Today was deck day 1 of 2. Jim Pipoly has done a lot of painting for us over the last few years. He painted our old house, inside and out, including the garage and the addition over it. He painted the main floor of our new house a couple of weeks after we closed, and six weeks before we moved in. He repainted some walls in the old house after we moved out to make it look better when we listed it for sale. He was here on the 21st and 22nd of September cleaning and stripping the deck along the back side of our new house and now he’s back staining and painting it. Today he stained the deck boards using Benjamin Moore TWP116 transparent stain in a “rustic” color. It gave the boards a reddish-brown patina while allowing all of the grain to show through, preserving the look of the wood. Tomorrow he will do the railings using Benjamin Moore ArborCoat, a solid stain (more like a paint) in Marine White, which is very close to the color of the paint used on the Hardy Board house siding.
Meghan (our daughter) came over mid-morning to help Linda weed the planting beds around the house and spread around the remaining bags of red rubber mulch that the previous owners left us. The house didn’t look bad, but it looks better now.
In the ham shack/office I relocated a computer and printer. I also relocated the Netgear 8-port Network Switch (8pNS) and the Linksys Wireless Access Point (WAP). I then brought another printer and Network Attached Storage (NAS) device down from Linda’s desk. I how had everything in the office along one wall except the WAP, and I had the new 100’ Cat 6 network cable running to same wall. This allowed me to reconnect all of the hardwired equipment without any network cables running across the floor, eliminating a potential trip hazard or major equipment catastrophe. I put the WAP on top of a cabinet and used the old 50’ Cat 6 network cable to connect it back to the AT&T Gateway by Linda’s desk. Everything checked out, and the only things left on Linda’s desk are her laptop computer and adding machine (it’s an accounting thing). That will give her more room to work at her desk.
Linda made an ad hoc dish for dinner with beans, rice, and tomatoes and the usual assortment of seasonings. She used the Italian Seasoning she bought some time ago from Milford Spices at the Howell Farmers Market. This blend includes just the right amount of red pepper flakes to add slight bit of “heat” to a dish. She used this seasoning last week when she made the marinara sauce that I liked so much.
Jim finished up as it was getting dark. We took Linda’s laptop to the basement and connected it to the TV/monitor using an HDMI cable. We selected that port as the input and voila, her computer screen was now on the TV. She navigated to her photo directory, started a slide show, and we sat and watched pictures of our summer trip at the rate of 20 per minute (3 seconds each). It sounds fast, but it’s actually a pretty good speed. We are going to set this up for the open house. Linda may try to edit the pictures down to 200 – 300 as that would allow visitors to see all of them in 10 – 15 minutes.