An Interesting Week

I don't do well in the shortest darkest days of the year, but with the lengthening days, I have gotten more active.  It's nice to start accomplishing things again.

1.  I got The Salvation Army out here to pick up stuff I never used or no longer needed.  Mainly, I had a dining room table and chairs that I bought at their local showcase store 8 years ago.  It had some dings and scrapes, and I intended to completely refinish it as a Winter project.  Realizing I would never get around to doing that, I wanted to give it back.  I was also cleaning out closets and accumulated 8 boxes of miscellaneous household goods in good condition, a telescope (I have a newer better one now), an unopened flat screen wall mount (I decided to use a TV table instead), a nearly unused upright vacuum cleaner (I have wood floors now), etc.

It was all picked up last Wensday (I have decided to change the spelling; "Wednesday" is just medieval).  The new open space in my basement workshop is appreciated.

2.  I decided my cooking habits were in a rut.  20 years ago, I used to make pizzas from scratch.  I relearned how.  The first was bad.  The 2nd and 3rd were very good.  A pizza stone helps.  So does a bread machine with a pizza dough setting.  And leaving the dough sit overnight in a covered bowl helps.  I made my own sauce from crushed canned tomatoes too.  I do that for my spaghetti sauce anyway, just let it get a bit thicker.  Sliced commercial pepperoni, hot italian sausage, green bell peppers, mushrooms, and onions.

And I made chicken cordon blue, my own breaded chicken nuggets, ground hamburger from top sirloin (I have a manual grinder), pancakes from scratch, and egg rolls.

My efforts to make decent hamburger buns continue to fail, though.

3.  Rearranged and vacuumed the entire basement wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling.  The guys who filled the walls with insulation last September left such a mess (even though they did a lot of cleaning).  But I moved EVERYTHING and vacuumed.  I vacuumed some spots that may have never been vacuumed in 28 years.  When's the last time you pulled out the washer and dryer and cleaned behind there?  LOL!

4.  Reorganized all the stuff from the attic that I had to move down into the cats' room and stored them for returning to the attic when I replace the flooring up there.  The cats are thrilled to have more space for toys, exploring, and scratchers.

5.  Took almost everything out of the computer room, threw away lots of old stuff, and returned little.  And there is more to get rid of.  Why should I keep the boxes and disks from the apps from Windows 98?

6.  Emptied out 3 closets and most of the stuff went to a new pile of stuff to go to charity.  It is amazing how much unneeded "stuff" ends up on closet floors.  "Out of sight, out of mind".  For example, 30 years ago, I became the manager of an office softball team.  I had bases, gloves and balls in a box.  I'm keeping the ball and gloves, but the bases can go.  One thing charities can't say is that I have boring stuff to give.

7.  I had boxes of newspaper articles clipped out for "information".  Computer articles, gardening articles, cooking articles.  That stuff is all on the internet now.  So those are going into the recycling bin.

8.  One box was half full on fanfold perforated-edge computer paper!  That goes back to the days of dot-matrix printers.  But I'm not recycling THAT.  I now have a lifetime supply of note-taking paper!  Some old stuff is worth keeping.

9.  The weather today was GREAT.  It reached 67F!  I went outside to do some gardening work.  Mostly, I needed to dig level spots for the 6th of 6 framed garden beds.  Unfortunately, the ground was still frozen 2' down, so I did some work, but not as much as I hoped.  Still I did some work and the next warm day I can get another 2' deep.  That will be enough to build that 6th bed before Spring arrives.

10.  Haircut time!  Ever 2 months.  And I love the feel of heated shaving cream around my ears and neck when the barber does that razor cut!

11.  Visited the bank.  Got 6x higher interest rates on my savings with some creative transfers.   3% interest is better than .5%

I may have had a more productive week sometime, but I can't recall when exactly.  LOL!

Planning To Move

I would like to move.  For many reasons.  As I mentioned last time, it is getting hard to garden here, and that is a major hobby these days.  But the neighborhood is going downhill (crazy drunk neighbors and gang fights becoming more common). 

Parts of the yard have always been a problem.  I live at the bottom of a long sloping neighborhood, the front yard has standing water for days after heavy rains.  I'm across the street from a swamp (something no one pointed out when I bought the property) and the mosquitos are fierce.  When the Asian Tiger mosquitoes moved into the area, it got worse.  I get bitten just going out to get my mail!  Some of the very old huge trees near the house are looking weaker, and I don't want to be here when one finally falls on it (and it would cost a fortune to have them removed).  The house is 25 years old and will need serious maintenance in the next 10 years (roof, driveway, fence, deck).

I'm 61 years old and need to plan for my older years and I am getting tired of stairs.  I want a flat house!  Nothing big.  Basically, a ranch house with an attached garage and a workshop.  I have been finding some decent houseplans.

And, I have to admit, I did a lot of DIY stuff when I moved in here that I wasn't experienced at (and before I had decent equipment).  I want to just escape all that and start fresh (I'll limit my future DIY to furniture and birdfeeders)!  I chose this place because it HAD mature trees.  I'll choose the next place because it DOESN'T.  I'll hope to cover a new open roof with solar panels and put in a geothermal heat pump.  A system that just blows in 50 degree air from the cool underground all Summer sounds very good to me.

I would LOVE to start landscaping again from scratch.  I did everything piecemeal, and it never did quite come together.  Its not UGLY, but a fresh start would be nice.  I could stay and try to fix everything the way I want it, but some parts (like the shady neighbor trees) can't be fixed.

But the idea of moving is daunting!  I have SO MUCH stuff accumulated.  And the idea of moving all my heavy woodworking equipment seems difficult and expensive.  Cabinet saw, floor drill press, joiner, planer, radial arm saw.  Same with the yard equipment:  Riding mower, push mower, chipper, tiller, snowblower, large slow-smoker; stuff a yard person accumulates in 25 years...

Then there is all the inside stuff.  The major furniture is simple to move, and I don't have that much of it.  No sofas, big chairs, beds, etc.  A waterbed folds up into small parts.  Its all the small stuff...  I guess I could have several yard sales.  But I have so many small things difficult to pack up.

The last time I moved, I was renting.  I had to pack up a dozen boxes of books, kitchen plates and cookware, a few standard pieces of furniture, a few boxes of hand tools, and a simple bedroom.  I have 10 times as much stuff now, at least!  And I want to keep most of it.  It's scary, but I am making plans...

The Plant Light Stand

I finally finished it.  The final steps were awful.  The 2-bulb fixtures had a metal strip that fitted into the center to hold the wires off the lights.  Fitting them back in place upside down drove me NUTS!!!  They just DIDN'T want to go in upside down.  They wanted gravity.  Or its opposite, levity...  There were slightly bent spots all along the strip and it made it nearly impossible to get them set back in place.


Getting the 1st one back in took 30 DAMNED minutes!  I was screaming in frustration.  Then I forced myself to calm down an examine the problem carefully.  There were some bent spots from removing them previously.    I have a parallel pliers, and used that to re-make the edges are straight as possible.  Eventually, I got the wire-holding metal strip back in place.

The 2nd one took only 15 minutes.  I was getting the trick of how it fit in.  Ans I did that 4 times.  The last time, I had to crawl onto the bottom shelf and stare 6" away from the fixture.  I can't see anything 6 inches away even WITH glasses.  I'm, farsighted.  I had to do it by touch.

Basically, you have to install the wire hold-up strips by squeezing them slowly along the entire length a little bit at  a time.  I was pleased when I finally completed that task!  Here is what the stand looks like now.

You can see it better from an angle.

 This shows the difference between the double 2 light fixtures and the single 4-light fixtures.

I have good storage on the top, and good storage on the shelves during the non-growing seasons, which is most of the year.

It was a longer project than I expected, but it will be great for many years to come.

You wouldn't believe how much my basement has been cramped out of place because of all this.  I'll sure be glad to get it back to order.  But that is for tomorrow!

But if I had it to do over again, I would have just made the whole thing 5' wide of 1/2" plywood 16" deep.  It would have been SO MUCH easier.  But, you go down a path and you are stuck on it sometimes. 

All in all, I am happy with it, and I am pretty sure it will outlast me.  Can't ask better than that, I suppose.  But I'll always think I could have done it both better and easier.

Seedling Light Stand, Part 2

Well, at least I have some pictures to add for the assembly!  And I have to admit, the assembly IS well designed and simple to do.  The upright posts have "keyholes".  Think of a hole with a narrower slot below.  The horizontal side pieces have mushroom heads that fit through the hole and the "stem" of the mushroom heads fits the slots below tightly.  The connections are indeed "rigid".  You tap them firmly in place with a hammer (gently - I used a 2x4 and a deadblow hammer).  So far, so good. 

 This is the old plant light stand.  I am taking it apart as I transfer the lights to the new one.  The old shelves had a 2 bulb fixture.  The new ones have TWO 2 bulb fixtures per shelf.  

Here are the old light shelves being disassembled.  I really over-engineered the previous light shelf.  I am learning to back off on the over-engineering.

Note the plywood shelf.  I made those.  It's tricky.  The plywood shelf supports the light fixtures below.  But since the supporting bolts stick up over the plywood, I needed to countersink the provided fancy shelfs from below.  In other words, the top cover shelf has a hole in the bottom where the fixture bolts stick up.  Does that make sense?

This is the new light shelf.  There are now 2 light fixtures per shelf (4 bulbs).  The fancy shelf sits on the light fixture supporting plywood

In this picture, you see two shelves assembled.  The green box is a support of the light fixture so I can feed the support bolts from above.

Each of the rigid steel horizontal bars have a double curve to them.   A lower curve is for strength, the upper curve has a flat surface that supports the shelving (a 2'x4'x3/8" engineered material).  I initially thought it was a sort of rubber/resin, but it is pressboard.  The instructions said it would support 800 poubds per shelf.  It also said not to stand on it.  Huh?  I only weigh 160 pounds.  They must have loaded the shelves VERY carefully to support 800 lbs  if I cant stand on it.  Well, I didn't buy it for the weight capacity.  Plants aren't all THAT heavy!

Next. I complete (almost) the whole shelf rack...

Oops, I Completely Forgot...

...to post about the storage/cat room.  I KNOW I wrote about it, so I must have deleted it somehow...  Or I transported to an almost-identical alternate universe AGAIN and in THIS one I didnt post about it (This seems to happen a few times a year - LOL!).  ;)

Anyway, at least I intended to (see here at  Feb 16th Item 4), and I DID do the project on March 9th.  So here is the missing post...

When my parents stopped traveling, I sold the guest room furniture to make it a storage room.  But when I got my 3rd cat (Marley), I decided they all needed a playroom.  So I decided to combine the two ideas.  The long sold wall of the room would become storage and the rest a cat play room (The "Mewsroom").

I checked for the depth I needed for boxes, vacuum cleaners, the carpet cleaner, etc; located the wall studs that would accept those things.  Naturally, the nearest stud was 2" too narrow, so I had to move out to the next one.  That was more space than I really needed to store stuff, but I will probably appreciate it in the future (if I'm IN this dimension in the future).

So, the concept was to take about 2' of the room and hang drapes to make a storage space and make the rest of it a cat playroom.  I tried to find drapery rods that could bear the weight (I have some old but nice drapes), but rods are not designed to float 2' out from the walls and I didn't want to go into the stipple ceiling for vertical support.  I checked out a few other ideas at home stores.  But what I ended up with was a 1" iron pipe.

Now, the iron pipe comes in 10' length and the walls were 10' 3" apart.  Pipe couplings only add 1/2".  So I thought about that.  The 2 ideas I came up with were"

1. Attach 1.5" boards to the walls (1.5 plus 1.5 makes up the 3"), or
2. Hang the pipe from 3" corner braces

If I had used the boards, I would have have to fancy them up.  Plane them to size, sand them, chamfer corners, stain and finish them, etc.  I just didn't feel like doing all that.  Maybe I will next year.  I went with just hanging the pipe on corner braces.  Hey, I had other things to do, and the gardening projects can't be delayed at this time of year!

So, there I was deciding to hang drapes from a 1" pipe.  I decided that wouldn't work.  Drapery hooks don't slide over pipes.  But shower curtain rings do!  Which gave me a further idea.  Why not get some nice light outer shower curtains?

I attached the corner braces to the stud.  The board was there to hold the other end of the pipe.  I couldn't be at both ends. 

When I maneuvered the pipe onto both braces, there was enough movement for the pipe to slip off one.

So I added wood blocks on both to keep the pipe from moving.  I'll screw the wood in place one of these days...

Here is a clear picture of the shower curtain pattern.  Not to plain, not too busy, not too cute.

And the closet is looking better.

The lamp will be hung up soon.

Games I love, using some freed-up space!

Here are a few pictures of what I wanted to hide behind the curtains...

Here are some of what it looked like afterwards...

 That cats loved the changes...

Isn't that a nice curtain to hide stuff behind?

Boat Canopy Again

Well, I waited too long.  I need to assemble it in halves in the garage (for the outside access) and assemble the 2 parts outside on the spot.  It is now too cold!  I am going to bundle up all the cut PVC and set it aside until Spring.  There were just too many questions about constructing it that made me hesitate in warmer weather, and then too many things that distracted me from the project the past month.

Next week will be cold but dry, so, as soon as the insides of the boat dry out and I can clean the leaves out of it, etc, I will simply put ropes over the seats bow to stern and across an tie a tarp down over it for the Winter.  Too labor-intensive for daily use, but worth it for the season.  I think other boaters call that "winter shrink-wrapping".

At least that frees me to pursue the other inside projects I have been putting off while dithering about the stupid boat canopy.  The pedestal dictionary stand, the end tables, and flooring the other half of the attic (though it does get cold up there in Winter, so I'm not positive). 

I put plywood on half the attic floors years ago, but the other half had wires running over the joists.  I cut notches in the joists for one sheet of plywood, butdecided that seemed structurally unsound.  It suddenly occurred to me last week that I could glue spacers/supports between the wires and simply raise the plywood up a 1/2 inch.  I am usually quite creative, but in this case, quite stupid!  The solution was obvious in hindsight.

I think I will set up a Betta (Siamese Fighting Fish) breeding tank.  I have a new tan male with unusual darker spots on the fins, and I've never seen that before.  And since I have a tan female showing signs of eggs, why not?  I've raised them before (decades ago).

I think I will do the Bettas first, to get them on their way.  I need to make a multi-compartment insert to place in a aquarium for the newborns.  Even males a few weeks old will attack each other, and fin damage never heals perfectly so they need to be separated real early.

Then the dictionary stand.  I am really ready for that.  I want to work with wood again!  All that PVC stuff really threw me out of my comfort zone for months.  Not that I am a great woodworker, but at least I understand the stuff!

And gardening season actually starts in 1 month!

Back on track, ever optimistic, and ready to go back to what I know...