The energizer bunny?

Well almost... That bunny is not as exhausted as I am....
I almost got a little work work done today. I did have to go work on Carol's computer, and also had to deal briefly with my Mom and her tivo. Thanks Dann, for helping me out on that one!

Dog's and brats on the grill for dinner, and then back to my woodwork. I did get you guys some pics, but first, how 'bout a thumb update?
Here's tonight's thumb pic:

It really is healing, pretty quickly now. here's a pic of where I started, exactly a month ago:

So much for the gross stuff.

When we first built our timberframe house, we used carpeting on the kids level, as well as on the stairs from the mainfloor to the kids level, and up from there to the second floor master wing. Yes, master wing, well over 1000 square feet, 7 rooms (the closet, at 8 by 16 feet, qualifies as a room!)  but that's another story.

Anyway, I hate carpet. Dirty disgusting stuff, impossible to clean or keep clean. One of my projects this year has been to replace the carpet in the kids wing with hardwood. I used 5/16" prefinished wood flooring from Bruce. Great stuff, very close to the natural  finish oak we used in the great room, but considerable thinner than  the carpet and pad it replaced. So much so that there was a gap of near 1/2" between the bottom of the baseboard and the new flooring.

Regular baseshoe would not fill this gap. Kinda small aginst my 8" custom made baseboard too. (Yes, I made all the woodwork in this house, out of clear pine lumber) So I made some base shoe. Starting with clear pine 1x2, I first rounded opposte corners on the router, then ripped the strips in half, making 3/8  x 2" base moulding that was rounded over on the top edge.

Tonight I finished nailing this down in  the guestroom

You can see the hieght difference, and that I still need to remove and lower the corner block, and make a new taller doorframe block. So the guestroom is almost done. 2 corner blocks to move, and 6 new doorframe blocks to make.

I've also been changing the stairs over from carpet to oak. I got the first one done, from the main floor to the kids level:

So this past weekend I started on the other stairway, this one's a lil bigger at 9 steps instead of just 5. I got Dann to pull off the carpet and pad last weekend, and then I got all the tacks and staples off, and cut off the "toes" of the steps.

Soonly, I'll be cutting 8 steps and 9 risers ($18 and $7.75 each respectively) to exact fit, staining and varnishing them, and attaching the new parts over the old.

Meanwhile, I'm saving money for new carpet upstairs,  in the MBR and sitting room. I'd love to do that in hardwood, but the catwalk and loft are done with 3/4" finished in place oak. At $7 per square foot, that just isn't in the cards.

Someday soon, I'll get more into the house... I love our home, we built it with our own blood and sweat, and much of it with our own hands. It's a unique and special house. I'm sad that we will be moving on soon, and hope that we find a family who will enjoy and respect it as much as we have. Still, the plain and simple fact is I'm done. I need to look forward, to a time when my primary focus won't be maintaining my trophy house. Denver here we come!

So much for today, thanks for joining me.

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Thumb update

hmmm, I didn't see it happen, but someone muct be on my cam cause it's aimed in a different place. Good thing I didn't pick my nose.

All I got for you today is a thumb update.
At this point I  don't even know how many weeks it's been, certainly long enough for me to be getting tired of only having one useable thumb. The worst is dealing with things like snaps, buttons, and zippers. All of these things, on men's clothing, are made to be operated with the right hand. Since I'm left handed this has never been terribly easy for me. With most of the tip of my right thumb gone, it's nearly impossible.

Tomorrow, try to button your pants using only the side of your thumb, at the first knuckle. It ain't easy.

I used a bandaid for the last 36 hours or so. This melts off all the hard crusty scab looking stuff.
Here's today's pic, a beaut, ain't it?

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Tieing up the loose ends

After a bunch of short posts these last few busy days, let's tie up the loose ends.

We had a great lil b-day party for Brian, live on webcam of course. He got a bunch of cool presents including a werewolf costume and a new bike. The cake looked like Scooby-Doo, and I had 3 pieces. Our friends in BC-CA watched on Webcam, and Danielle called me, and Brian got to talk to Shelby for a while.

I'd mentioned yesterday that I went on a field trip with Brian's class. I am after all the official "field trip Dad" and I go on most. Here's a few pictures from yesterday.

Yes, we really did bury Tory in the corn.

And yes, Danielle did get her braces on today. It's ok sweety, they won't be there forever, and I still love your beautiful smile!

And finally, here's today's thumb update

A tough pic to take, by myself on a cel phone. Not focused very well I'm afraid, sorry. I've left it open the last couple days, and it's pretty much covered over with hard black stuff. I'm still not sure of it's better to put a bandaid on or  leave it open. If it's covered, all the hard black stuff goes away, and it just looks raw and gross.

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Almost Friday...

I just thought I'd pop in a quick thumb update before I head to work.
It's looking kinda juicy around the edges this morning. No sign of infection, so that's good.

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Happy Wednesday!

Hi all, and Happy Wednesday!

First, a thumb update. As you may recall, my right thumb had an incident involving a table saw last Thursday mornig.
Well, I've left it open since yesterday morning, and it's all congealing nicely. Scabbing over, more or less.
Here's the pic:

The last few days I've been working hard on some doors. I got 4 of the 6 sealed and stained a few days ago, and today I got 2 coast of poly on both sides of all four. Tomorrow hopefully, I'll sand em smooth and put a finish coat on one side, so they'll be almost done.
My wife is always after me for "never finishing a prooject..." well, the 4 smurf doors will finish off the basement billiard room, and the 2 closet doors (see pic above) will almost finish off the guest room.

See the cute lil mini closets, that's where the 50" tall "smurf doors" go. Those openings have been open since we built the house...
9 years ago. 'Bout time I got that done.

I broke down and ordered new back tires for the vette today. She's been laid up since May, I got a small hole in a sidewall, tires were worn out anyway. I do need to sell the car, anyone needs a 1993 Corvette, let me know. 96k, dark green, tan interior, all the options, automatic trans, glass removable roof, 26+ MPG on the highway, new back tires. $11,000, emaill jimm1968@att.net

Again, this fine car is for sale, for 11k. These late C4's are really fine cars, they ride good, have great power, you can drive em every day (I have, really, except in snow) If you keep a light foot, she'll give you great mileage, even around town it's rarely below 20 mpg. And of course she's still a Corvette. Great looks and handling, 300 horse LT1 small block under the hood. Goes like stink when you put your foot in hard. Email me at jimm1968@att.net for ore info.

Last thing for today, had some weirdness with the motorhome. The battery's like to get "light" after a while, even though I always hit the disconnects, so today I went out to check things. Chassis battery was completely dead (expected after sitting since labor day) and the house battery had just enough ooomph left to get the genset cranked up.
I figured I'd turn on the furnaces and heat her up a bit, I'm worried about the plumbing, haven't winterized yet. The furnaces didn't go. The propane detector was chirping, I reset it, still chirping. Light for "propane on" was lit, it wasn't screaming, just giving a chirp every once ina while. Furnaces did not go at all. Stove would light fine. Water heater did not. Plenty of power with the genny going. Gonna hafta work on that soon . Also gonna hafta winterize the plumbing and find a place to park her for the winter. Sadly, camping season is done.

Wife says if I want people to read this I gotta be funny. Wuts funnier than sticking your thumb in a power saw?
check out my webcam at http://www.jimragtop.com:12000/ If you comment, maybe tomorrow I'll tell you the password.
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Tuesday....

Hi all, and happy Tuesday.

First, a thumb update. Here's a pic from the morning of the tenth

Someday I'll  figure out how to format this thing, in the meantime, sorry...

I've been bandaging the thumb over night, and when I  get up it's all raw and puffy like in the pic above. Then I leave it exposed all day, and it gets all crusty and blackish like the pic below.

And here's the offending power tool, wicked, isn't it?

Carol just got back. She went to Dekalb to visit our oldest son... He's in jail. Being held in lieu of bond, charged with breaking into people's cars and stealing their stuff, to get money to buy drugs no doubt.

That's really all I want to say about that right now. He's been out of my house for a while now, and he's not coming back. We're not bailing him out. I'll never understand mothers... Jake can still get to Carol, He causes her such pain that I bleed inside for her. But I won't bend, I  just won't. We've heard all this before. We've been talked into bailing him out before. He's promised to stay away from his worthless friends and quit ruining his life with drugs, before.  A buncha times. No More.
This time he has to fix himself.

I REALLY want to move to Colorado. That mountainside is looking really good right now. Carol (my wife) is scared to death, she thinks I've lost my mind. In an ideal world, Mark and Sandra would join us. We'd make a living building cars and "improving" motorhomes. We'd travel. We'd raise our kids way better than the world we're attached to  lets us now. That's gonna be a tough sell though. They've always just collected a paycheck. And their from another country after all. It's a lot to ask, and I can't push. My golden goose in Chicago is dying. But I know I can do it again. It sure would be nice to have some more help though.
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Mark and Sandra's visit

Moved from the old blog, originally posted last Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009

For the first time I can remember, I've done nothing on a Saturday.
From 10AM to now, I've just done nothing.
Exhausted. I can just imagine how Mark and Sandra feel.

This started last week when Mark .L.W asked me to look at a car for him. The car checked out, and I borrowed a trailer and brought her home.

She's a 78 Camaro, backhalved, tube chassis and full cage, certified for 8.50, and including a dana 60 / four link setup and some monster hoosier slicks.





And Mark and Sandra started talking about a marathon drive from Vancouver Island, British Columbia to yorkville, IL to pick the beast up.
This being Canada's Thanksgiving weekend, they snatched a couple extra days off, hooked the trailer to the pickup, and hit the road.

Meanwhile, it was decided by my better half that since we were having guests, we had to have a guestroom.

So we got to work cleaning out Brians old room, painting it, p;utting down the hardwood flooring, wall paper border, and quick buying a bed, bedding, and curtains.

This all went pretty well, except for that small incident Thursday morning when I knida got my thumb too close to the table saw blade while ripping the last row of hardwood floor. Nasty business, but I'll survive.



So Thursday afternoon, Mark and Sandra clattered into my driveway.

It was kinda funny. I'm checking my watch after the last phone call, looking out the front window... Finally, I call him again, and ask :didja get lost or something, u should be here?" And he says "Look out the kitchen window, we're in your back driveway!"

So Thursday we hang around here, Mark washes both our trucks, while I stand around with my thumb bandaged and leaking all over. Carol fixed a lasagna for dinner, and we all get to catch up a bit. After all, it's been almost 3 months since our west coast vacation together.





Friday, we got the car and all the parts secured and loaded, and around 1:00 we took off to show our friends the great city of Chicago.

We had lunch at Portillo's, and then drove downtown on Archer Avenue. we drove around Midway Airport, and through Chinatown, finally heading north up Lakeshore Drive.

We did a brief stop out by the Adler Planetarium, great skyline views there, but the wind was blowing hard off the lake so we didn't stay long.

Next we parked by Illinois Center and walked into Millenium park to check out the bean.

After that it was off to That Great Street, State street, and into the store I still call Marshall Fields, in spite of all the new Macy's signs.

It was still raining pretty hard so we drove up to Water Tower Place and found some parking. We didn't get too much time there, but the rain did stop so we decided to hoof it to the resturant.

After fabulous Ruth's Chris steaks with all the trimmings, we went outside to find the weather had mellowed considerably. We walked back downtown to see Buckingham fountain put on the hourly showw. At the same time, we could see the fireworks at Navy Pier too.

That 2 mile walk back to the car helped get dinner processing properly, and we didn't stay up talking past midnight.











And finally, around 10 AM Saturday morning, our good friends saddled up and headed west for Canada.

Mark and Sandra, have a safe trip back. Thanks for coming to visit!

Due to popular demand, here is the thumb.

It's actually healing nicely, I left the bandage off most of the afternoon/evening, and it's getting crusty and not oozing anymore.

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