When last I left you, I was planning to slink off and recover from the July from hell. I posted that on Wednesday August 2. The very next day – I kid you not! – I walked into the living room as a truck was pulling into our driveway. What? I had no appointments or machine drop offs scheduled. Then I noticed the decals on the truck. An asphalt company. OK, Ryan had been making noises about calling more landscaping places because we still needed to take care of the rain water / back step problem. He must have made an appointment and not told me. This guy gave us an estimate that nearly knocked me over but it was for way more work than we’d planned. This would take care of the grade problem in the back that had existed since we bought the house and that was made worse when we put the garage in back in 2010. It would also deal with our cracked, sinking and shifting driveway (which is a real treat to shovel in the winter!) that was future work we had planned.
He offered us a really good price if we did the work soon because his crew was in the area. How soon? Next day. Yeah. I got 2 weeks to recover and then new upheaval! And we’ve pre-spent the vacation budget for the next 10 years.
But, someone else was doing the work, how bad should it be for me? I find landscaping and pavement stuff especially never seems to be one and done for some reason. There’s always stuff left to do after they’re gone. In this case, the “2-3 buckets” of dirt they left in the trailer parking area turned out to be closer to about 4-5 yards of dirt/sod/road crush. It was piled so high, we couldn’t park the trailer anymore. So Ryan towed the trailer out to the dealership where we bought it back in 2009 and got them to do the roof seal that was long overdue. They had it for a week. That meant we had a week to get the yard in order enough to get the trailer back in.
Here’s what the yard looked like the day he came to evaluate the job. Even in generic pictures, it’s easy to see the grade problems and the effect of the broken bracket for the back step. The plastic helped to direct the obscene amount of rain we’d been getting away from the foundation temporarily:
Here’s the yard during:
And here’s what things look like before we shifted the sod and dirt to where it could be most effective for drainage and levelling out spots in the yard:
The bottom of the driveway here is a utility right of way and we couldn’t pave that. This coming spring, we’ll crib in the space and fill it with gravel. Hopefully, that will prevent the annual mudhole from forming and it will look better than it does here.
Once that was done, I apparently just needed the rest of the upheaval and water related things finished. So, I painted the bathroom and replaced the baseboards. Flooring and the countertop/tap will wait until I feel like enough time has passed that the thought of disturbing the water lines in this house doesn’t make me break into a cold sweat. I sanded and waxed all the IKEA bare wood stuff in the house – a butcher block cart, a kitchen island and a countertop that lives in the darkroom.
Then, I decided to reassemble my first car. See, Sebastian – my 83 Pontiac Firebird – has been living in the back of the garage for 13 years – since we built the garage. Around that time, I pulled the interior out so that I could get a look at the floor pans that needed replacing. And then it sat, waiting for me to learn to weld – and I haven’t. In that time, the hardware was in the laundry room. The seats in the exercise room. The carpets folded up in the car. The stereo and the amp in the front closet. It was time to photograph and reassemble in the short term – especially since I didn’t even know if I still could reassemble – it had been years since I took everything apart, nothing was labelled and no photos (I know this for sure with the photo scanning project I just did!). No big deal. It should take me a half day to put it back together. Ha.
This though is where my IT background (troubleshooting) and the sewing machine repair come in. I’m a far better mechanic than I was back in 2010 and I used all of those skills to get the car back into its original configuration.
It took about 12 hours because that interior fought back but it’s complete at the moment and I have a list of repairs needed to make it roadworthy again. I’m missing one M8 seat nut. I’m immensely impressed that that’s all that was missing.
Back when Baz was my daily driver, I did a lot of wrenching on him. That session took way more of a toll on me than I remembered. I was bruised, cut up, both wrists jammed up, my shoulder was tight and my forearm muscles so sore. Edit: No, it turns out the pain was in the tendons not the muscles.
Now, a portion of that is because the car is on dollies so we can move it at will in the garage but the wheels on the dollies hadn’t moved in years and needed some lubrication. We didn’t realize that before we struggled for about 45 minutes to get it back in place on Saturday night. Sunday, Ryan climbed under the car and gave all 16 wheels some fluid film and then I could move the car by myself – though I shouldn’t have. Now that those casters are freed up, I may push the old guy out to the pad and wash him next spring. I wasn’t going to do that while it was such a pain to move it but now that I can move it alone, it’s possible and boy is this car long overdue. It’s currently a record of every project we’ve done in the garage!
It finally felt like things were getting under control. I still checked for water every time it rained and likely will in the spring as well but I’ve been assured it’s virtually impossible for water to get in there now.
Then the dishwasher pump failed.
There were 7 water events in total – all between the end of May and the end of August:
- The bathroom replacement
- The broken step bracket that let water into the basement
- The water heater rupture
- The water pump in the car
- The dishwasher
- The tea kettle
- The washer (which turned out to be a non-event)
Since then, I’ve been trying to float under the radar and lick my figurative and literal wounds. Historically Autumn is a time to retreat for us and regroup. I’ve been hoping that whoever’s been paying way too much attention to us will let us do that.
So, all that to say: I did barely any spinning, no sewing, no sewing machine repair, only a little bit of computer support and nearly no photography (other than the last 2 days of the month) in August too. One of those stats will become significant in a later post.
I did discover that my eSpinner fits perfectly into a featherweight case and so I’ll use a spare case to carry it safely from now on. I’ll be making a modified featherweight case liner for it – since it doesn’t need the pocket for the extension bed- probably in the new year now.
Whatever happened to “no more big projects this year”?
OK, on to the next post and 3 far less eventful months!
Today’s post title – or not. I’ve been listening to a lot of Tina Guo lately. She’s a professional Cellist, and has done a lot of work in Hollywood. There’s a good chance you’ve heard her work, especially if you watch any of the sci-fi/fantasy shows but also some action films, video games, etc. I find lots of the regular classical relaxes me and the other work is super fun so it spans a lot of moods for me.
Here’s one of the classical songs: Sakura
And one of the themes: Wonder Woman Theme
A full life, for sure!
You know it!