Scattered Thoughts . . .

First thing this morning, I noticed that the bathroom sink was not draining.  I don't mean it was slow or sluggish.  I mean it was not draining.   We had to run to the Post Office as early as possible this morning to ship a couple of packages but I knew I would now have a frustrating morning ahead of me once we arrived back home. I had a pretty good idea that the rather long drain pipe running to the side wall was probably clogged with hair, gunk, soap and I don't want to know what else.  This would mean that I would need to disassemble the drain.  I decided to just check the trap under the sink first though just in case this could be a relatively simple problem to resolve. I emptied out the long vanity cabinet and then went looking for a bucket.  I placed the bucket under the trap and disassembled the trap...  nasty, foul water spilled out...  but the trap didn't have as much gunk in it as I thought it would or should considering the sink wasn't draining at all.  "

The other day, I finally started on our outdoor kitchen/grill project.  I already had all the lumber on hand that is seen in these photos...  two 4x4 posts and a bunch of 2x4's...  and it was long past time to get started on this project.   Actually...  since this structure ties in with the playhouse roof, the playhouse is getting a nice upgrade rebuild and renovation so this is really a two part project. Our dryer broke so that is now slowing me down a bit but I have made a significant amount of headway on this project....  hmmm...  headway...   that reminds me...  I also whacked my head twice during this project already! On our previous big project, I also whacked my head hard enough to see stars, gray-out and buckle me at the knees.  That resulted in about a month of nothingness as my mild traumatic brain injury healed a bit.   I had a couple of temporary supports holding things in place on that project.  They were supports that weren't a part of the structure so I

I've moved on to the second phase (and unplanned phase) of our garden window project by working on refinishing the window sashes for this window.  Our homebuilt garden window has a couple of removable window sashes that we can insert into the frame for colder weather. In the warmer months, I will leave the sashes out (as seen in the photo to the right) so the view is wide open with no obstructions. These sashes were in pretty lousy shape. It seemed silly to design and build this nice new garden window and then just install the same old worn-out sashes when the weather cools down and during the longer part of the year when we need extra insulation. I've been experiencing this throughout our renovations... you know... when you make a clean spot, everything else that didn't look so badly before you made a clean spot suddenly appears horrendous... I needed to do something about these window sashes.  I also needed to replace the window sill... something else I hadn'

New sink and faucet installed in our old cabinets. Our renovation plans include a garden window in place of the window in this photo. We're planning to completely gut and renovate the kitchen as soon as we have time and some cooperative health (for both of us!) . In the meantime, we're storing away new building supplies for this project.  We've had a new kitchen sink and faucet sitting here for a few months while the old sink and faucet continued to drive us crazy everyday. The old sink was too small... the faucet was a poor quality one with very little clearance between the sink and the spout... the sink was dented and old... and the sprayer hasn't worked correctly in years. This stuff needed to be replaced years ago. Since the sink and faucet were just sitting there on the floor, I decided to do something about it the other day. I've replaced sinks and faucets in the past and, typically , this is a quick and easy project requiring no more than one to two