Author: peterb51

13th September 2022

What a difference a day makes, today I was full of energy and wanting to get started on the backlog.

I lifted one of the “Lane” style tables from the store room. I removed the screws holding the top on and started scraping off the surface. There was a dark stain in the middle that I treated with oxalic acid. In between that I sanded the drawer fronts from the sarcophagus.

Earlier we went for a ride to the park. On the way we were overtaken by a lady on a racing bike all dressed up in cycling gear. I didn’t think anything of it as we plodded on with the wine of Kelli’s electric motor in my right ear.

The lady shot ahead, then after a while she slowed, or we speeded up. Very soon we we right on her tail, now there was a decision to make, should we sail past with a smug look on our faces, or stay behind, Kelli took that decision and shot off like a rocket sailing past the lady like she was standing still. I tried to follow at the same pace, but not using the assistance it was a little more difficult.

I made up the distance eventually as Kelli switched down the level of assistance.

The lady cyclist disappeared in our dust as we continued on to the park. You could tell that autumn was just around the corner, a few golden maple leaves lay on the grass, where did the year go? It used to last for ages.

Kelli was determined to prime the sarcophagus, so that was the goal.

I had fixed two trollies together as the piece was nearly six foot long, this made it easier to move about.

Whilst she was doing the painting I wanted to draw out the kitchen cabinet full size on a board to check all the dimensions. The client wants to put a micro wave in the top part, so I needed to check out the clearances they gave me.

I finished the day watering the areas I had reseeded. The dog resistant grass was growing well, the tiny shoots had sprouted and filling the space nicely. Out the front there was no activity, but it’s early days, maybe next week things might happen.

12th September 2022

One important job to do was to remove the dresser from the truck. I have called the piece The sarcophagus. While Kelli was cleaning the beast I did some lawn-dressing and re-seeding on the front lawn. Knowing my luck with seeding I don’t expect much, although, there are signs of life in the area I seeded with the piss resistant grass. There is stuff called Dog Rocks that is added to their drinking water to reduce the nitrogen in the urine, that might be option B.

Both of us didn’t sleep very well last night, it might have something to do with it being a full moon.

The day was a non day, a bit of cleaning, moving stuff around, we both were not energised at all.

11th September 2022

We were up early to collect the mother of all dressers. The last time I carried something that heavy it had a body inside.

Three of us struggled to load it into the truck, it’s suspension groaned under the weight. Even taking the drawers out made little difference, I can’t wait when it’s time to extract it from our vehicle.

We were expecting a person to view, and hopefully buy the dresser, but the agreed time came and went with no sigh of anyone.

Now it just so happened that a coffee table that I had been repairing was due to be collected late afternoon, the customer had also showed interest in the dresser, so it could work out anyway.

And that’s what happened, we sold the dresser and got paid for the coffee table.

The original person that wanted the dresser had forgotten all about it, tough luck lady, you snooze, you lose.

11th September 2022

We hosted a birthday party for Kelli’s sister in law Brenda who is Matt’s wife.

She wanted to hold the event in our garden because she loved the flowers and enjoyed the space. We were happy to help her celebrate, and it was an opportunity to have all of Kelli’s children there.

There was cake and I bought a bottle of sparkling wine that I would drink, maybe giving a glass to Brenda.

We finally had a game of pickleball which is like short tennis. We’ve had the net in the front of the garage for the last three months but we never had the time to play.

At the end of the party we even had time to take pictures of the latest dresser.

It was posted and immediately had several people on it.

9th September 2022

Whilst floating in the pool for an extra day, I was looking across the bottom end of the garden where the wild flowers have taken over I spied a very rare sight, at least in this garden, this year, it was an apple growing on one of our trees. Okay it’s not a big apple, but something is growing at last.

I had thought that by having two apple trees of different varieties they would cross pollinate, but it looks like I have the most unsociable apple trees ever.

It was a hotter day than expected, I was able to get a couple of coats of finish on the long dresser top.

There was also a trip to Menards to buy timber for a kitchen cabinet that I have been commissioned to make, that should be a straight forward job that I will turn into a complicated over engineered piece.

8th September 2022

We were in the pool for possibly the last time this year. The temperature takes a bit of a dip next week, and the water today was a little fresh, but we both grinned and bared it.

It was a sad day with the news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth the second, both Kelli’s children called to see if I was all right, which was touching.

It was an interesting day, she had been Queen for all my life, and it will be strange not seeing her profile on the stamps.

Charles has now got his first dream job in seventy three years. I was telling Kelli about the various comic sketches on Spitting Images, showing Charles’s puppet trying various ways of bumping off the Queen, saying “please mummy let me be king”, I can see the funny side of it, but Kelli was horrified that it would appear on tv.

7th September 2022

I had a number of drawers to repair, these were obviously made very cheaply, no dovetails here, just nails, classy furniture.

We cycled down to the lake at Point West, only the second time year, we passed straight through the security gate that is now empty for the rest of the year.

Although Kelli knows someone who has a lakeside cottage there, the mention of their name always gets us through.

She wasn’t alway comfortable using the name to gain entrance, it felt better when there was no guard there.

The lake was a shimmering expanse of diamonds in the bright sunlight. There weren’t many people on the beach, the holidaying families had all gone home, there were a few cottage owners doing garden maintenance, no doubt sitting on a stash of dollars paid to them in rental fees that on the lake front are not cheap.

6th September 2022

We drove the last dresser that we bought up to Georgia’s garage to store, and to celebrate, we collected another from Zeeland and stored that as well.

Although our garage is full, we will sell what we have and be able to control the space better. No longer will I be freaked out by the amount of stuff in there, I won’t trip and fall over things.

The temperature is starting to drop, although the bike ride was fresh and still okay with short sleeves.

There was plenty to get on with. We finished the single side table, Kelli posted it on Marketplace quickly.

I got on with cutting radius’s to the corners of the coffee table, and sanding the dining table.

Wow! That is hard work. The original table was made in Indonesia and the clear coating is as hard as steel. I managed to do about a quarter before I got bored and did something else.

We managed to get a bike ride in and on the way back we stopped off at Kim’s house. Kim is Kelli’s ex-sister in law, and we wanted to check out some old windows she had for sale.

I noticed a guitar neck sticking out of the dust bin. Being nosy, I pulled it out, it looked perfect except that a repair had been made to the headstock. At some time it had snapped off from the neck and glued back together.

The guitar was Matt’s, Kelli’s brother, he didn’t think the repair was good enough, and hadn’t wanted to use it.

I watch a guy on YouTube who repairs guitars so I thought I might have a go at putting it right.

The problem was getting it home, it wasn’t a long way, but a guitar is not the easiest shape to carry on a bike.

First we thought of strapping it to the back of Kelli’s bike, on top of the battery pack. It had two bungees that came with the bike, we used them to tie it down. Keillor traveled three feet before it slipped down and nearly hit the road.

The only alternative was for me to carry it in my right hand.

It must have been odd for people to see me riding down the road with a guitar flaying in the wind. I had to be carful crossing roads, hoping that I didn’t need to use the brake, because that was the hand I was using to hold the instrument.

Tonight was “Take out” night, so I drove to Hop Cat to collect our meal. I had to wait for a while and had a beer at the bar. It had been ages since I’ve done that, it felt special, and tasted great.

5th September 2022

The customers for the tall dresser arrived early, we were hoping for a lie-in being a holiday, but no, we had a quick breakfast and opened up the garage.

They had come from Grand Haven which means that a lot of our recent customers have come from that area.

They brought with them a coffee table that had areas of damage caused by a small dog.

Two of the corners of the top had teeth marks, and they agree to have the four corners rounded.

We then went to collect a another dresser spotted by my observant wife, who seems to think the garage is the size of a cathedral.

The rest of the day was spent with the family who came over for Labour Day the official end of the summer.

I managed to get up courage to ask my mother in law it we could store our “backlog” in her garage. I crawled lower than a snakes belly, and was overjoyed when she said we could.

It just so happened that we have one in the truck, and we are picking up another tomorrow.

4th September 2022

We made a return trip the the house with the fairytale garden. We wanted to thank them in person for letting us explore their yard.

The man of the house was Bill and his wife was Jeanine, they moved into the house in 1991 and have spent the last thirty one years creating this masterpiece. They built the various buildings out of reclaimed materials.

The large rounded windows in the Greek temple came from an old church, and the bottom half of the same windows were used to build the greenhouse.

It was great to meet the people who made it all and were proud to show it to anyone who was interested.

We left with an open invitation to visit any time we wanted.

I started an experiment to re-seed a portion of my new lawn damaged by dog piss.

I had bought a bag of seed more resistant to animal pee as an attempt to stop the unsightly brown patches.

I mixed the seed into a bucket containing good quality lawn soil, then I scraped the dead grass and then soaked the area before sowing the soil/seed mix. I then covered it with a fine net to stop the dogs, birds and squirrels.

Now I wait and see what comes up.