Author: mel

Hey.

It’s been a while eh?

I had to go back and look to see what the last thing I posted was. Canceled travel plans I see. So let’s see where we are…

Travel is rebooked for the spring, and we will be flying. Fingers crossed. The off grid bathroom is 90% done, just the vanity and sink left. This could have been done by now but choosing a sink turned out to be a 2 month exercise. I didn’t mind although we’ve lost our weather now so I will have to move construction of the vanity to the workshop so I can apply finish.

Building reno client either changed her mind or didn’t like my price and went away. Car shelter up.

I think that catches us up. New business: I have a referral client who has a lot of work for me. Tore out a wall and moved another one in his house to create a new music studio space for him. He is a creator and producer of meditative zen music. Lots of recording equipment, lots of instruments, lots of sound control on the walls. In the new year he wants a bathroom and a kitchen reno. Yay for indoor winter work!

December will close out doing what I think will be my last fence. They are just too much work. Setting posts in rock and humping around a few thousand pounds of concrete bags is a younger man’s game.

On the home front we survived another multi-day power outage. We are now ready to spend some money to up our backup power game. Definitely going to do a transfer panel and external hook up to back up generator. The remaining question is a larger gas generator in the 7-10,000W range or a whole home Generac solution. Either way it will be more than a few thousand dollars. Maybe I need to do another couple fences 🙄.

Mail strike is complicating gift for Christmas. We will courier some but will be e-transferring more cash gifts than usual. Our preference is always a physical gift, personally wrapped and mailed. Might cost more especially with double shipping in some cases but it feels better to us. More Christmassy.

My poor truck continues to have issues. I fact I’m sitting in the shop waiting room as I type this while they figure out why I still have belt squeal. Immediate reason is a belt with something on it. Root cause TDB. Why do I still get oil or some other bodily fluid on my belt? The belt is going to be warranty. Not sure what else they will say. If they say main seal we will have words, since I brought is in a couple months ago to have it done and they said oh no, not required, but here are other seals/gaskets that are leaking.

Lights and tree going up this weekend. I’ll post a pic.

TTFN

The trip to see the kids and attend the wedding is off. We are learning to live with the uncertainties of aged related health issues and climate change related travel complications.

It was our intention to drive this time as each of the last three times we flew we caught some kind of virus and spent weeks hacking and snuffling afterwords. The gong show that is the domestic airline business also makes me prefer driving.

In order to make the trip we need to go through the interior, which for the last several years has either been underwater after atmospheric river events or burning down with forest fires exacerbated by record heat and pine beetle caused die off. Whether or not the roads are open has become a bit of a crap shoot.

Not that you can’t get through if you wanted to. The only time there was no actual route was when the roads were washed out after flooding. The fires just add to the uncertainly of our travel plans. The straw which made us decide to not go was health related this time. When you wait 18 months for a test you don’t just cancel the appointment haphazardly.

Instead I have started two new client projects. First an off grid bathroom with outdoor shower and then renovate an off grid A frame cabin. Same client, which is nice. No hard deadlines, which is nicer!

Additional projects continue to fall in my lap as well. I met the new neighbour the other day and he has a few things on the property he asked me to look at. Re-standing a collapsed (a.k.a rotted out) arbor and sketchy deck rails.

The other day I was loading up tools from the workshop and a random walker stopped and ask if I could come look at her project. Turning a 16×24 foot unfinished outbuilding into a guest/studio space. The estimate I sent last night came to $20K. If she decides to give me the work, in addition to the other stuff on the list, will probably book out the remaining calendar space until the end of the year.

Somewhere in there I need to find time to put new metal roofing on my two sheds and rebuild the car shelter. Rains will start in a few weeks and I want three BMW under a roof by then.

The garden is winding down, maybe a few beans left to pick this weekend then we wait for the squash and potatoes to be ready. Good thing too as I suspect the cisterns are getting low. Might see an inch of rain this weekend, fingers crossed.

I’ve been trying to knock a bunch of things off the job list before we head east for a couple weeks. Made pretty good progress too, with only one small job left to do before I can either work in the yard for a couple weeks or start the next major job. I spoke with that client a couple days ago and she’s not totally convinced to go ahead yet, so maybe I get some time to do my own thing soon

It has been a wet early summer for us. May and June saw more rain than I think we have had during that period than any of the years since we moved here. Not complaining, I think it is a wonderful and very welcome change from the drought like conditions of the previous several summers.

The rain has aided in my quest to do less paid work and more work for myself on the property. Good thing, because there is an endless list of things to do.

The garden

Our tomato starts were the best we have ever grown. Nice big stalky plants. Carefully babied and planted later so they don’t get cold shock and stop growing for weeks (ref: every other year we tried ☹️).

We started almost 100 plants and I think I planted 75 which is a ridiculous number of tomato plants for us. We will see in a few weeks whether we get a crop off. Stay tuned.

Also put a new rhodo in the yard and two new blueberry bushes that as of a couple days ago had a nice little crop of berries forming. Yay! The Saskatoon bushes have never bloomed in 5 years so fingers crossed for the blueberries.

Deck and tree fall cleanup

Most of the damage from the January tree fall was cleaned up a couple months ago but this week I finally got around to moving the shed deck. This move, from the side of the shed to the front (door side) allows what we hope will be better parking for the fleet.

Moving wasn’t too hard either. My little electric Warn winch and some tow straps and a couple opportune tree trunks together with a collection of spare 2×6’s and it moved reasonably easy.

Firewood

I’ve managed to split half of the rounds stacked in the yard from the last couple of trees that came down. I figure another day and I’ll be done the rest and I can start to haul it over to the mother inlaw’s .

Trailer(s)

After a couple years being embarrassed at the state of my enclosed trailer I finally got around to working on it. I installed the two extra vents to hopefully get a better handle on the condensation problems it has. Nice because I bought them two years ago.

As part of that exercise I completely reorganized the inside. Much much better. So much so that I think I could use it as a mini workshop and not just a cold storage place for seldom use tools. All I have to do is figure out how to get power to it, or how to fit it up by the house. Unfortunately those are both difficult to solve right now. I either have 1) not enough money to trench a power line or 2) too many vehicles sitting on the driveway.

That other trailer which we will call Peter needs a new deck. A new deck means I will need to do from frame straightening as well because the existing deck has quite the bow in it. Someone in Peter’s past really overloaded the poor guy. I haven’t started this work yet but it is floating higher up in the to do list.

Landscape steps

After a year hiatus work on the landscape steps has restarted. I had hoped to be farther along this weekend but once again the rain chased me indoors and I had to settle with watching sports on TV.