It's Dinner Time

12 3
1) Scouting out dinner. 2) Striking out for dinner. 3) Positioning the little fish.
4
4) Swallowing the little fish.

A Blue Heron landed in the pond behind our house today so I took some pictures, 90 to be exact. I've sense narrowed that down to something like 70 or so with more to go. I was afraid to try to go out for several reasons. First would be the obvious, startling the bird and second would be I didn't know if I would have enough time. The last time one of these birds came it didn't stay long. It was a younger bird. This one got scared by a big truck and flew a hundred feet away but then walked back and started feeding again. I will post some of the in flight shots. I must say, my pictures don't do the wingspan justice. It actually got spooked twice so I do have a couple of angles. Stay tuned for updates.

Sink and mirror installed

The sink and mirror for the bath are installed. Found a small sink with wainscoting on it to match the lower part of the walls in the bath. The faucet matches the light fixture that came out of the hall bath upstairs and this faucet came with a handle selection. We haven't decided whether the white one on the left or the all metal look as on the right is t he correct one for this room. Open for suggestions. Doesn't mean they will be used but if the suggestion is made with a point of interest than it will definitely be used in are process of elimination. Go ahead and post your thoughts or call, if you know the number.

Running supply lines and drain.

It looks nuts in the first and second photo but the hot and cold actually cross. Two reasons here, first when I looked at it from the back side I put the cold on the left and the hot on the right side of the stud. You wouldn't know that I flew radio control airplanes where you have to be able to think in reverse. Secondly, I actually had to run the tap ins on the main lines due to space of where I could get on the pipe with the size of fittings I had. I had 1 3/4 x 3/4 x 1/2 inch 'T' because the supply to the hot water heater was 3/4" but the hot water was reduced in this area to 1/2" thus I had to put a 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 inch 'T' in and it was right across from the stud. Lack of room available in the area meant that the cold water had to cross the hot. It is just an asthetic thing and I am all about the neatness of a job. It's my construction background I guess.

The third and fourth photos show the complete feed to the sink, the toilet and a maintenance line to fill the sump pump pit. This allows me to be sure the check vavles are funtioning properly as well as the battery backup system.

The worst part of this was either the three trips to the supply store or the fumes from the glue. I had a guy that was a retired plumber help me pick out my parts. He said that everything he does, including plumbing jobs, requires three trips. He was right almost. Mine took three trips but had a neighbor not had three foot of pipe and one elbow I would have made the fourth trip. This little job took twenty-four foot of pipe. I had absolutely NO scrap.

Production line and offset

Here we have our wainscoting painting facility in operation. We could get 4 boards at a time. The third picture is a better shot at the offsets that had to be made for the Ryan mistake. Coming from the back corner where the sump pump sits on the otherside of the wall we have approximately a 36" wall then a 10" offset then a 22" wall and then a 3.5" offset and then lastly where a pedistal sink will sit is a 37" wall. Not bad for an electrician by trade and an amature wannabe carpenter eh!

Paint and Trim Transition

As you can see the ceiling and the walls color is the same so to break up the supper cave effect we put cove molding at the ceiling and wainscoting on the lower portion of the wall with chair molding on top with white base boards.

Bath Addition

When we bought our house we had a 1/2 bath roughed in for the basement. I didn't do anything to it until this year. Ryan, the builder made some mistakes that I had to make allowances for like where they put the sump pump and the fact that the floor pitched to the sump pump, which it should do if the need was to arise due to flooding. The location of the s.p. was almost in the bathroom area, hence the offset in the wall as seen in picture 4. You can see where the toilet is to be located and approximately 13 1/2 " back is the vent pipe. The sink will go where you see the lights on the wall. In order to put the sink in and close the door if need be once installed, this wall had to go over a drain in the floor that the water softner goes to and the hotwater heaters vent line as well as the A/C condensate drain. So, first I had to run a wall across this drain, then move in to pick up the vent pipe, wouldn't want that visible in your bath and then move in again another 10" to get by the sump pump. A room that starts off at about 65" ruduces down 13" to get by Ryan's screw up.

Well, as you can see we are on our way to getting this project done. I made two new walls, two existed from the finished part of the basement, hung drywall, spackled (hate this part) put two coats of primer on and then painted the ceiling and a little over half way down a dark gray color.

More to come.

Gene and his car

The master of the yellow Vette. We went out Tues. after lunch to a hugh church parking lot to take some pictures of his Vette and ended up taking 158 shots. Some have already bitten the dust while others are to be played with or kept for posting if or when he decides to sell it. Took so through the mirror (inside and out) shots and through the rear window. Found I really do want to get an 18mm lens. It was fun and it gave a couple of retired bums something to do.