Stewart Creek Somethings: Thanksgiving work party completed

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend! Doug and Linda came up and we had great food (best prime rib I have cooked in years), great company and we got some projects done around the house. As always it is nice to see long distance friends. The weather was incredible. On Saturday it was 60 degrees, unbelievable for the end of November. Annmarie and Linda worked on recovering the cushions for our loveseat. Annmarie should be able to complete them today.

Stone/cookie sheet holder

Doug and I tackled a few small projects around the house. Annmarie wanted a baking sheet/stone holder for the dead space next to the stove. We built it on Thanksgiving before dinner. It was the first time I have ever cut grooves in a project for a central dividing wall. It actually worked. The best part was we just scrounged around the house and old house for lumber that was laying around not being used. The whole thing cost NO money just time. My super favorite kind of project.

On a side note, I felt guilty about not finishing our project from last year (the utility sink cabinet). Here are the completed pictures for the utility sink. I had it all done before Doug arrived.

stained and door on.

The utility sink still needed a shelf over the top of the back splash. I glued some hardwood flooring together before his arrival and had it ready to go. We cut it down to size and attempted to install it. It is on now, but I kept hitting something in the wall and ended up stripping the head out of one of the screws. Of course it is a colored wood screw so I will have to stop at a large hardware store to find its replacement. I can stain it in place now. I will do it this week some time.

Utility sink shelf, even 3 screws are holding it up.

The laundry room seemed to be the mini focus of this year's projects. We also fixed a door on the pantry. It fell out due to the screws coming out of the wood, too much useage and wear and tear on the holes. I had found some little metal tabs that you cut to size, bent in half and inserted into the oversize holes then you just reused the old screws. Doug seemed kinda doubtful they would work. His solution was to drill out oversize holes, glue in dowels and then redrill for door hinge hardware. This is a viable option, but labor intensive. The metal tabs worked great and were much faster. The door held with no difficulties.

Right hand door repaired.

The other inside project was to get the utility room door to shut. It has not shut for over four years. I was tired of the noise and shot expanding foam insulation into the cracks. Well it did exactly what it was supposed to and "expanded" enough to push the door frame inward until our door would not shut. This has been an ongoing issue, but I did not want to dig all the foam out. So we cut a couple of pieces of lumber to go against the inside of the door frame and used a bottle jack and a 4x4 to press the inside of the frame outward. It wasn't really working then it popped out of the frame and clubbed Doug on the left knee. We ended up digging every bit of foam insulation out of the cracks and beating the door frame back over. It works fine now. I even had some old pipe insulation wrap (fiberglass) that I had picked up in a whole bundle of garage cleaning out items from craigslist. I was going to throw the insulation away next week. That same craigslist find I sorted out about 20 pounds of scrap iron from the 7 boxes of "useful" stuff I purchased. I found about 15 cable clamps and 7 grounding clamps in the same pile of stuff.

We also made a three different pieces of testing equipment for Annmarie's structure class. It is for testing their manila file folder bridges. The bridges are supposed to hold 11 pounds. Pretty impressive from a manila file folder.

We also went and picked up another dog yesterday. We now have a border collie puppy. They had one short hair puppy but she had lost her playmate (he went to another home) the day before and would not come see us. She was the prettiest of the bunch but we wanted a very responsive and interactive puppy. So Sarah picked one out and we brought him home last night. He is adjusting as are we, incredibly smart dog. Already comes to his name, Zeke, and whines to go outside and go potty. Amazing at 9-10 weeks old. Of course we must have some bad with all that good (just one of those years). A deer made a suicide run into the front driver side quarter panel of our PT cruiser a mile from our house. I had no time to react, it smashed into the quarter panel and flew six feet into the air. I was afraid it was going to land on the roof top. It killed it dead. Of course when I attempted to get out the driver side door to check on the deer, I was unable to open the door. I had to crawl over the gear shifter and out the passenger door. I dragged the deer to the side of the road and when we got home I called the insurance company and then the county dispatch center. That poor car has been hit on the front quarter panel at least 8 times now.

I am going to start in on the access panel for our large light in the stairwell. I am going to cut a panel in the upstairs bathroom wall so the light can be accessed for cleaning and changing of the bulbs. No ladder necessary.