Catching up and writing more

I have not been writing as much in the last few months as I should.  I have lots of excuses:

  1. House Remodel
  2. Hectic Work Schedule
  3. Jeep Rebuild
  4. A focus on film making and growing my YouTube presence
  5. Lawn and Garden care – seriously, this takes up a lot of my time.
  6. Too much TV and interwebs…
  7. Blah, Blah, Blah…

When you get to the base of it all though, the answer is that I have made time for all the other things that keep me sane/make me crazy except for writing.  I am renewing my focus and will be posting more words to go along with all of the pictures and video.

Let’s start with an update of current stuff:

The Attic

We are so close to being done with the attic conversion.  I have to put a couple of coats on the closet door and one on the stair railing and paint the 4 walls with a couple coats of the almond eggshell that my wife picked out.  The new hardwood flooring is being delivered today and it will be installed on Friday.  I will spend the weekend installing the stair treads and kickers/risers.  The receptacles, switches and lights are the last serious items that will go in before I touch-up a little paint here & there and I will be done and can focus on the basement.

Basement

We are 75% there.  All tiled laid, grout done and a functioning toilet!!  I need to finish the trim install, hang two doors and then paint EVERYTHING!  I am having a custom shower rod TIG welded together and will be building the double sink vanity.  I have to tack together & paint the medicine cabinet door and mirror frames as well.  After all is in, we will have a plumber come out for the sink install and shower hook up.  I don’t plumb.  I am afraid of flooding my house with water or sewage.  I leave that job to the professionals.

Main Level Bath

The tube tile surround is being replaced in two weeks with 6” subway and small hex tile.  The new bathroom mirror will be going in this week, and I have to have the exhaust fan switch rewired.

Jeep

I had a solid weekend working on the Jeep.  The taillights are installed, the winch is re-wired, mirrors installed, windshield back on with new gasket and PLENTY on extra silicone.  The upper KC spotlights are re-installed, and an issue with the front speakers if fixed.  I still need to paint and install the spare tire rack, as well as the CB, megaphone speaker, 2nd battery, air compressor, lower KC spot lights, passenger headlight, rub rails, whip antenna, headlight trim rings, and polish the rear tube bumper.

The current plan is to leave the top COMPLETELY off until fall when I re-install the soft top.  I need to finish the Hi-Lift Jack rebuild project, have the speedometer serviced, and replace my tube pads as well before the cold winter wind blows.

Garage

The shop of me dreams is packed full of everyone else’s crap right now.  It is all leaving by the last weekend in July if I have to put it all out on the road.  I need to finish wiring in my 40K lumens of LED lighting, a 50AMP plug, a couple of 220/30amp plugs and have an electrician connect all into my service panel.

House Exterior

  1. Downspout in back needs attention
  2. A section of soffit need looking at and possibly repaired
  3. I need to weld together the Juliet Balcony outside the dining room
  4. Weld railing for rear steps
  5. The new front windows need a little trim and paint
  6. Dining room window needs trim and paint
  7. The rear steps need to be painted
  8. The chimney needs to be repointed before fall/winter
  9. Basement railing needs to be installed
  10. Both front railings need to be sanded and repainted.
  11. External security alarm siren need to be installed
  12. A tiny bit of concrete need to be pouted
  13. Two security cameras need to be swapped out for the lower profile ones

The yard

Man, the front yard is good, a little weeding and bush trimming maybe.  The back yard though…  It is still a disaster, or at least ½ a disaster.  I want to fill 3-4 gabion baskets with all the rocks left over from a previous owner’s attempt at pond-scaping and make benches around out fire pit.  We will be adding a steel arbor from the garage to the patio this fall that I am welding up on-site.  The patio table and chairs will get a proper sanding and oiling this weekend and we need/want an umbrella of it this year.  I want to add a tool shed and additional firewood racks to the side yard.   And finally, the small yard next to the garage is my makeshift apiary and I would like to make that both permanent and presentable with some additional hives, gravel and flower plants in narrow garden boxes.

Health

Stamps-With-Foot, my mom, and the kids are good.  I am feeling all of my 40+ years lately though.  My hip is still painful a full year after reconstruction.  I may have torn the meniscus in my left knee, AND I have Fucking Tennis elbow from chopping firewood!!  Not being able to run and bike, coupled with my love of cookies, has left me with a classic “Dad-bod” and even my fat pants are tight right now.  Eating better now.  Trying to get between 7 and 10K steps in a day, having the knee looked at, and working on the elbow.  We are going to Hawaii in February and I need at least a 2-pac as there will be MANY shirtless days in and under the water, for my arm to feel better, and my knee and hip to be like 70%.

Other

Work is work, but I have really traveled at all this year and that is awesome!  Still wish I was building cabinets for a living, covered in man-glitter, smiling but that will have to wait.  I will be traveling to Arkansas this fall to see my daughter and her family.  My son will be here in Seattle for a couple of weeks this summer.  I hope to tour a couple of colleges with him.  My wife and I have a couple of road trips planned and I want to get out on my bike, kayak, and skate board a little (don’t tell my wife or knee Dr. about the board…) I have started recording for a monthly Podcast.  A friend conned me into it after a few years of asking.  I am going to just sit and tell stories without naming names or implicating myself in any illegal activities that are not past the statute of limitations.  As a reward for losing weight I will go ahead and finish out both of my tattooed arm sleeves and my wife and I are planning matching bee tattoos for our anniversary.  I still have not bought a boat or a motorcycle, so she will keep me for a while longer

Film Friday – Oak and Maple Pizza Peel Build

My Father-in-Law, The Chatty Buddha,  wanted me to make him a pizza peel and while I have built cutting boards and boat paddles, I hadn’t yet made a peel. I agreed, sourced the lumber from a local salvege store. It used to be flooring, but after some magic with the table saw, jointer, some glue, and a hand plane or three – he has a pizza peel that I gave to him for Christmas.  I hope to be enjoying pizza from it for years to come.

Film Friday – Home Garage Car Lift Details

The short film below is part on my on-going series on YouTube discussing and showing my garage/shop build process. It details my experience of having a 2-post Rotary Revolution RTP10 vehicle lift, why I went with the type/brand/style that I did, thoughts after using it for 9 months, and what I might do differently if I could go back in time.

As Always, likes are really appreciated on my YouTube Channel!

Weekend in the shop

I got some serious crap done in the garage and at home this weekend:

Cleaned, swept, and put away tools for over an hour Saturday morning
Added wheels to my screw-clamp stand
Built a hammer stand – I have a lot of hammers
Organized 4 drawers on my tool cabinet
Organized a drawer for just camera mounts and cables
Hung 22 small blue U-Line organization bins
Cleaned off table saw
Installed new table saw blade
Re-tensioned bandsaw
Cleaned off bench for 1st time in MONTHS!
Put all the miscellaneous screws, bolts, and hardware in the proper organization bin
Sanded the carcass for a bathroom cabinet installation
Moved some angle-iron into the metal storage rack
Carried 2 of the 3 cabinet sections in the house
Cranked on the lathe to reduce the diameter of a dowel
Blew 30 amp breaker
Said the f-word at least 3 times
Took a look and original electrician did not fully terminate one of the “hot” wire legs, which led to the failure.
Said dirty words
Drove to Home Depot and back for breaker
Swapped out a blown breaker
Ran 75 linier feet of 12-2 Romex wiring
Installed 12 electrical boxes
Only dropped 1 on my head/face
Installed a couple of runs of CAT-6 ethernet cable for the PoE camera system
Jesus, CAT-6 is expensive!!
Moved some firewood into the house
Built and installed butcher paper roll noteboard on a cabinet front
Re-set wall clock
Worked on chipping hammer re-build
Shot a couple of videos
Sanded a couple spots on the jeep under windshield
Wished I had a bathroom in the garage at 3 different points during the weekend
Started on pizza peel build for Father-in-law

Thieving Bastards…

My neighbor, who is remodeling his just purchased home had his garage and house broken into and a bunch of tools and supplies were taken – mostly hand tools. He and his family thankfully live elsewhere right now, until construction is complete. The thieving bastards were on foot and left the larger tools and job box. There was lots of damage to the newly installed wooden doors that required hours of labor for patches and repair. It was all a huge pain in the ass for him and to add insult they came back a week later in the middle of the night with a u-haul truck to get the bigger stuff. This time they cut through the newly installed deadbolt on the garage with a sawzall, but my neighbor had already moved his tools out, so they left empty-handed.

The thieves were caught on camera both times, but who knows if the police are looking really hard at this. This super sucks for my neighbor and the neighborhood. For me, it heightened my level of worry. I already have an alarm on our house and garage, but haven’t installed the POE cameras yet. They will be going on this weekend and I am also installing an external siren capable of damaging someone the next state’s hearing. I hate that it has come to this and that we all have to be so paranoid, but I have already lost tools to a thief once and I REALLY don’t want it happening again.

Garage sidewalk now poured with a side of cat-related drama

The sidewalk to the garage is finally poured – 8 weeks after I put the forms in…   To recap, it is 20’X4′ and 4″ deep.  I used 3500PSI with fiber added and lots of steel, because I hate cracking sidewalks. I paid a guy working on the house next door give me a hand with the wheel barrow concrete moving and to move-hold the other side of the scree board.  It took two hours from the minute the truck rolled up until I was cleaning up my tools and I saved >$1500 doing it myself, even with the cost of material, delivery and a couple of new tools.

I was super happy with the results when I went inside at 5:30. When I went back out to check on it at 9:30, the cat had walked up one side all the way to the garage, walked across, and back down the other side. I now have cat prints in my “perfect” sidewalk until the end of days…

I am not anthropomorphizing, she did it as a “Fuck You bald monkey!” because I would not let her in the house. It was too dry to re-float. This morning, to add insult, the hate-cat dropped a giant turd in the middle of the thing up by the garage door.  I said such dirty words!  This is the last straw!

Who would like an overweight white fluffy cat that is passive aggressive and shits on the things I love? I will throw in 2 bags of food, a carrier, shot records, box of band-aids, half eaten mouse, and 3 cat-nip impregnated toys. It is an awesome deal! Won’t last! Act now before someone else snatches her up!

Film Friday – Jeep Paint Prep

…And so begins my plan for interweb domination… This is the 1st in a series of videos detailing my Jeep re-painting project. I am doing the prep work and getting ready for my 1986 CJ-7 to go into the shop for a little cosmetic make-over. It was painted black at the factory in Toledo, has been black ever since, and will stay black until they make something darker. I also give a little bit of an update to what I have been up to of late, some projects that are in the works, and a quick pan view of part of a dirty, disorganized, and cluttered shop.

Labor Day Weekend – 2017

I was at home for Labor Day weekend this year and spend the time working on the house and yard. I dug up a cubic yard+ of dirt where the garage walkway will be and then built concrete forms, added rebar, and welded wire for a 20′ X 4′ sidewalk pour next week.

 

 

 

 

I also took a couple of hours to rebuild a 10′ section of fence on our south side. A 40′ (12.2m) tree had grown through it from the neighbor’s yard. He let me cut it down a couple of weeks ago and rebuilding the fence was required.  Note: Stamps-With-Foot did not see me roped up, hanging in the harness, topping the tree, so I didn’t get in trouble for being a “stupid man” until later 🙂

Garage, lawn, and house work this weekend

Worked in the basement a bit to make Stamps-With-Foot’s sewing room/project space usable.
Made two trips to the dump.
Built screw clamp holder.
Did a little Amazon shopping for a gift and a part that I needed.
Went shooting at the range – shot like a blind squirrel.
Cleaned pistol, muttering disappointment in self whole time.
Hip super-hurt all weekend.
Went to see Atomic Blond for date night. Great movie.
Bought two bookshelf cabinets for garage at Second Use – got a super good deal (hard to do these days at Second Use)
Picked up 2 cases of oil at discount from NAPA
Put down a little 1/4 round trim in dining room.
Washed Stamps-With-Foot’s car.
Filled the washer fluid.
Worked on a couple of films.
Cleaned lighting contacts on the trailer light harness.
Took a load of recycling to the dump.
Organized shop a little and hung the two cabinets.
My shop now has all the storage I will ever need – until I fill it all up 🙂
Consumed some rosé while sitting in sunshine in back yard.
Snuggled wife and puppies.
Installed my welding cabinet and filled it with helms, jacket, gloves, sticks, and welding tools.
Made a happy face.
Did not mow lawn…
Ran two lighting circuits and one 220VAC circuit in garage.
Need to install the 4 florescent lights.
One 220VAC circuit to run and all shop wiring will be complete!
Flew drone a bit to work out new firmware update.
Took a few macro photos with camera
Spent too long on Instagram and Twitter.
Ignored the grass some more.
Changed oil in my father-in-law’s truck.
Picked-up/was given wrong oil filter!
Said dirty words…
Made it to parts store 3 minutes before they closed for new filter.
41 more oil changes and the lift pays for itself!

Car Lift and Jeep CJ-7 Saga/Search/Information

Before putting 4000 pounds of 31 year old Toledo steel above my head for the first time I really needed the correct locations for a 2-post-lift pad placement points on a CJ-7.  I like who I am and I have some plans for the next 30 years or so and really didn’t not want to be that guy who squashed himself in his own garage.  It happens.

lift fail 1Lift fail 2lift fail 3

 

 

 

 

I have seen two jeeps on their sides at dealerships after falling off lifts, countless other lift fails, and have seen CJs put up in the air at least four different ways.  I have had a couple of cars in the air since building the garage, referencing their owner manuals for lift placement, but not the Jeep yet. Again, I didn’t want to be the guy that drops his 4X4 pride off the lift in his own garage. I started doing a little research and asking questions.

After a fairly fruitless internet Search, I called the company that built my lift (it is a Rotary Revolution RPT10) and they referred me to The American Lift Institute (ALI) manual that came with the lift. The 2016 version of the manual only goes back to 1991 for most vehicles and when I called them, there was no answer that they could give me. They referred me to “a local Jeep dealer.”

I dropped in the one nearest the house and there was not an “old-guy consensus” on how to life a CJ: on the frame behind the shackle mounts, on the shackles, on the spring plates, on the axles, etc… My Chilton and Hayes manuals have nothing and I am still trying to source a good 1986 Service Manual (can’t find anything in the downloaded ’82) and would love an original Owners manual. I went by a 4X4 shop a bit ago and the tech there said “lift it on the shackles…” and posed it as sort of a question.  I walked away swiftly.

So, relying on Cunningham’s Law, I asked the internet via the JeepForum if anyone had some documentation on where to apply the lift arms/pads on a CJ-7 frame and where the balance point/center of gravity of the vehicle was to put in-line with the lift posts?  I got some helpful suggestions and a couple answers that were on the edge of trolling, but the general consensus from CJ owners and mechanics on the forum was to follow the guidelines for the 1991 Jeep Wrangler and their frames, suspension, and balance points are very similar: The lift pads are placed under the frame (centered on the pads), directly adjacent to spring hangers/shackles. Sounded reasonable and plausible, so I decided to go with that.  The balance point/CoG is between my dash and the bottom of the steering wheel and that point goes on center between the two posts of my symmetrical lift.

I went ahead a couple weekends ago and decided to put it up and do a little general maintenance.  After everything checked out – raising the Jeep 6″ off the ground and giving it a serious shake on all 4 corners, raising it up and down a few times, I spent 30 minute for full oil and filter change. I lubed all the zert points on the drive-line and chassis while I was there.  No squashing or falling Jeeps. 🙂
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Matt Talley CJ Lift points (1)

Matt Talley CJ Lift points (2)

Matt Talley CJ Lift points (3)

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Matt Talley Changing oil_07-2017 Jeep (2)

Weekend Activities

Seattle is in early summer full bloom. The sun is out and the temperature is perfect!  These conditions led to a really good weekend:

Slept had friends stay with us Friday night and Saturday morning
Big yummy breakfast
Picked three big bowls of ripe Lapin cherries
Ate a lot of cherries
Went over to my mother’s house
Took care of house projects for her
Had a yummy dinner
Nice bottle of red wine was opened and mostly consumed
Read American Gods aloud with Stamps-With-Foot before bed

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Matt Talley Farmer's Market 07-2017 (1)

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Brunch with Friends
Went to the Sunday farmer’s market
Bought cheese and honey!
Went to the garden store
Bought a bunch of flowers for the yard
Walked the puppies
Planted flowers
Scattered weed&feed in the 1/3 of the back yard that is void of Ireland-green grass
scattered and raked grass seed.
Murdered dandelions
Picked up a mountain of puppy-made landmines 🙁
Mowed the yard
Installed new tire cover on Jeep spare
Put Jeep on the car lift – also now refereed to as “The Jeep Sex Swing”
Changed oil and filter
Only 42 more Oil Changes and the lift pays for itself!! 🙂
Lubed the chassis
Checked and topped off all the fluids
Made happy noises
Had a Coke and smile afterward while sitting in the shade
Printed out GAINT ’84-’86 Jeep Maintenance Manual
Let my internal OCD monster out to play
Custom labels and tabbed separators were made…
Added folders with Maintenance Manuals to shelf in the garage
Watered the garden, yard, and newly seeded dirt patch
More reading
Sleep

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Matt Talley Changing oil_07-2017 Jeep (1)

Matt Talley Jeep_07-2017 (1)

Matt Talley Garden 2017

Going Topless

I made a short film showing all the steps in removing the Hard Top from my 1986 CJ7 Jeep for the first time in 1.5 years. I couldn’t round up the help to pull it off, so I put on my thunking’ cap and used the lift. The garage is a MESS, but my excuse is that we are still remodeling the house and it has been a wet winter and spring so there are materials and projects in work everywhere.

My Week in Review

This past week has been a week of mish-mash happenings:

90-day Post-surgery hip appointment: Could have gone better.
Fruit tree pruning
I built a lid for the compost boxes
A rat didn’t like my lid and chewed through the side to get at the worms in the compost bin
I said dirty words
Mounted 7 up-cycled cabinets in the garage
Finished painting 80 liner feet of 1/4 round trim.
Sweep and cleaned GROP
Organized some stuff into new shelves and cabinets.
Finished painting the corner shelf doors – 5 total coats of fresh paint
Installed the hinges and hung the doors on wrong cabinets
Said dirty words
Re-hung doors on the correct cabinet.
Scratched paint
More dirty words
Touched up paint
Finished corner cabinet install
Did some Physical Therapy for my Old Man hip
Mowed and edged the yard
Read a book
Made a few Instagram and Twitter posts
Amazon sent me a new tool!
Flew drone one afternoon after J-O-B
Planted the boxwood shrubs
Bought garden starts at Nursery: tomatoes, corn, squash, zucchini, peppers,herbs, lettuce, etc…
50+ hours at my J-O-B, hustlin’ to keep us fed and the lights on
Watched about 2 hours of NetFlix
Gave away a bed in our home office
Had to delver it to new owner
Drank some French wine
Worked on cedar log garden table
Bought couch/guest bed for the office/TV room
Braved the gauntlet at IKEA – three hours to pick up a pre-ordered couch 🙁
IKEA gave me a $50 discount for the trouble
Had to source clear glass Victorian-style pull knobs for the corner cabinet doors
Spoke to both of my children for Father’s Day
Heart Happy
Planted summer garden
There was some coffee drinking and puppy snuggling
Took top off of Jeep for the first time in 1.5 years
Started Raining the second I took it out of the Garage
Made grumpy noises
Had coffee and listened to a bluegrass jam session at favorite coffee shop
Watched a movie
Was prolific on Twitter and Instagram
Murdered some dandelions
Rode around neighborhood on errands in topless Jeep when it stopped raining
Made happy noises
Sent some J-O-B e-mails from home
Started reading American Gods out loud with my awesome wife
Went to bed to start it all over again on Monday morning

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Matt Talley_Corner Cabinet Rebuild_2017

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A Year Later – The Garage is Finally Legal and Inspected

Holy crap… I got notice from our former garage contractor that the city permit for the build was about to expire. WhAt tHe FUCK!?!? Apparently, he had never called for the final inspection. It just never ends with this guy and the inattention to detail.

After a flurry of calls and e-mails, the city inspector came out yesterday and looked at the framing, roof, gutters, paint, electrical final. He signed off thew garage as legal and conforming but, said that we should have not moved in and started the insulation and drywall until the final was signed and in hand. He was the guy that did the initial inspection and remembered us and the build, so I didn’t have to tear anything out. While I appreciate the contractor letting me know about the expiration, I would have preferred that the inspections were done a year ago when the structure was done.

Update:

The day after the Final Inspection was signed off, I got a notice that a Waste Diversion Report (WDR) needs to be submitted to Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) for all demolition projects as well as any new construction and alteration permits where the project value is $30,000 or greater. Normally this falls to the party that pulled the building permit, but as I did the demo myself it got forwarded to me.  Links to the forms are below in case anyone in Seattle needs them.

SPU Waste Diversion Report Manual Form
Seattle WDR Letter 2016

Apparently, if you live in Seattle, our local utility company wants to make triple-extra sure you did not dump any building or demo waste inappropriately. I have the receipts from the equipment company and the hauling company, so there should be no issue.

Getting Stuff Done Over the Weekend

We had a really productive weekend around the house – so much so that I to take an old guy nap on Sunday. In no particular order:

Organized and cleaned up shop from Garage sale two weekends ago
Took 10 boxes of good stuff to Goodwill
Bought and brought home cabinets and wine racks from Habitat for Humanity in Tukwila
Sourced and purchased some additional boxwood shrubs and mulch for the yard
Mowed the new sod in the yard for the first time
Took the puppies for a walk
Date Night: Burgers and a late 3D showing of Wonder Woman.
Cleaned house
Spent 1.5 hours looking for either one of my orbital sanders
Said dirty words the whole time
Sanded Corner cabinet doors
Shocked the hot-tub with chemicals getting ready for water and filter change
ad a couple of nice glasses of French rosé in the sunshine.
Made lid from up-cycled ceder fence boards and used hardware for the compost bins
Hung two paintings
Organized dining room
mounted 6 stringed instruments in the hallway
Installed new toilet seat
Ran the chainsaw a bit
Made some woodchips and used as garden bed mulch
Picked up 4 huge rounds of cedar from a neighbor who has a tree cut down to split for kindling
Took out trash and recycling – there was a LOT of the latter
Met new neighbor
Another walk with the puppies
Made a trip to CostCo and dropped more $$ that we wanted to
Paid $12 for a used plywood miter saw station – SCORE!
Drank lots of coffee
Murdered some dandelions in the yard
Paid some bills
Wrote a couple “Thank You” notes
Read a little
Didn’t sleep enough

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Film Friday – Recycling Sawdust and Wood Chips

I spent last weekend in Portland, Oregon and happened by a custom furniture shop downtown called The Joinery.  The workmanship of their wares was terrific and the sales staff was really accommodating.  They knew I wasn’t going to buy any of their very nice pieces and yet still explained their ethos and process, details of the builds, and even let me wonder around taking a couple of pictures.  If Mid-Century to Japanese Fusion to 21st Century Modern is your thing and you are as allergic to IKEA pressed wood crap furniture as I am, them look them up and see if they have a piece of furniture that you have to have to fill that void in your living-room/soul.

Aside from their furniture, they had a display of pressed hardwood sawdust pucks – making furniture produces some waste and normally this sawdust goes to landfills or in my case, used for mulch and compost roughage.  Their display piqued my interest and I started asking questions. The Joinery and like establishments produce exponentially more sawdust than my little shop does, so their way of dealing with it is that they have invested in a sawdust briquette press that makes these hardwood hockey-puck-ish sized briquettes that are burned in pellet stoves, regular wood stoves, or fireplace inserts to provide heat.  There is no glue or bonding agent used, just pressure from a hydraulic ram-press keeps the pucks together. The shop goes a little beyond expectation though and GIVES THEM AWAY FOR FREE to the public at their other sales location and workshop (48th and Woodstock in Portland).  I can’t even tell you how happy it makes me to see a company do this.  The shear fact that this is part of their business model makes me want to buy a small occasional table or some such item just to support what they are doing.

I am so turned on by this that I am looking into a small briquette press for my shop.  The ROI time for the model that meets the size/cost requiremnet for me (a UK made press, a couple of Chinese machines, and one Canadian model) would be like 2 years for my limited use, but it would be worth it to me as there is only so much mulch that I and my neighbors can use.  I would like to use the briquettes for some house heat and to heat the shop and green house in the winter, giving away what I didn’t use.  Stay tuned for updates in my hunt and go by The Joinery’s website of shop and support them if you can.

Film Friday – The Garage Build Film Part 1

I’ve had a number of people on various web forums, 6 sets of neighbors, a few friends, and a ton of folks in our area ask me some detailed questions about our garage build: size, foundation, demo, siding, wiring, roof, the car lift, etc…  As I have been making some videos while rehabbing the hip, I thought that I would turn my garage build into a three part YouTube series to answer most of the questions and have all of the information documented in one spot. The first one is done and up now and the second should be done in a few weeks.

This one and the next are from pictures taken during the build, with a voice over.  The third will be a mix of videos, stills and some drone shots.  I learn something every single time I put a video or slide show together, so my hope is they get more and more watchable.

I didn’t have the time or facilities to do it in this video, but I would like to use my own guitar, banjo, ukulele, fiddle, and mandolin picking for the soundtrack on future videos. My son, brother-in-law, and any friends I can con into it will also be future soundtrack contributors.

2017 New Year’s Resolutions:

Stuff I will do in 2017:

Eat my veggies
Lose weight – back to 175!
Go to the gym regularly
Box more
Write more: Blog, letters, notes, fiction, non-fiction
Take a lunch at least 4 days a week at work
Show up to yoga at least once a week
Take a pottery class
Take a Blacksmithing class at the Pratt
Read 1 book every 2 weeks – minimum
Play my uke, banjo, and guitar with others
build a skin-on-frame canoe
Run and bike
Start a guitar building class
Pay off all credit cards
Go Sailing
Give lots of $$ to Heifer and MFS
Make movies and post: Adventure, craftsmanship, and family.
Lessen my Social Media presence (Blog doesn’t count)
See my kids and granddaughter more
Be involved in popitics more: financally and time wise
Work on my Genealogy database a little
Finish the house remodel
Finish the garage/shop/GROP build
Make Stuff!!
Ride my skateboard because I am not too old or too fat
Road trip in WA more
Have two hives of healthy, happy bees
Kayak lots!
See my friends more
Take my wife on vacation
Plant a spring garden
Fix up the front and back yards
Climb more inside and outside
Have an awesome Griswald-like Christmas light display!

New yellow Mustard-Monster Lathe up and running

When building The F-Bomb Garage, I bought some new tools in which to fill it.  One of those hunks of iron delight was a Powermatic PM3520b wood lathe with a bed extension and lots of accessories.  It was a replacement for the three lathes of varying sizes I had sold before the original garage was torn down. I didn’t have the room or desire to store equipment that I wanted to upgrade anyway.  The new lathe had been boxed up for 4 months waiting for me to clear some room, unpack boxes, and for the power to be hooked up.

I spent all of Saturday afternoon, the weekend after power was finally turned on,  putting together my sweet lathe. The thing is a beast, so I had to start out with the bed upside down and install the legs.  I carefully rolled it on its side after all the leg bolts were torqued down and girded up my loins for some heavy lifting.  Now, what I should of done was hook a block and tackle to the rafters and pulled it up right, but I am hard-headed, so I put on wrist straps and dead-lifted the bed onto a 2′ wood block.  Then, after psyching myself up a little, I lifted it the rest of the way vertical.  If my sweet wife would have caught me, she would have said dirty words and i would have been in serious – grounded form the shop – trouble.

Anyway, after the base was upright, the head-stock/motor, banjo (tool rest holder), and tail-stock went on.  I installed the 18″ bed extension while I was at it and made sure to check everything over one more time.

It is 710lbs of mustard-yellow sexy.

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We Have LIGHTS!!!

HOLY Bejesus… I have Electricity in the F-Bomb Garage!! Only 4 months after permit pulled and 9 months after garage build began. I have lights that are not hooked up to an extension cord, the auto door openers work, there are five 110VAC plugs ready for power tools, and my lift is now working without the aid of a 220VAC extension cord running from the drier plug in the basement of the house.

I just had the bare minimum done to get the panel and transfer switch in place and have the city sign off on the garage. Now, that is not to say that all is well in the electrical department: I am still waiting for final permit sign off for the work already done, which is on hold. Apparently, my electrician screwed up the wire routing in the meter box and SCL cannot install a meter. Thankfully they are letting me keep the lights on until my current electrician can come back and address.

I am now prepping in all the other 110 plugs myself – at 4′ high, putting in 2 additional 220 plugs and a 50amp plug for my welder. There is no way I am going to pay an hourly fee to have romex run, holes drilled, staples put in, and plugs & switches wired in. Nope. I will be paying electrician that my company contracts for industrial work to sign off on my install and run the lines into the panel and install breakers – already arranged and the price isn’t too bad at all. While I can do this in my sleep, I am not licensed and my insurance would not pay a dime is something happened, regardless of fault.

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Additionally, My J-O-B was getting rid of a huge organizer bin cabinet: 1/8″ steel, 72″X24″X84″ and 350+ lbs. There was no way I was going to watch that beast go to the recycling center, so I asked if I could have it. Yep, the facilities guy said “load it up” and btw “I have a pallet jack that is wonky if you want it…” Yes, please. Got them both home and the cabinet fits perfectly and will be amazing for climbing, boarding, camping gear organization – keeping all the shop dust and debris off of my gear and making it so I don’t have to dig for small parts ever again.

The pallet jack was low on hydraulic fluid. I filled it up, put a weighted pallet on it overnight and this morning I found the pallet still in the air and no fluid on the floor. Win-win.

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F-Bomb Garage Build Update: Mid-September 2016

Still no electricity… long sad story from the electrician: too much work, not enough people, confusion with the city, scheduling snafu… No show at all last week. I have watched an entire house, with a garage, be built and sold 3 streets away since my garage project started…

Fall is here and the rain is coming soon, so I spent an afternoon last week with the Airless Spray Rig and painted the garage doors, bollard post, and man-door Benjamin Moore Heritage red. The door & building trim will be bright white and will go on after work one day next week. Gutters go on after.

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House Remodel Status September 2, 2016 – 7.5 months in

Here is the house/garage re-build/build status for the 1st part of September.

  1. The F-Bomb Garage has been painted – at least the outside walls.  I need to paint the trim and doors next.
  2. Repaired some major issues with the trim and siding on garage – real unhappy with my garage builder!
  3. Front yard is still green, but need to clean and re-seed the back yard.
  4. There oar only 2 rooms in the house that are complete and need no work at this point.  Stamps-With-Foot could be happier with me right now…
  5. The mounting brackets for the granite in the basement are done and I will install them this weekend.
  6. Our washing machine went out…  fuck.  The bearings finally gave up the ghost.  need to haul it out and put another in.
  7. No garage power yet.  Huge load of confusion between the City of Seattle and my electrician.  Maybe worked out now, but we will see.
  8. The yard is completely fenced in and the rear gate is installed.  just a couple of tweaks and then power wash and polyurethane coat.
  9. The living room corner cabinets are in place, but not painted or installed.
  10. We have a small roof leak – motherfvcker!!!  it is around the kitchen vent and from where the moss removal team got too eager with the power washer.  I will go up there this weekend and seal it.
  11. Got a huge bill from our plumber for work that they didn’t do before abandoning the job.  wanted to scan my ass into the 3D printer and send them a copy.  Called a lawyer instead.  we have a plan forward.

The yard is now secure for the puppies

I spent my evenings after work this week rebuilding 35’ of fence, connecting it to the corners of the new garage, and installing two gates using reclaimed boards and stringers from the original fence that I carefully tore down back in January.  I reused the screws and most of the hardware, but had to buy 7 new treated posts, 2160 lbs of Sakrete, 4 bolts and two 2x8x10s. Total cost was $160 and 14 hours of labor including the tear down and hole digging.

My neighbor has been INCREDIBLY patient with me, my mess, noise, and building debris.  When I rebuilt the fence on her side of the yard, I tore out some more of the existing, replaced two rotten posts and then leveled the tops of each section to make it look nicer.  There were a couple of solid posts left from the previous fence location – about 2′ from the new garage – that I just couldn’t chop down or pull out so, I leveled them up and built her a simple trellis for honey suckle or wisteria.  I also bought her a $50 Starbucks card as a small ‘Thank you!’.

The back gate and adjoining section is a nice mix of mostly reclaimed and reused hardware, boards, bits mixed with new posts and structural support. I did double up on the facing boards (set on both sides) for some additional privacy as our hot tub is right on the other side.  The gate itself used to be on the opposite side of the yard.  I had to trim it a bit to get it to hang plumb, and move some hardware around a little.  I will be adding an additional hinge in the middle for added support and some face boards on the outside as well, so it gives the same amount of privacy and so it matches the fence.   The whole thing then will get a power washing and a coat of polyurethane in the coming weeks.

 

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Painting The F-Bomb Garage

The Garage build is coming along. Still waiting for Seattle City Light to connect the power from the transformer. 5 weeks now…Delay has been just a factor of this build. I would have more patience with City Light if one of their crews hadn’t been sitting at a bikini coffee stand for 30+ minutes on Monday while I was eating a late lunch across the street. I like boobs and bikinis and coffee even more than the average bear, but come on – don’t tell tell everybody how swamped your crews are if they have time to have a philosophical discussion with a nearly naked barista…

(For those of you not in the PacNW – bikini coffee here is a thing and some stands are really open to the definition of what a bikini is – an eye patch and pasties are the rule and some stands.)

I can’t continue with the interior wiring until that connection happens and the electrical inspection is OKed. No insulation or drywall/T1-11 until it get the “OK to Cover” from the electric inspector. I am not one to sit on my butt, so I wheeled out the airless spray rig for the first time in like forever and put two coats of quality Benjamin Moore paint on the outside of the garage – matches the house. I will paint the doors and trim this weekend.

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Building fences and pouring concrete

I need to tie the wooden fence back into the new structure so the dogs can roam in the back yard again. While backing up to unload concrete and posts for the fence, I barely tapped the corner of the garage with my trailer. Not a single scratch or dent or ding, but it made me say DIRTY words. I put my thunkin’ cap on and decided that if I did it once, I would do it again, and someone else would definitely smack the corner. A Bollard was in order. I went by Pacific Metals and picked up a 6’X5″X5/16″ wall hunk of square tubing and 4 sections of 3/8X10′ rebar.

I rented an auger to dig the needed 7 post holes and dropped in 1 more for the bollard. The fence post holes are 18-14″ deep, but the bollard hole is 38″ deep and after chipping away at it with a post hole digger, maybe 14-16″ in diameter with a bell-shaped bottom. I cut 3 of the rebars to 7’ and bent the three pieces into a fishhook shape, wire tying the tops together in 3 places. I then took the off cuts and bent them into a “U.”

I put the rebar in the hole, sitting on plastic rebar chairs and placed the post over them. I splayed out the “hook” sections and wire-tied the U-shaped pieced around the rebar and around the bollard. I then added another hoop around the original section and the tied hoop. Concrete was poured in and vibrated to get all the air and voids out. I filled the bollard with concrete and used a scrap section of rebar to agitate and pack down the concrete in the bollard.

I left 4” of the top of the square tubing free of concrete and dropped in a 6” lag bolt with to 3” sticking out of the wet concrete, but still in the tube. After the concrete dried and while I was setting some fence posts, I went back and finished off the top of the bollard with a bit more concrete. I will paint it red when I paint the doors to the garage. The thing won’t stop a tank, but it might save the corner of my garage from a moment of inattention…
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Not so short contractor rant

We are so close to being done with the garage and the house (yard is still a disaster, which will have to wait ‘til next year, but the stress of dealing with crappy, disorganized, and/or no show contractors throughout this process has been and is so frustrating.  This is not a post to rail on all contractors or even all of our contractors…

We had same great ones:

  1. Maranatha Hardwood Floors showed up on time for the quote. The owner was personable and the quote was reasonable.  They showed up on time, did a beautiful job, listened to a specific request from my wife, there were no extra charges, cleaned up after themselves, and our floor looks great.
  2. RCS Fire Place was A-1: On time, good pricing, no add-on charges, etc…
  3. After an initial sales rep flub, Greenwood Heating & Air did a nice job on our heat pump. Very professional installers.  No complaints.
  4. Vehicle Equipment Solutions was awesome on the lift order and install. I couldn’t be happier with their work.
  5. Our Drywall guys were top notch.  Very professional, great price, showed up when they were supposed to and finished right on time.
  6. The carpet guys that did our bedroom were fast, professional, and did a nice job.
  7. I had some custom wrought iron brackets made and the blacksmith listen to our wants and delivered a beautiful product.
  8. Pacific RIM equipment rental was great in supplying heavy equipment for the garage tear out and site prep. When there was a breakdown, they delivered a new machine and I wasn’t charged for any gas use for the entire weekend.
  9. Bryan at Squak Box was a rock star when it came time to haul out the debris from the old garage and all the old concrete. On time, no hidden costs, dropped the containers perfectly.  Couldn’t ask for more.

And the not so great:

My garage contractor has now quit.  There is little I can do at this point besides shake my head in wonder and disgust.  It has been a bumpy road from almost the start, but I figured that with a little bit of work it would all be OK.  A bit of work turned into a part time job and time spent on the garage was time not spent on the house and that made Stamps-With-Foot grumble.  In addition to the garage tear down and the site preparation that had to be done (40+ hours of my time and ~$3000.  I had to do 4-5 hours of slab/rebar prep when the contractor’s guy messed up, then had to ask for poly burlap to cure the slab, apparently not standard.  I ended up keeping the slab wet for the entire 10-day cure (to limit cracking and allow it to fully harden, then apply the concrete densifier after my normal workday and the end of the cure process.

Installation of fire blocking isn’t required per code in Seattle for a wall less than 10’, but it is the right thing to do.  It was out of scope for the contractor and an additional cost, so The Ruminator and I ended up doing it while he was here on summer vacation.  I had to install two forgotten kicker studs, tighten missed/forgotten anchor bolt nuts, added nails to the hurricane straps, and had to go over punch list items twice before they were addressed.

The windows and door trim were installed incorrectly – I could see daylight in the corners of the windows and I asked that they be re-installed.  When that was being done, my siding got cracked.  I also found that instead of every 16” per code, the siding was nailed every 4’ in some locations.  I called and the foreman came out.  He addressed some issues but caused others.  I then called the owner and he came out.  He agreed with every point I had.  They crew came back and while some items were fixed, others were not and new problems popped up.  I let the owner know and this was his response:

“Unfortunately we’ve succeeded in messing up again.  ____ had no excuse for why he didn’t read my email, about taking the siding out from the bottom of the windows, and what they were thinking with the screws into the bottom of the fascia’s.  If they’d pre-drilled the holes it would have worked and been clean.

I don’t have anyone else in my employee who I could send down to make any corrections, and I don’t think you would trust anyone I sent to do any more work.  What I’d like to offer is to forego our final payment and let  you clean up any items by your self.  I don’t like doing this, I really want to get the job done for  you but we’ve already had three try’s.  I know you might not be as happy as you should be but I want to at least make you satisfied with _____________.”

I am not happy and while I agree that I don’t trust his guys to come back a third time, the keeping of a few hundred bucks does not make it all better.  Now, I either have to find and pay someone else or do it myself.  Frustrating.

I have looked at this.  Am I just an asshole?  Am I too picky or do I expect too much?  I really have looked at this hard and yes, I can be an asshole,  but not in this and not with a single contractor or tradesman on my site.  We provided lunches, Gator-aid, and beer for all the guys working, I talked to every contractor that has been on our property like I would want to be spoken to, If I wanted something different or changed, I addressed it right then by ASKING and wasn’t the least bit of a shit about it.  I cleaned up the job site in the afternoons after I got off work to save them all time and effort.

Is needing someone to stick to a schedule, be on time, and not halfway do something too particular?  I don’t think so.  Is asking that a contractor meet minimum code requirements, pull permits, and do the job they agreed to for the agreed to price crazy?  apparently so.

Other issues:

In addition to the plumbing circus that we had in the spring, we had a carpentry crew that abandoned us for a job where the other customer was screaming louder.  They left tools, work unfinished, material, you name it.   My electrician has been a little flakey – uncashed checks, no shows, showing up unannounced and unscheduled, really hard to get a hold of, etc., but at least this one hasn’t broken into our house while we were gone…  I have had 3 contractors come out for quotes on our basement bathroom tile and never heard from two of them again.  The third guy finally called me back and said the job was just way too small and “not worth the time it would take to set up his wet-saw.”

I get it, all the contractors in Seattle are busier than a puppy with two peckers.  That means that 1. they can be super picky, 2. charge what they want, 3. if they fuck up, no worries, there are three other jobs waiting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The F-Bomb Garage completion is getting closer!

I was out of town this past week on a work trip to merry ol’ England. I came home to a sweet surprise: I have a new 10,000lb two-post lift installed in the F-Bomb Garage. I got a decent deal on a . Went with the Rotary Revolution RPT10 because there is a local dealer, local support, I got a decent deal on the lift+install, and some experience that some friends and colleagues have had with this and other lifts.

We are getting closer to finally building some stuff inside/voiding warranties/modifying the jeep.  My contractor had a foreman out last week to deal with the framing punch-list items: a couple of anchor bolts, some trim, loose siding, a funky corner, and I had him re-install my three windows with the proper flashing tape – I could see light in all the corners.  A leaky window after I have stressed the importance of proper installation and showed them what I needed twice would throw me into fits.  He also swapped the door trim, but not everything on the list got done and now there is more stuff that needs attention.  I have the contractor stopping by to go over it all tonight.  Very frustrating to spend this sort of cash and to deal with all the little things over and over.

The electrician is 3 weeks out – everyone is building and remodeling in Seattle and contractors are super swamped, so I am going to concentrate on the outside in the mean time: Paint and gutters as soon as the siding issues are dealt with.

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F-Bomb Garage Build Status – Late June

Well, we are a month+ behind schedule, but the our garage is coming along:

The roof trusses are up and on: Flat trusses on one side and scissors on the other side to accommodate the 2-post car lift. My contractor is not adding the fire block (insert grumpy face).  These both limit the upward spread of a possible fire and add structural rigidity to the wall.  Building code in our area is 10′ of wall height before block is “required” and my walls are 10’… I don’t care to build to the minimum of code, I want it done the right way and fire blocks, regardless of wall height, are the right way, so I cut them all to size myself and have employed child labor (The Ruminator) to install the blocks with a driver and some 3” framing screws. I then snapped a line at 5′ on the outside wall and gave him a hammer and a big box of 8d coated nails so he could attach the sheets to the blocks. Not too many shiners – he did a fine job.

The Tyvek vapor barrier wrap is just installed over the front wall so that the garage doors could be hung. Both are 8’X9′ R12 insulated fiberglass doors with no windows and follow the two different ceiling lines on the inside. I put jack-screw openers to the side of the doors so that the space over the doors would be clear. In the pictures below you can see the tiny attic as well – a pull down ladder goes in next week. Overkill, but I put ¾” T&G up there as floor decking and glued/screwed it in place – just ‘cause…

There is Carlisle WIP300 self-sealing roofing underlayment/membrane installed. #30 roof felt is $25 a roll and WIP is $90, but I only needed 5 rolls (4.2 actually). That $325 difference is serious insurance as the WIP can sit out without shingles on it, in case of wind damage an such, and not leak for 6 months. The roof (as well as wall) decking is all CDX (I HATE OSB) and for the small quantity bought for my garage, it is $4 a sheet in difference. $200ish total for sheathing and decking – well worth the price for peace of mind.  Roofing is 30 year algae-resistant (important in Seattle) 3 tab architectural shingles that are color matched to our house.

The rest of the wrap, windows, the man-door, and  6″ reveal Hardi lap siding goes on next week.

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