Rude and Crude but it works danged it

Murphy's Law

 Some where in this house I am about 99.9999 % certain I have a 1/2 inch notched trowel for  ceramic tile work.  Murphy's law says if something can go wrong it will.  I'm betting some where there is a law that says after you go out and replace something you cannot find,  it will show up. Serendipity comes to mind.  You know, the one that says when you stop looking for something it will show up. I did some checking. One of the local hardware stores offered me a 5.00 discount off of a new  notched trowel. That's not a bad discount.  Money is tight and spending 11.95  on a tool for one small job like the wood stove surround, if I  don't have to, aint happening if I can figure this out. I can get the plumbing stuff for the sink or a new trowel.

  Time for the Dremel to earn  it's keep again.

It's rude and crude and did not cost me one red cent, unless your including the electricity to cut it out with the Dremel. It was fall off from all the plexiglass we used to replace windows  recently

 

Bath room lavatory pre cut

I put the sink on top of the counter upside down and  traced the sink outline. ( Outer marks)

Then I  measured the under side of the sink and marked inside the  tracing to know where I wanted to cut it.

 After cutting it out with  circular saw on  main lines and using a hand saw to get the corners it's ready to put the sink in.

Now all we have to do is go get the plumbing and we are done with it!

This week has been busy. We are finishing up the bathroom,. Have been installing trim, painting and all that good stuff. We are sanding the bath room floor to get it good and clean for vinyl tile to go down. I do not want any thing making the adhesive on the tile to not stick. I'm cheating.We are using the self adhesive tiles.  I had bought these to use in the kitchen. On a whim, becasue I really want to get this bathroom finished, I took them in there, They match the tan commode, sink and counter  my son picked out perfectly, so it's a done deal.

Wood Stove Surround Update

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are two photos.

You can see the ventilation holes in this photo. Once the tile is done there will be better balance between the intake and out put holes.

A close up some of the tiles I am planning on using for this.

Finally got the honey do shipping list pared down to just a few more items that need to be bought.  Finally I can start looking at boat equipment again! Yippppee!!!!!!!!!!    I ordered a puck GPS to go with the Open CPN. I have been playing around with the software just to get familiar with it. Down the road I want to be able to use sextant and old technology more then any thing. Lets face it the satellites are great and all that. GPS will tell you exactly where you are as will AIS. I don't have any thing against all that.  In the back of my mind I cannot shake this thought of what with the news reports of a major solar storms cycle being in progress, what good will GPS do if one of the solar flares they are talking  about as possibilities comes close enough to make an EMP that affects the satellites? The way I see it better safe then sorry.  Am I going to feel foolish if nothing like that ever happens? Absolutely not! Being prepared for worse case scenario is part of sailing the way I see it. Equipment breaks down. If I am not dependent on it, I do not have to worry about my trip being held up for lack of electronics.  For now I have a cheap plastic sextant  to use.  All I have to do is drill a hole in  it and put a lanyard through it to hang around my neck while I am using it so I don't accidentally drop it over board and I am good to go. Yes, eventually I want to get a better sextant. But I figure if  this cheap one is good enough to use as a back up it is good enough to use. as my main one until finances allow for a better one.

Wet Cutting Cinder Block with a Dry Saw

If you have done any DIY your self you KNOW how expensive tools are. ESPECIALLY if you get specialty tools. We had to cut at least some of the blocks. There was no way around it.  First order of business was get  the right  saw blade for the job. I bought a diamond masonry blade. It cost me about 35.00. Not cheap but it will last a long time, especially when you consider I don't need to use something like this a lot.  Yes, I am keeping it. Once I am  living aboard, it goes in the "touch it and die" tool box.


We looked at our in house options.
1: Use the table saw.
2. Use the circular saw.
3. Rent a specialty saw. ( Renting  a specialty saw meant we still had to buy a blade.)


Our main goals:
Keep the saw and blade COOL!
Keep the dust down as much as is humanly possible.
Get all blocks cut and not destroy the blade,  the saw or the blocks..
Accomplish this ASAP.

Keeping the blade cool and dust down meant using water or doing a wet cut.  How to do that with a saw not designed for wet cutting was the question,. Solution was water down the blocks away from the saws,  then after the water has soaked in a bit, cut them as usual.

Next decision:
In doors now or wait until morning to do maybe an hours worth of work? Doing it tonight means the cement will be cured that much faster and I gain a day . Considering all the delays we have ran into getting an extra 12 - 18 hour  jump on this project would be a real bonus.
Decided if the circular saw would do the job then go  ahead and do it inside tonight.


Next decision: How to do it and NOT make a mess on a sanded floor that was not stained or poly-ed?
We took a large 30 gallon trash bag and spread it out on floor. The I found an old flannel sheet and folded it up until it was just a bit larger then the blocks to soak up any water that gets loose. That got put on top of the larger trash bag.  We added two short pieces of 2x4 on top of the folded sheet spaced appropriately to to support the blocks and wala we are good to go.

A large bowl of water and a cup to dribble a bit  of water on the area to be cut  and we are in business.

 I had marked the cuts with a pencil. The only problem was that as soon as you poured water on to the block the pencil marks disappeared. The cure was to make the first SHALLOW pass dry to mark the cut, then put water on and continue cutting.


Why the extra layer of 2" block?

If you remember the original post on this project there were big gaping holes at the back. The choice was cut full sized cinder blocks to fit those gaps OR make some sort of frame to hold in either cement or debris then top that debris off with cement to make it flat.  Neither idea appealed to me quite frankly. Making a straight cut across a single slab of cement such as we did tonight is one thing.  Custom cutting full blown cinder block to fit  is a horse of a completely different color. I just flat out did NOT want to go there!
When we moved the stove over I noticed that the pipe was not straight at the level the stove was at so we put  the 2" blocks under it and the pipe looked a lot better. How I did not notice it before I can't tell you. I just never noticed it was that slanted .

That solved the problem. Especially since I had enough blocks laying around.

Wood Stove Surround and Baggin The Coon.

Well I admit it I cheated . The more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me what was making this so slow was the fact I was throwing all these heavy blocks. Decided to get the guys involved. I basically did the cement work and the guys both chipped in on moving the heavier blocks in place so we could get this done faster.
It don't look to bad if I do say so myself.
Decided to try my circular saw to cut the  thinner blocks. We were not sure if it was heavy enough to do the job or not. My saw man looked at the thing and , yes, i will work. Read the directions the diamond masonry saw came with . It says to cool the blade down every 3 minutes with an air cut.  I timed it for first cut. It took  the saw man a bit under three minute to make a pass, adjust the blade depth for next pass  and repeat enough times to eventually cut through so that worked out well. One cut and cool blade and repeat. By the time he brought in the cut block and took the next piece back the blade was cool enough to cut .
 About 3/4 of a 3 gallon bucket of the local brand of Quick crete later and we have it this far.

You can see where we still have blocks to set in place.













This next shot is  one of the top drought holes. The surround is designed for room temp air to enter the hollow parts of blocks at floor level, heat and rise  by convection then come out the upper holes. The block also picks up a LOT of radiant heat that slowly releases long after the fire has gone out. It makes those cold winter mornings a lot more comfortable when crawling out of the sheets to start a fire. It looks really horrible at this point but once I have the ceramic tile in place it will look a LOT better.









Baggin'  A Coon


The other night I was working inside and all of a sudden BOTH dogs went off like a five alarm fire bell.  This is not something that happens a lot. Most people around here KNOW to not come into this yard unless one of us is standing right there letting you in.  I figured it must be someone walking down the road but since the dogs just flat out refused to shut up,  I let them out. Well they no more got to  the edge of the porch when all you know what broke loose. There was a full grown coon out there right at the edge of the porch. The coon got him self backed up close to  the front door porch hissing and spitting like it was completely crazy, with both dogs yapping at it one on each side, all three trying to get an advantage.
After about two or three minutes of this the coon noticed he had an escape route on the porch. Right now  I have a lot of stuff we are sorting through stacked up on the front porch. There is a spot that basically makes a tunnel to the side small enough that the dogs could not go through. Once that coon spotted it, you could see him hissing and spitting, back arched ready to attack, taking swipes at the dogs when ever they came to close,   with one eye on the dogs and one eye on that tunnel.  He watched for his chance and when it came, BOOM that coon was  GONE!


Any one I know would figure that this coon would be over the fence and gone lickety split after all that. That is not what happened. The dogs went off around the porch in the direction the coon has disappeared to which is to be expected. I figured that coon would be gone and the barking would die down momentarily. It did not,. After a few minutes my son went out to see what was going on. He put the dogs in the house still yapping like they had gone nuts and went back out side.  He came back to the front door hollering for me to hand him his shoes, socks and coat. Now my boy is 28 years old. I told him he is to old for Momma to be waiting on him like that,. to go get his own stuff. Then he told me he had the coon in  a bag. That was a good reason so I had him his stuff and he gets it on while holding this bagged coon.  That coon must have been awful hungry as he had found a dog food bag that must have had some crumbs in it and had crawled in. That is where he was when my son found him.



The coon was released unharmed into the woods down the road from us.