We did not get an early start to our day today. I got up a little after 8 AM and Linda got up 15 minutes later. Even so, she still had our granola and berries ready before I had the coffee made, but in my defense I had the extra step of transferring the three pounds of coffee we bought yesterday from their paper bags to our metal containers with the air-tight lids. We were wondering about whether grapes are berries so Linda Googled the topic. Botanically, grapes are berries but strawberries and raspberries are not. Also included among the “true” berries are bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants. That’s right, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants are fruits.
Linda left at 9:30 AM to meet Diane at Kensington Metropark for a 10 AM walk. Mike from Bratcher Electric showed up at 10:30 to revisit the wiring project I needed his company to do. They are going to install a 100 Amp disconnect switch next to the transfer switch in the southwest corner of the garage, run power to the disconnect switch from the transfer switch, and then run a 4-wire service entrance cable (SEC) from the disconnect switch through the garage attic to the electrical distribution panel in the closet with the HVAC system for the library. The electrical panel is currently a 60 A sub-panel of the main distribution panel in the basement and this project will convert it to a 100 A main panel while still allowing it to be powered by the generator if the utility power goes out.
When Mike left I gathered up the two metal cutting tools I borrowed from Chuck, our corded 1/2″ Craftsman drill (which I needed to power one of the nibblers), the small Rigid drill kit, and my telescoping inspection mirror. My plan was to cut one or two openings in the passenger side HVAC duct for the heater hoses but I decided to do some yard work instead.
We still had some bushes growing out over the drainage ditch by the mailbox and I wanted to get them trimmed up and add the waste material to the timber pile before Phil hauled it away tomorrow (hopefully). I was still working on this little distraction when Linda got back from her walk so she got a pair of gloves and helped. The bushes and trees in this area have an extensive system of vines running through them. I got a lot of the smaller vines cut and pulled free and I managed to trim one bush back enough to create an “entrance” to the inner part of this stand of trees.
Once I was “inside” the grove I found one of the main sources of the vine, a massive thing that looked like something out of a Harry Potter movie. It was easily 10″ in diameter where it came out of the ground and had 4″ to 6″ pieces branching off in different directions. I have no idea what kind of vine this but I suspect it is a wild grape vine. Given its size I surmised that it has been there for a very long time gradually chocking off the trees. I will have to eventually cut it out, but I would like to find out first just exactly what it is.
Linda helped drag all of the clippings over to the disposal pile where we cut some of them into smaller pieces before adding them to the pile. We noticed a small tree hanging out into the space above the driveway that Phil is about to build. We thought the tree was dead and decided to cut it down. It was 5″ in diameter 6″ above the ground–big enough to require the chain saw–and also had a lot of branches that were large enough to be more expeditiously dispatched with said same machine.
After felling the tree and de-limbing it I was not so sure that it was dead. We had a half dozen other trees along the northern edge of this stand woods that looked to be similarly dead but I decided not to cut them down. One in particular had a lot of obviously new, small branches. We will wait until spring and see which, if any, of these trees develop leaves. If they are alive I will trim them instead of cutting them down.
We put away the yard tools and took a break to have a light, late lunch of vegan cold cuts sandwiches and black grapes with a glass of beet juice. I like beets on salads and as a side vegetable. Beet juice is OK but a bit more of an acquired taste. We have added it into our daily food plans because of its ability to control blood pressure. Linda is adding ground flax seed to her granola for the same reason.
Measuring and cutting wallpaper on the dining room table in the house.
At 2 PM we decided to hang the wallpaper in the hallway of the bus so we gathered all of our tools and took them to the coach. I measured the wall and determined the lengths (30″) and widths of the four pieces; two full width (26.5″) and two partial width (15.5″), one for the left end and one for the right end. We cut the four pieces on the dining room table in the house where we could unroll over six feet of wallpaper, measure more accurately, and cut more easily. We cut the two full pieces out of the end of the first double roll and cut the two partial pieces out of the beginning of a new double roll.
Linda took the pieces to the bus and laid them out on the bed. I was getting ready to pour some GH-95 paste into the tray and roll it onto the wall when I decided to remove the trim board that separates the upper wall from the vertical mirror strips on the lower wall. My intent was to avoid having to trim the bottom edge of the wallpaper by tucking it behind this board. What I discovered was that the strip mirrors on the lower portion of the wall were glued to the wallpaper and some of them were loose.
The fact that the mirrors were glued to wallpaper and not to the plywood wall surface meant that they could be removed. I unscrewed the four vertical pieces of wood trim that framed the mirrors in three panels and then removed the bottom trim piece. I carefully removed each mirror by prying the underlying wallpaper loose from the wall using a large screwdriver and working from the top down. When the entire strip was loose I cut the wallpaper to release it. I handed them to Linda and she stored them carefully inside the built-in sofa. I managed to get all of them off except one which fractured in several places. We taped it up and vacuumed up the few glass fragments that were created when it broke.
At this point we were clearly not going to hang the four pieces of wallpaper we just cut as we needed to finish stripping the base layer of the old wallpaper first. We also had to take a little time to decide how to finish the lower wall. One option would be to wallpaper the entire wall and not put the wood trim back. We probably have enough wallpaper to do that, even after cutting the four smaller pieces for the upper wall, but we did not think the wall would look right if we did that.
Another option would be to install wood panels to replace the mirror strips. In this case we would use a light wood with a natural finish to provide an intentional contrast with all of the walnut trim. The mirror strips are slightly beveled on their long edges and measure 3/16″ thick at those edges. That means a 3/16″ hardwood veneered plywood should be a perfect fit, allowing all of the wood trim to go back in place. Maple or Birch with a natural finish are the most likely choices.
The wood panels is the option we will almost certainly pursue and we do not have to resolve exactly what panels to use in order to finish wallpapering the upper part of the wall. All told this will push our finish date back a couple of days, but we don’t really have a finish date anyway, and we will like the final result a lot better. We really do not like the strip mirrors and wish we could remove or cover all of them.
It was only 4:30 PM when we quit working in the bus for the day but we had both had a relatively physical day and were ready to quit. The lighting in the hallway was also a little dim due to the continuing heavy cloud cover which was having the added effect of lowering our energy level and enthusiasm a bit.
My last couple of e-mails to Lou Petkus of the SKP Photographers BoF had gone unanswered so I called Lou to make sure everything was OK. It was; he and Val have just been very busy. We know about busy. We had a nice chat about cameras and RVing plans for the upcoming winter.
Linda always puts nice dinner meals on the table and tonight was no different. She halved and cored a white acorn squash and baked it in the oven with a little vegan butter and brown sugar. She had a few Brussels sprouts left over and some baby carrots so she added onions and sautéed them to make a very good vegetable medley. Finally, she heated a package of mock chicken in orange sauce. The trio of dishes was not only tasty but lifted my spirits; not that either of us are down, but the weather has been heavily overcast for several days and had a slightly depressing effect on our moods.
I got a call from Phil after dinner updating me on his availability to work on our driveway and French drain project. The 2-day job he started yesterday morning is probably going to take him the entire week to finish so there is very little chance we will see him back at work on our project before next Monday. He did, however, find time to call a company that can hydrojet the culvert under our road and find out their pricing. He gave me the name and phone number and I will call them tomorrow and try to set something up. The other upside is that we have more time to pull dead trees out of the woods in front of our house, cut them up, and add them to the disposal pile, if we so choose.
Linda’s favorite TV shows are concentrated on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings so we watched NCIS and NCISNOLA followed by an episode of LIMITLESS, just to see what it was like. I watched Two and a Half Men, which I happen to find very amusing, and then went to sleep.