Good Socks!

At 5am this morning walking the dog my thoughts were on one thing...how good my socks felt.

Now some of you may be saying to yourselves, how insightful, there must be some existential meaning behind the observation....ah, not so much, they just really felt good.

I won't argue the point, that I have been accused of being less then deep in my thinking sometimes. But I like to rationalize this as an eclectic interest in a vast (vs. deep) body of knowledge, kinda like a renaissance man. If you think that was good, you should hear me rationalize the need for a new power tool.

Which brings me back to the socks. Sometimes you just need to notice, and take pleasure in, the simple things, and this morning that was the case. Its dark. the wind is blowing, snowing lightly, the temp is down, but damn my socks felt good.

1400 Gallons down the drain!

As that great songstress Britney Spears would say, "Oops I did it again".

We drained the cistern of 1400 gallons on Friday night according to the water meter.

This is the third time this has happened this year and the culprit was the same as the first; the downstairs toilet.

When we arrived on Friday afternoon, I checked the cistern water level as part of the norm when turning up the house and it was as full as the internal float limiter would allow (Next year I plan to move the level up, as it only fills to 1400 gallons in a 1700 gallon tank.).

During the evening I noticed that "fresh air" smell in the lower level while watching TV, but I didn't get up to check for the source. First thing the next morning when I turned on a faucet I knew what it was.

I checked the cistern level and it was empty. I didn't flush any toilets before checking the tanks and guess what, the one in the lower level was empty.

I need to do a couple of things; repair the intermittently running toilet and get some type of monitor/automatic shut off system in place in case it happens again.

In searching the Internet there were two promising systems available; FloLogic and H2ORB.

• The Flologic system in a whole house monitor which is programed recognize an out of normal flow amount and then shuts down the water. The con is it costs about $1,000.
• The H2ORB is built to monitor a toilet only for leaks and overflows. Again it is set to recognize an abnormal flow amount, e.g. 25 gallons, then it shuts off the water to the stool. The pro is it appears to be only about $100, but the con is I can't find anyplace to buy one, on or off line.

No wonder the grass is growing so good over the drain field.

If a recession can have a silver lining

I don't need to wait for the official word that we are in a recession to know we are. But I have to tell you the drop in fuel prices as a result is really a God send not only for the economy, but for my own pleasure in driving around the newish truck.

I mentioned in the previous post the trip to the Springs to pickup wood, on the way back I filled up the truck for the first time in 6 weeks and it only cost $78 bucks. Since buying the truck in March that is the lowest bill I have had on a fill. A couple of times it surpassed the $150 range.

Ok, so I like to putz around.

It was an exceptional weekend for the beginning of November.

The weather was nice enough that the Margarita fixin’s came out of storage.

While partaking of Marlys’ concoction and talking about “things”, it came out that she believes I do a lot of putzing around. I agreed. I guess that makes me a putz.

So I Googled “putz”, to see if I should be worried and this is what came up (intended pre-pun):

putz (p ts)
n.
1. Slang A fool; an idiot.
2. Vulgar Slang A penis.

intr.v. putzed, putz·ing, putz·es
Slang To behave in an idle manner; putter.
[Yiddish pots, penis, fool.]

Source:American Heritage Dictionary.

I don’t believe, or don’t want to, that I bear a resemblance to the noun “putz”, but I do expend significant time doing, as the intransitive verb form suggests, in that I “putter”.

Let’s talk about my latest putzing around project.

This puttering (I have elected to go with puttering vs. putzing so as not to offend those who may be offended) around project had its beginning during the house build in 2006. The laundry room had a 51 inch wide space where a hanging rod with a counter was to be installed by moi. I had even purchased the wooden counter top that was going to be put in…someday.

Next, this space morphed into an area that would include a broom cabinet. No problemo a cabinet and hanging rod with a counter it would be.

But after being visited by Marlys’ cohorts a few times, it was decided a auxiliary refrigeration unit for fermented derivatives of macerated vitis was now a necessity.

Life was so simple before the Internet and Google…right.

A wine cooler was integrated into the puttering project.

Can you say “scope creep”.

To finish off the space, it was deemed that a hanging rod no longer seemed appropriate, so built in shelving and crown molding now was part of the plan,

Before it went any further the list was committed to paper via a cabinet planning application, found on the Internet via, you guessed it Google.

The thinking was that by putting in on paper the list would stabilize.

According to Cabinet Planner this was now a $1100 cabinet, using its average material, labor and mark-up rates.

So on Saturday off we went to buy the materials. This in itself became a great adventure as Paxton Lumber in Denver was the only place I knew of to get cabinet grade plywood in something other then Oak (Home Depot). In consultation with the folks on the Sawmill Creek Forum it was suggested that Colorado Lumber Specialties in the Springs would be another place to try.

This opened up a whole ‘nother chapter in this project, because they had a lot of nice wood.

An interlude for context –

This “built-in”, yes we have moved beyond simply calling it a cabinet, was to look like those in the kitchen, meaning three stile Shaker style Chestnut stained Maple cabinetry.

Initially, Birch and Poplar were going to be used to save a buck, since the leftover stain from the kitchen could be used for color matching.

BUT, CLS had Maple cabinet grade sheet goods (fancy name for 4’x8’ wood products).

So on to the cart it went.

Now on to the solid stock for the face and door frames.

The Poplar stock has made up of both sap and heart wood and after the problems I had with matching the two on the Molesworth and after seeing the Maple inventory, we unloaded the Poplar and re-loaded with S2S (surfaced two sides) soft Maple.

Even though we were ready to go, this place had so much nice wood, I needed to look around.

While looking at all of the different molding CLS stocked we came across a wall of S4S (guess) lumber and the Maple looked even better (#1 vs. #2?), so back we went to off-load the S2S Maple and then back to re-load with S4S. The price difference was actually pretty minimal and I rationalized this as having to do less machining to prep it.

For those keeping score we have loaded the cart three times and unloaded in twice.

Before greater damage could be done we headed for the door.

I will need to re-adjust the material pricing in Cabinet Planner due to the CLS adventure.

BTW, the other head board puttering project, using the Ponderosa cut at Pinon Rock, is moving along also.

I have found that for efficient putzing requires multiple projects must to be in play at any one time.