T'was almost a month before Christmas

December 1st., and once again it's been close to a month since I sat down to update. Life moves forward with not a lot out of the ordinary to report. A week ago or so I put my trusty iPhone to work in note-taking mode. I walked through the house, pausing at each room to make more than a mental note of the things that so often leap to mind when I enter the room: the things that need doing, or have needed doing for some time. When I was done, I had a list some 60-70 items long. Strangely, or perhaps not so, they seem to be getting addressed more now than ever. I can't say that I'm doing them in any particular order, or in any order of importance, but it feels good to bite into the list.

One of the things that has been bugging me for... OK, years, is the lighting in the shop. It's abominable. A 4-tube florescent lighting fixture hangs in the centre of the ceiling (which is an improvement over the single 60-watt lightbulb that was there when I moved in) and in recent weeks has finally given up the ballast. I've come to like the brightness and energy efficiency of the new generation of twisty fluorescents. A 23-watt bulb is rated equivalent to that of a 100-watt incandescent. For home use, they're ugly as florescent fixtures always have been, but for a workspace where brightness is key, I think they're great. I'd thrown up a couple of them a couple years ago to aid in the lighting of the shop, so decided to carry through with the theme. Here are some pics of the project started Monday night:



The dead florescent light fixture


Opening it up to peek inside...


Fixture is down to expose the original single light electrical box


Added an electrical receptacle


Finished with a face plate, ready to accept the plug-in lighting


Jumping forward a bunch to show the completed replacement fixtures plugged in and ready to go


The other end of the shop: the two new fixtures in place at either end of the single twisty I'd put in place to experiment.



Yesterday I replaced the plug and light switch inside the man-door. The switch for the room lights now controls the plug, from which additional fixtures will be powered to cover the dark corners under the loft and over the work benches.


It's no surprise to anyone who's lived in an older home (mine was built in 1955) that when you modify and update, you can find all kinds of things that don't always meet today's standards. In doing this project I discovered that the shop lighting is on breaker 13 of the main panel located in the furnace room. To my surprise, breaker 13 is labelled "Fridge". These days, electrical code says that a fridge MUST be placed on its own, independent breaker so that there is no risk of something else being plugged in, possibly overloading the breaker and causing the fridge to quit. I think I may have found yet another project to add to the list: move the fridge to its own breaker! In the meantime, the minimal draw of the shop lights won't endanger my food - especially with the lower-wattage bulbs in place and the dedication of the electrical outlets attached to the switch to lights-only. What's strange is that I'd had the electrical panel upgraded in 1993. The electricians who did the switchover added a sub panel in the shop, but did little else by way of additions. They simply labelled the breakers very generally. The furnace, too, is on with the lights for the laundry room, back entry and the back bedroom downstairs. Looks like I found another project.

With Christmas fast approaching, I thought you might get a kick out of this:

A picture would have been worth a thousand words

I was on the train this afternoon from the University station heading south. When the train arrived at the platform, I along with two others stepped on board through the door at the end of the car. We turned right only to discover a very large fellow sprawled from one bench, across the aisle to the other - three seats from the front.

He was asleep.

I quickly ducked into the first seat inside the door - reserved for priority seating, but conveniently empty at the time! The girl in front of me chose to climb over the fellow's legs and make her way toward the rear of the car.

I watched - for two stops - as people would board the train and awkwardly climb over this fellow to get to available seats. Oddly, no one said a word about him, and no one even disturbed him. At the second stop, a lady got on with her young son. She looked around and decided it wasn't worth clambering over the giant of a man and chose to stand near the door. I decided to offer up my seat, stepped out into the aisle, hopped over sleepy-guy's legs and grabbed a seat two benches behind him.

At the next stop, three Peace Officers were on the platform. One boarded the train, woke the fellow and asked him to step off the train. With no commotion, no fuss, he simply got up and exited the train. The Peace Officer grabbed the fellow's backpack and said, "I'll just grab this for you so you don't forget it." As the train pulled away, I saw the group of three officers questioning sleepy-guy.

I'd never seen this before; I had left my phone at home - kinda wish I'd had my camera.

More Wisdom

Second post today, I know.
...but I couldn't resist!

Wisdom

t's no surprise that once Halloween has come and gone, the retail Christmas season is right there to take its place... for about two months, if you count the Boxing Week sales.

Today I trundled through the mall because I felt the need for something completely mindless. I came upon this display which made me feel, well, maybe not old, but odd.

Note the CD that's labeled "1988".
Incidentally, 1988 is the year that I graduated from High School.
Note too, the sign that reads "Gifts For Mom and Dad"

I thought for a moment,

"Am I REALLY that old? ...Nahhh... um... Yah..."

Speaking of "Old", I saw a trailer for that Disney movie, "Old Dogs" with John Travolta and Robin Williams. I thought it was pretty cute, AND there's a version where B.A. does a music video for the movie that features himself as each musician in the band. You can see it on YouTube, here. The trailer is really cute, and the full B.A. music video can also be viewed on YouTube.

Indeed, a Turtle blog.

I have so many photos archived away, waiting for a post to accompany them. I called my sister the other day and she eagerly asked when i was planning to post about the hardwood floors that were done here months ago. She suggested I do another multi-story post, so we'll see how this one goes. I'll abbreviate the story so that it actually gets done and posted.

MOVING OUT
I literally had to move out of my house - all furniture stored in the shed and garage, the contents of the shed pulled out to the patio, the contents of the garage/shop pushed toward the front and crammed to make room.















ORIGINAL FLOORS
When I moved in, October 1993, the upper floor was covered in wall-to-wall 70s yellow shag carpeting. The flooring underneath was suitably warn and had knife marks where the installers had scored the underlay. Over time (and with the help of a couple feline friends - note the black spots) this floor has seen better days.










PREP WORK
I had to go through the house and pull the fir door frames prior to sanding. Also, you will note the patching on the walls; I figured since we were going this far, a fresh coat of paint wouldn't hurt!







THE SANDING BEGINS!
My friend Matt and his wife Liz stepped up to the plate to help with the grunt work. The first pass was with the heavy drum sander which will in fact leave waves in your floor if you don't control it well. My confidence was in Matt since he and his Dad had done numerous floors prior to mine. The dust was actually quite minimal, and the fresh wood smell at the end of the day was really quite amazing. I ended up sleeping in front of the fireplace that night.














IT'S ALL IN THE WRIST
My job between drum sander day and buff sander day was to go around each room and, with a palm sander, sand the perimeter to remove what the larger machines could not reach. The hardest to work on of all these areas was under the fireplace shelf. It was a 2.5 hour job to get that span to look like the rest of the floor!





REFINISHING BEGINS!

We started in the closet of the Master bedroom. It was my job to pour out the polyurethane. Matt had an applicator that made it a breeze to spread evenly.












A WHOLE NEW SPACE!
After two coats, we were done. The low-sheen finish turned out absolutely amazingly. Here is the office mostly back together. I made another project of refinishing the shelves here and some other pieces throughout the house. I'll post about that separately.




I'm almost settled in now. Perhaps around Christmas I'll have a wee party to celebrate new floors, not to mention a few other little victories along the way.