Author: peterb51

3rd June 2026

My busy schedule continues, first down to Elaine’s to scope out the work on her caravan.

I looked in her barn at the stock of materials, seeing if there was anything suitable for the ceiling panel. Most of the sheet stock was placed high up, the only way to get at it was using a ladder, then balance precariously lowering each sheet to the ground.

I did find a sheet of the right thickness which was a tick in the right box.

Then I went to the caravan to take measurements and check its squareness.

Surprisingly it was pretty good.

However, I looked at the total tasks required to complete the restoration. In my opinion, it was too difficult for Elaine to do herself, and for me to do it would not be economically beneficial for her. So, and I know this would talk myself out of a job, I talked it through with her. 

Fortunately she agreed, I suggested that she sells the caravan as a project, add in all the parts that were removed, and get it out of her garage, out of her life so she could move on.

This was emotional, because she and her late husband used to do renovation work on these recreational vehicles, and in some way she felt that it was letting down his memory.

In real terms it is not worth the energy trying to do something you are not physically fit to do, it might be a hard thing to accept. 

This would certainly give her the space in her garage.

So now unemployed, I drove home, I had another appointment in Zeeland later in the afternoon.

Kelli was keen to tryout the new pool, by the time I got home the cover was off and she was floating on the vastness of water in the pool. 

I didn’t need any excuse to jump in and join her, it was cool and relaxing. Now we had space to float independently, with the old one we moved in sequence, this was definitely an improvement.

2nd June 2026

John was sitting outside when I arrived. He was sitting on a part of a trunk of a tree that he recently had cut down in his garden.

He wanted to take it to the barn, meaning we had to lift it into the back of the truck.

You wouldn’t think a small log could weight so much, but that strained the greens a bit.

Everything was how we left it last week, I set John the task of sealing the top surface of table top whilst I sanded the pieces of the base. 

I got John to seal those pieces as well, I put them outside to dry. It was a beautiful hot day, and they dried quite quickly, that what I like about working in the summer.

We managed to get two coats on the top, another two or three to go.

This part is the most frustrating because of what we can accomplish in a day, then wait a week to do the next bit, it does test my patience a bit.

John started talking about a hydraulic pump on his saw mill outside. There has been a replacement on the barn floor for about a year. 

He said that it didn’t fit, and wanted to phone the dealer from where he bought to get them to come and fit it.

I didn’t understand what the part was and where it fitted on the mill, so I suggested that he show me. Well that started a whole new distraction.

We removed the panel that covered the old pump and manifold, now I could see what the thing looked like, and it didn’t look like the replacement part in the barn.

I didn’t understand everything but offered to speak to the dealer on John’s behalf, knowing that John would not be able to explain the situation, but maybe that will be next week’s task.

1st June 2026

It was the usual, food shopping, with Winnie sitting on my lap watching the world. She has an issue with people on motorcycle, she barks loudly at any she sees. This can be a little embarrassing, because she also barks at small children. This might be not being used to seeing small people, but it’s not good. 

We had to deliver the maple dresser this afternoon, so a bit of final cleaning and a good waxing of the top and it was ready to go.

The house, or should I say the driveway was impressive, we pulled into an area with a massive barn. So many places have these Dutch barns, stacked out with junk usually, but this one was empty. However, stored in it was a series one Mazda MX5 in bright red.

I mentioned how good it looked as we carried the dresser past.

The lady said it was her husband’s pride and joy.

I took that to mean that he was no longer around.

She then said that she was selling it, I asked the price, “nine thousand dollars”.

That was a good price for such a sought after car that had only forty five thousand miles on the clock.

I was duly tempted, I still am, yes honestly.

That gave me something to think about for the rest of the evening.

31st May 2026

It was time to tackle building the ladder for the new pool. As it is thirty inches tall, you would have to be an athlete to clear the wall.

There were a number of separate parts, but not that complex.

All this was after a late morning and breakfast.

Kelli had an irregular heartbeat at about three in the morning, taking maybe an hour to knock it back into its correct rhythm. This one of the many issues that she is going through, mainly triggered by certain foods. This, she concluded was caused by hummus that she had at the wedding shower she attended yesterday.

All that knocked us back a bit, but it was good that we both managed to go to sleep afterwards.

I had a message from Elaine, our artist friend who wanted to hire me to do work on a caravan that she wanted to sell, so I agreed to drive to her house to suss it out.

Before all that, we took pictures of the maple dresser, and had our usual ice cream fest, well I did, I had a big pile of vanilla caramel, and it was yummy.

After that I drove down to Elaine’s to survey the job. The caravan was in the garage. It was a job started many years ago when her husband was alive, and it has languished in the garage ever since. 

Now she wants it gone. The job in question was a missing panel on the ceiling, and a smaller one on the side.  Now these jobs look easy, but experience has taught me that it isn’t. Fortunately it doesn’t have compound curves , but getting ply the right thickness could be an issue. Anyway, I will go back later in the week to sort through what material is in the barn.

Later in the evening we sold the dresser, yippee!

30th May 2026

Kelli was out early to go to a Wedding Shower for Mandy, her niece. This left me alone, to do whatever I wanted.

Well I finished sealing the sofa slats, added another oak strip to the leg laminations, watered the front lawn and flower bed.

The maple dresser was also finished, pictured, and posted.

It was a wonderful sunny day, I thought everything was going well when all the veneer stack fell off the shelf. Of course I was well into a gluing operation, so it had to wait. 

I spent time laying out all the veneers back on the shelf carefully so they wouldn’t fall again.

Once Kelli came back, the peace was disturbed, there were numerous other things that had to be done including putting up the new pool.

I followed the instructions  meticulously, something I don’t usually do, but my instinct told me that I should. Putting the last connector into the tube was difficult, the instructions mentioned a way to do it, but it wasn’t easy.

I was hoping that the heat from the sun would make the pool material more pliable, but it didn’t help. Finally, with help from Chris, who came over to do a bit more recording, we managed to complete the installation.

It is big, much bigger than the last one, not as big as the one we gave away. We started the filling process, it will make many hours to do that.

The product also included the pump and a cover. I set up it up and connected all the hoses.

I found the box with the cover in, it was remarkably heavy for a plastic cover. This was all explained when I opened the box. Inside was six smaller boxes, each one contained a cover. For some reason we have six covers, I guess someone messed up. I expect the company has a stock out situation, and are on the phone to China to increase production.

29th May 2026

I met up with Lloyd at the Southside Inn for breakfast. I was keen to hear about his vacation that he took with his two sons. Funnily enough they spent four days in Bath before then going to Ireland.

So for the hour and a half I listened to his stories which sounded like a glorious pub crawl.

But he was impressed,q although the hotel they chose sounded like a hostel with bunk beds and room sharing.

Once I got back  changed into my shorts, yes it’s time to get some colour back to my legs.

I worked on the maple dresser, laying on many coat of polycrylic, as that finish doesn’t give a yellowish colour. 

I also added a sealer to the slats for the sofa, I really hope Randy gets the cushions finished soon so I can assemble the sofa, and start enjoying it.

He messaged me to say he had been ill which put him back a week or so, now instead of me holding him up it’s he who is holding me up.

28th May 2026

There was so much I wanted to achieve today, my list was long, and I was ready to start. Kelli then announced that we had to collect a dresser from a mobile home park on the north side of town. I set my list aside, and we headed out.

For once it was easy to find our way around, usually there is no logic to the numbering, but it was refreshing not to get lost.

We found the place, and outside was the dresser. It was a reasonable piece that will be transformed. After paying the lady, we set off for our next port of call, the pet store to buy Winnie’s food. It might have been a big mistake taking Winnie into the store, it was like a child in a toy shop, she went straight for the chewy things, grabbing a mouthful before Kelli could stop her. So it worked out that as well as the sack of food we also had some slightly dog chewed chews to pay for.

Finally we got back home, and back to my list.

I set up the router to machine a radius on the slats for the sofa. I ran through the stack quickly, just the fixing holes to drill and they’re ready to fit.

Next was a maple dresser. I had removed the top to remove a piece of laminate that had been bonded to it. I had managed to do that but it left the adhesive residue that was really hard to remove.

I decided to flip the top and use the inside surface as the top, but there was a stain all around the edge where the colour had stained the wood, that,I could not remove, however much I sanded. This led me to attempt to sand off the old adhesive with a course sandpaper.

After a lot of effort I had stripped it bare.

This led me to want to strip off all the horrible finishes that factories spray over beautiful timber, which I did. I think taking it back to its natural state will look really good and a bit more contemporary.

Later Chris came round to add more guitar to the song we worked on last week.

27th May 2026

We had to deliver the oak dresser that we picked up a couple of weeks ago. All we did was give it a good clean and reline the drawers, we did pay a bit more than we usually do, but with little work needed we got a decent return on it.

I met up with Henry. I picked him up from Belle Tires where his truck was having his wheels changed. We went for coffee at Starbucks, not the regular place, but it was close.

I enjoy his company, he has an interesting take on life, his sarcasm, and street honesty makes me laugh.

We talked about his landscaping ideas, and I tried to convince him to build a round shed. I said it would fit in with his industrial style studio. He wasn’t sure about the practicality of it. I said stuff the practicality, it would look cool.

27th May 2026

It was a great day, the sun was shining and I was heading down to pick up John the wood.

On the way Kelli had arranged a collection, by me, of a couple of furniture pieces, one was a small chest, and when I say small, it was tiny.

The next was a tall dresser. The address was a shithole, there was crap everywhere, including a row of ladies wigs. The furniture piece was not brilliant, not the best material, but with a good clean it might be okay.

As I was driving away, there was a bloke with a compound bow standing in the road firing arrows into his garage, well, that’s normal out here.

Next it was picking up John.

He was bright and cheerful, I felt it was going to be a fun day.

It certainly turned out interesting because once inside the barn there was a tricycle right in front of me. Not just a trike, but an extended one.

“I bought this for twenty five bucks” he said proudly. “I want to put an electric motor in it”

Oh dear, I thought, this would be a major undertaking.

Our first job was a coffee and a biscuit, then it was attaching a new flag to his flagpole.

We took down the last one because it got shredded. He was happy as the new one fluttered in the breeze.

Then we got on to the serious business of working on the Michigan coffee table.

John did more edge sanding whilst I got on with the base frame.

I had to cut a number of half laps for which I used the band saw. This had issues, I felt the blade had a kink in it as it didn’t run true, so I had to compensate for it. I did mention it to John who then and produced a new blade from a drawer, a bit late for me, but that needs to be changed.

When the edge sanding was finished it was ready for the sealing coat to be applied to the underside. I was still tuning the joints and once I was happy with the result, we had our final coffee and finished off the biscuits.

After the usual clean up it was time to drive back to Wyoming, then head home.

25th May 2026

“Come here and look at this!” Kelli shouted.

This disturbed me from a job I love to do, regrouting the paved area. I wanted to get this done before we erected our new pool.

Anyway, I stopped what I was doing and marched over to where Kelli was standing.

“We have another toad” she was excited, “ That’s three we have”

I didn’t necessarily share her excitement, but it’s good that we have frogs in the pond and toads in the wild areas because it means that it’s a safe environment, and free from chemicals fertilisers.

I then got back to my grouting.

The new pool is twelve foot in diameter, it will cover the paved area completely. It also does not have any inflatable bits which cause us problems last year. This one has a tubular structure with a liner suspended within, I’m looking forward to building that.

It was a momentous occasion in Winnie’s life, when we left her alone whilst we went shopping.

The risk was high, she has her moments, but there had to be a time when she had to prove herself. The added advantage to this was we finished our shop in record time, rushing back to assess the damage.

Imagine our delight when the house was still intact, nothing out of place, her wagging tail showed that she was pleased to see us.

We had anticipated this, we had bought her a bone as a treat, that was devoured so quickly I almost lost a hand, boy her teeth are large.