Author: peterb51

15th June 2023

I had an appointment to see the dentist about my broken tooth. They took an X-ray and the dentist came in and looked in my mouth, saying “we can fix that”. Turns out it will be built up with a special compound then a crown fitted, fortunately no root canal.

That was an expensive piece of granola bar.

Next we drove down to Byron Center to collect the wood top. John had finished it, and it looked pretty flat, so we loaded it back into the track and drove home.

We put it on a pair of trestles and I noticed that the radius end was not shaped properly. I redrew it and it was out quite a bit. I got the sander and spent nearly an hour sanding it round like it should be.

We had a lady round from the city at the request of Kelli, she was here to check to see if we had poison ivy growing through our fence.

This is a no-no in Holland, and if it is the case a strong letter will be sent to the household requesting it’s removal, we of course will have to remove what on the fence.

I’m sure this will put us in these neighbours bad books, but it’s not our fault, they have to control their garden.

14th June 2023

An early start to the day, Kelli was awake at 5.30, so I was at 5.35, but as she had a doctors appointment it wasn’t so bad.

We had a message from table man John to say the worktop was ready, so I called him to arrange collection for tomorrow.

Kelli also had more clothes to take to Plato’s.

At the doctors, she had a full check to see what supplements she still needed. This went back to my point about when they have done their jobs. He was convinced the liver supplements could be reduced, but there was still work to do on the adrenals.

Then it was back to Plato’s to collect what meagre amount she got and what clothes had been rejected.

The rest of the day was playing catch-up, but Kelli managed to get some paint on the latest creation.

The landscape companies are in full flight, spreading tons of mulch on the large properties they serve. It is certainly a big employer, and even the seasons are short they certainly make the most of every opportunity.

13th June 2023

The weather was against us again, limiting what we could work on. The most exciting part of the day was picking up a tin Buddha. Kelli found it on Marketplace (unfortunately) however, as every home should have one, I reluctantly agreed.

We did have someone who came to collect the pair of matching side tables made from an old desk, we had been sitting on them for longer than usual, it was good to see them go.

There is another challenge that face us. Kelli bought two pieces that were in a bit of a state. One part was a two drawer unit, the other was a two door and one drawer. It is a bit unconventional, but that is a challenge.

It was painted red over a stone textured blue colour, which was a bugger to scrape.

So now the transformation begins.

Whilst tucking into a slice of quiche, I felt a hard lump of something in my mouth. I quickly picked it out and recognised it as a bit of a filling from the tooth that had chipped a few days ago

Yet again I am starting to crumble away!

12th June 2023

I made the drive to Byron Center to work on the modification to the worktop.

This was the first time that I have spent time with John, and it was an experience. He is a good guy, with a well equipped workshop to die for, but it was like working with my mirror image, but slightly worse.

He has no problem with building massive tables, but when it came to modifying mine he didn’t know what to do, and in which order.

It was the blind leading the blind.

My first thoughts were to find exactly where the bow occurred, this might be obvious, but as I didn’t have my “Boys book of everything”,I relied on my instinct. Whilst agreeing on the area, John went in search of a plank of beech.

I could hear him upstairs rifling amongst the lumber he had stored there. It took about fifteen minutes for him to emerge with two pieces ten feet long. Then it was choosing the best piece that didn’t have knots.

Once that was cleaned up, then it was deciding the width to cut. I can’t remember how many times I suggested a dimension, but it was like I was speaking a different language, or that the hairs in his ears were dulling my words, but finally a decision was made.

Now was the time to cut the worktop.

A straight edge was laid along the length, and John fired up the skill saw. The two pieces fell aside, there was no going back. The next step was to cut out the offending section of timber which was done on his huge table saw.

Each piece was then sent past the jointer to neaten the edge.

Now we had to finalise the exact width of the new pieces to insert. John left that to me, I think he lost the plot a little while back. I measured everything three times and gave him the width dimension to cut, again allowing for cleaning up afterwards.

After each pass through jointer I measured the piece until I stuck my thumbs up.

Now was the process of joining all three parts together.

At this point I would have chosen a domino or a biscuit to ensure aligned of the face, but John chose to use dowels. Even though I have various doweling jigs I’ve never been that successful, mainly because it has to be precise, but John was adamant. He went to a set of drawers and pulled out a self centring dowel jig, it looked old, but very robust.

He marked out the positions for the dowels and asked me to mark the lines down to where the holes were to be drilled. There were a number that I remarked, hopefully in a more accurate position, then he drilled the holes.

I wasn’t there when he glued and fitted it all together, but hopefully all went well.

When I got back we had to drive to a house that was giving away flooring that Kelli was interested in, I had my reservations, I suspected what it was, and I was right, fake wood laminate. That was not something that I would put in the house, even if I was desperate, so we walked away.

Later Kelli got into a dispute with a neighbour. He objected to the music she was playing and shouted something over the fence. I was in the garage at the time and didn’t hear what was said. The first I knew of it was when she burst into the garage saying what was said. She wanted me to speak to the man, so to avoid being shot, I donned my bulletproof vest.

We exchanged views and if he stopped shouting over the fence we would turn the sound down when we knew he was back from work.

11th June 2023

Dismal day, it rained all day, but we needed it. The ground gets so dry very quickly, we have, as gardeners say, good drainage.

We used this as an excuse to do the shopping, we joined the lines of the ungodly who dare to shop on a Sunday.

There were plenty of things to do in the house, Kelli was refreshing the paintwork in the kitchen, and I was adding the new drawers to another kitchen cabinet, it’s gradually coming together at last.

Later in the day I was eating a slice of Kelli’s wonderful granola bar when I found a hard lump that turned out to be a bit of my tooth.

Damn! I was mad, I thought I’d seen the last of my dental issues.

10th June 2023

Well it all happens in America.

I spent time reading through the indictment of Donald Trump concealment of classified documents, a fascinating report written in finite detail. All this is public, but I expect no Trump supporters will bother to read.

The man is an absolute dope, to think that he could treat confidential information as his personal property.

He, at last been shown as a criminal, he ran the Presidency as he ran his organisation, for the benefit of himself.

Finally all those who have been cheated, bullied, and slandered, and who have spoken out, but not listened to, can say “ I told you so”

The organisation he ran was found guilty of illegal business fraud, so I guess what goes around comes around.

It was day two of Larry’s yard sale, and it got off to a dismal start.

We went over and Kelli bought some things, but throughout the day few cars stopped to pick over the stuff he had going.

We had Kim, Kelli’s ex sister in law, stop over to get some rubber mats cut. I had earlier volunteered my services, and my bandsaw to cut a large circle so she could place it under her bird feeder, stopping the seeds from falling on to the ground and sprouting. I thought it was a ten minute job, but more like forty minutes. I redrew the circle in a brighter marker and carefully cut each piece, the garage began to smell like a tyre factory, but they got done and she was happy.

I spent the rest of the time scraping two bright red cabinets. They had been originally painted in a blue textured paint and the repainted. I was glad that it came off easily. I plan to join the two units together and stick legs on it

9th June 2023

I had been thinking about the bowed worktop all night, trying to find alternatives to adding a piece on metal and forcing the top flat. It seemed like the top would be highly stressed and could cause the top to crack at sometime in the future.

I called John, although he was not at the mill, I wanted to bounce an alternative idea around.

The main cause of the bow was a wide strip of timber in the middle of the top that had moved.

I suggested to him that we cut the worktop down the middle and insert another narrower strip and re-glue. This would relieve the stress, and then insert some hard timber braces on the underside. John had showed me some examples that were harder than oak that could do the job. So we agreed that I will drive down on Monday to help run the piece through the saw, and prepare the joining.

The next thing on the list was to get the truck fixed. A exhaust clamp had broken and needed to be replaced. Kelli booked it into a small garage that had done work for her before.

We drove there with the truck sounding like a tractor, waited twenty minutes for it to be fixed, then drove home a lot quieter.

We took pictures of a pair of night stands that we converted from a desk, these were “quick and dirty” jobs that we needed to boost the months numbers.

Larry was having a garage sale across the road, I took over a couple of Equa chairs that we’ve had for ages and couldn’t sell. He had a few people turn up, but the chairs were still there when he finished for the day, maybe better luck tomorrow.

8th June 2023

It was a bad night for both of us, Kelli because she woke early and couldn’t get back to sleep, and I, because Kelli could get back to sleep.

It sets the tone for the whole day and I didn’t want to be here. Fortunately I was going to visit John the wood man to discuss how to remove the bow in the worktop.

It was the first time I had driven solo to his barn, and got off to a bad start. I took the wrong road and landed in a construction area.

The road was being dug up and diversions were in place. This didn’t help me one bit, so I turned to my GPS to get me out of a mess.

John was slicing a red oak tree as I arrived but he halted that and helped me unload the worktop. We lifted it on to his flat table where he could see how much the top had bowed.

He was surprised at the amount, so we discussed different ways of flatting it out.

Short of adding lumps of steel, which might be the only way, he had a selection of America’s hardest timber most of which I can’t remember, as other options. He agreed to try a few things next week.

The drive back was quicker and easier because I was on the right road.

I did notice the truck was sounding louder than usual, when I got home I noticed that an exhaust clamp had broken, so I need to get that fixed.

The good new was I got the saw fixed. The new switch came in the post, so there was some trepidation on my part that it was the problem. It took a while to find out how to get the old one out. I had to knock out the pivot pin that held the emergency stop flap.

Once that was out, with depressing a couple of tabs and it was out. Then there was pressure on to attach the terminals correctly, there were six. Eventually I had it reassembled and fitted back in the saw, now came the crucial test.

I plugged in the power cable, pausing before I hit the green button. I could wait no longer, my finger pressed the starter, the saw burst into life, YAY! I was so relieved.

7th June 2023

Well it happened, the boys arrived at 8.00am on the dot, snapping a branch from our tree as they reversed their truck up the driveway.

These were not small boys, they sure had their fare share of burgers I’ll be darned.

They ripped off the old worktop with one hard grunt and carried it outside. In came the new piece looking clean and new. They wanted the hob removed, but we requested that it could be threaded through the hole, like threading the needle, which we did successfully as the boys looked on amused.

The bonding of the two parts took a while, the adhesive giving off a pungent smell causing Kelli to open all the available windows. The construction of the worktop was a lot different to the ones I’ve had before, there was a little less particle board in this, I hope it will be as durable.

There were a couple of issues that were brought to light.

One was the accuracy of some of the details, especially where the wood part joins.

I had made some assumptions that were wrong, so some additional work needs to be done if it can be.

I need to have the wood top widened by half an inch so the overhang matches the other side, I spoke to my wood man who said he could do that, but more serious, the top had bowed slightly, so we have to add some steel to flatten it. Altogether a bit more work to do.

The overall result was good, not as good as my other kitchens, but a score of eight out of ten.

The couple who owned the rocker came to collect it this evening, there were whoops of joy as they got out of their car, that made me happy to know they were happy.

So an interesting day ended, tomorrow the sink is connected so we can wash the dishes in that rather than the bathroom sink.

6th June 2023

So we did get a professional plumber in after all. He did not disconnect everything, instead he fitted shut off valves to the hot and cold supply. This allowed me simply to strip away the parts at the last minute without climbing into the crawl space to turn off the mains supply each time. I waited until the last possible time to do the work ready for the eight o clock start tomorrow.

Kelli finished painting the rocking chair and I finished the arms ready for assembly tomorrow and collection Thursday.

It was a difficult night, Kelli only got four hours sleep, which was not good making the day strained.

The weather was not so hot, making it ideal for outdoor working