Tire-Loft-Folding-Storage-System-01031/202800565" target="_blank">cheapest tire rack at Home Depot</a> runs twice that. With materials in hand, we are only about 30 minutes from a complete, loaded tire rack.<br />
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Lets start building.<br />
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The first thing to do is to get the 2X4's cut to size with matching holes. Clamp the boards together and cut them off at 28"<br />
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With the wood still clamped together, use a spade drill, to make a hole slightly over-sized to accommodate your lag bolts. The hole should be centered on the boards, and in 2" from the end. At the other end, measure in 2" and make a hole slightly over-sized to accommodate your pipe or dowel.<br />
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Measure to the center of a stud on your garage wall and attach one of the 2X4's pieces of wood using a lag bolt. 4 feet over, attach the second. They should be attached level to each other, above head height. The tires don't have to touch the ceiling, but they can if you want. the tires will likely be a little below the bar once in place, but you can lever them up above it too. It is best if you attach the 2X4's so they are on the insides of the stud bay, this will bring them closer together than the 48" long pipe or dowel.<br />
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Attach your eye bolts or storage hooks up at ceiling height. You should be able to tie them in to a top plate in the framing.<br />
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About a foot above the 2X4's you just put on the wall, attach the 'scuff plate'.<br />
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Take your pipe or dowel and feed it through the 2X4's. Use a cam-strap to pull the 2X4's together on the pipe and ensure the pipe's ends don't slip out.<br />
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Take the last 2 camstraps and attach them to the eye bolt, loop over the pipe, and then hook the other end back to the wall. One on each end.<br />
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Now by tightening and loosening the cam straps you can lower and raise the frame to lift or lower your tires when you are storing them.<br />
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And there you have it - the cheapest tire storage rack ever! Save even more cash by changing the tires yourself on a sunny afternoon. Just be sure to mark their position so you can rotate them when you put them back on in the spring!<br />
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<br />littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-76860865931643217022014-10-25T11:15:00.001-04:002014-10-25T11:15:21.873-04:00Cleaning upWe had puzzles and marbles all over the floor, so the boys and I had some fun cleaning up...<br />
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<br />littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-52731171041700363552014-10-19T11:02:00.003-04:002014-10-19T11:07:41.631-04:00Playing at Pingle's Farm Market<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Every town and city has that local attractions that folks just can't wait to go and enjoy. Around here one of those is <a href="http://www.pinglesfarmmarket.com/">Pingle's Farm Market</a>. The Pingle family has created a fantastic family getaway that explodes with visitors every fall just in time for the pumpkin and apple harvest, and is open as a roadside stop year round (they seem to have pick-your-own everything there all summer too). We decided to go for a visit yesterday.<br />
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The pictures below are pretty self explanatory... until you get to the very end.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They think their tractor's sexy!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chicken feed!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sheep weren't hungry for straw.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Baaaaa Billy Goat!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Baby Goat - cuteness </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPhRi5_UQMv9tiGHa0C_RM58aTYr0nmTH18bddeACz0aIEOltspH3YFR-T1UDpH9QAlW1fi-xD_RTJbHcM_A2ixCBBi_26hjD1LwB5eiLLCtHVjrJFFkiyFvnadj7lEkmmjEQaqrkZOXkk/s1600/_DSC0215.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPhRi5_UQMv9tiGHa0C_RM58aTYr0nmTH18bddeACz0aIEOltspH3YFR-T1UDpH9QAlW1fi-xD_RTJbHcM_A2ixCBBi_26hjD1LwB5eiLLCtHVjrJFFkiyFvnadj7lEkmmjEQaqrkZOXkk/s1600/_DSC0215.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Jack and Jill slide!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sliding skills +10</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4-ar2eHHm4-r6m0qE5a7y66OlJP2ZnDmz-_dJ7gc3sg3y99s49HugF_lLq7bezamKAOq2Sk4kHibs209EhJhbyyu8aWKL3ESxaQ2y_SsGGqWQlDaPT0PXGRSG7fBxaRBfHRGsKzZQvnBj/s1600/_DSC0228.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4-ar2eHHm4-r6m0qE5a7y66OlJP2ZnDmz-_dJ7gc3sg3y99s49HugF_lLq7bezamKAOq2Sk4kHibs209EhJhbyyu8aWKL3ESxaQ2y_SsGGqWQlDaPT0PXGRSG7fBxaRBfHRGsKzZQvnBj/s1600/_DSC0228.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pedal Tractor Riding</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhStqyM7i3hb0c0FL4e6Ww6_b60VeGKL6iZzXr9nlBvLfKBLII2vEgn03swv90bnALdH_DQ6kj-neXwQXXaaWSZUb8Apnpm61SPBepoCue5ggsPN1xnYE8QtPwBzz7tHs39BLL8Q-_g_SsB/s1600/_DSC0234.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhStqyM7i3hb0c0FL4e6Ww6_b60VeGKL6iZzXr9nlBvLfKBLII2vEgn03swv90bnALdH_DQ6kj-neXwQXXaaWSZUb8Apnpm61SPBepoCue5ggsPN1xnYE8QtPwBzz7tHs39BLL8Q-_g_SsB/s1600/_DSC0234.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jack-o-Lantern full of balloons and kids!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj73F9McHsuUQoVWN09TS2xj1ALEsPg7DhYaB_HJTYUpBt9we9NTvm3gPf7u0M5r_VLpaOwbwdUM69qHWDcAnDH1ZS3oiDqdQzaaunwfabZ5FlCXZqUBJ9BKDIDPw6q5GRLc-5jseunm4vC/s1600/_DSC0238.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj73F9McHsuUQoVWN09TS2xj1ALEsPg7DhYaB_HJTYUpBt9we9NTvm3gPf7u0M5r_VLpaOwbwdUM69qHWDcAnDH1ZS3oiDqdQzaaunwfabZ5FlCXZqUBJ9BKDIDPw6q5GRLc-5jseunm4vC/s1600/_DSC0238.JPG" height="424" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside the Jack-o-lantern</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhccmruq1jbjt9-e9AmlGsPN-CUQCr05R1xdiiusnE3x2LMzZIJOlmFeHDZKszVxnUunJNGqQNXID6kWkjV_tgpWSJylNqOwdIelDbK7Vw5lSOFEpu6e8c6DNjPrir1bDEoHUlw1cmI9Hlt/s1600/_DSC0261.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhccmruq1jbjt9-e9AmlGsPN-CUQCr05R1xdiiusnE3x2LMzZIJOlmFeHDZKszVxnUunJNGqQNXID6kWkjV_tgpWSJylNqOwdIelDbK7Vw5lSOFEpu6e8c6DNjPrir1bDEoHUlw1cmI9Hlt/s1600/_DSC0261.JPG" height="640" width="422" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Diggers! </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUZAloyw8tYa4zoi5hB4oFC3YXo2G3n9nx6b71yefHWFPbeXQbXRYoaAPiAJ9DexUWIL_ehYaYRMFhXoEJnagm6s4pmd0U8EIuxAl7MGnXme66iUX0oN7-qkTjudNGRyN3vhvDqfrAWVCl/s1600/_DSC0273.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUZAloyw8tYa4zoi5hB4oFC3YXo2G3n9nx6b71yefHWFPbeXQbXRYoaAPiAJ9DexUWIL_ehYaYRMFhXoEJnagm6s4pmd0U8EIuxAl7MGnXme66iUX0oN7-qkTjudNGRyN3vhvDqfrAWVCl/s1600/_DSC0273.JPG" height="640" width="422" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Haybale Jumping!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJCKZ6m3JSGsvu1R1e9SLGOOCCoVpKeEs5zhrw9WbGxpVIrcfTBql-SwML_q2nC3fBbWzg2s8nfvBnv7Hpp2EBSq1k3RO-RKtC4QL_YORJpC8Nod3dttm1L4ETtYG8pmj6F8NCKSMvCbuB/s1600/_DSC0274.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJCKZ6m3JSGsvu1R1e9SLGOOCCoVpKeEs5zhrw9WbGxpVIrcfTBql-SwML_q2nC3fBbWzg2s8nfvBnv7Hpp2EBSq1k3RO-RKtC4QL_YORJpC8Nod3dttm1L4ETtYG8pmj6F8NCKSMvCbuB/s1600/_DSC0274.JPG" height="640" width="422" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Haybale Running!</td></tr>
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Why is everyone sitting there? At 2:00 a crowd gathered at the end of the farmyard. Out in teh field there was cannon with 'Punkin chunkin' painted on the side of it. Suddenly the funding problems of the Canadian Armed Forces became clear...</div>
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The Farmer came out and got everyone to help do a countdown...<br />
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And then he pulled the handle and BOOM!! Flying Pumpkins!</div>
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The Pumpkins went really far. Right over his target.</div>
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After a few shots with pumpkins, he stuffed the cannon full of corn. We thought for sure it would make popcorn. He put in one pumpkin for good measure.</div>
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I wonder if we can make a pumpkin cannon for our back yard, but Mom says that would be a bad idea. We could shoot hot chocolate to the kids sledding on the hill then though.</div>
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When we were done at the farm, we went to the lumber store to get one more board for our pool fence. The boys were great helpers and carried it all the way to the front of the store.<br />
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But all that fun at Pingles had tired them (and the parents) out. We didn't get any fence building done when we got home. </div>
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<br />littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-25612367658860992882014-10-10T08:30:00.000-04:002014-10-10T08:30:04.275-04:00The Shed has Doors!To be honest the shed had doors a couple weeks ago, I just never got around to posting about them, and they aren't completely done - they need 1 strip of wood still, and they need a coat of stain, but they are up, and the shed is full and I no longer have garbage cans in the garage, so hey - the shed is done!<br />
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Its a skinny space back there though, so no good head-on pics of the doors. Boo!<br />
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The blue thing is our solar/wind powered retractable clothes dryer. Ok, its a laundry line. It also broke the first time we used it. I think I need to replace the clothes line in it.</div>
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But anyways, the shed doors are made of western red cedar with cherrywood lattice. Weaving strips of cherrywood into a cedar frame is not as easy as it sounds. The strips really didn't want to flex and bend.</div>
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I need to get another little piece of cedar to fill the gaps in the bottom half of the doors. I'm not super worried about it, but it is on my to-do list for before winter sets in too deep. Ignore the glue mess.</div>
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Also the door closure/handle thing I'm quite proud of. It turned out really well, and was a huge savings over the closures I was going to order.</div>
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On the inside of the doors, I made a garden tool holder. The pruning shears are forever going missing, and hopefully by giving them a spot to live, I'll be able to find them. Note they are missing in the pictures below.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhryXdwxbNk4Gu2FdN_a888AKQVzClw_fuCYM_437XRVUHUqWLJo7YKbzGNDZuc947iaFQOCb9xGzHRu1U3HF6GZh7s64FHnf2JB_FG2Ne3WZdQFzibuVlu9Elux_fI1I6Bftk-xyS9ra8D/s1600/_DSC0108.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhryXdwxbNk4Gu2FdN_a888AKQVzClw_fuCYM_437XRVUHUqWLJo7YKbzGNDZuc947iaFQOCb9xGzHRu1U3HF6GZh7s64FHnf2JB_FG2Ne3WZdQFzibuVlu9Elux_fI1I6Bftk-xyS9ra8D/s1600/_DSC0108.JPG" height="640" width="422" /></a></div>
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The garden tote has space for tools, a spray bottle, seeds, gloves and so on. All the necessities for gardening, and since they can live in the tote, and the tote can live on the door, nothing will ever go missing again, right? Now I just have to round up all the stuff to fill the tote.<br />
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I had read on a few other blogs about printing a reverse image on wax paper and then transferring the design to wood, and thought it would be fun to try here. I got mixed results. Maybe our printer doesn't put out enough ink.<br />
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With the doors pulled all the way open, folks can still get past the shed in the skinny walkway - yay!<br />
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Inside the shed I made hanging space for 3 grownup bikes and for our gardening supplies and recycling/garbage/green bin stuff. The bikes are stored in order of most likely to be needed first. To be honest it was a bit of a trick getting them all to fit, and in the end I loosened off the headset and turned the handlebars 90° to make mine more skinny.</div>
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For the blue bins, I was going to make shelves for them to sit on, but then I decided that going with a cleat system would allow the bins to be removed more easily and offer better access to the garbage cans below.<br />
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This pic shows how the blue-bin sits on a 2X4 and has a block go over its lip to hold it in place. The shelf above is garden chemicals safely out of reach of munchkins.<br />
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And here's one last look at the closure, which is quite simple really, but works great and slides oh so smoothly. I wonder if its going to freeze up in the winter.<br />
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<br />littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-65983426455288661322014-10-08T11:33:00.002-04:002014-10-08T11:52:08.526-04:00Dolla Dolla Bills, Yo.<br />
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So back a few months ago I put up a <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2014/07/on-strike-is-no-fun.html">whiney post</a> about being on strike at work and having no cash, and generally not being sure about our financial situation. Since then you may have noticed that the blog has been light (even for me, even for in the summer) on new content.<br />
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That's because we're doing something about it.<br />
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In the time since the strike (about 13 weeks) we have tracked savings, specifically funneling cash into TFSA's in order to have a war chest/ emergency fund/ slush fund/ rainy day fund/ opportunity fund - dammit there's a million names for these things. Our goal was to set aside $25,000 in a year in order to have a nice little cushion that will allow us to avoid credit, and take advantage of new opportunities as they arise.<br />
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Checking out the savings as they grow has become a sort of strange fixation for me, and delivering pizzas is my new hobby. Trouble is, while we are fixating on our savings, we are still handcuffed by our debts.<br />
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A friend sent me a <a href="http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/">bookmark to check out</a> - a blog by dude who works casually and calls himself retired at 30 based on lifestyle and spending decisions he calls "Financial Badassery" I liked that enough to take a closer look. I like the blog and the ideas are worth thinking about, even if I don't completely buy into all of them. I doubt SWMBO would ever get 100% on board with the things he suggests (save money and drink olive oil in stead of eating meat!) but some of his ideas are very valid - especially in our situation, and much of his philosophy isn't far from what we should be doing.<br />
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Anyways, our warchest has grown to almost $10,000 in 14 weeks, which is pretty sizeable. Most of that cash has gone in from delivering pizzas and cleaning offices, $3 at a time, a little here, and a little there. In that same time, our debts have been nibbling away at what money we could be putting into the warchest. Which is why we are about to change our focus and we likely won't hit our $25,000 goal in savings this year.<br />
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Its showtime, and <a href="http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/04/18/news-flash-your-debt-is-an-emergency/">MBNA is about to stop picking our pockets</a>. As far as I'm concerned, killing off the debts is as good an investment right now as filling up the warchest, and once those debts are gone, well, we'll have that much more cash to dump into the bucket. Some time soon we are going to need to change our financial adviser. We have spoken with a few, but I'm not getting the right vibes yet. That will be a tricky bit for us.<br />
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With $10K set aside, we won't have to incur new debt as we kill off the old. We aren't bulletproof yet, but we do have a pretty strong shield up. If a car craps out, or we need to redo the backyard, or the roof starts leaking, that warchest will carry us along ways before we have to pull out a credit card. If we must dip into the warchest, we can turn our focus from debt killing back to topping up savings while we prepare for the next hit. In the interim, its sitting there making interest. The beauty of this is that we've set that cash aside without any major lifestyle changes. Sure I've missed TV nights, but paying to watch TV versus getting paid to drive around town doesn't seem like a tough decision.<br />
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Our big decision now is whether to have $10K celebration or wait and have a debt-free party. I think we need to add a new goal section to our 14 for 2014. Or maybe it will be our 15th for 2015.littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-86308529302836165412014-10-02T09:35:00.003-04:002014-10-03T10:39:51.530-04:00Hiding Wires in Fenceposts<br />
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I wish I had a more creative name for this, but well, its a quick and cheesy post about a quick and cheesy topic, so WYSIWYG.<br />
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Waaaaay back last spring<a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2013/04/fence-pt-1.html"> I put in a series of fence posts</a> to one day support a fence of some sort which would protect children from wandering into the pool area. Then we did a complete backyard reno, planted our espalier, built retaining walls, and redid the pool. <a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2013/10/backyard-before-and-now.html">Through all that, the cheesy fenceposts stood forlornly</a>.<br />
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They're still pretty forlorn.<br />
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Last year we got as far as attaching some snow fence to 4X4 posts, running conduit and wiring to them, and testing the connections with some cheap plastic bulbholders. Then we left them sit for a year with the result being the pic above.<br />
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U-G-L-Y, you aint got no alibi. You're ugly...</div>
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So I determined that this spring I would at least get those posts in order. Then I got around to it late in the summer. </div>
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First step was to hook up the electrical properly. I got some reducers and ran the conduit up the poles. two spots were getting low-level duplex recepticals, so they were easy...</div>
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On three posts though, I wanted overhead lights for the pool. I shopped endlessly for unobtrusive lights, rated for outdoors that would cast a good light, be weatherproof, and not so big that people would be hitting their heads off them. Nothing 'designer' had the look I wanted in the size I needed. Then I saw the weatherproof utility lights at Lowes, and they were about right. I snagged 3 of them.<br />
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The first step in installing the lights was to through-drill the posts. I made a pilot hole, then used a forstner bit to go through the post. With the hole in place, I ran conduit and wiring up the posts and out the other side.<br />
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Once everything was lined up and glued in, I attached the electrical boxes for the lights, and turned my attention to woodworking. My idea was to transform my cheap pressure treated 4X4 posts into lovely cedar timbers with all the wiring and conduit hidden inside them.<br />
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I started by using a hole saw to cut an opening in the end of the boards that was about the same size as the electrical boxes, then I used the router to cut flats to match the boxes' shape. A spare electrical box was handy to use as a template.</div>
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Flipping the board over, you can see dadoes I cut to hide the seams between boards. Once I installed the boards, they would lock together on the dadoes. Although I was tempted to glue everything up, I decided not to in case I ever need to get at the wiring inside. I had to use a chisel to cut flats where the tangs for the electrical boxes stuck out.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV9c7fF8LGrEgTLWSZa3sBttfQKPF0FhfedIIy9bMDu42pvXATC_hvbaUgVPjWqQs7wabKhCY1dA2Iw454HX84rKTX1SvamKjb2vTj4_ah323d_blSl94vibIVwLeT8_zj8RHligqiQ98m/s1600/_DSC0007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV9c7fF8LGrEgTLWSZa3sBttfQKPF0FhfedIIy9bMDu42pvXATC_hvbaUgVPjWqQs7wabKhCY1dA2Iw454HX84rKTX1SvamKjb2vTj4_ah323d_blSl94vibIVwLeT8_zj8RHligqiQ98m/s1600/_DSC0007.JPG" height="640" width="422" /></a></div>
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Heading outside, I put the boards up over the box for the light and screwed it to the 4X4. The two side pieces werre installed without any woodworking at all, just trimmed to length where needed. A standard 2" X 6" deckboard, 8 ft long was all I used to cover the posts, and they extended far enough to hide the conduit and electric as well. For the last board, I cut dadoes to match the front board, and routed out a recess for the junction box at the top of the post to hide in. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj37VY9OTxxAfOGUTuei0BrQpkqRklhRNWxyKkjFIw3jIA7O4NPnxmVP1yWbMTmFl0yxEh8afvq42x8X7qKIFteWNhsI_umq0Z0YBONe3Dlj5qNFSNilbHVLJUWzqh75KL1cNVZg8l6KQ6-/s1600/_DSC0008.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj37VY9OTxxAfOGUTuei0BrQpkqRklhRNWxyKkjFIw3jIA7O4NPnxmVP1yWbMTmFl0yxEh8afvq42x8X7qKIFteWNhsI_umq0Z0YBONe3Dlj5qNFSNilbHVLJUWzqh75KL1cNVZg8l6KQ6-/s1600/_DSC0008.JPG" height="640" width="422" /></a></div>
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The final product is a nice looking cedar post with all the electric stuff hidden, and the lights up and over the pool. Now I can get rid of the halogen floodlight mounted to the back of the house and think about some sort of fence to go between the posts. I also need to build some post-caps, but I already have a plan to work from there. Stay tuned, I might get to it next summer...<br />
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<br />littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-10037929570628572442014-10-01T11:13:00.001-04:002014-10-01T13:55:36.100-04:00When Every Leaf is a Flower<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTpMnIriY1vS5xseTHLAKjmoTQFZW3OMLsCOMRPfozAEllp9UxupwhL9OqOlAZP1ipKOS8QANurVWOsHZsFG2gbHK_NbK6GOViqx_UiUN2mgTECrqiWUxSeQwXQ5n6r92GeV60GyC1Cjz/s1600/Cover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTpMnIriY1vS5xseTHLAKjmoTQFZW3OMLsCOMRPfozAEllp9UxupwhL9OqOlAZP1ipKOS8QANurVWOsHZsFG2gbHK_NbK6GOViqx_UiUN2mgTECrqiWUxSeQwXQ5n6r92GeV60GyC1Cjz/s1600/Cover.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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Our monthly forays are starting to sound like a conga line of camping trips in Algonquin park, but living where we do, and having such a great destination so close, and with the park being so diverse with so much to do there, well you'll just have to forgive us for returning to it over and over again, and seeing autumn leaves in Algonquin is as wonderful a display as seeing the Mona Lisa without the lines. You'll have to forgive the dozens of dozens of photos in this post. It is long and pic heavy, but two days ablaze in Algonquin is about as good as it gets.</div>
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For those who have never been, Algonquin Park is one of Ontario's largest and most accessible provincial parks. It is home to a pile of campgrounds and a handful of museums. There are art galleries and lodges, cabins and yurts, remote interior camp sites and hiking trails that go for hours or days. Since we have four distinct seasons Algonquin transforms monthly and offers activities ranging from dogsledding to sunbathing, from mountainbiking to ice fishing, and about everything between. Every season is my favourite in Algonquin, but only in the moment thereof. Its hard to imagine why anyone would visit the park in the spring when portages are filled with mud and mosquitoes are biting ferociously, but then you surge down a whitewater run while the creeks are swollen from the spring flood, ephemerals blooming along the banks, and trees flashing bright green buds and springtime suddenly becomes the very best time to visit the park. And so on for every time of year. A different adventure, a different reason to visit, but always a fantastic time. </div>
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For this trip we decided to forego the hiking trails and fall lookouts and booked interior campsites only accessible by canoe. In order to complete the trip, we needed to rent a boat - we already had paddles, life jackets and so on. So we went rental shopping and found that renting a canoe from Mountain Equipment Coop in Barrie would save us mucho bucks but add about an hour to our drive to the park. After work we drove the old Mercedes to Barrie arriving just after dark, and loaded up our boat.</div>
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Our canoe was a Fibreglass prospector. It was heavier than I had hoped, but with only 2 portages and a price of $20 for the first day, and a mere $13 per day thereafter, it was worth it. I strapped down the canoe while momma ran next door to pick up Subway for dinner, and then we hit the road headed for Algonquin. We arrived in the dark, and spent the night unaware of the fall colours exploding around us. In the morning we woke up in a wonderland.</div>
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Algonquin is set on the Canadian Shield and has a forest of mostly maple and pines with some birch and other trees mixed in. Since the poor soil stresses the trees, they are famous for putting on an explosive show of fall colour. We had inadvertently scheduled this trip for the climax of colour change, and managed to sneak in at night when the crowds of 'leaf peepers' hadn't been out. The photo above (of our canoe!) was actually taken by a leaf peeper - we found the photo on Facebook after we got home! This was us launching our canoe at the start of our trip - you can't see it in the picture, but the highway through the park (Highway 60) is just behind the put-in.</div>
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We started this trip from Lake of Two Rivers, just near the beach on the east side of the lake, and headed down the river towards Pog Lake. While Momma and I paddled the boys watched for turtles and animal houses. We saw some muskrat and beaver lodges, some holes in the river bank, and a few flocks of mergansers. No bears on this trip though - we saw those earlier in the summer in this same area.<br />
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After a while we slipped across a corner of Pog Lake, and then down the creek towards Whitefish Lake. In the summer this area is busy with car campers on the banks and the creeks and rivers full of canoeists, but this time of year, we saw no one, and the only sound on the water was the babble of the two boys and they made up stories and songs. Eventually we reached the short (150m) Portage between Pog Lake (creek) and Whitefish Lake. The portage skirts a dam, and outflow was running pretty high. Everyone shouldered their backpack, and we headed off down the trail. We make a point of having something for the boys to carry - there are no free rides on a canoe trip!<br />
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Right at the start of the portage there was a nice big sitting rock, so the boys sortof posed for a picture. As you can see, Cuppa's paddle is a little less functional than most. Buddy was actually a pretty good paddler when he chose to paddle.</div>
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This portage was really easy to find since a float boom protects you from the dam on the upstream end. The portage is river right, with a nice gravel/sand landing and a few stepping stones. The trail is clear and flat with just a small climb at the beginning. The dam is unspectacular, but the sound of rushing water is nice. Earlier in the summer we picked blueberries and raspberries along the trail while on a daypaddle. This time of year all the berries were long gone.</div>
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We started to notice a problem with our canoe packing at this point. It felt like the nose of the canoe was ploughing the water rather than riding over or slicing it. I needed to adjust either the way I was paddling or the way the boat was loaded. I made the mistake of repacking the canoe after the portage the same way it had been packed in the morning, and we tired quickly as the work of pushing water in front of the boat continued through the day.<br />
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The outlet of Pog Creek into Whitefish Lake is a shallow, grassy area. When we arrived, we spooked a pair of Herons who were fishing in the shallows. Herons are usually solitary birds, so I figure they must have been grouping up for the flight south. Otherwise, I am not sure why there would have been two of them within 100m of each other. Another thing we noticed as we entered Whitefish was that the north shore of the lake was mostly pine and evergreen trees while the south shore was mixed with more hardwoods. The colour displays here were very good.</div>
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On Pog Lake there is a group camp site where a canoeing class was going on. We landed long enough to use the privies and stretch the boys' legs. The longer they had to sit in the canoe, the more fidgety they became. A snack of trail mix and granola bars helped a little, and then we were on our way again.<br />
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At the bottom of Whitefish Lake, we arrived at the old railway bridge where a family was fishing for bass. The boys had fun running on the bridge and the family even caught two fish while we were there. A friendly man took our picture, so we posed in the canoe for as long as the boys could stay still. They really wanted to run and play!<br />
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More granola bars were devoured, and everyone was happy.<br />
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Once we were done visiting the fish, we started paddling again, and before long we were on Rock Lake. It had been a long day of sitting for the boys, and of paddling for the parents, but the leaves and scenery on Rock Lake were fantastic. We thought about taking a portage to Penn Lake and visiting the falls and dam, but instead we found a campsite on Jean Island (campsites were filling quickly!) and got settled in.<br />
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Our campsite was on a flat shelf of rock with a cliff wall behind us. We had a fantastic sunset view, and were nestled into a bunch of cedars and pines near the water's edge. We climbed the cliffs into the deciduous trees and got views out across the lake. It was nice spot, but was very well used with absolutely no firewood, and a lot of tree damage ranging from nails driven into the tree trunks to trees sawed or chopped down. I wonder if the park will shut down this site in the near future and give it a chance to regenerate.<br />
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The view from the campsite was fantastic though. No wind to speak, and a leaf show across the lake. </div>
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Our first order of business was a lunch - multigrain flatbreads with cheese and meat. It was delicious, especially after all that paddling! We quickly found out how tame the Chippies were on the site. They have figured out snacking really well!</div>
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After lunch we climbed to the top of the site and looked out over rock lake. All the hills were on fire with fall colours. The rage of reds and yellows and oranges was beautiful. We could have taken our gear up there and just sat and stared all weekend.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfKastZmAhuyoQL9pG_uaO6gkikyXGTvy8cHki6SnQ_H3XIT4HP9NN30pBghO4g_4t4wNmbl-MW9tty3AVegLEH8x-j7tPreNrb0xfIdXWB369fg1BuBwSwdfjkR-PP8zn7gUzWlv106_g/s1600/150.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfKastZmAhuyoQL9pG_uaO6gkikyXGTvy8cHki6SnQ_H3XIT4HP9NN30pBghO4g_4t4wNmbl-MW9tty3AVegLEH8x-j7tPreNrb0xfIdXWB369fg1BuBwSwdfjkR-PP8zn7gUzWlv106_g/s1600/150.JPG" height="422" width="640" /></a></div>
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The way our campsite was set up, there was probably oportunity to put in a half dozen or more tents on the site. The rock wall behind us went up in terraces, with two or three really good tent sites on each terrace. For the boys, mountain climbing was a great pass time. So was getting wet in the cold lake water.</div>
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After a while, Momma and Buddy took the canoe out of a paddle while cuppa and I stayed on shore and played. I got a few pics of Momma and Buddy - I think this one looks like it belongs on a catalogue cover.<br />
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Then Buddy took me for a ride. He did really well paddling the canoe, but he tired quickly, so I took him for a trip around the island. We found a muskrat lodge and stole some firewood off it, and we found another campsite on the island. Just as we returned to camp, a breeze sprang up and we ducked into camp before it got strong.</div>
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After a dinner of shepherd's pie (I messed up and it was awful!) we tucked the boys in bed as the sunset, then Momma and I enjoyed the fire and watched the stars come out. The night sky was as amazing as the leaves had been all day. We decided to sneak our backpacks out of the tent and sleep out under the stars. The rock wall protected us from the breeze, our winter sleeping bags were very warm, and the rock radiated back heat it had trapped from the sun all day. We quickly fell asleep under a clear night sky, but in the morning, we woke up in a world of misty shadows.<br />
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As we got our camp organized the mist thinned and lifted, but for a while it gave the impression of a world made of crumpled velvet, printed on a studio backdrop.</div>
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We had a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon (protip - crack your eggs into a nalgene bottle and leave the shells at home!!) then packed up camp and paddled off into the mist. The blur of trees emerging as the fog lifted was fantastic.<br />
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Once the mist was burned off, mare's tails stretched across the sky, and the lakes were mirrorlike, with only our canoe to disturb the surface. It was like paddling through a dream.</div>
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In a few spots, a cloud of fog stretched across the lake, refusing to give in to the sun.<br />
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While we paddled in awe, the boys somehow managed to be oblivious to everything and focussed on watching for fish in the clear water below.</div>
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So our adventure went with Momma and I developing a rhythm, our paddles repeating a splatter of droplets across the water with each stroke, and the boys watching the bottom of the lakes slip past below us.</div>
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Eventually we reached the end of Rock lake, and it was time to complete the short portage into Galeairy Lake. This portage also goes around a dam, is a very easy path, and takes little effort to complete. The trail is rocky at the beginning, but joins a well worn hiking path, then leaves it again at the put-in.</div>
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The dam provided some great opportunities for photos, so we stayed long enough for a snack of trail mix and some drinks.<br />
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After the dam we started the long slog across Galeairy Lake that would bring us to our waiting car. Galeairy seems to go on forever, and we had been paddling through the leafs so long that their effect had started to wear off. We saw some cormorants along the way, and a few other things, but the hours-long crossing of the lake was, well, an hours-long lake crossing. </div>
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As we went, nature took pity on us, and a tailwind built as we neared the finish of our trip. By the time we neared the end of the lake, sizeable waves were pushing toward the car, and we almost surfed a few times. We passed the Couples Resort in Whitney and pulled up to the government launch happy to be done a great trip.</div>
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Then we loaded the canoe back onto the old Mercedes, posed for a family picture, and hit the road.</div>
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Driving back through Algonquin Park on the way home, we got to enjoy the leaves all along Highway 60. We were also shocked at the crowds of people waiting at every trail entrance and lookout point. The queue to buy park permits was close to 2 km long. Canoeing through the park, we had hardly seen a soul, and thought we had the place to ourselves. I guess we were wrong!</div>
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For the next canoe trip we do, I think we will need to plan a route with more short portages. The boys really did get bored with all the paddling (hours at a time sometimes!) and we need to bring along a couple fishing poles for the boys. I hate portaging fishing poles and gear, so I usually don't bother with them.We also need to rethink our canoe rental strategy. Renting in Barrie saved us a lot of money, but made for a long drive. There must be another alternative!littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-41864807521011520812014-09-02T09:11:00.002-04:002014-10-02T11:06:13.984-04:00First Day of School 2014<div style="text-align: center;">
The (hopefully) last First Day of School picture for Chuck. Grade 12 this year!!</div>
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And this year, grade one at the French Immersion school for Buddy:</div>
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He wants to be a Mountain Climber when he grows up :)</div>
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Cuppa, by a quirk of birthdays, has one more year of preschool:</div>
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When we asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he replied "Grandpa."</div>
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We are waiting for the bus</div>
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One other eighth grader got on the bus with Buddy this morning, but it was his first day at that school too.</div>
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Good thing about the bus.... there is no time for tears</div>
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Apparently, the bus loops back around and goes back past our stop, and stops on the south side of the road. So I guess if we miss it the first time, we can catch it on the way back. </div>
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For comparison, here is<a href="http://frosthaus.blogspot.ca/2013/09/i-hear-crickets-chirp-chirp.html"> back to school 2013</a>.</div>
Starhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01420338326593916836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-52157689720330822362014-09-01T15:18:00.000-04:002014-09-01T15:20:39.938-04:00$1.40 hanging storage unit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's not much you can buy with $1.40 any more. Even penny candy is 5 cents now, but you can build this storage rack for $1.40 and get change back. What you store on the rack is up to you, and the dimensions of the tool will determine the dimensions of your storage rack. Mostly this project relies on scrap materials and geometry to make up a great storage rack.<br />
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To build your rack you will need some scrap materials:<br />
<ul>
<li>A backer-board - I would say about 6" X 4" is the smallest you can go, but any piece of scrap should work.</li>
<li>A hanger arm - the longer, the more you can store, but be careful that the loads aren't too heavy for your backer-board.</li>
<li>Some dowel - size depends on the weight of what you want to store. For the rack above I used 1/4". For canoe paddles I used 3/8". Garden tools might take a heavier dowel than that. Each 'arm' above used 3' of dowel. (3' of dowel costs $0.70 at home depot)</li>
<li>4 screws to attach the arms to the backer boards.</li>
<li>Some glue.</li>
</ul>
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And a handfull of tools:</div>
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<ul>
<li>Drills (one the same same size as your dowel, another a little bigger than the diameter of your screws. - I used a drill press)</li>
<li>Saw - I used a compound mitre saw, but you could use a handsaw.</li>
<li>Hammer to tap dowel in place.</li>
<li>Ruler and speed square for layout.</li>
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I had some scrap cedar and some scrap pressure treated boards around, so I used them for my project. Were this going into the house, or someplace on display, I might use hardwood or something more exotic. I might even look for matching scraps.I started this project off intending to only make 1 arm on my project, but a second one evolved... Things like that happen.<br />
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Our first step is pretty simple. Cut the hanger arm off at 45°. See. That took longer to type than it took to do. This is going to be an easy project!<br />
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Now measure the width of the handles of whatever you want to hang. Using a speed square make lines parallel to your 45° cutoff slightly smaller than the width of your handle, but wide enough that the shank of the tool/paddle/thing will fit in the space between. If you look in my title pic, you can see what I mean - the orange (cheap) screwdriver is being held in the concave section of its handle because it is top heavy with all its extra bits, but you can see how the racks work, and space your lines accordingly.</div>
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Measure off the edge of the board "about that much" and make a tick on each line parallel to the edge of the board. To be honest, I just laid my ruler on the board, and whatever thickness the ruler is, that's how far off the edge of the board my line is.</div>
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Turn the speed square, and make a mark on each line where the speeds square touches the first set of marks. Wow. That was a lot of geometry/measuring/layout stuff. Lets get back to tools.</div>
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Grab a drill (or drill press) and drill holes at all the marks you made. The hole size should match the size of dowel you bought.<br />
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At this point I decided to go with a double-hanger, so I got another scrap of cedar to match the first, clamped them together and used piece 'A' as a template to cut holes in piece 'B'.</div>
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Now I sanded everything smooth and removed all my layout marks. I also rounded off the corners on the boards and softened the edges so there would be no chance of splinters.</div>
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With the hanger arms done, I moved over to the chopsaw and got a stop block set to cut dowel.<br />
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The pieces of dowel need to be twice as long as the thickness of a tool's handle, plus the thickness of the board. If they are too short, the tools will fall off the rack. Too long and they will get in the way. A happy medium is that the dowel is about 1/4" longer than the tools when the tools are hanging on them.<br />
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After you cut the dowel, lightly sand the edges to round them, and then get ready to glue them into the holes in the hanger arms. (chisels are for test-fitting only - rust optional). Have a ruler handy when you do this step. You want all the dowels to line up when installed, and none to stick out too much.</div>
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With all the dowels in place, and the hanger arm assemblies complete, we can turn our attention to the backboards. I almost made a mistake and put the arms too close together on mine, so my layout got a little messy. Also - this is going in the garage, so I didn't even try to fancy up the board, but if this was going in the kitchen to hang whisks and spatulas, i might do some toll painting or make an ogee on it. Garage storage - meh. It can be ugly.<br />
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Anyways, figure out where you want to put the arms so they look nice and are functional, and drill 2 holes slightly larger than the screws you plan to use. I used deck screws.<br />
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put a dab of glue on the back of each arm, and screw it to your backerboard, and voila! storage rack complete. Now you are faced with one final dilemma... How to hang it. I can never decide whether these should hang with the arms pointing up (gives a good view of the bottom of the tools) or pointing down (gives a good view of the handles) In the end I decided to go with pointing down.<br />
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Also since I was installing mine on pegboard, I drilled a pair of giant holes for the pegs to go through. With pegboard, I find that bigger holes work better for some reason. They are a lot more forgiving.<br />
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And here it is all loaded up and ready to go. <br />
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TaDaa - seriously, this post took longer to type than the racks took to build. Stop reading, and go get started!</div>
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littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-38695773482338881922014-08-14T14:36:00.000-04:002014-10-02T11:06:21.822-04:00Chuck Heads to CampChuck is getting big. I mean next year she is legally an adult, so thats sortof a big deal. Right now she's still a kid though, and kids get to go to Summer Camp. Chuck has gone to a lot of summer camps in the past. As a girl guide, as a friend, as a lot of things. This year, she went as a cadet.<br />
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To be honest, she comes home in, like, 2 days, so she's been gone for a while. I've just been lazy about blogging.<br />
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Anyways, here are the Chuck heads to Cadet Camp photos. She comes home soon. I'm looking forward to her being back (and I'm a little jealous that she got to go to camp without me)<br />
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As you can see in the picture above, we drove her to the bus in our super-awesome Mercedes Diesel. It is super awesome. This picture is mostly about the car.</div>
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This pic is Chuck squinting because I turned around so the sun would be at my back. That meant she had to squint. </div>
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Not long after we took those pics, the officers and the bus, and a bunch of other kids arrived. Then it was time to throw the bags on the bus, and check everyone's paperwork.</div>
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After that it was a big hug from a little brother...</div>
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And another hug from another brother...</div>
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And then she boarded the bus, and with a wave...</div>
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She was gone. Bye Chuckles... we can't wait for you to come home! We've missed you!</div>
littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7270755518002394417.post-13508891534256538722014-08-13T14:19:00.004-04:002014-10-02T11:07:10.011-04:00Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere!Its getting late in the summer, but I thought I would quicklypost a photo dump of whats blooming in the back yard. Leaves are starting to look bug-chewed, and some things are growin gbetter then others, but what looks good looks really good. Here we go...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Front: Stella D'Oro Dayliliy<br />Back: Explorer Rose - Samuel Champlain</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lower: Rudebeckia (Black-Eyed Susan)<br />Back - Daylily - (Black Cherry?)<br />Upper: Echinacea (Purple Cone Flower)</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hosta Sum & Substance (One Year old)<br />All our Hostas have yellowed this summer. I am confused.<br />(Back: Tomatoes as filler plant)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tomatoes with bumper crop</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Daylily - No idea what variety this one is, but I love it. <br />We've brought it with us through 5 moves. Flowers as big as your hand!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apple Espaliers reaching upwards. Many are above the third cross on the bamboo.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another washed-out hosta. I need to research what is going on with these. I also need to weed this garden.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Massive Rhubarb! It just keeps growing!</td></tr>
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More plants are budding and in the next week or two we should see our late bloomers all jump into action. Mulch went on sale this week too, so I think I know what my chores for the next couple weeks will include... making tomato sandwiches and watching the kids weed and mulch the garden!!littleboatirishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11080457633243908620noreply@blogger.com0