Addition and Cabinets.

On this job we actually moved the kitchen form the back side of the home to the front of the home. The challenge= The home was on a concrete slab.

The One Week Mac Kitchen Make Over.

I should have taken some before shots. This area was where the home owner had a desk set up.

I walked onto this job with an existing kitchen. On all the cabinets were little post it notes saying either garage or basement. Wouldn't you believe that almost all of the large cabinets and 5 pantry units were all listed for the basement. I actually got them into the basement by removing all the drawers and doors. I was so ticked that I just set all the doors and drawers in a pile. The reason for being ticked, the homeowner had 3 sons ages from 18 to 24 that just hung around the whole time I was there doing the job.
I did get the old kitchen discombobulated on the first day. Fixed all the electrical work to the new locations, patched all the drywall where needed and then started unpacking all the new cabinets.
I had all the new cabinets in by the following Wedensday. Thursday I installed the Crown mouldings, kick plates and all the finished end panels. Friday was the installation of the hardware and clean up.
I'm sorry the granite wasn't in for the final picture but it was off to another job.

NationalAnthem-Cactus.wmv

An Interesting History Lesson

I Just thought I would pass it on.

 

Railroad tracks.  This is fascinating.

 

Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of it will depend

on the earlier part of the content.

 

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,

8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

 

Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in

England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.

 

Why did the English build them like that?

 

 

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the

pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

 

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?

 

Because the people who built the

tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons,

which used that wheel spacing.

 

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

 

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would

break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's

the spacing of the wheel ruts.

 

So who built those old rutted roads?

 

Imperial Rome built the first long

distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions.  The roads

have been used ever since.

 

And the ruts in the roads?

 

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts,

which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon

wheels.  Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all

alike in the matter of wheel spacing.  Therefore the United States

standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the

original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies

live forever.

So the next time you are handed a Specification/Procedure/Process and

wonder 'What horse's ass came up with it?' you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate

the rear ends of two war horses.  (Two horses' asses.)  Now, the twist to

the story:

 

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big

booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank.  These are

solid rocket boosters, or SRB's.  The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their

factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRB's would have

preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by

train from the factory to the launch site.  The railroad line from the

factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB's

had to fit through that tunnel.  The tunnel is slightly wider than the

railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide

as two horses' behinds.

 

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's

most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand

years ago by the width of a horse's ass.  And you thought being a horse's

ass wasn't important?  Ancient horse's asses control almost everything...

and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.

 

Robin Williams on whose line?

Robin Williams on whose line is it anyway
(just a bit not the whole thing)

Cat Story Of My Own

A few weeks ago one of our female cats in heat decided to jump from a window in the middle of the night. My wife is overly attached to cats. I myself like them and have been attached to one or two in my life time but at this moment in my life due to my wife's obsession I think that between our house and my shop we have over 15 of them running around. They say rabbits breed quickly. Cats should have the title.

Anyways my wife has been so upset over the lose of this one cat. She has combed the neighborhood daily. Me, I was kinda glad to have one less cat in the house and the other 4 indoor cats kinda liked it too. The escapee was the alpha bitch.

My wife was searxhing the outdoors at night and the cat would come out of hiding but when my wife would get close to it it would run off. A few nights ago I actually wanted to tell her to try a string but of course it being dark and all I didn't think that that would do much good.

Well the last few nights the cat has been hanging out in our yard but still my wife couldn't get her hands on it. She was out stalking the stand of trees on the side of our house during the middle of the night and a couple neighbor kids freaked out a bit when they heard her. She told them she was chasing her lost cat that had escaped. One of the boys whom was over the age of 18 later took off in his pick up truck and when he drove by my wife who was still chasing her cat he yelled profanities out his window at her. The kid must have some set of balls. Personally I am going to have a chat with him when I catch him pulling out of the driveway one of these days.  My wife was running around until 3;00 in the morning with that cat playing games with her.

Last night after watching several hours of this I decided that my feelings towards my wife were just a whole lot more important than having another pregnant cat in the house. I'll regret it later. I could see her frustration  and could sense her pleading for help so I had to intervene. I told her to sit down and that I would get the cat for her.  I went outside into the pitch black and heard the meows from the cat. They sounded really pitiful. I quietly walked over to the direction of the meows and heard them start to change location. I just stopped and sat down on the ground cross legged. This cat has been sitting on my lap for years. Since it was a kitten. On saturdays it sits on my lap for hours at a time at night and watches tv with me.

I made a few cat type sounds and would you believe that that cat came right over to me. I reached out really fast and off it went but I didn't move. It meowed and I made my cat call noises again and back it came I let it come right up to me this time and then I grabbed it before it could get away and pinned it to the ground. It was so scared and tried desperately to get away. I got a good grab on the back of it's neck with one hand and held it to the ground with the other and yelled for my wife to get a towel to wrap around the cat. I started petting the cat and calming it down. I was to the point that she had calmed down enough to carry her back into the house when my wife started walking towards us with the towel. The cat went nuts. It laid it's teeth into the hand that had been petting her. Next thing my wife just threw the towel over the cat. I could not believe how berserk that little cat went. It must have done an exorcist head spin under that towel because it had a finger from that hand in it's mouth. I refused to let go of her though because I wasn't going to see my wife all upset again. my wife managed to get the towel wrapped around the cat and picked it up. I could feel the teeth from that cat ripping the skin on my finger.

Once inside the cat returned to  normal and acted as if it had never ran away.It probably lost about 1/3 of it's body weight. I cleaned my wounds and can't believe the swelling. I have never actually been bit by a cat before. Of course I am hoping that the cat hadn't eaten a rodent that had been rabid or left the debris from dead beast in my wound like a Komodo dragon would do.

Yes, I remember when I actually liked cats..

How's Gardening?

The weather is warming up fast here and the urge to get the gardens going full steam is coming on hard.

I was able to get some green house plastic on line and was extremely impressed with the difference of the 6mil material over the 5. I was using regular 5mil plastic that we use for regular construction work and the stuff would not hold up to the weather for more than a year. So anyway, after pulling a gajillion old staples and then painting my green house frame and shelves a nice hunter green I finally installed the plastic and my tomato and pepper plants among a few other vegetables are well on their way. I am figuring a few more weeks though before I put them into the gardens because April isn't a very reliable month here. Anything could happen weather wise.

I had such a bad year last year with pepper plants and I wasn't to happy with the tomatoes either so I did all of my own plants from seed this year. I even have a few early varieties too just so Vero can't tease me cause I am waiting 75-80 days for a dang ripe tomato. Lets just see how close the 4th of July tomatoes actually are ready by the 4th of July.

I am a bit disappointed with the amount of compost I ended up with this year. I compost everything but for some reason after final stage I still don't have enough. But again I never do. I was actually thinking of getting some more from our towns recycling center but hate to do that.What ever chemicals and such people use in their yards usually end up in the compost along with what ever weed seeds and garbage that went into their leaf bags last fall.

The old tiller is working fine this year.That new Carburetor I had put on it a few years ago turned out to be a good investment.