life – Page 6 – turtle + mole

Laundry Room Wainscot

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Arwen has been working on her modeling again… trying to get a nomination for “Cutest Cat.”

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Never outdone, Bella’s doing her best…

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You know, humans aren’t the only ones obsessed with computers.

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We got a real tree again this year. My family came over for a Christmas celebration, and we managed to get the tree up a good couple of hours before everyone showed up. Arwen decided that this present was for her. I think she knew that Janeen would like the purple paper.

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Here’s Janeen, Eva and Leo comparing stripy socks.

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Christmas dinner around our little table: Seats eight.

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We even took a conventional family picture. That’s Mia on Skype on Dad’s phone.

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I did two batches of beer last month: an English Brown Ale, and a Chocolate Stout. I plan to give most away as thank you gifts for sponsors of my AIDS/LifeCycle ride. Let me know if you want some!

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Arwen and Bella are very “helpful” when it comes to making the bed. They love to play “thumbtack” when you move the sheet.

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OK, so this blog was supposed to be about working on the house. Well, not been doing a lot, but I did tear out the old tile flooring in the laundry room (no photos), and put in cement board ready for new tile. Looks cleaner already.

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Continuing with my goal of reusing old wood, I have a pile of short scraps of old wood that is still left over. To make baseboards (nice, thick, big baseboards), I cut the pieces of wood into identical sized strips, planed and glued them together. Here’s one of the boards, using lots of clamps.

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Before and after going through the planer. I routed the triple bead into one line of the wood strips before glueing together. On the right, I’ve filled the nail holes, and the board is smooth after going through the thickness planer a few times.

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Here’s the baseboard going in, and the start of the wainscot. I’m finally using the recycled wood I made and talked about back a couple of months ago. I still need to make boards for the window sill. I’ll probably buy molding for around the windows, though.

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Happy and Peaceful New Year, from turtle, mole, arwen and bella.

the BIG “life” post

there’s a lot of “life” that happens when we’re not working on the house. i’ve been meaning to post these photos for months…

back in may i helped mark (our friend and downstairs tenant) redesign his cafe website. this involved a photo shoot where we got to eat and/or take home everything that was shot. definitely one of my better projects!

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(left) some of the beautiful, delicious food. (right) it was a late night and mathew was probably a little bored.

to see the finished photos and website. click -> epicenter cafe.

fun fact: i also helped choose the color palette for the cafe when it opened in 2008.

an animated collection of mathew’s “selfies.” these were taken when misha was visiting in may. i could have made the image larger but i didn’t want to scare you.

i’m no food photographer but sometimes i take photos of stuff i make. (left) poached eggs on english muffins. (right) vegan ginger cookies!

ice cream is a regular, if not daily occurrence in mathew’s life. look how happy he is making an ice cream sandwich with luna and larry’s coconut bliss and my vegan chocolate chip cookies.

in june i went to seattle to visit my “other family.” i also visited the new chihuly garden glass exhibit.

a dramatic show. beneath the space needle.

while in seattle i caught up with my old friend erik. we had a very touristy day which included the pike place market, china town, souvenir shopping, ice cream cones and a ride on the new ferris wheel at the pier.

here i am with two of my “little sisters” elissa and wylie up at crystal mountain, where they spend every winter skiing.

the same day i flew back from seattle, leonora and dan arrived from boston. (left) dan, leo and their friend andy, starving, waiting for burritos. (right) lovely handmade gifts from leo and dan.

while leo and dan were still visiting, mathew, the cats and i took off for tahoe with my parents. the 4th of july is CRAZY on our street so it’s always good to get the cats away from loud, booming, unpredictable explosions. but they HATE the drive.

i bought them “thundershirts” to help calm them down. supposedly the constant pressure is soothing to animals (and humans), sort of like a mini straight jacket. it helped but they still hated the drive. (above right) bella crying, arwen cowering on the floor. 🙁

ah, the rock cabin. like a giant cat tree. here they are relaxing on the spiral staircase.

mathew and arwen outside.

leaving day, the thundershirts are back on. and for anyone who thinks my cats are fat. the thundershirts prove it’s all FUR! 🙂

home after the long drive. snacks for humans and cats.

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in july we met up with our friends midori and andy and their son adrian. all three of them celebrate july birthdays. we had an ethiopian feast in oakland.

what are those?? ninja cookies! (and some brownies.)

in august mathew and his sensei khim celebrated passing their belt tests. khim is now a 5th degree black belt and mathew is 3rd degree. they had a party. i made ninja cookies. 🙂

morning glories in the back yard. and the most amazing fuji apples from our little tree. mark called them “rock star apples.”

an evening at terrapin crossroads in san rafael with mathew, mark and mike, visiting from austria. good food, live music and grateful dead memorabilia on the walls.

and what is THIS?

in august we went ziplining in the sonoma redwoods with our friends bob and irene. that’s mathew above.

that’s me! the location was beautiful and the ziplining was really fun.

in october misha and aja visited. here we are having an impromptu picnic in the backyard.

misha and aja were visiting because aja had a work event in san francisco and mathew and i got to go too! here are the brothers in a photo booth at the autodesk gallery, where the event took place. i love this photo. 🙂

a feature of the photo booth was being able to add filters and characters.

here we all are. but aja and i got distorted a bit being so close to the camera. that’s not how we really look!

and it wouldn’t be a “life” blog post without extra cat cuteness! they look like they’re taking a nap but in reality bella (on the right) was sleeping and arwen decided to join her. i’m not sure if arwen just wants to be with her sister or wants to steal the cat bed. a few minutes after this photo was taken, bella had left the bed to arwen who seemed quite happy to curl up in it alone.

bella enjoying my new knitting bag that i got at aja’s sustainability book launch party.

i just realized i still have lots more “life” photos to share but this post has gotten way too long. look for “life” part 2 coming soon! xoxo

planer vs heat gun

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Sometimes Bella likes to lie half hanging off shelves. No problem with heights, I guess!

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I did some more wiring. The garage was on the same circuit as much of the downstairs unit. And with all my fancy power tools… the breaker would trip. I added four circuits. Two for the garage, and two for our upstairs kitchen (which was also on the same circuit!) But it meant taking off more ceiling, and lots of conduit bending and pulling wire.

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Stringing the wire through the conduit took much longer than I thought it would. As usual, what I thought was a one day project was really a four day project.

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And now that the girls are three — they can go into the garage. Here’s Bella inspecting the conduit bender.

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Here’s Bella doing her best impression of an otter. Her hairy belly makes here look really big. heh. And Arwen taking a nap on her favorite blanket.

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Mole, Arwen, and knitting. Cozy! Arwen is on my lap as I write this. She has a unique squeaky rattling loud purrr…

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The wood that was the laundry room siding was thickly covered in flaking paint. Before I put the wood on the soffit, we stripped it with a heat gun, and it took many hours. I decided to try another (faster) method for the rest of the wood: a planer. For the first pass, I hooked the dust collection up to a HEPA vacuum to try to catch the (probably leaded) paint dust I created.

The process generated two full garbage bags of paint chips, and wore through a set of planer blades (paint is quite abrasive and I hit a few nails.) But I stripped about 300 linear feet of wood (both sides) in one day. Of course, this method only works on flat boards, but the heat gun takes about 10-20 min per foot per side.

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Here’s a picture of the pile of wood part way through planing. Some of the old wood is really beautiful tight grained wood. There are some rotten bits, but I’ll trim them off.

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Here’s another photo of some of the boards after planing. Next step is to rout a decorative edge, and edge the boards so they fit together neatly for the wainscot in the laundry room.

And now for a photo of Bella relaxing in the sun:

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Plastering Done

I mentioned before how good Arwen is at shredding paper. Well, she finally got her paws on a bill. I had to piece it back together with tape. “My cat ate it!” Good thing mole is really good at puzzles and found all the pieces.

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Above left: Unshredding. Above right, looking down through the skylight while I was plastering the ceiling.

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I set up boards over saw horses so that I could reach the ceiling. Plastering the ceiling went quite well. I followed all the directions: “Blue” board as the base, then “Kal Kote” base coat, then “Uni-Kal” veneer plaster.

One problem I’d always had when plastering was there would be small patches of the plaster that would come loose as I was trying to polish the plaster. It was as if that section did not set up as fast. I’ve finally learned that when putting on plaster, the first pass must be very thin – basically scrubbed onto the surface so it’s almost translucent. If it’s too thick, it will get air bubbles under it, and that’s what was happening to me. Then, from the same batch, I come back and build the coat of plaster up to about 1/16 inch thick. This is the first time I’ve done that (the manufacturer’s instructions say to do that — it was just never clear to me how thin the first pass must be). It worked like a dream.

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So now the plastering is done in the laundry room. Here’s mole and Arwen coming to inspect right after I’d finished the walls. The plaster was just setting up; it goes a brownish grey until all the water evaporates.

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Then Arwen decided to get up to her old tricks and ran up onto the roof. Here she is walking along the ridge, with the sun setting behind her. Must be a great view.

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Not to be outdone, Bella jumped up onto the handrail and walked back and forth. Then she walked into the open window of the laundry room.

Tile Shopping

We had a week of hot weather for San Francisco. The poor cats have been losing their summer coats and getting their winter coats at the same time.

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Above is Bella trying to stay cool.

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Continuing on the shower rebuild in the laundry room bathroom, I made the shower pan. Because I’m using Kerdi as the waterproofing membrane, I use their special drain flange, and cast it into a bed of mortar.

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Above left is the finished shower pan. Above right mole is putting bondo onto the pressure treated wood we used for the back stairs. The wood gets incised when it’s treated, so has all those holes all over it. Looks much better when filled.

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Above: Before and after filling with Bondo.

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Over a year ago I made some balusters for the back stairs. I just got them primed, and will put them up soon.

But the most interesting thing we’ve done lately is go to Fireclay tile and we bought fancy tile for the bathroom. Above right are two nice decorative pieces we’ll add in. The only downside is that this tile is $$expensive$$ !!

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We went to their ‘boneyard’ and bought a couple of boxes of seconds at about 1/4 the price. Now we need to figure out exactly how much more we need and order it.

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Some other tile we looked at was at Latch tile in San Francisco. The person working there was super helpful and patient. Above left, cool shapes, but how to use it? Above right, these tiles are beautiful (reminded mole of her parent’s house) — maybe we’ll use a few as accents.

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We’ve been watching a lot of Downton Abbey lately… Funny, with all the fancy stuff “upstairs”, the thing that caught our eye was the tile in the kitchen. We may do something like this on the floor in the laundry room & bathroom. Above right Bella came to inspect right before I started plastering.

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This is the first time I’ve used basecoat plaster. It’s similar to plaster, but has sand in it. It goes on slightly rough so that the plaster sticks to it properly. Above you can see the ceiling after the basecoat is on and drying.

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On top of the basecoat, I put a finish coat of veneer plaster. I forgot how much I enjoy plastering. Yes, I did get quite a bit in my face and on the floor while working on the ceiling. Still, it’s very satisfying to start out the day with rough uneven surfaces, and end with perfectly smooth white plaster.

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In the laundry room, I taped all the joints. I don’t need to be very careful with the taping, because it will be covered in veneer plaster.

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Next: More plaster!

from cobbler to cement board

Our peach tree gave us lots of peaches this year. The tricky thing with peaches–at least the ones on our tree–is they all ripen at the same time.

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The peaches were not as sweet as last year, so Janeen made lots of peach cobbler. MMmmm. Especially good with vanilla coconut bliss.

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Arwen still loves to get into bags. I think she’s amazed at how a space can be created out of a folded up piece of fabric. She loves to be carried around in the bag, too. Oh, and we don’t need a shredder anymore: Arwen does a fine job of it. We have to be careful never to leave anything important out, though.

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Here’s a photo of me and Bella (above left.) Arwen and Bella are having a discussion about who gets to shred this piece of paper.

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This is an unusual view: Looking straight up at the ceiling of the bathroom-to-be beside the laundry room. I’ve used cement board on all walls and the ceiling.

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Above left is the shower with the niche, and above right is the space for the toilet.

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Here is mole painting on the plaster weld. I’m going to plaster the walls on two sides, and tile the remaining walls. Above right I’ve done a first pass with alkali resistant mesh and plaster over the joints. I forgot how much I enjoy plastering.

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Here’s the skylight in the laundry room. I finally put the drywall around the inside of the skylight. The photo is taken from two opposite sides of the skylight. Above right you can see I have curved the piece where the ceiling steps back (see above left on the right side). Next step is plastering – not sure if I know how to plaster a curve. This will be a challenge.

Ta da: walls!

Bella and Arwen got into some remodeling of their own:

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I think Bella likes the additional area that the walls provide for sleeping space. The house is also centrally located in the middle of the dining room. Arwen (above right) looking through the window at Bella inside.

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MY house.

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This weekend we bottled the most recent batch: amber ale. I’ve tried a bit right after bottling (still too sweet from the bottling sugar, and no carbonation). The previous brew, though, a brown ale, is really good. We decided to call this “Tiny Kitchen” brews.

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Finally finished all the rough plumbing for the shower (had been waiting for some parts to be delivered). And true to form, I can’t keep things simple: I’ve put the shower controls centered on the wall in the shower, but there’s a window, so I have the pipe crossing over. And, I got clever with 45 degree bends, even using a pipe bender on part of it to get a smother flow. The hardest part is drilling at 45 degrees through a stud.

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Here’s all the insulation in place, and a view up at the ceiling in this tiny little bathroom.

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Now the hard part: putting up drywall. As you know, I love plaster — the real stuff. So here we are using ‘blue board’. It’s supposed to make it easier to adhere the veneer plaster. The only problem is that the supply place only had 5/8″ thick blue board. Heavy. Here I’m cutting out the openings for the recessed lights.

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Oh, that looks easy? Let me tell you: That one board weighed over 70 lb. Hefting it overhead, and screwing it in place is hernia material. Luckily all my measurements for this board were correct, so the holes all lined up, and everything fit.

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I came up with one little idea to help get the pieces of drywall in place overhead. I temporarily screwed a piece of wood to the wall just below the edge of the board. That way we could rest that edge of the board in place and only support one side while trying to position it and screw it up.

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Here’s how one side looks with all the walls covered in drywall now..

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And the other side. Still not quite finished the walls on this side.

Cat-in-the-Box

To make up for last post’s absence of kitten-pics, I’m going to over-do it now.

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They are getting a bit big to share the same bed now. Bella is looking grumpy because Arwen came along and wanted to snuggle with her.

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And I made my second large brew (brew #7). Up until now, I’d been making one gallon batches. I’ve moved to 3 to 5 gallon batches. This time five gallons of an Amber Ale. And I had a bit extra, that I put in a separate one gallon jug and fermented with extra hops. The main batch is has one more week of fermentation before bottling.

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Dad had his seventy fifth birthday this year. Here we are talking at the surprise party that Eva and Elijah threw for him. Above right is a photo with Dad and two of his closest friends: Charles, and John.

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A picture with some of the attendees to Dad’s birthday party.

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And these photos were irresistible: Above, Arwen; below, Bella. They like Anchor Brewing as much as I do…

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Since I’ve not been eating dairy, one of my favorite things I can’t eat: Haagen-Dazs Dark Chocolate bars. But, now there’s a solution: Coconut Bliss makes coconut bliss chocolate fudge bars. All I had to do is coat it in dark chocolate. Not quite as pretty, but really *dang* good:

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Oh, yes, the reason for the blog: I finished up the wiring and added a ceiling in the small bathroom that’s attached to the laundry room (no photos). Then I put in all the insulation.

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Here I am working on the insulation in the ceiling. We bought ‘encapsulated’ insulation, which is basically fiberglass insulation, with a plastic bag around it. In the past, it was really well made, so that the bag fitted well around the insulation pretty much stopped it from coming out as dust. (The batch we bought this time, though, had terrible quality control: The bags were not sealed up, so basically it was just fiberglass batts with extra sheets of plastic packed with it.)

Next week we’ll put up the drywall.

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And one more thing: Mae and Nancy came to visit on a cold SF summer Sunday Streets day in the Mission. We walked all the way up Valencia and had a chance to catch up over lunch.

misha’s visit part 2

just to prove we do more than work on the house when misha visits, i finally downloaded photos from my camera!

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here we are at the betabrand store. misha and mathew are posing with a creepy mannequin and his silver dog (in mathew’s lap.)

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the cats insist on going outside every evening. (left) bella checking out the poppies and bumble bees. (right) arwen hanging out with the nasturtiams

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i can’t remember what we were doing when these photos were taken. i think we’d just had dinner at cha-ya and come home for tea. mathew is also taking funny self portraits, none of which i have posted. perhaps they will become an animation..?

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another outside visit. (left) arwen investigating the new compost tumbler. (right) bella showing off her balancing skills, spying on birds in the tree. she almost caught a bird recently when climbing in the tree, luckily the bird got away!

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mathew and misha painting and then reviewing their work.

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(left) we went for a walk into bernal heights with misha and daniel and made a new feline friend. (right) we also found quirky water features advertising a business outside someone’s home: watercontraptions.com

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misha looking out over our beautiful city on a beautiful day. 🙂

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three bittleston men having a chat on a bench.

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arwen has gotten adventurous again. she’s figured out how to jump onto the other neighbor’s house. i love how casual she is; she has no idea how freaky this is for us!

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when she’d decided she’d had enough, she finally came back to the place she’d originally jumped from and it didn’t seem so fun coming back. she was more than happy to run to the bathroom window where i pulled off the screen and let her in.

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and when they’re not getting into trouble, they spend a lot of time lying around being cute…

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and before i forget, HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to our dads! we love you both!

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mathew is currently in new orleans. he had a 3-day master camp training and a belt test that he’s been preparing for for months. HE PASSED!! he’s now a third degree black belt in shotokan karate. (above: bella helping mathew study.)

Bigfoot

We have been slowly progressing with finishing the trim around the windows of the laundry room and garden room.

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I spent almost all day getting the trim to fit in above the windows, and tight against the soffit. Had to splice on a piece at the end, because the board wasn’t quite long enough (above right). But that’s nothing: When I bought the redwood, I got tempted by the slightly cheaper, rough-sawn redwood planks intended for fences. We had to plane and sand and prime them all before putting them up. Silly Turtle – no wonder it takes so long! Now that all the trim is on around the windows, though, it’s starting to look finished.

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This (above left) is the window under the laundry room (‘garden room’). We built out a small box head above the window to shade and protect the windows from rain. Turtle being turtle, I couldn’t resist getting my router out and adding a bit of decorative edge (above right) to the trim. It also serves a purpose: Rounded edges don’t show dents, and they hold paint better than sharp corners.

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The photo above left shows the back wall of the laundry room — a bit difficult to see, as my home-built scaffolding is in the way. Above right is the corner that faces the deck. So, this is quite exciting (for me): All the exterior trim and siding are installed on the laundry room. Now we need to fill all the holes, sand, and paint.

While we were working on the laundry room trim, the cats sometimes came out to play. All the flowers have been blooming in the back yard, and the bees are loving it. Unfortunately, Bella doesn’t know the difference between a fly and a bee…
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She decided to catch a bee, and when she slapped it down on the ground, she got stung. Mole was calling her ‘bigfoot’ for the rest of the day…