Proving god has a sense of humor
Going and coming sometimes seems like a dream. If I didn't have the healing scars on my face, did I actually leave? Leaving in October was risky to begin with. The hurricane season runs July through November with September and October being noteworthy. Now it is true there's really nothing I can do during a hurricane if the house were to suffer any damage but there is a lot I can do to mitigate the damage immediately afterwards. It may simply be putting a tarp over a hole in the roof. The point, not being there prompts close weather watching every few days. During the season the storms are constantly forming off of Africa/Cape Verde islands and barreling across the Atlantic. Thankfully, tiny islands are hard to hit in the vastness of the ocean. It does happen however. When it does the survivors never forget. Some peeps move. One is enough. Akin to tornadoes, I would imagine.
First chore, cleaning the mold and mildew that builds up when the house is closed for more than a month and it rains. I can do the whole house in an hour. I spray and use a sponge mop. The trim is all painted in oil so it instantly disappears. I'm currently testing paint additives. None have worked so far.
First chore, cleaning the mold and mildew that builds up when the house is closed for more than a month and it rains. I can do the whole house in an hour. I spray and use a sponge mop. The trim is all painted in oil so it instantly disappears. I'm currently testing paint additives. None have worked so far.
Poor guy. Only the second one in all these years. They are not like city rats. In a different time and place they would be a pet like a white rat that so many people have. If they ate crumbs, wore diapers and generally slept at night I probably could live with them. With Lizzy, my feral cat patrolling I just don't have any. He moved in, I was gone a month, who can blame him?
Back to the punch list. With only two months before I leave again I'll do some things that will give a sense of completion. Most of the jobs never get truly finished as I'm usually waiting for something missing. With Roger's jackhammer above it was for one of the handles. I gave up waiting and used it as it was to relocate the downstairs toilet drain. Why move the drain? Because I changed the closet and utility room dimensions by a couple of inches throwing the toilet placement to far from the wall and too close to the shower. Then I had to order a 45 degree offset flange or some such from Amazon, trans ship via SF, hammer down through 6" of concrete, make it all fit, and pray like hell that the toilet would flush properly when it was done!
Done!
On the way back from Cruz after returning the jackhammer to Roger.
The cabinet arrives, crushed a bit but undamaged. With the drain moved, I jumped upstairs to finish the cabinet installation, left since August. Made other changes also. I did not like the cabinet on top of the refrigerator. Took it down and rehung it. We had this idea that we would make everything be flush with the refrig profile but it was out of the question. The more I looked at the ginormous footprint I couldn't handle it. When we purchased our appliances counter depth refrigs were not available at reasonable prices. Compound that with my using the wrong dimension on the refrig and I had an aesthetic nightmare--self induced of course.
This gives you the machinations I tried to go through to have the top of the refrig be flush with the bottom of the cabinet. The frig/cabinet are forcing me to shrink the size of the arch by four inches. Like I said previously, if I could have afforded a new refrig I would have bought one to fit rather than doing all these modifications.
For us armchair scuba peeps, full screen mandatory
Next on the agenda teaching myself to put up the copper gutters. Back in SF I bought an "opened" Bernzomatic torch head for $20 which I brought down in my carryon along with several rolls of silver soldering. The hose and tank I bought on St Thomas.
The nozzle, along with the small 20 gallon propane tank, made the practice soldering very easy. Applying it to the gutters was a whole different story. The fun was just starting. I don't even know where to begin. Years before, yes it's been that long, the drain pipes to the cistern were each to the side of the front porch columns. I figured the downspouts would come down and with a 2" offset, disappearing into the underground pipes laid in the concrete slab. Congratulating myself that everything was on spot on I started to snap lines for the gutters. Then the problems started. To avoid the normal look of gutters draining into gutters with small downspouts, I wanted to hang them seamlessly around the premier of the house down sloping where necessary along the rooflines of the shed roof above the front door. A little more work, four corner pieces and a lot less clutter resulting in cleaner lines. Like most of our plans they sound good on paper!
I started with easy part.
In the pic above I simply cut a ten foot gutter piece to fit the front of the porch. The down spouts are a work in progress. Because of the fascia board, if I mounted the leader heads up closer to the gutter where I wanted them, I would then have a 1" offset problem for my downspout. (In the picture I have them under the fascia board lip creating a straight drop into the downspout--very clear in the picture below.)
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| Not liking this look. We want the catchment closer to the gutter. Yet we want the downspout flush to the column. |
They don't make custom 1" offset elbows only 2", 3" and 4". I have seen peeps hang their downspouts on an angle. We don't like that look. I'll have to come up with something. I put them up, as is, just to funnel the water into the cisterns while I think about it.
Working with copper feels really good.
Getting in touch with my inner Mexican, I mean tinsmith...;~)
Everything is getting put up for a test run before I solder everything.
In the picture below you can see the gutter on left sloping up, following the slope of porch roof I mentioned earlier. That's how we want it but it created its own problem as I was to find out.
What you don't see is my driving back to Cruz to borrow the jackhammer again. The original drains were on the outside of each column. I quickly realized that was not going to work with my gutter layout. Water would flow down the gutter with some of it passing over the downspout and then collect on the front of the porch with no place to go. Monster rains would probably cause it to overflow. Hello jackhammer. Yup, of course I ran into rebar in the slab. Just another snafu!
Finished....moved from the side to the front.
With the hurricane season over I left the dry fit gutters in place on the front of the house to be soldered when I return in the new year.
full screen as always
From the Smuggler's blues files....
Remember, always retire before copping a plea--this way you go to jail but keep your pension! It's the VI way....;~)
http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/police-commissioner-angelo-hill-retired-after-arrest-1.1605032
A sleeper year
Proving once again, predicting the weather, climate etc is dart throwing at best.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130523_hurricaneoutlook_atlantic.html
I think most people thought these were ruins inside the park at Maho until a construction crew showed up and started a major remodel. Reporters were not able to find out what is intended. From this I arrived here the next day!
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