Thursday's work

Jenny came home late and didn't like the colors.
It is a tradition now, I suppose that every night end with Lilly going belly up.
Well, we got four walls painted today. Pomagranet (red) is quite the bold color. Two other walls are yellowish off-white and the fourth is yellow.
Jim finished with office room by installing lattice work, hiding the seams.
Jim hard at work with pants that are too big for his size 31 waist. I am thinking he is a size 29.8" waist, but ...
Jessica with paint plays a bit with Lilly who wanted to play all day.
Jessica covered her painted legs with jeans and went to a movie.
Hey! It's an installed door! The funny thing -- there are no keys for this door.
Jim and I put on the coat of polyurethane.
Diane posing for the multitude of work.
This young man is spraying the outside of the house to kill ants -- carpenter ants maybe.
Jerry came out and installed the door on his birthday. Thanks Jerry!

We made progress today, Diane ended it with well-earned baklava. We still have much to do, but we are making progress.

In from the rain ...

Tom comes to Diane's to see the work. Lilly, of course ran low on belly rubs, Tom came just in time.

Short version of Wednesday

What I wish I could do ... lying around and roll on the lawn (and a recently chewed stick)

Quality pants and shoes and shirt ... who needs to buy them pre-stained?
These wonder shoes are 3 months-old, seams are ripped, inside torn and stained, outside burnt, stained with nature and through work -- note the varnish stain. They are also peeling.
This is the blue end of Lilly.
No, Diane doesn't have frostbite ... that's primer and spilled paint.
These were Diane's last pair of shoes.
Even Diane's arms are a mess.
This is 100 percent typical Diane. She is messed up from working, tired and has two phones. She's talking on one, the other is ringing. Lilly lies at her feet.
Garage door, no more!
Recently stained cabinet
yesterday-stained cabinet. Note the line on the top. It rested on something while it and the other thing was wet. Crud! We have a line.
It had been a hole leading to the kitchen, then a mudded wall, then a primed wall, now coated with a first darker blue.

The downstairs is primed and nearly ready to paint.
Diane picked me up and we went to Botanical Gardens to arrange things for 80 some guests for the 50th Anniversary Celebration for Tom and Lois. We then dropped off wheels to Fox & Fox who later said 3 of the 5 wheels were OK (fixed). We stopped off at a specialized shoe store. Diane offered, but I declined a new pair of shoes. At $80, I couldn't accept them. I would certainly tear them apart in a short amount of time, though they were more rugged than most I have seen.

We painted the living room (blue room), kitchen, hallways. We stained the cabinet after the door man came. We finished by painting the basement.

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What went awry: National Serv-All didn't come, didn't call back, hasn't fulfilled the service agreement to pick up the trash, which grows larger daily.

The door installer who was due today or tomorrow postponed until Monday. Diane got another one who came out and found that the door we had from Menard's was too large. He pieced together a covering.

The cabinet was delivered while Diane wasn't home, so he had to go through the house to open the garage.

Marcus kicked a can of paint on his way downstairs; it spilled but the floor wasn't a concern.

Fire

With all the wood (fuel) that was there, I didn't need an accelerant. It got so hot, I could easily feel the heat 30' away. If you will not the one picture shows the thermal change in light transmission or the mirage effect (top picture).

stained

Diane and I tried the stain. It was tough to make even for it was thinner than water. It was a stinking mess for sure. Diane got cabinets to go over the new wall in the kitchen. She had them delivered from Menards with doors matching those on the cabinets she already owns. One cabinet will be replaced for it was damaged in shipping.

I emptied the garage to gain access to the door

The door was broken in the center by a bonehead. It had to be patched, well, it wasn't replaced right away and was kind of forgotten. Jim sprayed in foam to ensure no heat leaking out. It was air tight. The wood there also prevented any would-be burglar from choosing that route.

It took me 20 minutes to chisel away the foam. To completely free the door, Diane had to turn the lock open and I beat the other side with a hammer. It eventually came free.

This is a rare sight, for Diane doesn't usually get trash service.
The trash service came, but whined that the bags were too heavy to move.
Diane and I re-bagged them, but they still didn't come and didn't drop off the bin for trash use.
This used to have a lot of toys along the wall. Well, I moved them to make way for a few other movements -- it spilled into the front lawn.

Diane sorted through toys.
Some went to storage for later garage sale.
Some were pitched into the trash.
Some were saved. There were no fewer than 12 basketballs. Wasteful.

Diane also had to weed through old school papers to find out which were confidential that needed burnt and those that were to be recycled and those that needed back to school. Lilly got several new chew toys.
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I still don't know if it was a good or bad idea.

Hugging after a long day

Monday & Tuesday ceiling and priming

Jessica was retiring for the night -- somewhat. Behind her is another section primed this afternoon. Jessica volunteered to help and wanted the "largest section". She did the "blue room". Lilly is always a "big" help. She bears a white line on her side.
Jessica was a help today, so thank you Jessica!
She also got a section near the steps that I had missed entirely.
These are very thin slats (lattice) that will hide seams in the office.
This is part of the office. The ceiling tiles were quite heavy to support single-handed. Diane held it and I fought with the screws to get it into place. Yeah! I cursed the times the screws fought me and won.
We left the one tile drooping. There is a problem that jim will resolve. We don't want to put a screw in the water line, so Jim can find it.
There is another section, which requires the removal of the light in order to install the ceiling. We didn't take the time to do this tonight.
When cutting the tiles at night last night, I accidentally sliced through the table. Thankfully it can be helped and fixed, albeit with an ugly hint, wood glue.
These are ceiling tiles that are roughly dense cardboard like the old clipboards. They are not too heavy, until you have to support them over your head.

Monday's work story will be continued later

due to my being called to help Diane today.

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Well, I was going to meet a friend on Monday morning, but that didn't work out because of unforeseen circumstances. It wound up being better for her family, as they wanted to go shopping at the mall. They had to make a trek for they live in Warsaw and came to Fort Wayne to shop. Oh well, ce' la vie! Better luck next time.

Diane called me for help. First, her car had the "check engine light" on and Diane was naturally concerned that it would spell the end to her car. She bought this car from Enterprise Rental and it seemed to do fairly well. I will assume that, for I know that she puts miles on her car like a truck on a rig.

A strange thing happened ... Hell froze over, the wind tussling her hair in the way slacked and the background ambient noise hushed to a whisper. OK, that didn't happen, but her luck, for once, wasn't bad. The mechanic suggested that the air in-take was leaking from a gasket. The situation is very common on the Ford Taurus cars of that age. It would take $250 to fix, but ... it wasn't a danger to the engine. It was to correct emissions. The side effect to the leakage is that she would get better gas mileage. Yeah, she's hard pressed to get that fixed.

The rest of the day was minor work with mostly planning.

Mike, who did the drywalling with neighbor Dusty, not Dustin as listed in the posts below, came over and did lots of work. Diane wanted to fix the spotty areas of the popcorn ceiling. Mike shrouded the rooms in plastic and began.

If you don't have the supplies needed, don't bother trying to do it yourself. It is work! Mike returned to his work union and is working on a gig for the local school system. He is unsure how long that will last, so is happy to work side jobs. He brought in his air compressor, funnel and gun (commercial items), high torque drill (commercial item), and 36" drill bit for stirring. Only with experience could anyone know the ratio of sheet rock (dense material) to water for it to work. He put the sheet rock in water, stirred the mess with the drill until the right consistency. Then pouring the soup into the reservoir funnel, you spray up in even coats, powered with the air compressor.

At this, I saw -- nope, I could not duplicate that. If you have ever tried to paint "popcorn" ceiling with a paint roller, you know that it works as a fairly effect ceiling ripper-stripper. After Mike's success on this, he sanded down the drywall mudding that he did before.

He did a great job, nice man deserves some recognition. Thanks Mike for your hard work and expertise!