If it ain't broke

Here is Sarah using a motorized piece of equipment, AND mowing a lawn! Two firsts in one bundle! 

When I finally got a turn, I wasted little precious time destroying part of our mower when an errant stone from the firepit reared its ugly head. Sure I was cutting kinda close, but this guy was out on his own in the 12+" grass. I managed to bend both ends of the blade out of service and just decimate my sharpening job (which, until just then, was performing admirably!).

It had just begun running very erratically, anyways. So today I started in with the service manual, and quickly realized I was in way over my head. Sarah suggested I just try running it (with no blade), so I did. It fired up on the first pull, and ran smoothly as I let it warm up and then let it pull me up the hill and around the yard. 

I decided not to try to adjust things after all!

1love 

Andy

Urgent Garden Updates

First of all:

!!!!!!

Also: 

Beans, beans!

Can Collards overwinter?

 It would appear so. We found this munchkin growing in a pot we neglected last year and figured we'd try it again.

Does anyone know what this is?

I thought maybe some squashy relative but I don't know. I am going to leave it there and see what happens.

I got Andy these future pickles the other day:

Check out the whole scene and the trim lawn surrounding it! So exciting!

A rain event

...Is what my dad would call a day like this. So while I still can't mow the lawn, I might as well sharpen the mower blade, right? Let's pump up the jams and get to it! 

Safety gear (hearing, respiratory and eye protection) is an absolute must for this!

    While it is difficult to photograph, I hope we can all agree that this blade, shown with one cutting edge in the foreground, would not cut but rather maim room temperature butter.

    Normally I might clean up the rust and pitting first, but on balance, it's probably just as cheap to purchase a new replacement blade! All we are trying to do is cut the grass, which is now a foot high and loving all this rain!

    First thing to check before putting the time in is to see if the blade is bent or warped. Let's check it against a relatively *flat* surface.

    Not perfect, but serviceable.

    From the end, we want the bottom plane of the blade behind the cutting edge to be flat. Here it is twisted, but it is twisted on my favor. This might even be part of the design of this particular blade.

First I'll "joint" the cutting edge flat, trying to grind past the depth of any major dents or chips, and relatively square to the bottom of the blade.

    The bright reflective area is freshly ground. That ding in the bottom of the blade won't be as sharp as possible until we grind back past it. I won't get it during this session, but through successive sharpenings it will diminish.

    Next I'll grind a bevel on the top o the blade only. I'll be removing quite a bit of material, so I want to periodically cool the  blade in water.

   The accidental "micro bevel" at the edge won't hurt us here. The idea is to create an angled plane that meets the flat of the bottom of the blade with as close to no surface area at the edge as possible (think of two planes meeting perfectly in space, with no radiused edge at their meeting line) It's not a drawknife, and it will cut grass fair enough, but the principles involved are transferable.

    Now to repeat the process for the other cutting edge.... 

   And possibly the most important part, balancing. An improperly balanced blade will, among other things, vibrate the mower and cause damage to the engine. Here I have rigged up the lowest drag system I could with what I have at the house: some 5/16" drill rod, some tape to make a tight fitting bushing betwem the rod and the blade, and two rails from the base of my lathe. It's not perfect, but the rails occupy the same plane, and in case that plane is out of level, I run the test in each direction, marking the heavy end with a little tab of tape.

The blade is spun slowly, and is free to rotate until it can't make a full revolution, when it rolls back the other way and creates a pendulum with the heavy en down. I'll take a chunk out of the heavy end of the blade to balance it.

I had to take out quite a bit more material than I had anticipated, but it hangs flat in every orientation. Trying to be scientific in less than controllable circumstances is a challenge!

   I'll let you know how it mows!

1love

Andy

What else.

The view of our front yard from the roof.

That wide, bright green strip of sunlight is where I envision our veggie garden. It gets a solid 6 hours of sun everyday, maybe more.

   While I was up there, I removed the satellite dish and whatever type of antennae was up there. I'm sure it has a name, but it's a wild comb of aluminum spears. Maybe it makes a cool bean trellis one day. 

   I also got my first good look at the chimney. The situation is pretty rough, with cracked flue tiles and a cap that was never constructed correctly. 

Wood

And oil.

Of maybe the most interest is the aluminum flashing under the lead, which drains under the most recent application of rolled roofing material... Here is the Cricket, if you can call it that on this super shallow roof.

This level of work and/or neglect is unfortunately everywhere you look.

 

This last photo is of the bathroom skylight. It isn't visibly flashed at all. Huh.

Some bright side news: I washed the lamp shade over the kitchen sink; I think I had just assumed that it was frosted glass...

And I came across 3 out of 4 screens for the crank out windows in the kitchen. I guess when the water damage started and the decision was made to caulk them shut with silicone, the screens must have blocked the view. 

Now with the gutters, we can at least have the windows cracked when it's raining!

And oh yea, the mower runs. Major victory. Now all it might need is a couple of new belts! Besides being made in the USA, this might as well be the Volkswagen of push mowers with all it's extraneous systems. Whatever, the price was right!

1love

Andy

Short term/Long term

Hello again, faithful reader. This week has been full of projects, not all of which yet have photographic evidence... 

   Monday we found out that our non functioning washer has a sensor that knows its not getting hot water. Even the cold cycle has to be 70 degrees to dissolve the HE soap. Ok fine, let's just turn on the hot water in the basement, right? 

Wrong. Terrible photo, I know. Come to find out, this is a stop and drain valve which is missing a little cap. Opening this overhead valve results in a shower. Jump to the scene where we bolt to the hardware store! 

I had very little faith that we would make it before it closed. Expert piloting, Sar! 

   Monday and Tuesday, I managed to get a run of gutters all the way around the building. The first couple of sections were done (gasp) without the aid of a level. I may have exaggerated the pitch in a couple of spots to make up for having to assume anything on the exterior of the house is remotely close to level. The first afternoon's work does function, though....

It thankfully hasn't rained since I completed the circuit on Tuesday, but I ran some water through just to test it. I may regret opting for vinyl gutters some day, but man are they easy to install and adjust!

   My struggle to find an ideal tool belt setup continues... I have a cheap small canvas pouch on one side, and a metal hammer loop (that doubles as a drill/driver loop) on the other side, with the suspenders clipping into zip ties on the belt. It's mostly comfortable, but I find it gets out of balance too easily... Alas, the struggle continues.

    Yesterday. Yesterday I spent the entire morning vacuuming the cat hair and cobwebs out from as many nooks, crannies, and joist bays as I could reach in the basement. The initial result is a 100% less creepy basement. I am perpetually impressed with what people can live with. 

   After the nooks, I went after the floor. By this time, my shop vac has paid for itself. The poor thing. It had no idea (and I'm thinking this is common among vacuums) what was next.... Trying to go after the cat pee stench. 

    By now I have read at least a hundred posts online about how to deal with this problem. The solutions range in sincerity from chemical breakdowns of what is happening to produce an odor, to suggestions about the best type of ammunition for dealing with cats. 

   What it boils down to is that in the years that the previous owners had cats, they likely produced hundreds of gallons of urine in the basement. Unsealed concrete is porous, and as such, the urine which has crystallized as uric acid and salt (essentially), is impossible to remove from the billions of pores in my basement.

    Efforts to scrub out the stench made things worse. Later reading revealed that the presence of humidity (read: hot water and Simple Green) will activate the dried salts etc and make the odor unbearable. Lesson learned. I spent the rest of the afternoon outside, plucking Red Lily Beetle larvae off our Asian(?) Lilies, and dissecting the underside of our free mower in an effort to understand this wild 1990 beast and all of her weird safety features. I found some things out. I don't love bugs, and our free mower is not a simple machine.

I do like this little guy, though.

1love

Andy

The Hammock

I am home sick today, hydrating and lounging in the hammock. 

Yesterday I was totally miserable and really productive. I hung a clothes line and the previously mentioned hammock while Andy worked on the gutters. I also cleaned the grate in the floor by the fire place and the top of the cabinets. These areas were covered with black, greasy, poopy tar and cat hair. We took some photos but it's too gross to post. Here is a PG rated photo of the top after one pass each with the vacuum and Pledge followed by Goo-Gone and a scraper.  

This morning I smashed some wasps' nests. Afterward I did some research and apparently these were friendlier wasps that eat lots of bugs. They are still wasps to me and I am going to pull out the ladder to reach the final nest. 

On our way home from the gutter trip to Home Depot yesterday we did a quick u-turn when we saw a free push lawn mower on the side of the road. The gentlemen giving it away was riding a shiny new mower and stopped his work when he noticed us eyeing his old equipment. Hopefully it needs nothing more than a new spark plug! 

Oh, as luck would have it he was getting rid of a "perfectly good" snowblower as well. The guy will have to find someone else to take his old bike. Doesn't Andy look dashing with the fleet?? I think so!

Bug ID

We have some unfriendly visitors eating up these plants 

They look like bright red beetles. There is also some dirty looking orangish larvae/slug-like creature perhaps from the same red beetle all over the bottom of the plants. I couldn't get a good photo of them but here is the beetle:

What are these and how do we get rid of them?