Friday, April 20, 2012

Buttoning Down Cabinet Tops....Simple....Huh???

I thought I'd secure the cabinet tops to the cabinets this morning. Simple job, shouldn't take too long.......WRONG!!

We'd bought the ready made tops cut at a 45 degree angle and they seemed to fit great. Problems began when I put the formica ends to finish out the ends of the tops. The finish ends went on well enough. Then I had to connect the two pieces together with the special bolts. I got the bolts tightened and the two pieces leveled and ready to push into place and secure to the cabinets. Hmmmm.....wouldn't go in. Turns out the formica end kit has an additional piece of particle board that you add to the bottom of the cabinet top and it is about 1/2" too wide and the cabinet top won't slide all the way back to the wall.

So now I'm doing a little trimming and sculpting. Well, I finally got the pieces cut with my trusty grinder and cutting disk. It was sort of smoky and dusty but it did fit.

So, my short morning project turned into an all day affair. Not unusual for a lot of things I do. LOL!

I'll add some pics tomorrow.

Until next time....

Overthehump

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Cabinets & dripworks

March was plenty hot & windy, but April has been pretty nice. We've had some wind but nothing really terrible and the days have been fairly cool, not to mention the nights being dang near cold. The past few days we've been adding drip systems to all of our flower beds and garden beds. We thought we'd planned really well only to get the order in and instantly discover with all of our meticulous planning we still didn't order enough T's. Luckily the company we used, Dripworks, is a very fast company. We ordered Monday morning and we should get it Thursday. About 15 minutes after we'd ordered I decided we'd need some more metal stakes and called back to add to our order. They'd already pulled the order and we couldn't add anything to it, so I'll do without the stakes.

Today I had to give my hands and wrists a break from pushing the tubing into the fittings, so I worked on our cabinets in the shop. Still have a few details to finish up but they are looking pretty good.




We will probably add one or two more upper cabinets and add backsplash on the exposed wall. It's coming along a little at a time. 

Planning on going to the 5th Annual Restoration Rally in Albuquerque. Hope I'll pick up some techniques and pointers for restoring the New Mexi-Can. Yep, I still have it and I still plan on finishing it. Have been surfing for ideas for the past month or so. The black water tank has to come out and having set over the winter, it has finally all dried up. I think I can unbolt the dump valve and drop the tank now without getting showered with a bunch sh**. I really wasn't looking forward to that chore. Now maybe it won't be too bad.

Below is the flyer and application for the rally. I found it on airforums.com - at this link:




Looking forward to getting away for a few days too. Patsi will get to visit with Stan and family while we're there also. So it should be a good trip.

Well, that's about all for now....until next time....

Overthehump




Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Stumps, Pinks & Chayote

On my previous post I mentioned having to remove some stumps. The large stump, a very large and very old chinese elm tree that we'd cut down a few years ago was very close to the fence. I ended up with a pretty large hole around the stump. I was really trying to be extra careful because I didn't want to knock the fence down, especially since we just had new neighbors move in next door.

I even got stuck in the hole with my little tractor and the bucket was resting against the fence so I didn't have much wiggle room. I finally got the tractor out without pushing the fence over. WHEW!!!  And I finally got the roots broke loose that were right up against the fence and got the stump out.

The other stumps in the back area of the yard was a  little easier to remove once I found out where the gas line was. That would have been a real screw up if I'd have dug into the gas line. Luckily we had put a new gas line in a few years prior, so it wasn't hard to find. I still have lots of roots to contend with but I think they'll rot away in a year or so. In the meantime I'll plant some veggies back there. I already have some corn coming up. I'll have to thin it out in a day or so.

I failed to include any pictures so I thought I'd post a few:







The stump is gone now and I have it leveled out so I can move the tractor into the back area of the yard where the corn is planted. I have an onion bed back there also with about 400 onions in it. We have another bed in our back yard at the rock house with about 100 more onions, so I don't think we'll run out of onions anytime soon, especially since Patsi doesn't really like onions. She will tolerate dishes with onions cooked in. But....she will pick them out! 

Below is a series of pictures I took of some pinks that Patsi has planted in a tub in the front yard. I think pinks are a really cool flower and we've ended up planting quite a few different varieties in various areas. These that are in the tub are a really neat color and design.














I planted a chayote today. Say What????? Yep, a chayote....for all you veggie illiterates, that is a Latin American squash of the Cucurbitaceae family. I didn't know all that stuff until I looked it up on the internet. LOL


I have eaten them before though and they are pretty good. From what I've read on the net, they are a very vigorous growing vine, up to 50'.  A family of four only needs one vine, so if mine grows we'll have more than we can eat. I'll share. LOL


Here is a few pics of the chayote:






Cool looking plant. I hope it doesn't take over.

Until next time.....

Overthehump

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Decoliner. WOW...This Is a Piece of Work

This is a little different than my other posts, since it is featuring someone else's project. But when I happened onto this, it sort of gave me a little boost. Randy Grubb is a fantastic artist from Oregon and has built several custom vehicles including this one...The Decoliner.


Here's a short video of Randy being interviewed and a ride in the Decoliner.....





The Concept on Paper....


He began with a 1973 GMC motorhome



Took a 1955 White COE cab for the front cab













5000 hours and lots of elbow grease and you get this!


You can even drive it from the top!





Notice all the rear windows.

All I can say is, He's one talented guy. One helluva artist!!!

Here's another vehicle that caught my eye......



I don't know the story on this one. Just thought the guy did a very nice job.


Wish I had some more pics of this one. The guy took an airstream travel trailer and grafted it onto the Ford COE cab.





I like the way the crew cab section is a little larger than the original cab on this one. I don't know what kind of truck he used for the extension part of the cab. He did a great job though.

There are some people out there that put a lot of money and time into a project. I really enjoy seeing really nice work and only hope that the work I do measures up to some degree. I don't have the metal working skill that Mr. Grubb possesses, so I'll have to figure out some other techniques to get some of my intended results, but hopefully I'll be successful.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of some really nice sculpture and art.

Until next time......

Overthehump