Finally some pictures

Tim felt bad for busting my cheap plastic ones, and made me a very nice set of sawhorses.  All pressure treated, and in classic Tim fashion, I could probably put my car on them.  They are stackable as well, that is why the supports are on the outside on one, and inside on the other.  I might make myself another set (non pressure treated, those things are rather heavy) to use as scaffolding or the like.


As I mentioned previously, I spent some time mowing last week during lunch, and at some point I apparently kicked something up.  So much for my industrial strength glasses...


Despite that though, the front yard is mowed.  This picture is a little blown out since I forgot that I had left the camera at ISO800, and the shutter speed couldn't go fast enough to expose it correctly.




The back yard is getting really bad.  It hasn't been mowed yet this year.


The first triangle is partially sheathed.  I am glad I am going single slope (shed style) on the house, building an A frame is a lot more effort.  I will probably install it as is, and then add the supports later.


I saw some sprinkles around 630, so I packed everything up and decided to get ready to head out.  Good thing it appears, since there were storms moving in.  Hopefully nothing too bad, since the shed has no tarp on it anymore.

I need more hours in the day...

Unfortunately I haven't brought my camera the last couple of days, so no pictures.  I got the first triangle ready to install, the second is almost ready, but I ran out of time.  It rained all last weekend, so I have only been working during the week.

I will have to find a new solution for bugs.  My bug spray is kind of working, though not as good as I might expect considering it is 98% deet.  I have been spending as much time swatting bugs as I am building of late.  I don't remember it being this bad last year, so maybe it'll calm down after the spring rush.

The lawn needed mowing really really badly (most of it hasn't been mowed yet this year) and I got the side over by the well and part of what was in front of the old foundation mowed today during my lunch break.  Hopefully I can get the rest of the front yard mowed tomorrow during lunch before the rain moves back in.  The back yard will have to wait, which is unfortunate since it takes the longest to dry.

Apparently it is time for new glasses too.  I cracked the lenses in two different spots when something was kicked up from the lawn mower today.  These were the industrial grade safety lenses I got to that were supposedly shock resistant.  Heavy duty polycarbonate lenses my ass...

I half-heartedly put the tarp back on, but I know at this point that it won't stay, so we shall see how wet the shed gets.

Slow week

It has been raining pretty much all week, so little progress was made this week.  There might be a slight break in the rain tomorrow, so I might be able to get the triangles for the roof built this weekend.  The tarp is all but roasted, so a lot of the rain from the past week has ended up in the shed.

While I was out at Mike's last weekend though I did make an updated floorplan.  This is the full 27' of the trailer.  I added a couple of feet to the kitchen, and a couple of feet to the living room.  I also added a couple more windows and changed the loft design ever so slightly.  The biggest change though is the conversion of the bathroom into a bathroom and a utility closet.  I think instead of putting a shower stall into the bathroom, I will seal the whole room and make the whole bathroom the shower stall.  The squiggly line is because I intend to put a double door setup, so that I can hang towels on the door and have them not get wet.


One thing I did get done this week was I picked a free fixture I got from Craigslist.  There isn't a scratch on it, and I honestly don't think it was ever installed.  I picked it up from an old mansion that was getting converted to apartments, so I think it was a spare, it is in fabulous shape, and I was intending to buy one anyways for the living room.

Got some mowing done

I mowed for the first time this year.  The mower does run a lot better, the engine seems to bog less, and it is very easy to tell that the blade is sharper.

I actually decided to bag it, that way I could use the cut grass as fill for the uneven spots... until I didn't even make half a loop before the bag was full.


I finished the front yard, though most of the yard didn't really need it just yet.  I also mowed on a lower deck setting, so it is actually cut like a lawn.  I only hit a couple of rocks.

Opened up the camper

I didn't take these, but these are the interior pictures that were posted with the ad.  It pretty much sums up the interior of the camper:
















I also went and opened the windows on it to let it air out.  There is a leak in it, so it doesn't smell too nice in there.  These were taken with my phone, so they are all blurry, but get the point across.  I opened all the windows that protection, since it is going to rain tonight and tomorrow.

Nice easy day with lots of pictures

So I got some better pictures today.  Thankfully I was able to tell from the exif data what went wrong with the pictures yesterday and remembered the menus well enough to fix it.

The rambler


My ghetto rig wiring since the trailer was wired with a 7 pin round connector and my truck only had a flat four.


My cheapo magnetic lights


The front end up on blocks.  Unfortunately I don't think the thing that raises and lowers it works.


I also opened up what I could.  Unfortunately I forgot the key to it, so I couldn't go in and open the windows, but I at least got the blinds up.


Saw this growing down by the power pole, not sure what it is.


My lawn seems to be getting taken over by whatever this is, though it is green and not awful looking so I don't really care.


The free grill I picked up off of craigslist


Needs a couple of burners, but everything else looked ok.


The sink.  Not as nice as it looked in the ad, but I can clean it up.


The debris from the tree cutting.




This is the tree that fell directly into the wall, and thankfully hit the drum.  I have lots of camp wood now.


The mess from the inside.


The hole that was put in the floor.




The piece of siding that the big pine hit.


Damage from one of the branches.  Not really bad enough to care about.


I re-hammered the nails in the corner.  It helped, but I might need to give it a couple of taps with the sledge.


I also reattached the broken piece of siding.


From the ground you almost can't tell.


So my two main goals for the day were to finish cleaning up and get the tarp back up
The drum is once again holding up the tarp.


And I got the shed swept out.


As a bonus I also had time to get the lawn mower blade taken off and sharpened.  It really needed it.  Badly.  I took a large amount of metal off the blade, but it is sharp again, which is good since later this week or early next week I will need to mow.

Long painful day

Tim came up to take care of the trees that were leaning towards the shed.  Let's just say things didn't go as planned.  They didn't seem to want to fall where he was trying to put them.  There were a few casualties, but thankfully the shed is strong.  Unfortunately my camera was acting up and I haven't gotten the new one yet, so I will try to get some better pictures tomorrow.

There is a pile of debris on one side.  The pile in the back is much bigger but none of the pictures came out.


This was the tree that caused the most pain.  He took the limbs off first, which fell into the shed.  When he went to take the top part of the trunk down, he tried to push it away from the shed, but it wasn't having any of that.  The main part of the trunk came down on the shed as well, and did some damage.  It hit the drum I had up there (thankfully), but snapped the 2x4 that was holding up the tarp, putting the end of it through the floor, so I will need to replace a small section of flooring.  Unfortunately even hiding behind the ladder, I got hit with it as well.


The busted floor.  It is near the end, so it shouldn't be too bad to fix.


The damage to me wasn't too bad.  It sprained (I am guessing, nothing was broken) my wrist, and dinged up my legs.  I will find out tomorrow if the kneecap is bruised.  Fortunately though nothing is broken and I am a quick healer.




We also took down the pine tree behind the shed.  This was supposed to fall away from the shed, but it had other ideas and fell directly into the wall.  Thankfully the drum took the hit and all that was damaged was a little bit of siding.


The drum took its beating like a boss, and quite likely saved the wall and loft.  It took the brunt of the impact from the trunk, two of the limbs (these limbs were around 4-6" diameter and maybe 10-20' long), and also the entire pine tree that we took down.  The pine tree was the dead one behind the shed.  It fell directly on the wall, pivoted and hammered the drum.  So it is the hero of the day.


One of the branches took out my el cheapo sawhorses.


Despite all this, some good did come from the day.  I went and picked up the trailer today.  It is a 1977 Holiday Rambler.  It made it all the way without issue despite the tires being dryrotted.


Considering I didn't have the trailer brakes (my truck has a flat four, I used some magnetic trailer lights) nor the stabilizer on it, it towed pretty well.  In a couple of the windy spots I got a little nervous with the trailer swaying back and forth, but overall it was pretty smooth.  I definitely put all 305 horses to work today, and am happy that I got the big V8.  Even though the trailer completely bottomed out my suspension, I had no problems maintaining speed.






It was a bit of a chore getting it off the truck though.  The bottle jack didn't have enough lift to get the trailer off the truck, so I had to jack it up a few inches, block it, reset the jack, and so on.  As I was doing this though I noticed that the trailer is apparently heavy enough to break a concrete block.  It is hard to see because the picture sucks, but the concrete block broke in half.


But the trailer is now on the slab and on blocks.