Wrapping up House 2 refurb ; continuing prep for trip

(posted from home)
(This post covers 1 – 20 August, 2011)


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Saturday, 20 August -

We drove to Chambersburg this morning for a long day of cleaning and refinishing the hardwood floors in three bedrooms, the hall, and living room. In this case we're not sanding down the floor, we're just applying a refinisher. Much of our challenge was in getting the floor cleared and then going over it closely with a razor-blade scraper and can of Goof-Off in hand, looking for paint spots. We gave the floors a multi-pass sweep with the vacuum cleaner, then cleaned it with a spray pre-finishing cleaner before returning an hour later with the final refinisher coat.
We had left home at 0730 this morning and worked till 1830 to get the floor done today and then drove back home. We had a few stops to make on the way home-- dinner at Wendy's, returns at Lowe's and Home Depot. We finally pulled in the driveway about 2100, completely exhausted.

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Friday, 19 August -

Our visitors left early this morning and we buzzed down to York for our second Hep B injection. We spent the rest of the day planning our Africa trip.

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Thursday, 18 August -

We spent the morning with our visitors then drove over to visit Mom and Dad in the afternoon and had supper with them. Great day.

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Wednesday, 17 August -

Today our visitors arrived. Labashi's sister and her two sons came to visit Mom and Dad (and us!). They arrived late in the day and we had a great evening catching up.

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Tuesday, 16 August -

We spent much of the morning cleaning house for visitors for the next few days.
That evening we watched 'The United States of Tara' episodes.

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Monday, 15 August -

Today we had a lot of little miscellaneous tasks. We touched up paint and began cleaning up the house to prepare for re-doing the hardwood floors.
That evening we drove home and watched 'Robert Magabe and the White African', a very interesting documentary about the president of Zimbabwe and his 'war' on white farmers there.

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Sunday, 14 August -

This morning Labashi went to work finishing the color coat on the risers and treads of the stairway while I replaced a light over the kitchen sink. The old installation was far from standard so I had some problems mounting the new light. But I eventually got it. I was in the process of congratulating myself when I realized I had made a rookie error. I had replaced a light with a pull-chain with one without. That meant I had no way to turn the light off (short of turning off the breaker)..
I sheepishly replaced the old fixture and packed up the light for return to Lowe's. We'll have to look for another pull-chain fixture. The old one is in good shape, we just wanted to modernize the look so it's not that big of a deal but of course did waste my time when we're pushing to get done before our trip.
This morning when we inspected the basement floor we thought we were okay with just the single coat of paint. But as the morning progressed (and the paint fully dried) we saw we really needed to do another coat. We had some color bleed-through of the old gray paint through the new sandstone paint. We made a quick trip to the hardware store for more paint and put it down that afternoon. Once the first coat is on another coat only takes an hour so we probably should have just planned on that from the beginning. Lesson learned.
The basement looks great!
We then drove home.


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Saturday, 13 August -
We drove to Chambersburg this morning and jumped on the job for the weekend-- painting the basement floor and stairs. We spent the day cleaning and scraping and washing down the concrete floor and put on the color coat on the stairway underside and railing. We also finished the walls and ceiling of the stairwell.

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Friday, 12 August -

I spent much of the day researching a medical condition which has suddenly arisen in the family. I don't want to go into details here but this is a bit of a shock and requires immediate attention.


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Thursday, 11 August -

I spent an hour or so cleaning the house before we go away for the weekend and then researched water-timers. We need to set up an automated means for watering the new grass at the Chambersburg house twice a day. That afternoon I rode down to Rocky Ridge and walked my five-mile end-to-end course in 1:45.
That evening we started 'Dexter' Season Four.

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Wednesday, 10 August -

Today I researched and ordered a Steripen for our trip. This will provide a means for us to sterilize water. Our rental truck will have a water tank but we'll need to replenish. I'd like to have a gravity water filter too but haven't decided whether to go ahead with that or not.
I also researched portable battery chargers for our lithium camera batteries and ordered a spare battery for our new little Canon.
That evening we watched the end of season DVD for 'Treme', Season One. Good stuff.



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Tuesday, 9 August -

I was happy to be home today and didn't mind working on bills all day. I had to pull all the insurance statements and three-month's worth of bank statements to determine why a statement showed I had missed paying for a procedure I thought I had paid for in advance. That turned out to be my mistake. But at least now I know where I made the mistake.

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Monday, 8 August -

Today we put the first coat of primer on the basement stairs... a long and messy job. We overdid it, of course, also painting the underside of the planks and risers and also the stair horses and the landing.
That evening we drove home and then watched an Alexander MacCall Smith DVD on Botswana and his series 'Number One Ladies Detective Agency'.

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Sunday, 7 August -

Today a local friend, Maypo, and I cut down and removed a large pine tree from the front yard. Our friend is an expert and has the heavy-duty chainsaws, truck, and know-how to make the job relatively easy. My job was mostly one of loading branches onto the tractor for transport down to the hold pile. This pile will be picked up by the township guys on yard-cleanup day this Fall.
I drained the water heater as part of my disinfection process. This was both good for the water heater and prevents the well pump from running so much to flush out the bleach-treated water.
Maypo also shellacked all the knots on the basement stairs in preparation for painting.

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Saturday, 6 August -

Today I replaced locksets on the front and side doors while Labashi continued painting in the kitchen. I also disinfected the house's pipes using Chlorox. We had installed an ultraviolet light water sterilization system recently but hadn't yet disinfected the house's water pipes and hot water heater 'downstream' of the UV light.
Maypo also joined us and trimmed the basement stairway we had built last week. We all then moved to the front lawn with our rakes and shovels and the stone fork. We used the tractor's rake to get the topsoil close to level, the went to work with the hand tools.
By days end we had it cleared off and grass seed planted.

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Friday, 5 August -

We continued work in the kitchen today. While Labashi patched the walls and painted the ceiling, I sanded, painted, and installed baseboard and toe.
I also spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up the stainless steel sink. We had such a layer of paint on it from cleaning brushes that I had to liberally use Goof-Off to get it cleaned up.
I also installed a new shower rod, this one a curved model which reflects the design of the new vanity. I had to use drywall anchors in the plaster but they went in easily and the new rod looks great. Good call, Labashi!

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Thursday, 4 August -

We drove to Chambersburg this morning. We picked up some supplies on the way and I spent much of the afternoon messing with the kitchen register. The replacement register is six inches shorter than the original so I had to address baseboard and toe issues. Also, the replacement didn't quite cover the floor cutout so I had to fashion a wooden shim from lauan to move the register out from the wall a bit.

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Wednesday, 3 August -

Today I worked on our itinerary for the Africa trip. I had a hard time finding campground information and sent off an email to our outfitter for recommendations then checked out those recommendations.
That evening we watched the Zanzibar episode of the National Geographic Africa series.

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Tuesday, 2 August -

Last night we had a thunderstorm come through and we had a very brief electrical outage. But this morning we found our refrigerator dark. I know it had been working at 2300 but not this morning. Fortunately, the fridge itself was okay. I just used an extension cord to an outlet on another circuit. That got the fridge back online. But then the mystery began.
Somehow I had a short-circuit in a very simple wiring circuit servicing only three outlets. That didn't make sense. Even with nothing plugged in to the outlets, I still couldn't turn the circuit on at the breaker. The breaker would immediately blow each time I turned it on. I swapped in another breaker and the same thing continued to happen.
I noticed the circuit's outlets were 15-amp but the breaker was a 20-amp and the wiring was rated for 20 amps so I decided I'd change out the three outlets. As I put in each new outlet I tested the circuit. And, surprisingly, the short went away when I replaced the second outlet-- one on the wall above the counter.
I took the outlet apart but couldn't find anything even that even remotely looked like a short. I inspected the wires closely but again, nothing.
All I could do was finish the job.
That evening we watched episode 4 of National Geographic Africa.

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Monday, 1 August -

This morning I caught up the blog and updated the online version. I also registered us on the US Consular Affairs website for our trip to Africa. This is mostly a matter of providing family contact points for us in the event of an emergency.
I also ordered several Botswana maps from Amazon.


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