Home on the Hill

Washing that is. I have been painting Tom's Endako house in preparation for selling it to a friend of ours. It had one red bedroom, one orange and the living room had a hand painted( and not a straight one) transition between the dining area and living room. Two coats of slightly grey tinted primer to help hide the red and orange and a coat of high quality off white latex sprayed and then rollered on, and the place is looking a lot better. Tomorrow one last coat and I'll be finished. In between painting I have been pressure washing the garage in preparation for spraying on water proofing on the bottom foot inside and out and then installing mouse and bird stops between the battons. And then, if weather permits, putting a couple of coats of opaque hunter green latex stain on it. And If I am extremely lucky, weather wise, a couple of coats of primer and paint on the trim. Just a word of caution if your reading this and thinking pressure washing is the way to clean up your s...

Xena blew out her left front paw pad while chasing after Jo-Ann. Jo was going to visit a neighbor and had put Xena in the house to prevent her chasing after the van. Xena has a very bad habit of running after vehicles coming and leaving he yard. After Jo-Ann had left I went in the house and let Xena out to come and help with the garage renos. She saw some cows in the yard and looked at me, I told her to leave them alone, a command she knows and follows. When I turned around after a few minutes she was gone. Vanished. What had happend was Jo-Ann was driving slowly down the, wet from the rain, driveway and I guess Xena heard her and took off after her. By the time I Jumped in the truck and went after her Jo-Ann had her in the truck and was coming back up the hill. Blood stains all over the upholstery from where Xena had ripped her pad. No vet's on Tuesdays so we bandaged her up and put one of Jo-Anns socks on her paw. Today we have an appointment with the Vet in Burns. I am...

Spent a day cleaning up the construction debris around the garage reno. Pulling nails. I got to use a weird tool I purchased a couple of months ago. Some of the rafter pulins were six and eight inch peeled logs and when I pulled a couple of pounds of spikes from them I needed to cut them to length for the fireplace. The logs were too big for the radial slide saw so out came the electric chain saw. It worked great. It had a 16 inch bar and doesn't make a lot of noise - and no pull start. Just plug it in and press the button. It takes regular chain oil. Hard to beat for small cutting jobs around the place. No need to haul out the 24 inch Sthil to cut a couple of sticks of firewood. One of these days I am going to invest in a buck saw . Actually it looks like it wouldn't be to hard to make a decent one. Probably just as fast as getting out a chain saw for the little jobs. We went into Prince George on Sunday to roam around the Home Depot. I love the one in PG. At the...

We managed to get the tin on the roof. Just in time. Today we're having torrential rains, as a matter of fact the weather network has issued a weather warning. It did feel good to pop in the last roofing screw - moments before the rain started in earnest. Today we put windows in one of Tom's houses in Endako. Tomorrow some computer work, and then tyvek and a window in the refurbished garage/shop.

How's this for the end of a great day.

Back at the garage today. We got all the strapping installed. Put up the insulation barriers, put up the 2X6 and 2X4 trim, and cut in a side door opening. Tomorrow, weather permitting we go for roofing felt and tin. Given the weather that is supposed to be on the way a water proof room would be a good thing. And then comes inside strapping, insulation, garage door, concrete floor and Stain. Oh and some heat. It is starting to come together. Now I will have to make a decision about putting up plywood or drywall on the inside. My preference would be plywood, but dollar wise, drywall is cheaper. Am still trying to come up with a game plan for the door on the front that will lead to the "attic" storage. Right now I am thinking of making a framed in set of hinged doors just like a normal door except two of them, and smaller. The trick is in the finishing against the board and batten siding.

We got a lotta fecund zucchini. This year we planted two tires. A couple of tiny wee seeds in all that black amended soil. contained within a stout rubber barrier. What could go wrong? The jolly green garden bully has taken over. Reaching menacingly towards the spaghetti squash. Threatening the onions. Eyeballing the cabbages. We've heard rumblings at night, like it is getting organized, marching, holding rallys . No doubt it will soon get a flag, and march on the house. Total domination. We were warned. There were subtle admonishments. But did we listen? NO. Thinking that it was hard to get stuff to really grow in this climate we totally forgot about the magic of tire gardening and drip irrigation. Next year-- one tire. We are in trouble. We are franticaly researching what turns out to be a common problem: zucchini uprisings. In an attempt to keep it in it's place we've tried it steamed, and fried with garlic and butter. Wonderful thick emerald rounds, pan fried...

In preparation for raising the roof on the old garage. There was an old pole tied precariously to the garage with some soft fencing wire. The pole was the roost for a couple of old TV antennas, and it always made me nervous when I walked by it. For good reason, it turns out. I noticed how shaky the pole was when I used the arial lift to take the antennas down. We didn't waste any time getting some straps on it and securing it with the excavator. There was nothing really holding it up. When I cut the wires attaching it to the garage the pole just flopped over and Tom managed to bring it safely to the ground, securely attached to the excavator bucket. The bottom four feet of the pole was an ant's nest. Interestingly, there wasn't any sign of them from the outside. I hit the broken bottom four foot section with my claw hammer trying to pick it up and it split in two. I sure feel a lot better with that thing gone. Lord knows how it stayed up with some of the winds w...

Spent the day doing some odd jobs around the place. Some maintenance. Infrastructure repairs. Well OK, fixing things . While I was putting up a roller blind for the East wall kitchen window I, once again, ran into one of the more puzzling and maddening aspects of basic fasteners : what good is a philips screw? Especially the combination ones that try and combine a philips with a slotted screw. What’s with that idea? They strip if you stare at them sideways. It takes two hands to drive them. As opposed to the Robertson square socketed screw . It works like a dream compared to any other type. It doesn’t strip, it can be used one handed even overhead and about the only place I wouldn’t use it would be if I were screwing something like a lid on a box that was going to be buried. Like an underground electrical box. The reason for that is that the square socket is hard to clean the dirt out of . The proper screw for that application is a standard slotted screw. The dirt would jus...

Today I laid the last brick in the new compost pad. We've been learning a lot about composting lately and decided to move our current setup closer to the garden. The idea here is to have a level concrete pad that I can use to dump the composte to turn it. That will make more sense in a later Post when I show you the "re-tired" composter. First we leveled the ground, spiked some salvaged railroad ties down with pieces of 1/2 inch rebar, added some clay, leveled that and then added some sand. This is my friend Dan ( who stopped by the Blomquist bread,breakfast and project place) leveling the sand and giving me an idea for a future sand garden. ( or is that even possible with four cats and a dog?) Note all the 20 litre pails. That was Jo-Ann's contribution to the project.( and some future ones also) I have a trailer, but it leaks like a sieve so Jo-Ann came up with the idea of loading the pails with sand and transporting the filled pails in the trailer. It sure makes...

Time to do some long over due maintenance on my 1845 Case uni loader. Which I have been referring to as a generic skid loader. But now I have the service manual so I know what it's official name is. It has been losing traction on the right side and tend to acts like a man with one leg shorter than the other, tending to pull to one side. My brother Tom came up and we disassembled it enough to notice that it had a broken centering shock absorber on the right hand control arm. Afterward I spent an hour or so de-greasing and cleaning out the machine in prep for some annual maintenance. I am talking about removing at least an inch of thick oily crud from the innards. I don't think it has ever been cleaned since it left the factory. I swear it was smiling when I finished. To fill in the gap while my uni-loader is down for maintenance Tom brought up his new, did I mentioned, air conditioned' skid steer. You just know I am going to do some playin...er working with this thing...

This box arrived in the mail for Jo-Ann the other day. You don't think I have anything to worry about do you? Sara and Kevin and Lucy the baying dog left this morning for the 12 hour run to the Coast. They were loaded down with fresh eggs and some veg from the garden. I miss them already. They sure brought the good weather with them. It just might get to 26C today.

My Daughter Sara and husband, Kevin arrived on Friday. RT & Rhoda and the family, Molly and Tommy stayed around to meet them and have a 100 mile supper. Local cured ham, Garden Veg with Local green house Begonias added for colour and zip. Like Sara says: "We start feasting with our eyes". Last night was a half-smoked salmon Nicoise Salad ( ..don't have the french mark for the "c") Which was mostly local - the exception being the Olives - Which did come from the Local Safeway. Hopefully RT & family will be back on the return trip. I don't know what it is with visitors. I can get them here once and then they just don't come back. Bad hosting? Putting them to work on the daily projects? I was pretty sure they were having fun. Stick a cordless Paslode nail gun in RT's hands and we reverted to 12 year olds building tree forts. Just a lotta fun. Now don't try this one at home. We're trained twelve year olds. Although it looks li...