Paradise ponders, pressure-washed cat house edition...

Paradise ponders, pressure-washed cat house edition...  I made a run to Home Depot this morning to pick up the supplies I needed in order to do the wiring for our deck.  It was a big pile. :)  While there, I noted that they had nice solid cedar dog houses on sale – for less than I could buy the cedar for.  Well, the heck with building my own for the puppy yard!  When I put the puppies out with it for the first time, Mako ran straight up to it – and started chewing.  Sheesh!  He's already eaten about a half inch off one corner.  At this rate the dog house will have completely disappeared in about a week.

My brother Scott came over to visit and to test the pressure washer I bought recently.  If it worked well for cleaning up old muddy driftwood, he wants one for his own use.  He and I put it together in our garage, filled it with oil and gas, hooked it up to a hose, and lit it off.  It worked great on my driveway for a couple minutes, then I handed the wand over to Scott to try on a piece of driftwood.  Immediately it stopped working, doing a funny pulsing instead of a nice, steady high pressure.  Dang it!  Scott thought it had died, but after a couple more minutes of this intermittent operation it went back to working great.  I suspect there was air in the 75' hose I used to hook up to it, and that took a while to work out.  In any case, the pressure washer passed his driftwood test with flying colors, so we ordered one for him.

Scott saw the shipping crate I blogged about earlier today, and had a great idea: he can make that into a nice, insulated cat house for the kittens hanging around his cabin.  We loaded that into his truck for him to take, along with a roll of the goat wire that our fencing guys have been removing from our fence.  Scott's going to use that as an armature for some future concrete sculpture.

Debbie and I just got home from a very nice dinner at the Black Pearl, with a dessert of ice cream from Aggie's creamery.  When we pulled in, we noticed that the deck roof had been “dried in” (waterproof underlayment laid down on top of the sub-roof).  That means we're all set for the storms forecast for tomorrow night and much of the next week.  Woo hoo!

Paradise ponders, baseboard matching edition...

Paradise ponders, baseboard matching edition...  It was slightly calmer here yesterday.  But only slightly. :)

I did a walk-around inspection in the morning, looking for any little bits of trim that might not be ready for the painters (who are scheduled to show up on Monday).  I discovered a missing bit, about 9" long (at right) – and we don't have any spare pieces lying about.  Home Depot and Lowe's have nothing even remotely like this.  What to do?  Our builder recommended trying Burton Lumber (the source of all the lumber we used in construction), so I ran up there to see if they could match it.  They did!  Given that the baseboard we were trying to match was installed 22 years ago, I think that's pretty amazing!

Speaking of the builders ... they've finished all they can do until I get the electrical wiring for the deck finished.  Below left shows what our deck looks like now, looking out from our kitchen doorway to the northwest.  The photo at right shows what the inside of the deck roof looks like at the moment – not so beautiful! :)  My wiring will be installed inside that mess, and then when I'm finished the builders will return and put a “skin” of tongue-and-groove floorboards over the bottom of what you see there.  All the interior framing will be hidden.  Our builder was absolutely delighted that (for the first time in the entire project) he wasn't the long pole – it was me instead. :)

Later in the day we got a call from SSL shipping, telling us that they had a delivery to make.  We were expecting this; it's a piece of furniture for our bedroom (more on that in a later post).  He was driving a big rig, so I made arrangements to meet him out on the road with my tractor in ten minutes or so.  I went out, got the forks mounted on the tractor, and drove out to the highway to meet him.  As I arrived, a Corlett shipping truck (which we were not expecting) drove up and pulled over.  He had a delivery, too – Debbie's office chair that we weren't expecting for another week or so.  What a weird coincidence!  The SSL truck showed up about 3 minutes after the Corlett truck left.  That was very convenient – which it happened more often!

The delivery from SSL (the bedroom furniture) was in the crate at right.  The truck driver told me he'd never seen furniture delivered in such a nice crate.  The crate was entirely constructed from 5/8" plywood mounted on top of a standard pallet.  Inside were pine 2x2s for a frame, and all screwed together.  Amazing!  The furniture inside was in perfect condition, having been protected on its journey with that beautiful crate.