End of Summer

Haven't had a chance to catch everyone up much this Summer and now it will be over in a couple of days. Seems as if we have hardly been up here, but we are here virtually every weekend. I still have a couple of weeks of vacation to burn so there may be some additional days scheduled for fall.

Summers are fairly short in the high country, but Fall can be incredible. I am expecting this years to be, because of the amount of water we have had this year. Or is that a rural myth (vs. urban myth)?

The sun can be intense as my sunburn (multiple times) head can attest to, so we do have a number of shade creators around. More on the sun later.

Soon we will need to change the tea time beverage of choice from margaritas and Corona, to wine and Fat Tire. Oh, the problems of seasonal change overs.

Heck, even the grass is coming up in the front yard (ha!). I may even have to take the lawn mower to it.

I suppose I could wait for the cattle (proper term for cows, heifers, bulls, etc.) to trim it and deposit the clippings, in their own way...on the patio.

Marlys has adopted deck/balcony maintenance as her own. Last year she did the first waterproofing, and this year she is following it up. She believes a six foot scaffolding would be a good investment and after watching her stand on the VERY top of the eight foot step ladder, I have to agree. It always looks like an accident just waiting for the proper time to happen.

We still have a number of things that didn't get done over the summer, but there is always next year.

The biggest project in the carryover category is the rear deck.

And as a friend of ours says about projects her husband undertakes, "Abracadabra, and two years later its done!"

I am still in the planning stage on the deck.

As you can see the temporary idea didn't pan out. It was a carryover from the trailer era.

BTW the burn mark in the corner is from getting a Terra cot ta fireplace too hot and having it start to scorch the plywood. You would think we would learn after having the SAME chimmera (sp?) burn THROUGH the deck back in Minnesota.

Its not like I even need to buy materials. They have been on site aging for a year now. You know you don't want to use lumber until it decides its ready.

All of the trim painting is complete, except the garage doors (I guess then it isn't complete.) and that should be done in the next few weeks.

I almost became a human lightening rod during this project as I could only paint out of the heat of the sun, so that meant early morning (before sunrise) and when clouds would provide some shade. Sometimes those clouds also provide some lightening.

I keep think we need a dragons head or something for the prow. Kinda like the prow on a Viking longboat. Maybe we can get our son the artiste to do something. But probably only if we provide a commission in some amount, as if school isn't enough.

We had gutters installed. After last winter that became a priority before the flakes fly this season.

The snow would melt and refreeze on the deck/balcony, then drip on to the patio and refreeze again right in front of the doors.

Then of course it would snow on top of the ice, and I would do the slip, slide , plop mountain two-step.

We also installed retractable screen doors in green.

Even though the mosquitoes are pretty rare up here, flies can be a pain. I have reduced the population using a fly trap that utilizes a bait the smells like...well crap, or as Mike Rowe would say "poo" (Dirty Jobs).

It seems to really attract the flies, since it needs emptying pretty regularly. Its called a Fly Magnet and I got it at Lowe's.

Remember for every female fly you trap you reduce the potential problems by thousands.

We still need to touch up the white brackets, but they work real nice.

It has also become obvious that we need to tint the prow windows. This will be an inside undertaking when the temp drops a bit. We are going to go with a gray, non-reflective 35% tint. About the most we can go with the double glazed windows. I am looking at getting the film from Concord Films.

The road is amazing. Tim widened it to 16' and adding packed down road base. It is almost a shame to drive on it. Now I need to get the plow for the ATV.

You probably can't see it, but right in front of Dusty is my $300 coffee table base mistake. I gave the fabricator the wrong measurements and it is too small to support the curly redwood slab top. I have decided to forget the steel base and go with matching curly redwood leg and stretcher base. Should have gone that direction in the first place.

We are going to use the mistake base as a bench bottom. This is going to be an expensive bench.

We have also added another toy in that we moved the hot tub up in July and it is connected and ready to go.

The nice thing about being in the middle of nowhere is that soaking commando is not a neighborhood eyesore.

Its got a great sound system built in, only problem is that we can only get one radio station (too lazy for CD's) and that's the "River Rat" out of Salida. Its OK, but I am going to need to hook up a FM transmitter to the IPod for tunes.

Tootles, til next time.