Watcha doing?

[tango]

Listening to the overnight roar of the Pacific ocean, which I enjoy when I can.


The contrast between that timeless essence and the relative noise of humanity is strikingly healing.

There's something special about hearing the waves washing up on the land. However long you listen to it, it just never stops.

[RabbiKnife]

Listening to the overnight roar of the Pacific ocean, which I enjoy when I can.


The contrast between that timeless essence and the relative noise of humanity is strikingly healing.

There's something special about hearing the waves washing up on the land. However long you listen to it, it just never stops.

Yep

Wife, mother in law , Andi are slippin away for three days at Jekyll Island next weekend

Long overdue break

[tango]

Sounds good. It's a bit of a trek from here though. Have a good break!

[Cloudwalker]

I'm picking up another doctor's appointment.  Went to my hearing doctor on Friday.  She: found that I have mild loss in the right ear and moderate loss in the left ear.  She recommends an aid for the left.  But before she does it she wants me to see an Ear, nose, and throat specialist to be sure there aren't any other problems.  Just what I need, another doctor.

[tango]

This morning I went for a run and got rained on. The rain wasn't supposed to start as early as it did, but apparently the clouds don't check the weather forecast before emptying themselves over me.

Then I did an hour or so with the lathe, as a form of distraction because I didn't feel like fighting with the windows. Then I figured the windows aren't going to sort themselves out and I might as well just get on with it, so got busy cutting the tops and sides of the window recesses to width. They were already cut to length but the standard lumber sizes didn't match the depths of the window recesses, so I had to trim them. Most of them were easy but a couple needed the jigsaw rather than the table saw.

The next step is a whole lot of stripping paint from the trim I recovered from a couple of windows, sanding everything in sight, then staining and lacquering before I dig out my trim screws to secure them all into place.

[tango]

More creation of man glitter in various parts of the house.

I recovered some of the window trim from the attic and set about figuring the best way to strip white paint off it. Some idiot decided that what a beautiful piece of yellow pine with stunning grain needed was a coat of white paint. I have no idea when, or who, or why, but now I'm tasked with getting rid of the now rather dated paint and restoring the wood to its former glory.

Next up was finishing a bowl I turned weeks ago. I let it dry for a while and today I re-turned it (as it dried it shifted shape slightly, so I turned it to get it back into round), sanded it, and made a couple of cracks in the rim into an artistic statement rather than a fault. A coat of cutting board oil and it really shines. I'm going to use some form of wire to look like the cracks are laced up, to enhance the sense that they are a statement rather than something that happened as the bowl dried.

I need to get a lot of stuff out of my work rooms. I've got all the window trim cut and put into place but my young granddaughters are coming tomorrow, and it's all in the rooms they like to play. I can foresee more favorable outcomes than two little girls getting their hands on my jigsaw, or indeed lots of wood that I've taken the time to cut to a fairly precise standard, so it needs to be moved so they can play in there. I could tell them not to play in there, but it's a convenient place for them to go and play when the adults need some time to talk.

[IMINXTC]

The world is changing but it seems I refuse to.


Folks, especially the young, will increasingly turn to AI to do their thinking for them. Artificial Intelligence is exactly that: artificial, and not always correct.

[tango]

A couple of good evenings.

Tuesday was my granddaughter's 6th birthday so my daughter came round with the grandchildren. We ate lots of food that was nutritionally garbage but the kind of thing a 6-year-old thinks is a huge treat.

Yesterday was my wife's birthday, and she wanted to go to a local diner pending a dinner at a nicer place that isn't open until tonight. I might have forgotten to mention that our daughter and granddaughters were going to meet us there. We managed to keep it a secret from her until she walked around a corner and two small figures jumped out and shouted "happy birthday Grammy!"

[Cloudwalker]

Had my 2nd eye injection today.  If I remember what I was told I have 8 left.

[IMINXTC]

Around 1973, at  20 years old, I was pumping gas at around .57 per gal. The oil embargo of that era, sending  prices over $1.00 per, sent society into a tailspin.

[tango]

Time to get back to the everlasting house project. Today was easy enough, a final sanding of some window trim followed by cleaning up the dust, wiping everything down well and laying it out to be stained. I've got the trim for two windows stained so far, I only have so much space to lay it all out so the next three windows will need to wait. Maybe I can get to that tomorrow.

[tango]

Lacquering and sanding today. Three coats of lacquer on the window trim I stained yesterday, and sanding more window trim while waiting for the lacquer to dry. Now I have the pieces that go on the wall beside the windows stripped and sanded with coarse paper. It got too late for me to want to deal with finer sanding so I'll do that tomorrow.

My wife still doesn't like the fumes that come with lacquer. I've been using the faster drying lacquer which means I can apply three coats in a little over six hours instead of waiting eight hours between coats, but this lacquer has a lot more VOCs so the smell is, well, more aromatic. So despite the cool outside I have a fan in the window to try and pump the fumes out.

I think tomorrow's job is going to be to sand and stain the first sections of trim for the next three windows. That's about all I have space for at once, and once that's done and they are fitted into place I can think about cutting the room-facing trim. And then I can think about baseboards and doors. Stripping paint from a door could be tricky, not least because manhandling a door down to the basement is a task in itself, and it needs to be in the basement for ventilation because I have a nice big extractor fan in my woodshop down there.

[tango]

More staining and lacquering. I've gone through nearly a quart of lacquer in the last few days.

The sanding is done for now, as is most of the wood finishing. I've got three pieces of board left to stain and lacquer, another four boards to lacquer, and three windowsills to lacquer. I'm hoping I can do it all at once but I'm expecting it will take two passes, simply because of the space I need to lay everything out and work around it. Which is a bit of a drag, as it means I need more brushes and more time dealing with the fumes.

[tango]

The three boards are stained and everything has two coats of lacquer on it. The third and final coat of lacquer goes on in a little under two hours. Then I can put the lacquer away for a bit. I'll be glad when I can have a few days without the fumes. They don't usually affect me much but for this work I'm using the fast drying lacquer which is much higher in VOCs, so the smell is a lot more intrusive.

I wasn't sure if I could treat everything in one go but found a big box I could flatten as a drip catcher for one of the windowsills, and everything else just about fit over the sheet I had laid out.

Before too long I'm going to need to cut some side trim for three windows, I'm not sure if I have enough wood on hand to do that or if I'll need to go and get some more. Then I'll need to order wood to make baseboards, which will mean another round of staining and lacquering, but I'll probably look to use the flooring lacquer (with very low VOCs) for that job.

[tango]

All three windows in one room now have windowsills and window recess trim fitted. The other room has two windows - one is fully fitted with trim and the other needs a little attention - I noticed a gap in the sealant so that needs to dry. I can fit everything tomorrow. I'll also need to go and buy some more trim screws because I have 5 left and I'm going to need at least 10.

What's fitted is looking good. I know I'm going to have to be staining and lacquering again before too long but it's nice to have a couple of days with no fumes to be dealing with.