The weather was quite miserable two weekends ago. It was either raining, snowing, icing or some combination thereof. I went over and helped Anx with some of his projects, most notably adding overhead lights to his living room. Since all his rooms are wired with 3-way switches, it was a bigger adventure than anticipated.
That Saturday was raining and 60, and then Monday I had to scrape ice off the car.
The cold stuck around for most of the week so I didn't do much outside. I did finally get a nice day last weekend though on Friday, which oddly I had off this year. I noticed that despite the cold spring, the dandelions are coming up. I even opened up the windows for the first time this year. Spring is coming, whether the weather likes it or not.
Saturday was nicer, albeit not as warm, but I still got to work on some of my outdoor projects. I got the exterior panel pulled off the tiny home. It is going to be the sub-panel for the barn down in KY.
I noticed that apparently the silicone around the box had failed, and some of the siding has started to rot behind where the panel was.
It was still nice out, so I decided to do something with the mud at the bottom of the driveway. I tried to dig some of the mud out and replace it with gravel. It took longer than expected (and used a lot more gravel than expected), but it looks nice. When I drove over it this morning to come into work it felt like it needs a little more smoothing though. Time will tell if it is better or not.
It used more of the rock than I expected. I will have to get another load when the weight limits come off the road. There is still enough here to get started on the deck though.
This is the mud that I dug out.
I got to looking in the bucket after I was done. I will definitely need to take a grinding wheel and repaint the bucket this year.
I got another "Built Ford Tough" letter yesterday. This recall is actually something I have seen before, where the trailer lights occasionally fail because Ford drastically overcomplicated trailer wiring. There have been times I have had to stop and start the truck several times because it threw an error trying to detect whether there was a trailer plugged in or not.
Sunday was not as nice, so I worked on the cart for Jess and Heather. It turns out the 22" drawer slides I had are too long. I also had a set of 14" that will work though, even if they are shorter than ideal.
The box part is completed. I also took my flush cut saw (not sure its actual name, it is a Japanese saw for making things smooth) and smoothed the top; it is now ready for the butcher block top. All that is left is to install the center support, back panel, and
I saw my woodchuck out this morning. This one might be his kid, he isn't nearly as fat as the one that was living in the back yard, but I suppose that he just got out of hibernation.
Most of the stuff I needed to do before my spring trip is now done. All that is left is pulling down the tent garage, build the planter base, whelping boxes, and the cart, which is getting close. The trip is all planned, I just need to pick a weekend that isn't raining.
I have been thinking about the box truck and the long term plan some. As is annoyingly often the case, it seems what I want is really hard to find. I wanted single rear wheel because I don't want to lose more space inside and I am not going to be running so heavy that I need a dually, plus I don't want 2 more tires to keep maintained, but all the SRW options I have found have V6's under the hood. To be honest, I am not sure how well that would work. It feels rather undersized to me, but perhaps it would be okay. My current truck only has a V6 in it (though it is a much beefier twin turbo V6 than what I am seeing). My old white Chevy had a 4.3 V6 in it, and it was adequate for that truck, but I also never ran it with several thousand pounds in the bed, and the truck itself wasn't that heavy either. But the 250 Transit cutaway I looked at only had a 3.7 V6 in it. But even though I know it isn't the case, it feels like my options are either that or a Dually and a 6.0L V8 in it (which I don't want either; they aren't reliable and slurp gas). Even though I didn't want it as plan A, it makes the U-Haul look better every day (which has the small V8 that I want in it).
