Retired
so..... What's up
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I got the back yard sprinkler system up and operating over the weekend. What a job that was. It was my lack of experience that was the factor in why one of these stations was giving me fits.
First problem: Don't bump into one of the sprinkler heads by lowering the mower deck to get a closer cut. This was done to get more time between lawn cuttings. Wrong approach....
Second problem: After it broke off I replaced the 1/2" stand pipe with a new one and I did not get it screwed into the header pipe adequately so it was not getting the proper pressure to lift all the heads on this station.
Almost sounds like a critique, doesn't it?
April 2,
Got through the 1st without any April Fools Jokes played on me. I
talked to the customer who's home we are painting yesterday. We teamed
up on my boss by telling her that, she the owner, did not like the
present living/dining room paint color and wanted a different color.
When ever my boss recommends a paint color to a customer she backs it up
with her word that if you don't like it we will repaint it for free.
The look on her face was great, she fell for it. LOL
I just had to take a moment to show you a real artist at work.
Notice the stress lines, not
My boss gets frustrated at me because she says I am the only person she knows that can go home without paint on me at the end of the day.
April 7
Not much to catch up on especially when you are in a routine.
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We let our plumber go as he was starting to nickel dime us on his work and time. He would show up do part of the work, forget tools or parts, reschedule, etc.. He had an injured helper that could barely move around working with him. We did not want to assume any liability risks with that at all. Originally we discussed our being flexible since I was retired and allow him to work on our home in between jobs with some savings to us. We saw no special consideration in his charges and this was getting to be more inconvenient than beneficial for us.
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Saturday we went garage sale hunting again. Wow, so many with great deals to be had.
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Sunday we worked in the yard mowing and trimming bushes. Replaced most of the hose bibs and set up hoses front and back.
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Put my paint skills to the test, bought some stencils and painted the house numbers in the front yard gutter edge just to the right of the driveway.
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Sold 5 of my rain barrels and the glider ottoman. All in the timing I guess. All of a sudden I am getting lots of calls for them in the past few days.
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Taxes are almost done and thankfully it doesn't look to bad for us this year. IRA's are saving us but with investments still shaky it will be CD's this year. Since I am retired I cannot invest in IRA's any longer. Any other wages I earn will allow me to contribute, just not retirement wages.
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I am still helping with painting the high end home. I should be retired again by Friday. This was very hard but rewarding work. Again lots of respect for people who paint our homes. The good one's know who you are.......,you are indeed special.
Looks like I am retired again. It was a rough three weeks completing the make over of this high end home. Everything had to be perfect. This was a quality job and I could not have asked for a better person to have worked with. What actually amazed me was all of the poor workmanship done by the previous contractors and painters when the home was first built. We had to do a lot of extra's to get through some of those issues. Since the home owner was living in the home while we were painting we had to clean up and put stuff back each day. We could not have asked for a nicer homeowner to have worked with, making this extra work a pleasure to have performed for her.
April 11
By body say's, hey you......rest up from the past three weeks, but my
brain is still engaged to keep on going. So I satisfied its thirst
for more by slowly performing the intricate perfectionist caulking work
needed to complete the main bathroom shower enclosure. Wow!
I have to say the experience I got from the previous caulking jobs over
the past two months has paid off. I also installed a new upgrade modern
style sweeping shower curtain rod that extends the curtain out away from
the tub giving you more room inside the tub so you don't get attacked by
the shower curtain.
ALL
We were invited by my brother and his wife for Easter dinner.
One of my other brother's, his twin came over to our home and we car
pooled up to Red Bluff. Other than it being a long day and a long
drive it turned out to be a great day with family.
My father was put to rest in a veterans cemetery in a town nearby Redding, so we
took a time out and drove up to pay our respects.
April 13
Not much on the agenda today. Just glad to have the time off to
rest and plan my next adventures around the home front. I will
work on some overdue walking/bike riding today along with some other
stuff that was put on the back burner. I may just work on my
planter boxes today since the sun is out and it is going to be a nice
warm 72 degree day.
Did I rest up from my last adventure? No. Been busier than a one arm paperhanger. Mainly just working in the yard doing landscaping. I have been pulling lots of bushes that have taken over the property and opening up lots of new areas to plant flowers, veggie's, and maybe squeeze in a orange tree. Got another great deal on a gas driven lawn edger off craigslist. My yard looks real nice now so I kept going and edged my neighbors lawn. She was thrilled about getting that done. We have a great neighbor and are very fortunate in that aspect.
My sister is in town from Oregon. She is taking some ongoing classes in the area for her business, so we benefit with having her spending a few days with us. We are going to have several family members over on Sunday. We are going to cook up some healthy food and enjoy each others company.
We had a little set back with the guest bath since the new modern tub shower faucets have a safety feature built into them that requires you to set the water temperature by positioning this device in the proper groove inside of the fixture. If you accidently hit the handle and it went all the way over to the hot side you cannot get scalded. It was set to much to the cold side. Another issue with our plumber not setting this before he left the job site. He got called back to regulate it. So lets see he burned up (rework) over 2 hours travel time and 1/2 hour setting it. My sis is getting ready to go to classes so she is testing the shower right now. Late note: She is yelling for joy stating, this is a great shower with the oversize shower head and outward direction rounded curtain rod.
Since we had
our plumber back to regulate the shower temperature we decided to sit
down and have a serious talk with him. He will be coming back next
week to complete our work in the master bath.
Picture on the right shows two vehicles being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two vehicles were racing and lost control. I don't know the cause yet except we heard that the blue ranger truck was one of the vehicles racing a Honda car. The white Ford escape SUV was, we believe the innocent party to the accident. The entire road which is next to our frontage road was closed for about 8 hours. The debris field alone was probably 5 lanes across or more and about two city blocks long. Believe it or not no one died at the scene. All did go to the hospital in critical condition. The engine to the pickup truck was sitting in the road about 15 feet away from the truck.
Apr. 23
Lets see, if I go back to last Sunday we had a great time with a nice
healthy family dinner and a visit with my sister, her daughter, two
granddaughters, and both of my younger brothers. I got my sister
to the airport on Monday so she could return to her normal life back in
Oregon. Visits are great but l have to say it is nice to get back
to normalcy again.
I have been buying supplies for the garden. I got some fertilizer
& compost for my veggies. Still have not got to build my boxes yet
but hope to start them within the next couple days. I picked up a
bunch of sprinkler system components to help make this an auto water
system.
I finally got a great buy on craigslist (patience prevails) with some
brand new pressure treated 4x4's for $6.00 each and some 4x6's 10ft long
for $10.00 each. I purchased 25 of the 4x4's with a profit in
mind. My expectations will be to package up the compost units with
barrels and parts for the home owner to put together. I have to go
back to the drawing board to figure out is this is a higher profitable
method or not. I bought 10 of the 4x6's for the foundation for a
future shed. Nice start to a large shed. The old one needs
to go so this is a great start for replacing it.
I was successful in changing out my solenoid valve in the back yard
sprinkler manifold so now I have 6 stations totally operational.
Station 5 watered the fruit trees so this was a good one to have back
on line. This was some good timing since we had some upper 90 degree
temperatures over the past week. We are at least back to what they
consider normal with 70's again. What a blast furnace that was.
It is good that we have a nice newer AC unit.
Late note on the car accident out in front of our home.
It was believed to have been a road rage incident and the driver of the car ran the truck into the other
lane. The young man in the blue pickup was 16 years old.
One of the woman in the white SUV, a 40 year old woman who was the daughter of the 60 year old driver died
in the hospital. Sad Sad Sad
April 26
Still going at it. I have been prepping several spots in the back
yard for planting vegetables. This is becoming a very interesting
mental/physical project. Remember me discussing the old home along
with the unexpected surprises? This one was not to bad other than
time required for repairs. Just in front of the cement slab where
the old existing hot tub sat was an approx. 3 by 8 foot deck which was well worn.
I tore it up and decided to extend my garden a bit. I always
wondered where the corrugated plastic drain pipe ran that is located at
the end of the screen room. I now don't have to wonder since I
found it with my pitch fork turning over the soil. So I got to
patch several 1/4" round holes. It is at least deep enough that I
can still plant my stuff. Not funny
My next engineering technician feat is to figure out how to tap off my
existing sprinkler system to run all my lines to my garden spots.
I dug up one spray nozzle head yesterday and plugged that line off which
will give me more pressure and will allow me to ad a regulated drip
manifold. I spotted another two that I can plug off in another
station that will give me more pressure in that station which will allow
more coverage with the existing heads. I spotted two more, one
that can be capped off and the other I can convert to another drip
manifold. I believe I may have this figured out so off to the
store again for some more parts today. As you see I still have not
gotten to my garden boxes done yet, but I will at least get some tomato,
zucchini, and summer squash plants planted in the ground soon.
We now have a sink in the master bathroom. This
went well with the exception of one minor drip in the drain which he
will be back to fix. Of course the drain line was plugged
downstream from many years of use and non use. Thankfully liquid
drain cleaner did its job and it drains like new again. The
plumber spotted my rain barrels and ended up buying 4 of them from me.
This reduced our bill considerably so it all worked out great for both.
He with getting the work and me getting rid of some more items.
Should I say show and tell
or
show and cry?
As you can see by these two pictures... they show you the old, old, old,
sprinkler manifolds front and back of the house. The one manifold
with the unions was probably a newer fix by previous home owner quite
awhile ago to a problem he had and it is literally giving me fits right
now.
So again, off to the store with brother since we decided if you want a
good working system quit trying to fix an old system. I just
bought 6 new manifolds and a zillion parts to replace the whole system.
Hopefully that fixes the problem with one of my problem stations because
if not, I start digging in the yard for a cracked pipe. The problem I am
having is low pressure on one line. We believe that due to the
condition of the manifold and our troubleshooting results with the lines
and sprinkler heads, we are confident we will be successful when done.
April 30
With our medical provider now being Kaiser Permanente we decided to go
visit our new doctor to get a good check up. We are getting lab
work done as part of the process to establish our baseline as well as
ensure everything internal is still in spec's.
We now get to fast one day soon and go get our lab work done.
W
Maybe some of the problems won't follow me into May
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