One year ago today: May 24, 2016, cabin pics.
Five years ago today: May 24, 2012, boneless chicken thing.
Nine years ago today: May 24, 2008, it seems that way to women.
Random years ago today: May 24, 2011, the skinny on school-teaching.
There, finally some drywall finishing work. Sure enough, the tough part was all the cutouts, but I sort of got the hang of it. I’m going to use reinforced metal corners; I didn’t have any so wait on that one. Drywall, if you are looking for efficiency, is a two man operation. The sheets generally have to be manhandled into place. I got them done but had some problems I shouldn’t have. For example, there is one section of wall, all I did was take the old drywall off and put the new drywall on. But the panels won’t fit flat. It’s a mystery but not for long. I’ll have it sanded before long and maybe a coat of primer on the weekend.
He screwed up. The price drop followed through central Florida and if he’d been listening instead of talking, he would have had the cash to swoop in here and buy two or three nice properties just for himself (around $120,000). Alas, we will never see those prices again in our lifetimes. Yep, he royally messed up that one. He slowed me down a couple years. It may seem like five years (2012-2016) before I bought, but I could have bought any time. However prices were still inching downwards and I was busy visiting Colorado, California, Texas, all that travel cost more than this place, you know.
As for Wallace? I dunno, maybe he died a pauper in some basement suite in the east end, still blaming others for his mistakes. Note—I paid every bill and every cent I ever promised him. And I had the money to repay him on schedule as agreed in our partnership. How can he be sure, asks Patsie? Well, that’s what I bought this place with, dumbunya. What a schmuck he turned out to be. Runs in the family.
Trivia. Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology recently discovered that about half of adult Americans are logged in a criminal face recognition database, and may have ended up there simply by having a photo taken for a driver’s license or passport. And where were you all warned about all this long before Georgetown took up the cause?
French solar panels.
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Just as I was about to commence building a sluice box, some guy in Tampa has a real aluminum unit for sale for under a hundred bucks. They normally run $500 from Keene Engineering. I’ll give him a call, see if he can ship it. The weight is designed to be carried by hand. This kept us busy over at Agt. R’s place until after dark. He’s now in agreement that we don’t spend one unnecessary cent until we see results, and those results could be just the know-how on using the equipment. We’ve got the river channel as it cascades past the old railway trestle, so that obviates the need for a pressure pump until we see what’s in that gravel.
Who’s going to be the smartass and comment that things are once again moving ahead only at the speed I personally spend money and do the homework? Hey, it’s been like that my whole life. The problem is, before it does me any good, I’d have to live to be 300. It’s not like money or brains have ever been available in adequate quantities where and when I needed them. And the motor on my 1963 rock tumbler is beginning to make funny noises.
We got a half inch of rain so I was in the library. It was supposed to be three times that, but it was already a cool day. The storm had to move further inland before breaking out. I watched some video on the horror story called South Africa. There and Zimbabwe is where you look for what will happen when the liberals get their own way. A rape every 26 seconds and 47 murders a day while the BBC, CBC, Fox News, and CNN look the other way. Approximately 2,100 white farmers and their families have been tortured to death. And not a word from the liberal press.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.'
--Thomas Watson, IBM, 1943
And how about that situation in Poland? They’ve tried to hush that up as well, but the Poles know how to deal with foreigners who get out of line. What struck me about the underground videos getting out of the country and onto the Internet is that the dissenters are not punks or street thugs as the press traditionally portrays them. These are high-ranking elite types. And they are not to be put off by being called a few names. Is Poland going to be the flashpoint again? Something is brewing and the Eastern Europeans are the only people left over there with any backbone. Has France finished apologizing to the terrorists yet?
Another cry that gets me is the constant defense that immigrants take jobs that Americans won’t. I’m curious exactly how that is determined. After all, there is a very big distinction between won’t take the job and won’t take the job for less than a living wage and making up the difference on welfare and food stamps. But I’m still curious how a job that Americans won’t do is decided, and who does it. The tooth fairy?
[Author’s note: not many people know that on the eve of World War II, defined by the west as September 1, 1939, Poland had the fourth largest army in the world. The relatively tiny German army was able to overrun the Poles in a few days because the Poles, having received encouragement from France and England to threaten Germany, had massed their entire army along the border.]
The new guitar player, it turns out, has never been in a real country band. Only the fake ones, you know, that play one or two Cash numbers, and then bring out the old Buddy Holly. He wants to do some of those but I did point out to him that whenever bands I was with tried to incorporate that material, it always flopped. Even when we had extraordinarily gorgeous women singing them. The problem is that music lacks the distinct “boom-chicka” dance beat that people associate with country music. I mean, what do people who can dance move when a band plays “Peggy Sue”? You can’t even Hokey-Pokey to most of that 1950s sound.
That’s not to rule anything out, but my advice is don’t be playing any Elvis or Chuck when the house hires you as a country band. Worse, when you play one tune in that vein, there is always some fringe case in the crowd who will then start with the requests and admonitions when you can’t or won’t play more of his favorite crap. In fact, I’ll tell you the ten worst songs a “country band” could play
Gimme Three Steps (never play this song in a country band)
Blue Suede Shoes
Down On The Corner
That’s Alright Momma
Proud Mary
Johnny B. Goode
Honky Tonk Woman
Stray Cat Strut
Before You ‘Cuse Me
My Dingaling
Oh, and before I forget. Mack the Knife. Don’t play Mack the Knife. In any band. Ever. God, no.
ADDENDUM
The oak floor. Enough of the wood has been salvaged to choose only the best sections for the eventual sunroom floor. Nearby is a section of the wood with a series of tests to see what looks best. Not to be confused with the pine, this oak is the one that turns dark when anything liquid touches it. According to several sources, the best looking oak floors are now the ones with just a clear poly finish. That’s what you see on the far left. Reading across this is exterior poly, plain oak, one layer of stain and poly, and two layers of stain and poly.
[Photo delayed]
This is new to me, but apparently some consider that the red oak stain is a product used to disguise or cover up inferior oak lumber. I agree the clear finish does look good and the two layers of stain are so dark you have to squint to see the wood grain. It’s one of those situations where I’ll stop and think it over. The sunroom and deck, unlike the rest of the structure, will be 16” on center. In the sunroom, this means for a fraction of the cost of buying oak these days, I can get a top quality chop saw and upgrade the oak pile into perfect sections.
As for the sample shown here, this piece has been carefully planed on the jointer and both stained and painted by hand. More research shows the wood being covered by various mops and brushes, but from doing the lawn bench rails, I see no reason why the stain could not be applied by hand. The wood doesn’t always take the stain evenly and there is no substitute for adding a little dab where a light patch is encountered. I’ll test some very light stains just to see. But the final coat will be applied in place, I intend to hunt down the best possible product for that.
Another easy bit of work is the self-adhesive drywall tape. It goes on without a hitch and eliminates the need for a first layer of mud to make it stick. The tape is perforated so enough mud gets through to fill regulation gaps. It was my first tape job and I did the entire room in six minutes, giving me lots of time to be very careful with the mud. I’m borrowing sanding equipment. The mud was five or six dollars for a bucket of premix and it works fine.
The word is to use indoor/outdoor primer whenever possible. The new formulas will take any type of paint. The soundproofing insulation and extra tarpaper were worth the effort. If you think the room was silent before, there was an even more noticeable difference when the final sheet of drywall was secure in place. Compare it to shutting the door on a room at the end of a noisy hallway. It has a real damping effect. I prompt my readers that this is not a construction blog, rather a record of the most outstanding events of my day, and learning something new regularly tops that list. The more so because I’ve never done anything like this before in my life.
I could also add do not try this at home, but that’s precisely what I’m doing. Maybe consider each house unique and take everything as advise, not as exact instructions. I still have to remove that one entire piece of drywall to find out why it has that hump at one edge. I doubt the lumber could have possibly swelled that much by itself. But as usual, once these projects are completed, the blog will move on. Like electronics, I still dabble in it. I just don’t much encounter anything new with it any more.
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