Smoothing Out the Concrete Patio

We rented a concrete grinder last weekend and Eddie got the whole back patio done. It was really rough, and even just kneeling on it would hurt--so imagine falling from a bike or just tripping!

He went over each section in a cross-hatch pattern--north/south and east/west--and did that three times. The man is nothing if not thorough!

We filled the large cracks with concrete filler.

Before

After--hard to see that the chalk makes a smoother mark now, oh well--you can see the paint has been mostly ground off though.

It looks a lot brighter now too.

Great Automatic Chicken Coop Door Idea

My brother sent me a link to something his friend did recently.

The Automatic Chicken Door is pretty cool-looking. There's a short video clip at the link. And he got his plans for the door from this site at BuildEasy's The DIYers pages, How to make an Automatic Chicken House Door, by John Beaty, Director of Technology Programs, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts.

If you're looking for plans for your own coop, they've got one set posted here. We've been talking about making the coop doors automatic for years now.

Our coop is different, in that the walls aren't made of wood but of hardware cloth, so we'd have to modify the system a bit to make it work. The doors would have to be pulled up from the ground, maybe using some kind of arm? I don't know--I'll let Eddie figure that one out.

If we ever get around to doing something, I'll be sure to blog about it.

It's that Time of Year Again--Back to Splitting Wood

We already had split a bunch of wood the other week, and used up probably an 8ft by 4 ft stack of it. Eddie brought home more, probably all oak and some pieces weighed more than him, so that was our post-Thanksgiving workout.

Splitter still in pretty good shape, but Eddie's not happy with the gas reservoir; it seems to have a leak that he's unable to fix. There was also water in the carburetor. At any rate, it's functional.

And here are three buckets of small bits of wood that will be kindling.

Interior Door and Window Trim , part 3

Last but not least, Eddie put the trim up around the kitchen window. The only real issue to deal with was ripping the bottom trim piece to fit above the sink back splash.

The sill is in place.

I painted a primer coat on the unfinished piece of wood, and then we'll be caulking and filling holes and painting the trim on the window and the two doors.

Interior Door and Window Trim , part 2

Eddie next went to work on the new door we added.

Door trim going in.

He put shoe moulding across the bottom.

Finished door, still to be caulked, holes filled, and painted.

Interior Door and Window Trim , part 1

We installed the slider and kitchen window quite a while ago, and added the new door more recently, but had not put the trim up because we were eager to finish the siding first.

On Saturday we headed to Lowes to buy trim and also boards to fill gaps from the previous slider's opening, which was a bit larger than this one's.

This is what it started out as:


We also wanted to cover the piece of wood floor closest to the door because it was badly stained from condensation that the old aluminum slider created.

Filler boards going in.

I'm not sure what you call them, but the wood that Eddie's putting in here will make a frame around the door and be painted on the inside.

This shows the red oak that Eddie installed to create a small step or ledge to cover the flooring. We need to get another piece to put in under it--slight miscalculation either when we initially measured or when we made the purchase at Lowes left us with a piece that was not tall enough to use. Eddie put some temporary pieces in just to hold the step up, so he could install the rest of the trim. This top part of the step has been sanded and urethaned twice and will be done once more today. I think we're going to pre-treat the other piece before installing.

Filling some of the gap with DAP latex foam sealant.

Installing trim.

Perfect fit.

More in another post.

Firewood from our Fallen Tree

After taking care of the long skinny branches, of which there were too many for us to count, we started in on the huge limbs, and this is the result:


The top half of this is from the tree:

And we had just been saying to ourselves, we'll need to start bringing wood home to split for next fall . . .