 JM explains her technique: "Just make sure that the side of the level lines up with the center of the protractor! Here...I edited the drawing so it's a little more clear....Or you could use a plumb bob from that point!" I'll be sure to try both ways soon. I'm betting there is a five dollar purchase in my near future. SD [Edited Sunday, May 1st, 8:14 PM] When I said I'd try it both ways soon, I meant exactly that. This morning I woke up after having been dreaming about trying the protractor/plumb bob method. Rather than doing it for real, I ran out into the yard and played all day.
 Like this?
Your Amazon.com order has shipped (#102....
After building a deck two summers ago without one and doing a lot of other projects in the mean time, I've been lusting after a top chop saw for some time. Yesterday, the review I read on houseblogs.net pushed me over the edge and, after consulting with the light of my life and doing some comparitive shopping, I order the Bosch 3912 12" Compound Miter Saw, with Dust Bag and Work Clamp off Amazon. Total price with tax and shipping accounted for: $205 Hoo haa!
 In relating to the above posting, this drawing is meant to represent the roof, wall and floor of a house. The rectangle is to be a 2x4. Arrow #2 denotes the intention to move the 2x4 to the left until it is snug with the floor and roof and can be used as a stud in an interior wall. The arrow labeled #1 denotes a cut to be made in the top of the 2x4 so that it will be cut at the same angle as the roof. I would like to know what method people would propose of getting the right/most accurate line drawing on the side the of 2x4 before it goes to the saw. Thanks, SD
 I'd like to give a shout out to houseblogs.net. Check 'em out for some great posts about house blogging in general and links to some great house blogs.
Question for the Green Thumb Set
We have a plum tree of some sort in the corner of our yard that produced a good crop of tasty plums this past season. The only trouble was that most of them were inaccessible from the ground. It looks like one of the former residents attempted to cut the tree down a few years ago and being less than successful in that endevour decided to content themselves with trimming it back severely. Note the cuts at the base of the truck and the fact that they took everything off about ten fee from the ground. The tree survived (obviously) and put out a profusion of branch starts the following year. So now all the the branching starts 10-12 feet off the ground and goes immediately up. I want to know if you think the tree would survive if I waited until the sap goes down next winter and then cut it off at about chest height and started training the new branch starts to go out instead of up. It isn't a very pretty tree. It blocks our light, and produces fruit that we don't get to pick, but I get to run over with the mower. I'm half tempted to cut it down all together but I'm curious as to what you think its chances would be of surviving an extreme makeover.
 7
Stihl Fool
 3
Theres no I in Team or E in Tomatoe
 Several of my tomato plants, right after I transplanted them to planters on the deck, and before the first thing the puppy did when gaining entry to the deck, which was to dig them all up and scatter them all about. Good thing I had more starts than pots.
 2
 Look at those good dogs... being all good....
Small World
Well, I see that So and So posted to his blog today too. What a coincidence!
Up Jumps the Linoleum
Well, we had a good home improvement day yesterday (home destruction?), with time spent on the upstairs project and in the garden. Maybe it was watching the defenese of Helm's Deep in the Two Towers LOR film on Saturday, while coming down off a wicked, sticky bun induced sugar high that inspired me, but on Sunday I spent a couple of happy hours building wicker and bamboo battlements in order to keep marauding dogs, children, etc. out of my peas and onions. Here is a photo of the quaint capitol H that someone was good enough to burn into the upstairs carpet before we moved in. I think they also attempted an L in another corner but didn't get all the way through. Hopefully their lighter overheated and blew up. Compared to the stuff we took up downstairs, the upstairs linoleum came up relatively easily. The fir flooring is very soft and easy to gouge but in pretty good shape, all things considered. The photo may not show it well, but there is quite a bit of glue and some remaining tar to be sanded off the floor still. Yippie! 12
Its all about The Huggies, The Huggies...
The linoleum all came like a charm. We're going to strip, sand and seal both upstairs rooms at the same time and leave carpet on the stairs for now. I hope SOANDSO posts to his blog soon.
What Kind of American English Do You Speak?
Your Linguistic Profile:
|
80% General American English |
10% Yankee |
5% Dixie |
5% Upper Midwestern |
0% Midwestern |
I saw this today on part of my blogroll. Whats your profile?
Goodbye Pee Smelling Rug!
This is the rug that smelled like the dog had pee'd on it.  Rug going bye bye, T. in jail  All gone!  Linoleum that comes up like it was glued down with butter - joy!  The hardwoods look like they're in pretty good shape - time to break out the sander again, probably Sunday.
I haven't posted much to my blog for a while for reasons I won't go into here, but (ahem) I was surfing around the blogosphere and found this blog, which you might want to check out. :)
Why I get to go to Gunnars Autoparts on my lunch
The end of my driver's side wiper blade has been loose for too long now. I first noticed it on the way back from Steve's house a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to get it fixed. Its gotten to the point where the metal strip makes this nails on chalkboard schreech every time the wiper travels down the glass - up and over that then SCHREECH. This is irritating sure, like chewing on tin foil, but more than that its a little repetitive reminder that I'm being a slovenly automobile owner who needs to get his butt to the parts store pronto before there is a permanent scratch in my windsheild. So, this morning when I was driving in and it was raining I really didn't want to use the wiper. I'd wait, wait, wipe, SCHREECH, Dammit! In that order. I decided that even if I had to wipe, I didn't have to listen and so tried yelling. Hi pitched screeches just cut right through baritone or bass. I tried some opera falsetto, which worked pretty well but was a little hard on the vocals. The somber commentators on NPR didn't work worth a darned, even cranked up to max volume, but Bob and the Wailers worked pretty well.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Well it's a quiet night on Clark Creek. Scott woke up early this morning to find himself fallen prey to the sickness that plagued The Buddy last week and Me this weekend. Poor Scott-O. Its rather strange, I've had a quiet night of quilting, blogging and watching movies. But lets get down to the meat of the matter. I can't post to my own site any logger due to technical issues beyond my capabilities. Big Thanks to Ann the Magnificent (not her real name)for helping me out. So I've moved Running Stitch to a new URL http://www.turtledash.net/wordpress adjust your bookmarks accordingly. It is important that my many adoring fans, still find me. Maybe I do still have a touch of the fever!
I'm Looking At the Man in the Mirror
Last night Brit and I came to a somewhat painful revelation. Even with nearly unlimited funds, time and energy, our house will never be the house we want it to be. Considerations in design and layout are such that we will never have the house we want if we stay put. This is not the house we want to grow old in. I imagine this feeling is similar to realizing that your child is a loser and always will be a loser, no matter how much you love them (not that I’d know!). Items that will never change: - The house will always be 50 feet from the road on a straight away stretch. After seeing our little puppy run out in the road and get hit last summer, my hear leaps into my throat every time I hear a motor and know that the full grown dog (who is a total spazz) may decide to run out in the road at any time. I don’t imagine this will get any easier as T gets older
- The house will always have two stories with narrow little stairs going up to the upstairs bedrooms, a spiral stair going down to the basement and 24 steps up from the driveway to the front door – fine for now, but who wants get old in house built for monkeys?
- The house will always be backed up against the hillside in a valley that runs NW by SW, meaning that it cannot be remodeled to extend back and that there will never be good light for gardening.
So where do we go from here? Now that we’re thinking in temporary terms, how do we change our projects list of priorities? At the very least we would need to accomplish the following before putting the house on the market: - Redo the upstairs bedrooms
- Refinish the downstairs bath (wallpaper, etc.)
- Replace the back deck (a project for this summer)
- Repair or replace the shop roof and replace a lot of the wiring and insulation.
- Refinish the basement floor, probably laying tile.
- Re-landscape the upper yard (Oh the muddiness!)
I think it would be fair to say that our house looks its best in the summer, so the question becomes, how many summers from now should we shoot for? 3, 4, and 6 are all summer time projects. Could I get them all done this summer? I have about a month’s worth of vacation on the books. I think if we really killed ourselves, we could get everything done in one year but two would be a lot more realistic. I wonder what my folks will say when, at 31 with a wife and fam-damily, I want to return to the nest? What sort of a place do we want instead? Well, in a perfect world, we’d be able to buy other property on Clark Creek that is farther up the valley where it opens out a little. We’d like to stay about as close to town as we are now and as close to my folk’s house as possible. I’d like to build a ranch style house with lots of room around it. We like the vaulted ceilings in our front room and bedroom but not in the bathroom (hard to heat). A bigger kitchen would be nice – certainly an open one. We need at least three good sized bedrooms. We Clark Creek Dennis’ run to be the bigger sizes and need the elbow room. An out building or even a largish attached garage that I could turn into a shop/studio would be a big plus. As I said earlier, I’d also like a place with breathing room all around the house – not squished into the side of hill the way we are now.
Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head
It’s Friday already. How did that happen? I haven’t posted anything this week, I think, because in the back of my mind I’ve been waiting until I could report some progress on the garden. No progress happening, only a whole lotto rain falling. For the past two weeks it has rained almost every day and night. The PNW has had a very dry winter, granted. Two weeks ago, they were saying that this summer was going to be like Mad Max 3 with everyone fighting over water. After that past 14 day deluge, we’re now up to 60% of normal. The farmers, fish, and power people will still battle royal by mid-July but they probably won’t shoot crossbows and swing spiky things on chains at each other anymore. The official water scientist guy (Meteorologist? Hydrologist? Marine Biologist? Wacky Weekend Weather Guy?) I heard on the radio yesterday said that with another two weeks like the ones we’ve just had, we would be at 100% normal for this time of year. How is that possible? How can you get a whole winter’s worth of precipitation in one month? I guess the folks in SoCal wouldn’t find it to be so awfully amazing. We had the power go out once for about 30 minutes. They’re having whole neighborhoods wash away and end up spilled across all 16 lanes of their freeways. This weekend I resolve to get my cold weather crops in the ground no matter what. I will get wet and muddy. I will not take no for answer. There is no “I” in team (Not that that particularly matters at this point.). Whatever, I’ll get the ‘effin thing in the ground!
|
