Being Lazy is not Without It's Price

So I got that Sabre by John Deere tractor I mentioned a few weeks back, and it runs fine. I've been a fan of the Briggs & Stratton engines for a number of years, and this one hasn't done anything to change my opinion. I'm out today giving the lawn a haircut, since we're supposed to get some rain over the weekend and I want to have it done while I have time. Our ditch is extra soggy, as the heavy clay soil hasn't had any good time yet to dry out. As I'm mowing along the ditch, I notice the tractor start to slow down. It wasn't the engine bogging down, but the ass-end of the tractor starting to dig into the ground. It dug in enough that I couldn't proceed forward or backward, and I probably wasn't helping things by towing a lawn aerator at the time. Well, I'm incredibly strong so all I had to do was just pick the back end up and move it over. Seriously. I could have pressed it overhead and thrown it over the ditch if I so desired. That leads me to my issue-du-jour. The tires on the tractor suck. The guy I bought it from didn't have a shed or garage to keep it in, so he kept it under his deck. The tires are dry-rotted, weather-cracked, and provide very little traction due to how dried out they are. They're pretty much shot, and two of them have slow leaks meaning I have to fill 'em every time I want to use the tractor. Not a huge deal, but it is annoying none the less. Today I ordered new shoes for the tractor. A week from now I hope to have 'em installed. We'll see how that goes, since I'm doing the replacement myself. Just one more thing to do on a very long list.

The Wisconsin Chainsaw Massacre

I love chainsaws. The fact that they're ridiculously deadly, and are essentially an engine and a blade with lots of small, sharp teeth may have something to do with why I love them. From my movie-going experience I know that they not only take care of the typical tree problem, but are also your best friend when you're trying to find a way to dispose of extra body parts laying around the house. Hey, we've all been there.

This blog entry will deal with only legal activities surrounding chainsaw use. Sorry.

As of last weekend, I owned two chainsaws. Heck, who doesn't? Both were Homelite, and they were easily 20+ years old. Neither had been started for 10 years or longer, as they were my Grandpa's. Prior to this house, the largest tree in my yard could be taken down with a Sawzall - ask me how I know. The larger chainsaw had an 18" bar and the smaller a 10" bar. I have (well, had) three apple trees in the backyard which I wanted to remove, so I broke out the larger saw and tried for a half-hour to get it running. My guess is that the seals are shot and it needs a rebuild. Ain't no way it was going to start for me. Heck, the cost to get it running at a shop could cost $75, and a new saw is only $120 or so, so I picked up a new saw and gave tree #1 hell. #2 and #3 feel my wrath this weekend. There are a few other trees on my lot which will also get some saw-on-wood action soon.

I was trying to figure out what to do with the old saws - I don't have the knowledge to get 'em running myself. Luckily, I found a co-worker who does stump-grinding and tree removal as side work and made a deal with him. He gets the small saw running for me for the cost of parts and I give him the larger saw. Fine deal for me, as I was probably going to either give both saws away or throw them away if nobody wanted 'em. Two operating saws is good, but if I get a third one I can learn to juggle!

Chainsaw tip-o'-the-day: the chaps made specifically for use while using a chainsaw aren't as protective if you don't wear pants under 'em. Seriously - why would you want to protect your legs from the blade while letting your junk hang in the breeze? There wasn't a lumberjack in the Village People, was there? I remember something about those guys and chaps, but (luckily) forget what it is.

Special thanks go out to Officer Parkens, for only giving me a warning, which resulted in today's tip.

Home Depot can Kiss my Backside

"You can do it, we can help." Yeah. Let me translate: you find it yourself, figure out if it will work for your application yourself, and load it into your car yourself. We can help lighten your wallet for your effort. What, you want us to actually have somebody available to help lift a 200 pound bathtub in a damaged box off of another one that you want to buy? Sorry, I'll have to find somebody else to help you. 10 minutes later, still no help. 7:30 on a Friday night (yeah, I have no life) and the store is pretty empty of customers. Where are all the employees? Standing out front watching three police officers search a van which was pulled over in the parking lot. Bite-me, Home Depot. I'm taking all of my future business to Menards and Ace Hardware.

Oh, I never got anybody to help me move the bathtub, so I left empty handed.

Astute readers will remember my previous post regarding my love affair with Ryobi cordless tools. Yes, I know Ryobi is only available at HD, and they do have some more tools I will buy. I plan to boycott the local stores and go mail-order with them. Will this boycott do anything to hurt HD? I doubt it, but they seem to be doing a good job at hurting their own business, so we'll see how things turn out.

Yum, Rust!

My house has well water. For years I've been on city-water, which typically has less "flavor". After developing a taste for no taste in my water, it's been an adjustment being on well-water again. The slight taste I can live with. Heck, it's only tastes a little bit like minerals. My biggest issue with it has been the rust in the water. To be honest, I don't know if this is rust from the well line, rust from the water table, or from where, but it's there none-the-less. The most telling sign of it has been in the new toilet I installed. The first time I really noticed it I almost accused one of the kids of not flushing after a whiz. The water just looked yellow-ish. The longer it sat, the more it turned color. I also noticed some slight staining streaks in the toilet bowl. No, not those streaks - I know what (who) made those. These are the streaks which come from around the water inlet holes around the top of the bowl. NOT IN MY NEW TOILET, says I. I figured that short of a high-end full filtering system, I can at best hope to get the rust and other minerals down to a manageable level. I looked at a number of filter systems, and decided to see if I could avoid spending big bucks. Some of those filter systems cost a few thousand dollars! Menards carries a cartridge-type system for about $40.00, with replacement cartridges costing around $12.00. Worth a shot. Here's what I got: a stand-alone filter with the connections for 3/4" copper.




Installation wasn't too tough, although the instructions are only written for people doing new plumbing. There really should have been mention in the instructions stating that if you are splicing this into existing plumbing, that you may need to get creative in order to get the filter connections on. I had to cut another 6" section out and then re-install it. Not a huge deal, but it did mean another run to the local ACE Hardware. Once installed, I bled the lines of air and it now filters all water before the water gets to the water softener. I am not filtering any water which goes out to the front or rear hose bib. I'm hoping to get about 3 months of use out of the filter before it needs changing, but that time will be determined by how much crap I really have in the water lines. The handle at the top allows me to shut off the water to the house or to bypass the filter as needed. The crappy pipe fitting in this picture was not done by me. I did other crappy pipe fitting which I'm not posting pictures of.




Does it work? Surprisingly, it works better than I had expected it to. There is still a little taste to the water which doesn't surprise me. What did surprise me is how much rust it's trapped after only two days. Now I wasn't getting a glass full of rust each time I had some water, as I expect it was mostly caught by the water softener. In fact, every time I looked in the wash sink in the basement (where the water softener purges into) there was always a lot of rust-water splashed inside it. Today, it was far less than I had previously seen. Hopefully this means that my water softener is now having to work a lot less, too. That water softener is one of my next projects, by the way. I want to disconnect it and lay it down so I can flush it out - something which has probably never been done.

Click on the following pic for a larger size. You can actually see the rust! (sorry about the crappy photo quality. By the way, when it was new, the filter was completely black except for the nylon mesh around it.)

I Love the Smell of Expanding Foam in the Morning

Before I can start on the kitchen floor, I need to finish a few smaller projects. First on the list was to replace the back door. The one on the house when we bought it was as weather checked and crappy as the front door, so it had to go. With the new door in place we'll be able to tile right up to the thresh hold. We weren't sure if we wanted to add a storm door for the back door or not, so we found a middle ground for now. The door we purchased has a window which can be opened. Yeah, a window in the door is not the most secure way to go, but it's a nice neighborhood and if somebody wants to break in, they'll get in one way or another. That's why I have insurance - to protect my Picasso and Rembrandt collection. As I removed the old door, I found there was very little insulation in the door frame, which explains why I felt drafts in the winter around the door. The new frame got a can of expanding foam in all open spaces, so I expect the problem to be gone.





I've also been spending some quality time outside with the overgrown landscape. I honestly don't think anything has been pruned out there for at least 10 years. I cut down a couple of scrawny trees which went to seed next to the foundation. They weren't big enough to cause any damage, but they were about to touch the gutters, so I know they've been there a while. The evergreen bushes were about twice the size that they should have been allowed to grow, so I cut out a lot of the lower growth to expose the roots. They look much better now, in my opinion. By the patio, I had an evergreen which was so heavily overgrown that the best thing for it was just to remove the whole thing.

Our plan for the landscaping has changed a bit now. We're going to wait until next Spring to do any real major work outside so we can do all the landscaping in one shot (when we have money). The interior renovations are going to take every penny we have right now, and I've got enough on my plate without worrying about the landscape too much.

The Lawn Won't Know What Hit It

At our previous house, the lot was just under 1/4 acre. Subtract the footprint of the house, a LOT of planting beds, the driveway and the sidewalk, and I ended up with a pretty manageable size lawn. For the 8 years we were there, I did the lawn with a standard push mower. No need for a self-propelled, and I was able to finish the whole thing in about 30 minutes if I didn't let it go too long between cuttings. Our new place is 1/2 acre, and has no sidewalk or planting beds to take up space. Just a LOT of grass in need of fertilizer and attention to make it thick and green. My original plan was to just mow it with the push mower, and as money becomes available in the future look for a deal on a used riding mower. Just days away from the first mow of the season, I found myself taking a detour on the way to work due to work being done on a bridge. As luck would have it, somebody had a rider sitting out front for sale. It's a Sabre by John Deere - originally sold by Home Depot in the late '90s. It runs fine and is in good shape, so it now resides in my garage waiting for action. 12 hp and a 38" cutting width. It'll cut almost twice the width of my push mower and will mow at a speed about 50% faster than I would go on foot. By my calculations that should more than cut my mowing time in half leaving me that much more time to work on the house. Yay.

Oh yeah, the rider has headlights so now I can mow at night!

I've Got Priorities

Multiple choice:

You have a half-hour to kill before anybody gets home - what do you do?

A. Take a nap
B. Eat a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies
C. Surf for Asian midget p0rn
D. Destroy ugly 60's architecture

Answer: D. I've already got C taken care of and I'm out of Girl Scout cookies. "A" was a trick to weed out the weak.

Before, I had the remains of the half-wall between the kitchen and living room:




After, I've got ugly carpet, linoleum, and some patching to do before I start the floor tile. I think the dog is starting to get used to the noise and dust (finally) :



I had hoped to remove enough of the wall to make the bottom half even with the top half, but there is an electrical out let very close to what is now the corner of the wall, so I'll end up bumping out the top portion of the wall about 1/2" to match the lower half. Either way I've got patching to do, but it's all worth it. If you've ever watched those home flipping shows and were amazed at how much larger a room looks when a wall is removed, that's what we're experiencing right now. Even though it wasn't a "full" wall to begin with, it really feels larger in these rooms now.