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Journal: Three days hiking in Hercules Glades Wilderness, February 2022
Checking out the rain. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Work — at work and on the house — and the weather has been keeping me off the trails since November. After such a long break, I once again couldn’t make up my mind, whether to try and pile on the miles or just go sit in the woods.
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Problems
Problems – Three coats of paint, rubbing down between coats, around 3-4 hours each. And the color of the paint doesn’t match the doors we bought. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. One of the deciding factors in the wall units we bought for the utility room was the availability of color-matched paint. So we bought some for the custom-built shelving.
The color looked off after the first coat, but I went ahead with the second coat, and it’s not right.
Back we went to the store — Menards’ — who refunded us for the paint, but they couldn’t produce a match, and the paint we’d been given wasn’t very good. It was supposed to be self-leveling, but it wasn’t.
After over half an hour of trying to make a color match, the staff (and us) gave up.
We went to Lowes with a sample of the finish and they matched it with some great paint that was self-leveling, matching color, and provided an excellent finish.
Though I still had to put in another three-plus hours work to sand it and paint it, so that’s a total of four coats of paint, at over three-four hours each to prepare and apply.
It’s looking like the other set of shelves may be finished in just two coats.
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Painting
By the way, this is what $700-ish dollars of wood and around 200 screws1 look like when put together.
The final round of sanding and finishing was put on hold while the car was taking up all the space in
my workshopthe garage. The winter storm is over, and it’s back to work. Ginger worked on sanding and finishing last Sunday while I was up working in Kansas City. Today I got everything ready for painting and had just enough time to get the undercoat on one of the units. It took several hours to paint. Now to find time to put the first coat of topcoat on. I’m preparing myself to have to give it two coats to get the finish I want.The better weather is forecast to be with us for a few days. Hopefully, I can find some time to get out here and get painting.
I would like to get out backpacking, but that doesn’t seem to be on the agenda at the moment. Every time I turn around another job at home presents itself. Next is moving the kitchen table light which is 8″ off of being over the table’s center, and needs to be done before the painter starts work on the kitchen. The darned gear closet still isn’t finished. There is a couple of coats of varnish to go on the doors, I then need to fix the door handles and it’ll be done. After that, Ginger’s gear closet, and the monolith — I forgot the monolith — which needs to be cladded and painted. At some point my office will get sorted. I’ll probably have retired or be dead before that happens. If not, it’ll be time to remodel the bathroom.
Footnote
1. 200 screws, 11 screws per shelf, and a total of 17 shelves, that’s 187 screws and 37 feet of shelving.
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Heading North on HWY 7
Heading North on HWY 7 – Driving up to Kansas City. It’s good to see the roads are clear after last week’s winter storm. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. It is going to be a long day today. I left at nine and plan to be at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church by midday. Then we have four hours to get everything ready for the four pm Celebration of Absalom Jones service. After that, break everything down and drive three hours home. Fortunately, I’ve got a group of excellent and willing volunteers in Kansas City to help me.
In total it’s a team of six, including myself. There’s a stills photographer, two camera operators, a sound and video mixer, a social media monitor, and me.
Many hands will help make light work. Even so, it’s going to be after nine pm when I get back home.
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One, two, three. Testing, testing
One, two, three. Testing, testing. I’m doing my first church service broadcast in almost a year tomorrow. Time to check everything still works. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I’m doing my first church service broadcast in almost a year tomorrow. Time to check everything still works.
And it did. It took me a while to remember how everything connected together, and how to operate it all. All six radio mics are working with no crossed channels. I’m just hoping these are not going to clash with the existing wireless mics at the church. If they do, I guess I’ll have to get the manual out and work out how to shift the channels.
I’ve also got a dedicated wireless hotspot. I wish I had thought of this before for home. It is less expensive and more reliable than the awful AT&T broadband service we currently have. Not to worry though. We are having fiber connected on Monday, and then I’ll have a great deal of pleasure kicking AT&T to the curb.
This lot, with a lot of additional cables, plus mic stands and some lighting, fit in a 70-gallon and 20-gallon container. I’ve rented an SUV for my drive up to Kansas City tomorrow. At least the 6″-8″ of snow that’s still sitting on the ground here has been plowed off all the main routes.
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Pantry shelves ready for finishing
Pantry shelves ready for finishing. With a lot of snow forecast, I needed to get the shelves out of the garage to make room for the car… Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Work on house projects has temporarily stopped. a) because the car is in the garage to keep it out of a winter storm. b) because work is keeping me busy.
It would be nice to find a bit of time to get out backpacking. I’ve not been out in nearly three months. I think it is time to address my work-life balance.
Pantry shelves. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Checking the pantry doors will fit. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Well, that didn’t go as planned…
At least one of the shelving units fits in where it is supposed to go. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. As usual, things took a lot longer to do than I anticipated, and I made two annoying mistakes.
You may, or may not, be wondering why there is a set of shelves standing in the middle of the floor. Well… the shelves fit exactly in the space, but I forgot to make allowance for the door trim, so there is no way to actually get the shelves into the space. When I realized this, My knee-jerk reaction — beyond a lot of swearing — was to break the shelf unit down and reduce its width. However, I’d already glued and screwed it together and the glue had set. I tried chamfering off the back corner so it could be rotated into place. Nope. that wasn’t going to work.
Our final plan cannot be completed until the shelves are painted. Then we’ll take down one of the wall cabinets, and that will give me enough room to get the shelf unit into place. What a stupid mistake to make.
This reminds me of my ‘Great Window Frame Debacle’ back in the eighties.
This reminds me of my ‘Great Window Frame Debacle’ back in the eighties. Then I had designed an extra room for the back of my house, complete with a huge floor-to-ceiling window, some eight feet high and ten or twelve feet long. The window frame had to be custom-built and was already being manufactured when in the middle of the night, I woke up to realize there was no way to get the frame on-site, except by craning it over the top of the house. Something that was way out of my budget.
I eventually came up with a solution that involved bribing several of my neighbors with beer, and between us, we manhandled the huge and very heavy window frame across the walls and fences of three adjoining properties. You would think I had learned a lesson not to be forgotten. Obviously not.
The second, error was to pick up non-hardening wood putty, instead of wood filler at the store. Now I have to get all the putty out and then refill fill all the screw holes with the proper stuff. Until that’s done, we can’t paint and install the shelves. Another unnecessary delay.
The net result of the above was that I only got I set of shelves finished Saturday. Sunday after work, I started assembling the second unit, which does fit in place (left of frame in the picture). I still have all the shelves to add, and it has to be lifted up into place. hopefully, I’ll get the last of the shelves and the doors fitted Monday night.
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My task for tomorrow
My task for tomorrow … Is to turn this pile of wood into a ‘pantry’ and shelving unit. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Is to turn this pile of wood into a ‘pantry’ and shelving unit.
I think I’m going to need an early start if I’m going to get this finished in a day. We’ll see how far I get. I worked for a few hours today, so I guess it won’t matter if it overruns a bit into Sunday. (My work week is currently Sunday – Thursday.)
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Impelling
Impelling. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. The view inside the new washer is bright, shiny, and rather sci-fi looking.
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And that’s the cabinets fitted
And that’s the cabinets fitted – I’ve still got to make a pantry to fill the open space on the left, and another set of shelves on the opposite side of the room too. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. How it started out this morning…
A blank canvas – well, wall if you insist. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Cabinets fitted on one side
Cabinets fitted on one side. Now for the cabinets on the opposite wall. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Ginger fitting hinges
Ginger fitting hinges – currently, we are adding some high-level storage for ‘little used’ items. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. You’ve got to admire a woman who has her own power tools and knows how to use them. 🙂
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Boxes – we have some work to do today
Boxes – we have some work to do today. The utility room remodel is getting out of hand! We had already dealt with several boxes when I took this picture. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Almost Complete
Final coat of stain – Made a lot of difference to the color. Now to varnish it all, add door handles, and it’s finished. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. The picture looking down the hall (below) makes the hall look impossibly long and narrow. The bookcase on the left is 11ft. long. The other picture provides a sneak peek of the new front door too. I hope you’ll notice how you cannot see the join where I extended the wall out to build the gear closet.
Almost complete – This lens makes the hall look inpossibly long. The bookcase is around 11ft long. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
New backpacking gear closet. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
Hall with new backpacking gear closet – and new front door too! Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.Update
- 01-17-2022 I swapped out some of the pictures for essentially the same shots, but taken after the final coat of stain was added.
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Making the gear closet doors
Gluing the frames & fitting hinges. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. There have been a few upgrades in the workshop. Black Friday Grizzly had a drill press and bandsaw on sale at a price I couldn’t refuse. The pair cost less than the bandsaw normally retails at. Both tools have been on my ‘to buy’ list for ages. The bandsaw came in particularly useful for all the joints I had to make for the gear closet doors.
And for Christmas Jim and Carol gave me a new DeWalt drill driver and impact driver, which have come in very handy. I now need to find a new home for my old (as in over 17 years old) DeWalt drill driver, which came all the way across the Atlantic with me.
The white shelf unit in the background of the picture below is a sort of staging area. Each shelf is dedicated to one or more projects. Right now I have more going on than I can cope with. There’s:
- The hall gear closet project
- The utility room project
- Kitchen baseboard and quarter-round replacement
- Ginger’s storage closet
- some storage units for Ginger’s studio
- A gutter downspout to fix
- ‘Monolith’ finishing
Then there are the minor jobs I’ve done over the past couple of months but not bothered to mention, like:
- replacing a broken bathroom window
- Jacking up the roof at the front of the house (with a car jack) and replacing a rotten roof support post base
- Replacing our front door (okay helping Jim do it).
- Fitting two new front lights
There’s probably more, but those are the highlights. And September through November I was working 60-80 hour weeks.
Finishing a door and shelf – for the hall gear closet. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Gary in the workshop
Making closet doors – Hindsight being the gem that it is, I now know it was a huge mistake to make the doors and not get them ‘off the shelf.’ It took me ages to make two sets of doors. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. 
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Distractions
Unplanned activity – the dryer failed, which created an avalanche of consequences. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. A couple of weeks before Christmas the dryer broke down. I’ve fixed it in the past, and I was ready to fix it again. It sounded like a motor bearing had failed. We were just about to have the utility room, kitchen, and our bedroom painted, so Ginger decided that she’d pop out and buy a new dryer and washer for the freshly painted room. And that’s when the work began.
First, the water shut-offs on the washer were frozen, so taking out the washer caused a few problems, and I called a plumber in to replace them (Yes, I could have done the job myself, but I’m busy doing other things).
Then we realized that the new drier was much deeper and would get in the way of the door to the garage. By moving the wall vent to the side of the dryer, we could get the drier pushed back closer to the wall and out of the way of the door. With the painter due any day, I removed the wall vent and patched the wall so it could be painted, and we’d worry about where to put the new vent later.
Then the painter called and told us he had COVID. That gave us some more time, so we researched different dryer venting solutions and finally found the slim telescoping vent, that was thin enough for me to mount inside the wall cavity. Which is what you see in the picture. Fitting it meant removing a large section of the wall (including the very good patch job I’d done a few days earlier). Oh well.
Bizarre switch wiring – plus it’s a single light switch in a double box. I think it might have been part of some strange three-way switch arrangement. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. While I was at it, I moved an electrical outlet that wouldn’t be accessible when our plans for the utility room are complete — watch this space — and there was a bizarre switch arrangement for the outside light that I also fixed. Both involved removing big sections of the wall and then patching them up again.
Now, (January), we are having a new floor fitted too, and the painter still hasn’t painted the room.
The result of all this extra work was that my planned work on the hall gear closet was put on hold while it was dealt with.
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Gary and Ginger, Christmas Day, 2021
Gary and Ginger, Christmas Day, 2021. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Like the shirt? I was wearing it, plus shorts, in honor of the unseasonably hot weather we were having.
Gary and Ginger, Christmas Day, 2021. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Essential Supplies
Essential Supplies – What the Brit abroad needs. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. What the Brit abroad needs
The uninitiated might think that’s a lot of ammo. It’s not.
I realized I was running out of Teabags the other day and ordered another 6 months’ supply. Ammo’s been in short supply for ages. I’ve been nurturing my stocks, and not going to the range. The last time I went shooting, they were only allowing you to buy one box of ammo per lane (and they wouldn’t let me rent another lane to get another box).
Today, shopping at Bass Pro, I was pleased to find some ammo on the shelf, and at a reasonable price too. I picked up 500 rounds. I left a few boxes for others, I wasn’t going to be that guy.
The uninitiated might think that’s a lot of ammo. It’s not. We could easily run through all of it in a couple of trips to the range. As it is, a couple of hundred rounds are earmarked as a Christmas present for one of the kids. I’ll pop back to the store next week for some more, and to see if the handgun I’ve been trying to buy for six months is back in stock yet (It wasn’t. It took a trip to a gun show to find one).
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Fronds and bottles
Fronds and bottles – Testing my new cell phone’s camera in the dark. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Testing my new cell phone’s camera in the dark.
When I say dark, I mean I couldn’t read the label on the bottle, it was too dark to see with unaided eyes. Overall I’m quite impressed. Though I see evidence of over-sharpening in the images. However, I read somewhere that it is possible to get the camera to save the raw files. I’ll have to check it out.
I may even leave my camera at home on my next backpacking trip, which will reduce bulk and weight. The bulk aspect is fairly imp[ortant for my comfort as I have to keep the electronic gear under the covers with me to keep it warm once the temperatures start dropping below freezing.
The Sparkle Zone at night – Testing my new cell phone’s wide angle camera. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
The Sparkle Zone at night – Testing my new cell phone’s camera’s flash (actually, I hadn’t worked out how to turn it off). Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
The Sparkle Zone at night – Testing my new cell phone’s camera’s flash (actually, I hadn’t worked out how to turn it off). Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.
