Little Bits and Pieces

I guess this is my usual Friday routine, a virtual grab-bag of stuff - small projects that are in progress or completed and that seem to get attention drawn to them in time for the weekend or, at least Friday.

Again, I'm starting off with Dianna painting her trellises. This time it's the one in the raised bed. And she talked me into putting up our patio umbrella for shade.

The Artist At Work

The other trellises (trelli?) - on the side of the well house, Between the front stairs and the breezeway, and between the back stairs and the generator room.

Well House Trellis

Front Stairs Trellis

Back Stairs Trellis

Raised Bed Trellis

Say, speaking of the generator room, its contents... Our 5.6 Kw generator is up and functioning. I had to get a new battery for it. Anyway, for the hurricane season, I've got it on a weekly test schedule. Every Wednesday, I fire it up. Tomorrow, we're going to go over all the circuit breakers to see just what the load is and how we can best keep the place operating under generator power. Should be fun. The generator room works great. It holds down the noise and the smell and it's secure.

And another electrical item - the front gate... WORKS! Yea!!! After several months of wishing and hoping, Isaiel finally got all the bits and bobs welded to it, and by golly, it works. Pretty fancy. It came complete with two remots and a hard-wired switch in the kitchen. I have two more remotes on order. One for Cody and one for guests when we have them. Really beats getting out of the rig in the rain and opening/closing the gate.

Our other project that is mostly done for now is the gutters. As you can see below, we have gutters around all four sides of the house and they match the roof color. Then the downspouts (3" PVC Pipe), I'm in the process of painting to match the house colors. Where it's wood, I'll paint them a light brown.

Gutters and Downspouts

Downspouts

For the gutter on the back side of the house, I'll be putting in two 600 gal. Rotoplas plastic cisterns to capture the rainfall. the overflow from the first will fill the second. Then it's overflow will tie in to the French drain and go to the canal. I'll have a pump motor and a shutoff valve, so that if we loose well water, a simple flip of the valve, turn on the pump, and we'll still have water going through the RO system and the water softener. I have to build a concrete stand first for the cisterns to sit on, so they don't get punctured by rocks, etc. Oh, and buy the cisterns, too.

Speaking of draining to the canal, here's a shot of the 200+ foot drain pipe emptying to the canal. It doesn't look like much here, but naturally, before I got my camera and came back to shoot, it was going like gangbusters, shooting out about 2 1/2 feet into the canal, and about 2/3 of the pipe full of water. Wow! All that water won't be flooding our place no mo!

Water Draining to the Canal

Other stuff going on... Cody constructed another garden area with concrete curbing to route cars around the palapa, as well as putting a curb around three sides of the palapa to corral the gravel inside.

Cody Filling the New Planter Area

Vehicles Properly Bedded Down

Naturally, with the rainy season or hurricane season (samo samo), the weeds start growing with a vengence. Here's Cody mowing (or as it's called - "chopping") them down with his trusty machete. At first glimpse, it seems really hard to mow this way. But, it's really efficient and fast. And we don't have to buy a mower... yet.

Cody Chopping the Weeds

After the last rainfall during the week, and believe me, it rains. Heavy and hard. Lots of water. I mean serious rainfall here folks. Anyway, after the last few days of it, I noticed Dianna's hobby room was still leaking a smidge around the seam where the floor footing meets the wall blocks. So, I had Cody dig the gravel out from the wall, exposing the footing top and the lower wall. I went to Villa's Supply, and got a gallon of Dry-Lok (Thanks Twyla, for reminding me of the product name and where to get it). We managed to get one good coat on, and it had about an hour to dry before it started raining again.

I checked downstairs this morning - no leak. So, if all goes well and the forecast holds, I should be able to apply a second heavy coat Saturday or Sunday and then we should be good to go.

Cody Prepping the Footing/Wall Area for Dry-Lok

Let's see, what else? I made a short run to the Vet, Dr. Sheila. It seems Blue has a urinary track bacteria attack again. More antibiotics seem to do the trick and fast too; Canadian Bob has left for Canada for three weeks; Elsie's already there; We got her car back from Rick the mechanic - still full of glass. There's a new car wash place in town that does detailing. I'm going to take it there and have them go over it with a fine-tooth comb; I have to order a new keyboard for Dianna's computer. The "M", "N", "Enter", and a couple other keys just won't work. Hopefully, it's an easy fix. Speaking of, I got my computer working ok again, thanks to Roger Cookson.

Guess that's all for this evening,
Cheers.

Still Keeping On

Even though we're into our rainy season, and it's also hurricane season, and we've had Tropical Storm Arthur, work must go on.

Dianna has been working de-rusting her old iron railing/trellises, and has been positioning them around the yard. Here, she's painting a wall on the well house prior to putting one of the trellises there so she can have a vine grow up and over the well house.

The Artist At Work

Besides spreading gravel, we've had Cody busy making more curbs. This time, it's around the palapa, so we can contain the gravel in the parking/driveway areas.

Cody's Handiwork

Forming the Curbing

I've been busy too. It's taken several days of effort, and my back has let me know about it too (only at night), but the big truck is finally empty. I've told Carlos (Jim and Melanie's Caretaker) that he can earn a commission by rounding up a buyer for me. He seems to have a knack for that sort of thing. A regular wheeler and dealer of the vehicular sort. I hope it sells soon too.

Empty as a Cavern

Everything that was in the truck had to go somewhere. Since we didn't throw too much of it away, guess where we put it. That's right - in the basement. Here's some shots of my workshop and Dianna's hobby room. there's almost enough room to slip through.

That's until we have some shelves and benches made. Then things should look a lot better.

Looking Towards the Door in My Workshop

Looking From the Door in My Workshop

Of course, it really is a relief to have everything under one roof. We've been working toward this for a long time.

Dianna's Hobby Room - Filled to the Brim

The rest of the downstairs isn't doing too bad. the utility room actually has room to spare - even with 5 bags of water softener salt stored there.

The Utility Room Gets By Lightly

Relatively Neat and Tidy

And the tool and storage room is looking very prim and proper (Notice the pool toys below...). I can't wait to get a full complement of shelves throughout the basement. Then we'll be doing fine.

Tool Storage Room

Beer Fridge is fully stocked

And the last thing for today's entry. After 4 months of glorious relaxation with a good book, in fact, many good books, including the electronic kind (I have a Sony eReader, which I love. It currently has almost 150 books stored in it.), we've reentered the land of commercials and buy, buy, buy.

We got Star Choice satellite TV. From Net King in Belize City. They set you up with a Canadian account and so we can now watch all the hockey we can stand. Ok Hosers!

Our Satellite Dish Farm

The Dish Farm

End of the Work Week

The last projects for the week involved laying about 180 feet of 3" drain pipe and connecting three floor drains to it to pull rain water from the yard and driveway back to the canal where it empties.

I really was surprised that this was completely done in two days. Just digging the trench was a huge task. Laying the pipe, of course, went much faster, but still, I didn't expect to get it done yesterday.

Laying 20' Pipe Sections

This pipe goes all the way back, under the wall and empties into the canal.

That's A Long Stretch

I had the guys install three 4" floor drains, one in each of the soak-aways Cody built to handle run-off from the gutters, and one (below) that will drain a trouble spot in the driveway itself.

With the drains at each of the soak-aways, the guys connected the pipes from the gutters directly into the long drain pipe. If all works as planned, we should have much less of a rain water puddling problem than before.

Digging Under the Curb for Driveway Drain

While Isaiel was here installing the burglar bar windows and doors downstairs, Dianna took advantage of his having his arc-welder handy by having him tack some of the iron pieces that were loose on some of the old ornamental iron pieces she is going to use as trellises at various spots in the garden.

Dianna's Trellises

A trouble spot in the driveway was under the palapa. It prevented rain from landing on the ground under the palapa, but didn't stop it flowing in from all around, and leaving the stickiest layer of muck under the palapa. Well, that's solved now with 4" of gravel. It'll tie into the driveway really well with one more load of gravel yet to be ordered.

Mucky No More

It's amazing just how much the gravel in the driveway changes everything - really gives a finished look to the whole place, and... No more mud!

Now I Have to Wash the Isuzu