Preparing for our contractor....
(posted from home)
(This post covers 11 – 16 April, 2012)
----------------------
Monday, 16 April -
Today I took the F650GS out for a ride on this unseasonably warm (88-degree) spring day.
I rode down to Gander Mountain to pick up fox urine to keep groundhogs out from under our barn. I also looked for 'One-Shot', a gun-cleaning spray, at Dick's and Gander.
Because I didn't find the One-Shot there, I rode over to Columbia to Backwoods Outfitters but had forgotten they're closed on Mondays. And since I was now most of the way to Lancaster, I continued on to the Apple Store at Park City Mall. I bought an Airport Express to extend our home wireless system and bought a second power supply for the laptop. I need the latter to more easily move from my home office to living room chair. I routinely use the laptop for streaming Netflix movies and for googling various questions about movies or news. That's in the living room. I use the office more for concentration on my 'work'. To date I've been depending on the battery but it's limited to about two hours so I found myself moving the power supply time after time.
After the day cooled down a bit I mowed the remaining half of the lawn.
That evening we watched 'Elegy' with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz. It didn't ring true. I couldn't buy into the beautiful 24-year-old (returning) college student falling in love with the old-guy professor/loser/liar/philanderer. It seemed more like an exercise in storytelling where the writer is given a story line that doesn't make sense yet tries to pull it off.
----------------------
Sunday, 15 April -
Today we continued working in the basement to prepare for contractors. We took down five hanging wall cabinets after removing and storing their contents.
Late in the day we went outside and dug out three stumps from arbor-vitae trees. We had had these trees ever since moving in here 30 years ago and they had gotten quite huge. But last year they been badly damaged by snow storms so Labashi had cut them down to within a foot of the ground. We needed to remove the middle of the three stumps to make a place for the contractor to place the central air conditioning system's compressor.
Fortunately these trees had shallow, easily broken roots. I rigged up a chain and come-along between the root-bunches to make it a bit easier to pull them out but it could have been done by shovel-and-axe (and a lot of pulling and pushing) without that.
After supper I mowed the lower half of our lawn.
-----------------------
Saturday, 14 April -
We spent the day preparing for the contractor. We worked in the basement all day, emptying storage cabinets and storing them away. We had enough space in another part of the basement to store the contents in our rolling wire racks. We were going to haul the five cabinets to our storage unit but then I realized they'd fit in the front of the ATV's enclosed trailer. They fit well and I don't think it would even be a problem to take the trailer over to the ATV trails. All I'd have to do is put a big strap around the upright cabinets to keep them from shifting around. But since the ATV trails at Michaux are closed until Memorial Day, I'm thinking we'll have the project done and the cabinets back in place before then.
More 'Mad Men'/3 that evening.
-----------------------
Friday, 13 April -
Today I tore down the shotgun for the first time. I reviewed the manual but found it a bit confusing. Fortunately, there are several good Youtube videos for this model and they were very helpful.
Once I had it torn down and laid out in an orderly fashion, I thoroughly cleaned everything with solvent and dry-lube and then re-assembled it several times for familiarization. I will sometimes need to change barrels in the field (at the range, actually) and want to be able to do that without hassle.
I also tore down and cleaned my squirrel-hunting pistol for the first time. This one is a Western-style single-action .22 and was very easy to dis-assemble and clean.
We're into 'Mad Men', Season 3 now.
-----------------------
Thursday, 12 April -
Today the big project of the day was to meet with our contractor and sign the contract for our big project for this year. This project started out as having a bathroom installed next to our lower-level guest room. It quickly ballooned to that plus having a central air-conditioning system installed and having the attic insulated. And once you decide to do central air, you really ought to make it a heat pump.
We've lived in this house for 30-plus years without central air. Each year we haul up one or both of our window-mount air conditioners from the basement once we can no longer stand the heat of summer. Most years we only brought up one of the 12,000 btu units and tried to run it as little as possible. Last year was an extra-hot one and we both started early and used both window-units.
The decision to go to central air started with having overnight guests during a heat wave last summer. We thought we'd be able to keep the guest room downstairs cool enough if we'd get the upstairs units started by mid-day and depend on our foyer fan to push air down to the guest room. That didn't really work well enough.
We talked about simply putting a small window-unit in down there but we have other concerns. We're finding it more difficult to handle the window units, particularly on our steep steps. Also, the window units always were noisy and not very efficient at cooling the house. We'd place multiple fans through the house. And we didn't like to have the air conditioners running at night and since Labashi doesn't like to have a fan blowing over her at night the hotter nights weren't very comfortable.
-------------------------
Wednesday, 11 April -
I spent the morning patrolling the web and updating the blog. That afternoon we did a whirlwind cleaning of the house in preparation for a meeting tomorrow with our contractor for the house project.
That evening we watched 'The Story of the Weeping Camel', a wonderful little storytelling-film about a Mongolian family dealing with a camel 'colt' abandoned by its mother. There are many lessons in this film and we highly recommend it.
*********** END OF POST *********
(posted from home)
(This post covers 11 – 16 April, 2012)
----------------------
Monday, 16 April -
Today I took the F650GS out for a ride on this unseasonably warm (88-degree) spring day.
I rode down to Gander Mountain to pick up fox urine to keep groundhogs out from under our barn. I also looked for 'One-Shot', a gun-cleaning spray, at Dick's and Gander.
Because I didn't find the One-Shot there, I rode over to Columbia to Backwoods Outfitters but had forgotten they're closed on Mondays. And since I was now most of the way to Lancaster, I continued on to the Apple Store at Park City Mall. I bought an Airport Express to extend our home wireless system and bought a second power supply for the laptop. I need the latter to more easily move from my home office to living room chair. I routinely use the laptop for streaming Netflix movies and for googling various questions about movies or news. That's in the living room. I use the office more for concentration on my 'work'. To date I've been depending on the battery but it's limited to about two hours so I found myself moving the power supply time after time.
After the day cooled down a bit I mowed the remaining half of the lawn.
That evening we watched 'Elegy' with Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz. It didn't ring true. I couldn't buy into the beautiful 24-year-old (returning) college student falling in love with the old-guy professor/loser/liar/philanderer. It seemed more like an exercise in storytelling where the writer is given a story line that doesn't make sense yet tries to pull it off.
----------------------
Sunday, 15 April -
Today we continued working in the basement to prepare for contractors. We took down five hanging wall cabinets after removing and storing their contents.
Late in the day we went outside and dug out three stumps from arbor-vitae trees. We had had these trees ever since moving in here 30 years ago and they had gotten quite huge. But last year they been badly damaged by snow storms so Labashi had cut them down to within a foot of the ground. We needed to remove the middle of the three stumps to make a place for the contractor to place the central air conditioning system's compressor.
Fortunately these trees had shallow, easily broken roots. I rigged up a chain and come-along between the root-bunches to make it a bit easier to pull them out but it could have been done by shovel-and-axe (and a lot of pulling and pushing) without that.
After supper I mowed the lower half of our lawn.
-----------------------
Saturday, 14 April -
We spent the day preparing for the contractor. We worked in the basement all day, emptying storage cabinets and storing them away. We had enough space in another part of the basement to store the contents in our rolling wire racks. We were going to haul the five cabinets to our storage unit but then I realized they'd fit in the front of the ATV's enclosed trailer. They fit well and I don't think it would even be a problem to take the trailer over to the ATV trails. All I'd have to do is put a big strap around the upright cabinets to keep them from shifting around. But since the ATV trails at Michaux are closed until Memorial Day, I'm thinking we'll have the project done and the cabinets back in place before then.
More 'Mad Men'/3 that evening.
-----------------------
Friday, 13 April -
Today I tore down the shotgun for the first time. I reviewed the manual but found it a bit confusing. Fortunately, there are several good Youtube videos for this model and they were very helpful.
Once I had it torn down and laid out in an orderly fashion, I thoroughly cleaned everything with solvent and dry-lube and then re-assembled it several times for familiarization. I will sometimes need to change barrels in the field (at the range, actually) and want to be able to do that without hassle.
I also tore down and cleaned my squirrel-hunting pistol for the first time. This one is a Western-style single-action .22 and was very easy to dis-assemble and clean.
We're into 'Mad Men', Season 3 now.
-----------------------
Thursday, 12 April -
Today the big project of the day was to meet with our contractor and sign the contract for our big project for this year. This project started out as having a bathroom installed next to our lower-level guest room. It quickly ballooned to that plus having a central air-conditioning system installed and having the attic insulated. And once you decide to do central air, you really ought to make it a heat pump.
We've lived in this house for 30-plus years without central air. Each year we haul up one or both of our window-mount air conditioners from the basement once we can no longer stand the heat of summer. Most years we only brought up one of the 12,000 btu units and tried to run it as little as possible. Last year was an extra-hot one and we both started early and used both window-units.
The decision to go to central air started with having overnight guests during a heat wave last summer. We thought we'd be able to keep the guest room downstairs cool enough if we'd get the upstairs units started by mid-day and depend on our foyer fan to push air down to the guest room. That didn't really work well enough.
We talked about simply putting a small window-unit in down there but we have other concerns. We're finding it more difficult to handle the window units, particularly on our steep steps. Also, the window units always were noisy and not very efficient at cooling the house. We'd place multiple fans through the house. And we didn't like to have the air conditioners running at night and since Labashi doesn't like to have a fan blowing over her at night the hotter nights weren't very comfortable.
-------------------------
Wednesday, 11 April -
I spent the morning patrolling the web and updating the blog. That afternoon we did a whirlwind cleaning of the house in preparation for a meeting tomorrow with our contractor for the house project.
That evening we watched 'The Story of the Weeping Camel', a wonderful little storytelling-film about a Mongolian family dealing with a camel 'colt' abandoned by its mother. There are many lessons in this film and we highly recommend it.
*********** END OF POST *********
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home