Well, It’s Friday, Again…
Last week I asked about the title. Two readers responded and both were correct. Internet points were awarded. If you didn’t respond, you didn’t even get a chance at the reward. That’ll teach you, right?
I’m reusing the title because it’s still appropriate. It’s always appropriate. In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors — the TV weatherman who gets stuck reliving Groundhog Day over and over — says “Well, it’s Groundhog Day, again…” as the introduction to his second recording of the annual TV segment. I’ve modified the quote for my situation, but not beyond recognition. Writing these posts every Friday sometimes gives me a Groundhog Day feeling. Maybe they should all have the same title? Hmmm.
Anyway, congrats to the lucky winners! Don’t spend those points in one place!
This past week mostly consisted of work around the house. Again. I did more work on the BCA website, but it’s all still invisible. Someday it will be real, I promise. But I need approval from the board before it can launch, and a bunch of drawings & icons from a local artist who has not yet been identified. It may be a while.
Anyway, the things that did get accomplished included more painting:
That’s the door to the guest bedroom, one side primed the new colour. We’ve decided to paint most (and perhaps all) of the flat doors the new colour. They will cycle through my studio one at a time, get painted, and then rehung. I’m skipping the bifold doors for now because those only need brushes rather than the paint rollers I’m using on the flat doors. I’ll go back for the bifolds once the flat doors are done.
And while I am painting, I also started doing some trim painting in the hallway downstairs. Walls and ceiling down there are next. I have no photos of that, but as it consists of painting one shade of white over the various shades of white that are already present, it’s not very exciting. Not that a photo of a door being painted is all that exciting either.
I sure do know how to live, don’t I?
More interesting was a bunch of time spent on the roof. I installed shade cloth to cover all the skylights (replacing the old sheets I’d put over them during the heat wave).
The first photo shows the shade cloth held down over several skylights by roof coloured paving stones. The second shows one of the covered skylights from the inside. That photo also reveals an issue: water between the layers of plastic in the skylight.
Turns out it’s a good thing I got up on the roof to replace the covers. Several skylights have water vapour between the two layers of plastic, and have had it since we moved in, but the one featured above has a new, large crack in the plastic. Well, I assume it is newish, anyway. Or at least it got much larger, probably during the heatwave. You can’t see it in the photo, but it is there. I’ve ordered a replacement and will pick it up shortly. All our skylights are standard sizes, and all but one are easily replaced if needed. (The difficult one is about 20 feet above the floor in the entryway. Not simple to get at from the inside where the screws hold it down.)
Skylights are nice in some ways, but they are horribly inefficient as far as heating & cooling are concerned. And when the plastic cracks it gets even worse. I’ll be glad to have this one replaced before winter arrives.
Oh, and once the weather starts to cool off I will take all the shade cloth down and stash it somewhere out of the way until next spring. We like the light, but not the summer heat.
Following up on something I mentioned last time, a big project in the back yard finally got finished. Well, mostly finished. Here’s what was there before I started:
It’s the electrical supply for the pump that recirculates water in the water feature. In the first image you see the coffee can that covers the outlet that was here when we arrived. The outlet was on a short piece of conduit that was not attached to anything. Really.
The next image shows what was inside the coffee can. The final image shows the condition of what was there. The screws were not attached, and clearly every insect in the yard had tried to make a home in there at one point or another. It’s a wonder it never shorted out.
I reworked the wiring support as follows:
There you see the thing I built to hold the wiring being created and its location in the ground being determined.
And here you see the wiring coming up and the new outlet (and switch) installed and working.
I still need a flat piece of cedar to go on top of that to dress it up slightly, but that is easy to do. I don’t own the right wood yet, but eventually I will.
The new setup lets us open the clear cover and flip a switch to turn off the pump. It used to be that you turned off the pump with breaker in the house. This is much more convenient, much better protected against insects and water, and looks a lot nicer. I’m glad it’s finally done.
In closing I will mention that I am celebrating being three weeks past my second dose of vaccine. Life is slowly returning to normal. I even took a short ride on the bus the other day, just to check it out and visit a local flooring store.
With normality, though, come all kinds of interesting experiences. Here’s an example from one of my favourite Internet comics:
I hope your normal is returning rapidly. Thanks for getting vaccinated!