Keeping Cool and (Grand)Child Labor

Most of the Midwest is suffering from an unusual heat wave this week. It's absolutely miserable because there's humidity mixed in with it. Our central air conditioner has just been chug chug chugging away, pumping that cool air back into the house. Actually, I do realize, that air conditioners don't "make cool air"... rather they remove the heat from the air and dissipate it outside of the house.

But the stuff circulating back in sure is nice!

A couple of weeks ago we decided to do a little preventive maintenance service on our exterior AC unit. It's always good to do this once a year and check it often as well. Because it always seems that these things break down on the hottest day of the year, just like everybody else's unit. Then you wait in line for your turn from an AC repairman!!!

Because we have a big huge cottonwood tree in our yard, every Spring our yard is full of floating soft fluffs of cottonwood seeds that drift through the air. It's the same kind of fluff that's on dandelions, but we have lots lots lots more of it because the tree is huge. The tree is located in the backyard but it drifts all over, even up to the AC unit on the south side of the house.

The flying fluff collects on the exterior fins of the AC unit and impedes the airflow needed to run the unit efficiently.

Just look at all that junk built up on there!

Like I said, a few weeks ago, we decided it was time to give it a good cleaning before this hot humid stuff began.  We gathered our supplies and brought around a really soft brush and the Shop-Vac to give it a good cleaning.  It's located on the south side of the house, but fortunately it's in a shady location.

Steve removed the outer protective cage so we could do a thorough job cleaning the thin fine copper fins.

I started vacuuming it from the outside, one section at a time. You must be very very careful to never bend the fins. There is a little device called a fin straightener that's kind of like a comb that can help straighten them out again if you do.

Steve worked on the inside of the unit, cleaning it from the inside out.  He removed some big leaves and other little things like tiny sticks and dead bugs and pieces of fuzz.  He also used our leaf blower to get rid of some of it by blowing from the inside to the outside.

Fortunately, the condenser coil and fins looked pretty clean when we were done. There wasn't a lot of dirt or gunk built up. They do make a specific coil cleaner to soak and rinse away any build up. It's a special stuff to make sure that it does not corrode the copper tubing. You can't use just any household cleaner, it may wreck the coils.

This time we didn't need to use any because this was in pretty good shape. But it's good to know that the product is out there in case you need it.

We put everything back together and I am happy to report that the air conditioner has been running amazingly efficiently and seems to keep the house cool without running as much. It's on an automatic controlled wifi unit, but it seems to need to run less each cycle to keep the house cool. We will see what the bill is at the end of the month, with all this hot weather, I really don't care what the bill is, because we were comfortable and dry and we could sleep well at night in the central air conditioning throughout the whole house.

One of the things that we decided to do was to flip around the slanted openings of the register grids in the house. Now it blasts the cool air upwards and into the room, instead of shooting it down across the floor.

This brings me to the GrandChild Labor part of the post:

Little grandson Clayton was over with his toolbox, so we set him to work flipping all of the registers in the house. Before this winter comes, we can have him come over and flip them all back to keep the heat blowing downwards across the floor.

Yes, we take advantage of the grand child labor laws. You can make kids work for you, as long as they are family members. You don't even really have to pay them. (But we do--- lol)

When they come over, we make up a list of jobs to do, and they can choose which things they would like to take care of.

Here is granddaughter Chelsea swiffering out the dust from underneath the couch.

Clayton, with his handy little tool box, is installing some curtain rod brackets, so I can hang a lace valance halfway up the window.

There are lots of little projects that kind of accumulate before they come over. So I wait until they get here to add them to the list. Sometimes it even involves moving furniture and rerouting the cables for my printer.  Clayton is bringing in this old fashioned folding table to put in my office.

Clayton helped me re-measure and re-align my four seasonal framed prints in the office. He loves using all of the new tools that we bought him for his birthday. He got a gift certificate to Harbor Freight and went shopping with Grandpa to fill a tool box.

He did a great job

 using his tape measure and level 

and hammer and nails.

Both of them decided to team up on me, and do some hairdressing. I was pampered and primped and styled and coiffed in a multitude of hairstyles. I think they had fun. I sure enjoyed it.

Grandpa decided it was time to remove all of the blades on the mowing deck of his lawn mower and sharpen them up. Clayton then helped him clean out the underside of the base of the deck, and reattached the blades.

Chelsea took care of gardening for me, she weeded out the flower beds and watered everything. They sure like to make things grow. Chelsea works in the little garden at the summer daycare center too.  They just harvested beans and cucumbers from their efforts and shared them with all of the kids attending the center.  They compared the tastes of home grown to store bought and commercially processed foods. What a great learning experience.

They both took care of watering the tomatoes, which are going gangbusters and growing all over the place in my new spot in the backyard. I'm glad that I moved my tomato plot over to this location. Our first summer here, they did not grow so well over along the fence line.

I think I'll have a bumper crop this year! We will eat a lot of them right from the vine and have fresh tomatoes almost every evening. But I also can them up for stewed tomatoes to use up in the winter months. There is nothing more pleasant than opening up a a jar of home canned tomatoes in the middle of winter. That smell just brings me right back to the summer harvest. 

This next project, Clayton does for me about every 6 months. We take off all of the dog tags from their collars and lay them out on tinfoil. Then he coats them with a layer of clear nail polish. This keeps the aluminum tags from discoloring and rubbing on the white ruff fur around the dogs necks. Otherwise the aluminum leaves gray marks on their white fur and looks terrible.

We put them to work watering all of the trees and shrubs around the house. These are the new birch trees we planted this spring and they need continual watering this year if they're going to take root and prosper and grow.

There was an uneven support block to the top of this pillar on the front porch. It created a little ledge. A danged little bird was always landing on it as a perch and pooping all over the porch railings! So we decided to cut it off level with the top of the pillar support. Grandpa helped Clayton use the little oscillating cutting tool. What a handy little tool.

Yes, he wore safety goggles and was extremely careful in learning how to operate a power tool.

Once Grandpa was done cutting away the extra wood, then Chelsea painted over the freshly cut surface. This will keep that danged bird from landing up there. Also, in the future, I want to box in all of the tops of the pillars with a little piece of pretty cove trim and paint it may be a contrasting gray or maybe red?

While she had the paint brush out, she touched up the ends of the additional porch railings that Steve added to our front stairs. Originally, there's only been one top rail and nothing underneath. That's not safe. So he added a few more to the sides to make it complete and look much better.

Regular doggy brushing is a task that needs to be done. It's easier for these little ones to sit on the floor to brush the dogs, than poor old Grandma and Grandpa. Binney totally enjoys it and will lay there for hours, getting groomed and relaxing at her mini doggy spa session. Finnegan, on the other hand, acts like we are killing him and hates it. Lol!

We gave the kids long brooms and let them sweep the accumulation of little bugs that cling to the front porch pillars and ceiling. Living this close to the bay as we do, we tend to get the bugs just the way people do on a boat. They need to be swept down from time to time.

Chelsea learned to use the leaf blower to take care of the bugs that were swept down onto the porch floor... fun! 

Steve has discovered that spraying our house siding and porch with some Home Defense, it cuts down on the accumulation and makes the job less "icky"!

Chelsea took care of weeding the front flower bed, and had quite a bit in her bucket to show for her efforts.

This little OCD Girl loves to take our big shop broom and smooth out the new fine gravel in the driveway. She goes row by row, section by section, until it's all smooth and neat. She gets upset as soon as Grandpa drives over it again, because he puts track marks on her nice smooth gravel!

All of our grandkids help in the kitchen with meal prep. They're becoming quite proficient at helping out with kitchen duties, and clean-up as well. 

Here they made pigs in a blanket on the left

and tacos on the right.

 ...and sometimes we work them so hard, 

they just need a break...

The littlest one, Claire, calls this her "Bear Cave". She curls up with her 2 little teddy bears and reads them stories. What a nice spot to take a break. And hide out from Grandma and Grandpa giving her too many chores?

That's okay, she's not going to be a chore girl for very long. She decided that she needs to get busy and "Do some doctor things".  It will be nice to have a doctor in the family~

Well, the coffee break is over, 

time to get back to work 

and find some more projects to do!!!

Day 54 - Hairdresser and Finished Pergola

It is day 54 of our self quarantine. I really had no idea it would last this long. But I think it needs to last as long as it needs to last, until we have some answers or some proof that things are declining and we will be safe again.  Wisconsin numbers are slightly dropping, even with the newest increase in Green Bay at the meat packing plants.  Let us hope they continue to decline.

Of course, being quarantined this long, that means it's been more than 54 days since my shaggy headed husband had been to his hairdresser, Kelly.

Although I do like it when Steve's hair gets a little longer and a little softer and a little more 1970s-ish style hairdo... I think it had reached a point where he really needed to get it cut. It was getting in his way when he worked on things and blowing around into his eyes... Or so he said.

This morning he had had enough. He sat down on the little footstool in front of my chair, and let me get out my scissors and my comb and a spritzer bottle to try and get it under control a bit so I could trim it.

I figured if I just took each little section and cut off an inch all the way around the entire head, the hairstyle should remain the same? That is, if his hair grew one inch everywhere and every direction? It seems good in theory anyhow.

snip snip snip

He said that he noticed when I groom the dogs, they come out looking pretty good. So I should probably do all right when I do his hair???  He trusts me.

clip clip clip

He took out a little mustache trimmer and let me buzz off the curly hairs on the back of the nape of his neck. He giggled. I asked if he did that with his hairdresser Kelly?  "No", he said, "just with you!"

And here is my handsome man.

Not too bad.

~~~~~~~

We've been working on
a couple more projects
around our national folk farmhouse.

If you recall, a few months ago Steve was working up in our attic. He finished the electrical wiring and spread new insulation and added vents in the soffits. It's much easier to get in to and out of our attic through this front window on the gable by climbing a ladder up to the window by the front porch.

He got an idea.  Instead of opening the window in the traditional way like a normal casement window, sliding it up, then he has to get down on his hands and knees to shimmy through just the lower open portion. He decided to create a different type of full window that could open up like a door and he could access the entire space to step right inside.

He decided to look for a window that would fit that space. We did not need to buy an expensive insulated window because the attic is not heated.  It is a strange size and would have to be custom ordered. We do have in the future plans to put new windows all around on the main floor of the house. I would like to get them with the little individual panes or the grids between the layers of thermalpane glass. So that is what he looked for as a style of window for this upper portion of the gable.

Of course, he found one that was the exact size he needed while browsing on his wonderful Facebook Marketplace. We picked it up by social distancing for a mere $25.

He touched up a few spots with new glazing, and I was able to give it two good coats of a heavy exterior paint.  I cleaned it up with a razor blade scraper and it was ready to hang.

Today he popped his ladder up against the front porch roof, and went up there to replace the window.

It can now hinge open like a little door and latch back securely into place. I think this makes the best sense, considering the alternative of having to crawl up through a small scuttlehole inside of the house to get to the attic. It's not often we should ever have to go up there again, now that the new insulation is spread and the wiring is done... But having easy access like this makes it a lot better.

I think that looks so cute up there!

We still have to do a few little tweaks on the gable, including some new siding and touch up paint on the eaves. Then I don't think we'll need to go up there again for a long time.

Speaking of paint, I finished painting the fourth side of red lattice of these two panels we had on hand.  These two panels are being recycled from a garden structure that was here when we first bought the home. They were just plain grayed-out wood that was put up as an array backdrop of a flower garden in back. We decided to take it down, as we enjoy the natural trees, shrubs and woods view.

It took quite a while to paint the lattice on all four sides and catch all the edges and cover everything in the red paint. We set them up on saw horses out in the garage. It ended up being a "sit-down job" for a number of hours, with my tunes blasting on the radio as I worked my way around each panel on both sides. I used a small roller and then a bristle paint brush to get in all of the tiny spaces.

We erected two outer frames with the same dimensions as the frames we put on the two front sides of the pergola.  We made sure everything was level and plumb and square for both of these back panels that face out to the backyard.

We screwed the lattice into place using coated screws that won't rust. Once they were into place I dabbed paint over each screw head so they would remain invisible.

Soon both sides were done that face out to the backyard. I think on this back side I'm going to plant the ivy plants in two white cement pots that I got from my neighbor Sheryl.

On the front side, I may try to plant some red and white clematis plants, and see if they take off. They're rather tricky to get started. If I can have success with those, year after year growing up and over the top, I won't need the ivy from behind.

(see Steve out there in the mud puddle?

more on that later)

This is such an inviting way to get to the she shed to the right, straight ahead through to the backyard, or into the garage to the left.

I really like how the red lattice behind helps to set off the white grids of the trellis that faces the front. I know we could have just put four pieces of lattice on both sides, but I wanted something that would be a little different and eye-catching.

Now the pergola was almost complete. We had discussed about putting some clear plastic plexiglass, polycarbonate, or fiberglass on the top to keep some of the rain off as well as snow in the winter. Just to make it a little more pleasant to dash between the house and the garage...

Again, Steve with his handy dandy Facebook Marketplace listings, located a guy selling new sheets of exactly what we wanted, at a fraction of what it would cost at the home improvement store!

Tada! With social distancing in mind, we were able to pull into the guy's driveway, load up all four sheets, and leave the money in an envelope on his horseshoe pit setup in his yard.  No contact needed.

Again, our neighbors Sheryl and Ed came through with the proper type of screws to mount these. Ed had mounted some of this at his own home and he used the screws with a little rubber washer on the end by the head. We only needed 14 screws, and it seemed a shame to have to go buy a whole box full of 100 to get what we needed.  Sheryl brought us some over.  We love our neighbors!

The panels easily went up and were the perfect size that we needed to create this unobtrusive cover over the pergola. It still lets the light through and doesn't make it dark, but somewhat protects the walkway below for rain or snow.

Ahhhhh look at that!

Now...
The pergola is finished!

Thanks to this creative guy
who helped make my dreams come true.

I think the next thing on our list of ideas for this area of our property is to get some better paving stones. The spaced-out tan ones in the pic above were some that we got free a while back. But they are a tripping hazard and we really need to get something better.

Maybe some that match the pretty grey ones that we have in the front yard leading to the front porch. Those are rather pricey at $5.49 each, and we would need about 40 of them! Ouch!

Perhaps it is time for Steve to keep an eye out on his Facebook Marketplace, and maybe he will find some?

But first, he has more pressing projects to work on.  He is having an absolute blast playing with his mud puddles each time it rains.  He gears up for the task:

Then he heads out with his little pump and hoses, and works on emptying the big puddles in the backyard, routing it over to the drain pipe he unclogged last week. From there it goes out to the curb and gutter, and drains off into the marsh at the end of town. He goes back and forth, checking his hoses, and watching the water move through the pipe and out into the gutter.  He is "gleeful" to watch it work.   

What a happy guy! 

Time now to go take the dogs for a walk.