Author: peterb51

20th October 2025

On the way to our shopping experience, we drove to an address that Kelli had found who were giving away loads, and I mean loads of solid flooring strips. They were stacked up in an old barn, apparently the husband was a contractor who acquired them from a house they were refurbishing. 

We had planned to put a solid floor in the sunroom, but that would have cost a few thousand dollars, but this was an amazing find.

We agreed to take the lot, but first we have to make room in the garage.

We did all our usual shopping, and then I had to go to Menards to find out why I hadn’t had my refund for the fence panels that were crap.

I found a suitable manager, I explained the problem, she went to check the returns.

After a while she came back, no paperwork was found. Several phone calls later, there was not documentation anywhere, however, she made the executive decision to reimburse me the cost of the old fence panels plus the tax.

I did some finishing touches to the fence, then the buyer of the buffet arrived to collect and pay the balance due.

I then started to tackle the CD/DVD drive mechanism, the shutter doors were a bit stiff, so with the aid of YouTube, I started to remove the shutter assembly. There were a total of five screws, four were the smallest I’ve seen, but I managed to remove them all. 

I thought the assembly would then pull out, but no. Of course the video did not explain just how difficult it was. There were two posts moulded to the assembly that were a tight fit in a metal bracket. With extreme force I managed to dislodge them. I did a small modification to the plastic webs, and then refitted it. However trying to refit the micro screws were difficult, so rather than get stressed out, I decided to tackle it another day.

19th October 2025

There was a lot of rain overnight, and it was still coming down in the morning, just like a typical day in England, I felt at home.

There was no plans to do anything today anyway, although I put another coat of finish on the top of the buffet. Kelli had a message from the prospective buyer, that they had a flood in their basement and wouldn’t be driving down to view it. Kelli took that to mean that they would pass on the piece, however another person popped up and paid half, phew!

I spent the morning trolling the internet for clues to why I could not get WiFi or Bluetooth on the new computer.

Everything I could find out on the internet did not help me define what the issue was.

The machine itself has been well designed with sliding cards and hard drives, so the whole of the insides can be easily stripped down.

After about the twentieth video I struck gold.

I took off the side panel and noticed a few wires with numbers on them, at the time I did not know what they were, but the video cleared that up.

The WiFi and Bluetooth board was missing, the numbered wires were the ariels. I sent off a message to the seller asking if he had a board that I could have, I was polite, after all it should have been fitted when I bought it.

I will wait to see if he responds.

It was a relief to find that out, I’m sure fitting it should be simple, after all the video itself was only two and a half minutes long.

Being Sunday it was Goodwill day, so hoping to find some reasonable priced furniture, we set off for the north side. 

It was obviously the Mexican family outing day, young children were wizzing about on scooters and generally being annoying.

There were no furniture pieces there, well there was a horrible dresser painted in black gloss paint, priced at twenty five dollars, not money I wanted to spend, so there it sits.

We had our weekly ice cream fix at Kelli’s mums, and then came home, exhausted.

I think I’m getting acclimatised for winter, I have trouble keeping awake in the evenings, it must be an age thing.

18th October 2025

The last main part of the fence was done today, fitting the gate.

There were a few cuts and the fitting of the hinges, and the assembly into the gap in the fence. There was great relief when all that was done, although fitting the latch was more problematic, I should have read the instructions.

In total I took the thing off four times before I got it right, but it works, and if I don’t build another fence I will be flipping happy.

Once that was done I helped Kelli finish the buffet, fitting handles and doors and attaching the leg frame, that just raises the carcass off the floor a bit.

The rest of the time I spent struggling to sort the wi-fi on the computer. That was not made easy because I had a wireless mouse that I couldn’t connect, and it’s not easy to use a keyboard.

Anyway I need to research how to set that stuff up, you know that technology hates me, so it could take a long time.

17th October 2025

A message came in from the lady who had commissioned the kitchen island, she had a flood in the house and she feared the island was damaged. That was news I didn’t want to hear.

We got in the car and drove to her house.

We felt the pain in her eyes as she opened the door, Kelli gave her a hug, and as we entered the house we saw the extent of the water damage to the kitchen. Something happened in the bathroom where either a pipe burst or there was back pressure somewhere, but gallons of water soaked through the floor into the kitchen and down to the basement. I was nervous to see the island that had been moved into the living area. Now from the message I thought there was a massive crack, but actually there was nothing, other than a bit of movement in the timber itself. I gave a huge sigh of relief. I checked around the rest of the structure and found nothing that would need repair.

Panic over we returned home, I wanted to fit the panel under the buttress and bang in the last post. The final task will be fitting the gate, that will be tomorrow’s job.

I had a message from Chris the musician friend who was due to come tomorrow for a recording session, he couldn’t make it this week, maybe next. I was kind of expecting it, anyway it gives me a bit more time to relearn the software.

Kelli finished painting the large dresser leaving me to stain the base frame ready for the final finish.

16th October 2025

There was no work on the fence today, we needed to do some furniture.

We finally sold the small cedar dresser, that I had to line the drawers. Remarkably, it went better than my last one, the drawers were smaller, so the lining flopped down, almost perfectly.

Kelli wanted to paint the buffet, meaning I had to carry on building a baseframe for it. That was something I had forgotten, I had built half of it, so I just had to do the rest.

The problem was, I just wasn’t into it, everything started to annoy me. I couldn’t find the things I needed, and when I did, I lost them again. I would trip over things, which I usually do, and then I would throw stuff around. I tried to do it in good humour, hoping it would relieve stress.

So, I’ve had better days, maybe the fence took more out of me than I thought, and maybe I’m thinking about too many things at once. The landscaping, collecting hundreds of small stones that have to be moved to the other side of the new fence, all these things are rolling about in my grey sponge.

I discovered that the phone number I had tried to get Henry on was wrong, I inadvertently got the area code wrong, so some guy in Texas must have received my texts and voice mail.

Which was amusing because this Texan called my phone, Kelli answered it, probably said that I was English and doesn’t know what he’s doing, she is probably right on that today.

15th October 2025

What a great day for a drive to Zeeland for another Doctors appointment.

The highlight was looking around Goodwill for any furniture that we can flip, but there was nothing, so we had to contend with doing more work to the fence.

There was one final panel to fit, and the one that gave us the most trouble. I’m sure the professionals would have done the hardest one first, but not me, hard job Pete at your service.

What made it difficult was the design of the house had a buttressed feature that the panel had to fit under.

I took careful measurements, marked it out on the panel and cut the panel to shape. I had also dug a deep trench for the thing to fit in.

What followed was a comical scene of complete mayhem as we both tried to fit this panel into the remaining space.

After a couple of hours of lifting it in and out we made the decision to remove the piece that fitted under the buttress which made it much easier. 

The hard bit was I had dug the trench a bit deep which meant it had to be lifted up to match the other panels, we did it using the old method of leverage, but the effort was enormous, I’m sure we will feel it in the morning.

14th October 2025

It was a wonderful drive down to pick up John the wood from his home in Wyoming, the trees were starting to change into the autumn colours.

That is one thing that I love to see are all the maples in their golds and reds, it makes going through the black and whites of winter bearable. 

Kelli had packed me a lunch, consisting of a sourdough roll with pepperoni in, an apple, and some small biscuits.

Now I have a weakness, that is, if I know there is food close by, I will eat it, if not, it will tempt me until I do. So most of the food had gone before I got out of Holland.

John was his old self, starting a conversation then forgetting what he was talking about. It’s like playing a game of “Guess the next line”. I usually respond with a “Um” or “Mmmm” that serves the purpose.

He did say that he tidied the shop, and that was evident the moment the door was opened. 

The tidy wave also went into the basement where now you can walk without tripping over stuff.

The material that I wanted for the project was white oak of which he had an amazing stash.

He pulled out a few planks, just to check the quality, it was good, I needed eight planks.

Carrying the first few up the stairs I forgot to duck, as the thump resonated through my skull, John warned me to watch my head, thanks mate.

Then it was cutting, planing, thicknessing, and cutting to width, this was great fun, I could spend days doing all that, and I think John enjoys being involved.

By the time I had to get him back home I had glued up most of the middle sections of the chair.

I had taken a model of the finished design with me to show him the stages we would go through, it was a lot easier than trying to explaining it.

I had arranged to pick up an Apple ProTower from someone on Marketplace, the address given was Grandville, I had no idea where that was in relation to John’s house.

I punched it in to the GPS, and up came 4 minutes. 

I had over forty minutes to kill. I decided to look for a coffee shop, could I find one on one of the busiest road in Grandville? Not for several miles.

I got to the place right on time, it was a small business centre and warehouse, Leyland, the chap was there to meet me. He deals with old computers, and he does pretty well with them.

After going over all the modifications and additions he did to it, we loaded it into the back of the truck, and I headed home.

I certainly had been busy, and I was still covered in sawdust when I pulled into our driveway.

13th October 2025

I managed to put in two more posts, and cut out the gate, doesn’t sound a lot but it made me sweat a bit. I even used my laser for the first time.

Of course it was also shopping day, so it was amazing I got anything done at all.

It looks like the neighbours across the road have got a puppy judging by the continuous yapping I hear, crikey, they can barely look after the children they have.

I have taken on a job that I’m quite nervous about. I have to insert a piece of rosewood into the first fret of Matt’s guitar. He bought it cheap because of the damaged fret, and like a fool I said” I can fix that” why don’t I keep my big mouth shut.

I have to build a jig that will allow my small router to cut the old section out, I’ve done it a few times on furniture, but with this I don’t get any second chance.

12th October 2025

Well I turned the corner on the fence installation, literally. The progress was limited by the time available, don’t forget it is Sunday and it’s ice cream fest at Kelli’s mums. 

I managed to secure the second panel, and then added a third panel at ninety degrees. That was hard, I kept hitting roots under the surface that had to be cut away.

I had to make a decision regarding securing the posts along the long side. I didn’t think that the spikes would be rigid enough in the sandy soil that we have, to remedy that I chose to dig holes and set the spikes in concrete.

I cut notches on the spike with an angle grinder to give some grip and ran to Menards to buy the quick drying concrete designed for use with posts. 

I borrowed a hole boring tool from Matt and set about digging. It was easier than I thought, soon I was down two foot, I planned to knock the spikes down a foot and fill the rest with concrete. After propping the post vertical, I poured the dry concrete into the hole, gradually adding water. 

Soon it was done.

The next post to be set will be the gate post, then I would make the gate by cutting down a fence panel, but that’s tomorrow’s job.

11th October 2025

It was fence building day, finally a project two years in the planning now in progress.

I had decided to use metal spikes that I have to hammer three foot into the ground rather than concrete, mainly because of the roots in the area. 

I had decided to aim for three panel installations, I thought that should be achievable.

I had to cut the posts in half first, then came the difficult bit, banging in the posts where I wanted them. Sounds simple but they seemed to go where they damn well wanted to.

The first panel went up, it matched the height of the existing fence, but in order to do that I had to dig a trench to allow the new panel to sit correctly. The second panel wasn’t so easy, there were roots under the surface that interfered with the panel, so they had to be cut out. This fitting took ages, I did assume the panels would be square, but I had real difficulty in getting it level and abut with the fitted panel. I was farting about with it for ages, well until Kelli called me in for dinner. 

There the result for an afternoon’s work was one panel fitted, and another panel clamped into position, mm I don’t think I’m quite cutout to erect fences.