T And C, And A Bunch Of Other Letters

Before we get into the actual content of this post, I think it worthwhile to do a small review regarding what this blog has been about, in case some of you have forgotten (since it's been so long since I've posted anything new).  Primarily I have been using this blog to write about goings on at our New House (New House Bog), with the occasional annual write-up about our Christmas-time trips.  This will be the latter, a write-up about our most recent Christmas-time trip.  Don't worry though; I have new material in my head for the New House Blog, just waiting for the right time to be written.  On to the trip and high adventure!

A Is For American Airlines, And Augh!

We were the second-to-last couple to leave the Providenciales International Airport (MBPV), in the British Overseas Territory of Turks And Caicos, and it was American Airlines' fault.  Things started out smoothly enough at some pre-sunrise hour when we got up and schlepped off to San Jose International Airport (SJC) for the first leg of our flight to Turks and Caicos (T&C).  The flight from SJC to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) left on time and was smooth and trouble-free.  We arrived at DFW in plenty of time to locate our gate and wait for our flight to Miami International Airport (MIA), and we were scheduled to have a layover of about two hours in Miami before our final flight to MBPV.  Our boarding time came and went, with no boarding and no explanation.  So we waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited some more.  But they kept not allowing us to board the plane.  And our two-hour layover in Miami kept shrinking and shrinking.  While we were waiting we got to listen to the gate attendant mangle countless names of people on standby.  At the time it seemed absurd that someone who deals with a lot of names on a daily basis should be terrible at pronouncing names.  Finally, about two hours after our scheduled boarding time we were allowed to board.  It was an older plane - a 757 with the old-style tv screens fixed to the ceiling.  After the plane was boarded and ready to go a flight attendant got on the PA and explained the delay - the vital, all-important, essential-to-fly-the-plane entertainment system was broken, and they had spent the past two hours trying to fix the system, and then trying to decide if they should cancel the flight! or fly to Miami with no entertainment system. Seriously?  Would they really cancel a flight just because the entertainment system wasn't working?  Is that really an option, American?  Maybe you could acquire some newer planes so that we wouldn't have these kinds of situations?

The actual flight to Miami, when it finally got underway, was smooth and uneventful. However, we were so far behind schedule that our planned two-hour layover completely disappeared.  In Miami we de-planed, walked over to the next-door gate, and boarded our plane for the final leg to Providenciales.  I've never done that before, and it was nice to not have to wait, but we also did not have time to get food or use the facilities.  The flight to MBPV was smooth and uneventful, and we were among the first to de-plane and line up at the luggage carousel to await our checked bags.  And we waited and waited, until at last the carousel stopped without ever disgorging our two lovely checked bags that contained our clothes.  MBPV is a small airport, and it was late at night, so we had to look around to find someone to assist us, but we finally were told that we would have to file a claim at American Airlines in the main terminal.  After completing our trip through T&C immigration control (another hassle involving a disppearing agent and rejected red ink) we found the American Airlines line and waited behind about 4 other couples, and at some point another couple ended up waiting in line behind us.  And we waited and waited some more.  It seems like it took the agent about 15 minutes per couple to locate bags and have them routed to hotels.  Fifteen minutes waiting in a hot, humid airport terminal with all of the ceiling fans sitting idle.  And we waited some more.  Finally it was our turn, and the agent told us that our luggage was still in Miami, and it would come over on the 2pm flight the next day.  He asked for our hotel information and assured us that it would be delivered to our hotel by 5pm the next day.  So now it's around 10pm, local time, and we've been travelling all day, and we're hot, sweaty, tired, and hungry, and our luggage (with clean clothes) won't be arriving until 5pm the next day. We found a ride to our hotel (with the help of an airport worker), and we found food near our hotel, but clothes were going to be a problem.  We had a Vespa tour scheduled for 9am the next day, and we didn't want to wear our sweaty, dirty flying clothes for the tour, and our sunscreen was in our checked bags.  What choice did we have?  We had to get up earlier than planned and walk to a local dive shop to buy over-priced clothes and sunscreen for the day.

Is this the plane with our luggage?

Our luggage did arrive the next day, and eventually American Airlines compensated us for the full price of our over-priced clothes and sunscreen.

Our return flights were a bit better, but there were more delays.  The itinerary was Providenciales (MBPV) to Miami (MIA), Miami to Chicago (ORD), Chicago to San Jose (SJC), and I think it was the flight to Chicago that caused our first delay.  We boarded the plane on time, and the doors closed, and then we waited.  And waited some more.  Finally, the pilot addressed us over the PA and explained that the airplane had had some recent maintenance, but they couldn't find the log book, and we couldn't fly without that maintenance log book.  D'oh!  Just one more example of American Airlines' incompetence!  Eventually we did get the log book and we did make it to Chicago in time for our flight to SJC.  When we arrived at SJC there was more waiting and delay.  We landed and taxied almost to the terminal, then we stopped and sat. Eventually the pilot addressed us, via the PA, and explained that another American Airlines plane was at our gate, and we had to wait for it to get out of the way.  So even at the very end of our trip we had to sit around and wait because of American Airlines.  And American's instructional/safety videos were not very interesting or engaging.

V Is For Vespa

Our first scheduled activity for our first day on Providenciales, Turks and Caicos, was a guided island tour via Vespa scooters - a Vespa tour.  Some background information might be helpful before we go on with the tour.  Turks and Caicos is a British Overseas Territory, not an independent country, in the Caribbean.  T&C is made up of two island groups - the Turks Islands and the Caicos Islands.  The main, most populous island is Providenciales.

The islands get less populous as one moves eastward from Providenciales. The center of government is wisely located far away on the eastern-most island of Grand Turk.  Our hotel on Providenciales was the Ports of Call, and there is a small plaza next to the hotel that contains some shops (including a dive shop that opens at 8am), some restaurants, and an ice cream shop.

Back to the tour now.  We had to get up earlier than planned so that we would have time to visit the afore-mentioned dive shop to get some over-priced shorts, t-shirts, and sunscreen for our Vespa tour.  The Vespa tour office is located about 1/4 mile from the hotel, within easy walking distance, and right next door to another ice cream shop.  Our tour guide was Ann, and the three of us were joined by another tourist - a tall man from Florida (we never did learn his name).  Since none of us tourists had ever ridden a Vespa, we spent some time puttering around the parking lot area learning the basics of controlling the machines, and I broke my first Vespa the very first time I tried to lower the kickstand.

The broken kickstand

I did learn to properly use the kickstand on my second Vespa, and we were off. Driving on T&C is done on the left side of the road, and there were a couple of times when pulling out of parking lots that I pulled into the right (but wrong) side of the road simply from habit.  Vespas, it turns out, are great fun for gadding about on an island doing casual touring.

Our first tour stop was at a large hotel/resort so that we could see their gazebo and learn about the former premier, Michael Misick. He used several million dollars of government money to build himself a mansion within sight of said gazebo, and his government was so corrupt that he was forced to resign, and the UK suspended T&C's constitution and self-government until the corruption could be rooted out. Michael fled the country and was eventually extradited back to T&C from Brazil.  He is currently under island arrest (he can't leave Providenciales) as his cases work their way through the courts.  The mansion has since been sold to a private citizen, the corruption has been done away with, the constitution and self-government have been reinstated, and elections have been held.  In fact, a new premier was elected only days before our arrival in Providenciales.  Ann says that she knows Michael Misick, and she sees him around sometimes (it's a small island), and that he is apparently quite the ladies' man.

Our next stop was the Conch Farm.  Before we continue I have to explain a couple of pronunciations.  First, "conch" is pronounced "conk," or, "conq."  Second, "cay" is pronounced "key."  The Conch Farm is a commercial conch farm - they grow and breed conch for commercial purposes, and to prevent the queen conch from going extinct due to overfishing.  Recently, the Conch Farm has branched out into commercial fish farming, and our Conch Farm tour guide mentioned that American restaurants will pay high prices for their farmed fish.

A young queen conch

Jerry, the trained conch

After our next stop at a beach, we continued on to a small environmental center, a brief visit to a scenic overlook in Ann's grandmother's neighborhood (apparently Prince had a house there), and on to our lunch stop at Da Conch Shack.  Here I should mention that I had conch almost every single day in T&C, and my favorite conch was served at Da Conch Shack.

W Is For Wham!

I saw the whole thing happen even before it happened, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, or to warn those involved of what was coming.  It was a steep, downhill roundabout, and we were going to circle a quarter of the way around it clockwise then continue down the road with our adventure.  We had been riding down the road in a kind of staggered pattern - Ann on the right side of the lane, followed by Becky on the left side of the lane, followed by me on the right side of the lane, followed by the tall Floridan on the left side of the lane.  Ann entered the roundabout and slowed slightly.  Becky tried to slow, but still being not 100% confident of the controls she grabbed both the throttle and the brake at the same time.  It was painful to watch, but I was powerless to do anything but watch.  Becky's Vespa lurched forward a few times, then - WHAM!!! - right into the back of Ann's Vespa.  It was a direct hit - dead center and straight on.  Ann and her Vespa kind of bounced up into the air, her Vespa fell to the left, and Becky's Vespa fell to the right.  I arrived at the scene of the carnage a few seconds later and brought my Vespa successfully to a safe stop. Fluids were leaking everywhere. Fortunately, it was just gas and oil from Ann's Vespa, which was broken and out of commission.  Ann and Becky escaped the incident with just some bruising and road rash.  Me, the Floridan, and a helpful passing motorist removed Ann's Vespa, and its broken parts, from the road, and Ann applied disinfectant and bandaids as appropriate.  She then called the shop to report the incident (and the location of the broken scooter), commandeered Becky's scooter, and we were off again, with Becky riding shotgun behind Ann.  Something that might have taken hours to resolve in the US, involving paperwork, witnesses, insurance agencies, police, etc, was over and done with in less than 10 minutes.

P Is For Power

Sometime in the wee hours of our first night in T&C we were awakened by a bright light in our hotel room, and we noticed that the digital clock and AC were not working.  The bright light was coming from a bulb in the ceiling above the door, and it was shining right into our eyes as we were trying to sleep.  I called the front desk to report the situation, and was told that it was an island-wide power outtage, the light was an emergency light, and it could not be turned off.  D'oh!  Somehow we eventually got to sleep despite the bright light shining directly onto our retinas, and we didn't have any more power issues after that night.

K Is For Kayak

As we like to do when we are visiting islands, we thought it might be fun to do some kayaking from the beach.  T&C has some great beaches, and the water is clean and clear.  There is a nice beach about 5 minutes' walk from our hotel, the Ports of Call, and there is kayaking equipment on the beach for Ports of Call guests to use.  It was rather windy that day, and the sea was a bit choppy, but I decided to brave the wind and chop and do some kayaking.  Becky opted to stay on the beach and relax.  She may have made the better choice.  The choppy sea and constant wind conspired to take the fun from my kayaking and turn it into hard work.  I had to paddle hard just to not be blown downwind from my starting point, and it was even harder to make actual headway and paddle upwind.  Added to this was the fact that my kayak kept getting swamped and flooded by waves.  I only stayed out for about 30 minutes, then I spent some time just swimming in the ocean before joining Becky in relaxing on the beach.

I Is For Ice Cream

After our beach time we walked to the nearby Giggles Ice Cream & Candy Parlour for some ice cream. We also had ice cream at another lovely ice cream shop (not the same day, of course).








T Is For Treasure Hunt

On Christmas Eve we went on the Discovery Tour & Treasure Hunt, provided and guided by Caribbean Crusin'.

This is basically a tour of North and Middle Caicos, with several stops at points of interest and two rides on the TCI Ferry (also apparently run by Carribean Cruisin').  Our guide for the day, Charles, met us at the dock in North Caicos after our first ride on the TCI Ferry, and he proved to be a treasure trove of information and history.

Crusin' to North Caicos

Our first stop on North Caicos was Wade's Green Plantation, originally known as Bellefield. Cotton and sisal were grown at Wade's, and it should be noted that Charles pronounced the word "sisal" as "syssal."  Sisal, as you may know, is used for making ropes and mats and other such textiles, and according to Charles it is/was a long and itchy process to harvest the sissal fibers and make them into something useful.  Many slaves were brought to Wade's, and other island plantations, and after the British abolition of slavery many of the freed slaves took the names of their taskmasters.  Sadly, records of the origins of these people were not generally kept, and today the descendants of these former slaves can only trace their ancestry back as far as the plantations.

The plantation is a beautiful area, with ruins of many stone buildings and a lot of trees and vegetation growing in the former fields.  There are still cotton and sisal plants around (growing wild), and some lemon grass (also known as fever grass).  Among the buildings we visited were the great house, where Wade and his family lived, the kitchen, with a two-sided fireplace, and the overseer's house, where Wade's brother and family lived.  A stone's throw from the overseer's house was the slave quarters where newly-acquired slaves were introduced and acclimated to their new surroundings.

Our next stop was the Flamingo Pond, but the flamingos were not cooperating, and they remained out of sight.  We then drove through the community of Bottle Creek, and then to a waterfront area with a pier and several small buildings. Charles said that a large event was happening there that night (Christmas Eve), and that a lot of people and food would be there.  He also pointed out the pine trees growing up and down the coast, and mentioned that they are Australian Pines, an aggressive, invasive species.

On the waterfront

After the quick stop at the waterfront we drove over the causeway to Middle Caicos, and then to Conch Bar Caves, which is a series of interconnected bat caves.  After communing with the bats, and surviving an "attack" by said bats, we drove on to Mudjin Bar and Grill for conch for lunch.  After lunch we spent some time at the local beach, which offers some great views and has its own cay, Dragon cay.

Dragon Cay

After our beach time we drove all the way back to the TCI Ferry depot on North Caicos and returned to Providenciales and our hotel.







T Is For Turtle

On Christmas Day we took the Snorkel And Conch Cruise, provided by Caicos Dream Tours.  Our captain for the day was Captain Buff, but I don't recall the names of the other two crew members.  We began the cruise by being shuttled to the departure beach in a van.  After filling out the appropriate waiver and picking up or snorkeling gear we boarded the boat, along with about 16 other people, and set off for a grand time.  Our first stop was at the reef, several hundred yards offshore, for some snorkeling.  Becky doesn't snorkel, but I jumped right in (after attaching the mandatory flotation belt) and had a blast swimming among the fishies.  And then it happened - my turtle showed up.

For many years I had been wanting to see a sea turtle in the wild, so this was a real highlight of our trip.  He showed up out of the blue and swam about for a few minutes before fading off into the distance.




I Is For Iguana Hunt

Our next stop was on a small island for some iguana hunting while the crew prepared some fresh conch for lunch.  Becky and I hunted those wild iguanas and we found quite a few just hanging out under the Australian Pines.  Fortunately, the island was big enough that the entire load of passengers had plenty of room to spread out and hunt on their own.

We also found plenty of little stickers for our feet and sandals - stickers that would stick us initially in our feet or sandals, then stick us again in our fingers as we tried to pluck them from our injured flesh.  You definitely want some closed-toed sandals if you visit this island.  After some time romping on Iguana Island it was back on the boat for lunch and some leisurely cruising.

Lunch consisted of deli-style sandwiches chips, and fresh conch salad.  Said conch salad was merely some fresh raw conch and dices tomatoes.  We don't do raw conch or diced tomatoes, so we skipped the "salad" and had some sandwiches and chips.

R Is For Rum Punch

And now we get to the part of the trip that you've all been waiting for - my annual drink of Rum.  After lunch, while we were cruising the Caribbean, I got myself a rum punch.  This particular rum punch was a bit strong with the rum, but a splash of Mountain Dew mellowed it out nicely.  After being deposited back on our local beach we spent a lazy Christmas afternoon doing nothing in particular.

F Is For Fine Dining

We ate while visiting Turks & Caicos.  Some of the highlights are below.
 - Conch at Da Conch Bar - best conch I ate
 - Watching people mangle songs on karaoke night at Danny Buoys
 - Goat stew, giant tacos, and meeting Chef Nik at Crackpot Kitchen
 - Conch pizza in the garden at Bella Luna
 - Ice cream
 - Stuffed pizza at Miami International Airport
 - Absolutely packed deli meat sandwiches from the supermarket across the street from our hotel.  These were big, giant sandwiches, heated and compressed into an edible size.  The deli person took several minutes to prepare each sandwich, but they were worth the wait.

T Is For TSA

I suppose I can't blame American Airlines for this, but I wish I could.  On our return trip we had to go through US Immigration Control, which is standard procedure when re-entering the States, and we also had to retrieve and re-check our checked bags and go through security again, which is also standard procedure.  I suppose, in hindsight, that it was my fault.  After I entered the security scanner I shifted my position a little bit, and this apparently upset the machine and set off all sorts of alerts.  The TSA officer who saw those alerts had to pat me down and wand me. So far so good.  But then he swabbed my hands and put those swabs into a little device and more alerts went off, which meant that I would get the full security treatment. D'oh!  I knew I was safe, but apparently the little device that read my had swabs thought it found traces of some kind of banned chemical, so the TSA pulled me aside (and Becky had to wait for me through all of this) and searched through almost every cubic centimeter of my carry-on bags.  They were very thorough, and they took swabs from several items in my bags, but they did overlook a few cubic centimeters of searchable space.  After finding nothing damning in my bags they took me into a private little room and patted me down again, and re-swabbed my hands.  This time the machines were all happy, and I and my bags were released to continue on my way.  They were very professional throughout the entire affair, and it only cost us about 10 minutes of time.

M Is For Movies

Finally, we wrap up this tale with a list of the movies watched in hotels and on planes: Kubo and the Two Strings; Big Hero Six; Mockingjay, Part One; Night at the Museum #3; The Desert Rats; The Big Friendly Giant; Duck Soup; The Third Man; O Brother, Where Art Thou?

T Is For Turtle Again

As an added bonus to really wrap up this tale, here's some genuine turtle footage that I captured.  Alternately, you can click on this link to watch it in larger format.

Happy Turtling
    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode XCI - Smile!

The next time you approach our New House you'd better be smiling, and on your best behaviour, because everything you do will be recorded by one or more HD, day and night, video cameras.  And this video evidence may be used against (or in rare cases, for) you in a court of law.  You've been warned!  In this Episode of the New House Blog we will also be reporting on two plumbing repairs.  The first plumbing repair involves, surprisingly, the 1/2 bath, which we just repaired in the previous Episode.  That particular bathroom does seem to require more attention than the other two bathrooms.  The second plumbing repair was for an outside remote hose spigot, and it may surprise you to learn who made this repair necessary.

Smile 1

You may recall from this Episode the teaser image of a new run of cat 6 under our New House.  Here is that image again, to refresh your memory.

We can now reveal that this cable run from our garage to the orange room was for the purpose of connecting our camera system with the rest of our house network.

But before we could run cable and mount a Cat 6 faceplate we needed to remove some superfluous piping.  The galvanized piping you see in this picture used to be connected to a water softener way back in pre-Bishopian times, but it had not been used for many years. It was rather easy to remove, too.

The large rectangularish hole is where the faceplate for new garage Cat 6 will terminate in the orange room.  The two smaller holes were test holes we drilled when looking for a suitable mounting point for said faceplate.

And what's inside the large hole? Not much, really.  Here you can see the hole we drilled to allow the Cat 6 to come up from under our New House.
















Pipes

It seems like our 1/2 bath gets a lot more attention, and needs more repair, than our other two bathrooms.  And most of this involves repairs to the high-tech pressure-assist toilet.  For a long time one of us (not Becky) wondered if we just had a lemon of a toilet.  After the drastic repair featured in the previous Episode we thought all of the issues were resolved; but no, after only a few weeks the toilet resumed its always-running behaviour.  We had replaced everything inside the tank, so what could the problem be?  Taking the lid off the tank revealed over an inch of water in the bottom of the tank, where there should be no water, and water seemed to be leaking out of the air pressure regulator at the top of the in-tank assembly.

A quick look at the online Flushmate troubleshooting guide revealed that leaking from the air pressure regulator usually indicates a lack of incoming water pressure. We knew the water pressure was adequate when we bought our New House, and we also knew that the toilet itself was in good working order, so a lack of pressure likely meant one thing - clogging of the incoming water pipe due to rust.

A quick look at the incoming pipe area revealed what you see on the left - a rusty leak where the pipe joined the shutoff valve. D'oh!  At least we were finally getting to the actual root of the problem. To troubleshoot and resolve this required turning off the house water, something we are loath to do.

But do it we did, and this is what was revealed after removing the shutoff valve - the galvanized inlet pipe was rusty, clogged, and the metal was breaking down and causing water to leak - all of which resulted in a reduction of incoming water pressure.

That's a lot of clogging going on there.

Another view of the same pipe. Note how the end of the pipe has deteriorated.  Also note that most of the dust on the garbage can lid is from the smoke of the Soberanes fire burning south of here.

It seemed like a good idea to look inside the wall to see the extent of the clogging and damaged pipe, but the existing opening was just too small for good viewing

So we did what anyone else would do - we opened up the wall a bit to see what was really going on (as you know, I have no fear of opening up holes in the walls). We were very happy to see that the corrosion and clogging were limited to the short inlet pipe, and we were even happier to see that the in-wall pipe is un-corroded copper.

Time to put it all back together.  The new inlet pipe is copper - no more of that galvanized for us!

Ok, so the replacement drywall piece isn't quite an exact fit. But it's not too far off.

Once it's patched up with tape and joint compound you can't even tell. And where did that seahorse go?

There's the seahorse.  We had to move him so we didn't accidentally sand him down or paint over him. :) And now we finally, really think we have this situation resolved. We can tell just by listening that there is more water pressure getting into the toilet than before, and so far the system has worked perfectly.  Hooray!!

Smile 2

After running the Cat 6 into the garage and terminating it in the appropriate faceplate it was time to mount the POE network switch.  POE stands for Power Over Ethernet, and it means that the network switch provides both power and data to whatever device is plugged into it - in this case our cameras.  From a practical point of view it means that we only had to run one Cat 6 cable to each camera, instead of having to run both a power cable and a Cat 6 cable.

But where do you mount a network switch in a garage that doesn't have any existing mount points?  Obviously, you make your own mount, as seen below.

This simple but effective mount was made from a single 2-by-4, split roughly in half, with each half nailed to an existing wall stud.

Our network switch mounted, plugged in, and connected to the house network.  We had used up all of our blue Cat 6, so we ordered a large spool of  black, outdoor-rated Cat 6.















PVC

And now we get to the second plumibing repair.  Below you see a picture of our the hose hookup by our food garden.

What you don't see in this photo is the dense foliage that I had to remove just so that I could see and photograph this hose hookup. It was the afore-mentioned intense density of weeds surrounding this hose hookup that caught my attention and prompted me to look deeper.

Deeper into the ground, that is.  I discovered an underground spring, springing from where the PVC elbow meets the horizontal PVC pipe.
Pre-Bishopians did the previous PVC joining, and it was not adequately joined - thus the leak.  The vertical PVC work, done by me in this Episode, was (and is) leak-free.

This repair was pretty straightforward. After turning off the water to this outlet I disconnected the elbow and vertical assembly and let the pipe drain.

Next I re-connected and cemented the elbow to the horizontal pipe and let the PVC cement cure.

Once the cement was cured I turned the water back on, tested to make sure the joint was sealed, then I filled in the hole and re-installed the bricks.

Here you see the hose re-connected and actual water flowing through this spigot.











Smile 3

The last two steps were mounting the cameras and running the Cat 6.  Now, I'm not going to divulge all of the details, but I will say that we have multiple overlapping fields of view, and the cameras are full HD, recording day and night.

This is some of the new, black, outdoor Cat 6.

Here you can see a typical camera. So far the system works quite well, and it has options for remote viewing and capturing.

We do not yet have facial recognition activated, but who can say what we might do in the future?

Smile for the
    bIsh

New House Blog: Episode LXXXX - The Houselift

You may remember our New House's facelift from this Episode.  Well, we decided to do something similar, but on a larger scale, so we had a hole houselift.

Houselift Part One

It started, as other things have, with the door-to-door salesman.  Door-to-door salesmen have been good to us in this neighborhood (remember the solar guy and our meat guy?), so we let him come in and talk to us about painting our New House (and our New House was in great need of new paint) - but not just any paint; he was specifically going to talk to us about a fancy high-tech type of house paint that is guaranteed for 40 (yes, forty) years instead of the typical 5 years you get with regular latex paint.  And he had a fancy demo device that demonstrated this high-tech paint's waterproof-yet-breathable nature (using our tap water).  The demo was convincing, and not having to repaint for 40 years sounded good to us, so we looked at the bountiful color palette and made plans to have our new House painted.  Two other contributing factors were that our existing paint was getting mildewed in a few places; and our New House was not painted one uniform color when we bought it - it was three or four distinct shades of off-white: it would be nice to have a house painted one continuous color.

Flushing Update

You may remember from this Episode that we had been having some troubles with our downstairs 1/2 bath toilet, and we thought we had the troubles resolved.  Well, we were mistaken - our troubles continued and built up to the point where the toilet ran and ran and the tank never filled up.  So we decided to take the drastic step of replacing the entire inner workings of the tank and flush mechanism.

For the benefit of those who don't recall, our 1/2 bath and our upstairs toilet have fancy compressed-air units in their tanks that perform the flushing action, so persuading one of them to stop running is a little more complicated than it is on your standard flushing mechanism.  Here's a picture of the unit in question.

As you can see, there is some water at the bottom of the tank, and the tank should be completely dry.  You can also see that the wall behind the toilet never got completely painted.

Replacing the in-tank assembly required removing the tank, and we took this opportunity to paint the wall.

The old unit on the right, and the new unit on the left.

This is the new unit installed, and as you can see, the tank is dry, as it should be - all of the water is supposed to stay inside the inner tank.

Look at that.  It's nice and level.  And so far the new assembly seems to be working as it should.









Houselft Part Two

In addition to paint color and type, we had to decide what to do with the wooden facade of our New House - do we leave it as-is and have the paint guys repair it, or do we cover it with stucco and pretend it never existed?  We chose to do the latter.  We also chose to keep the wood framing round the windows, front door, and garage door, instead of getting those newfangled moldings that you see on other houses that have been facelifted.

The first team of workers came to our New House and installed the chicken wire and tar paper, and that crew was great.  They didn't trample our succulents or break any of our little solar yard lights.

Look at that chicken wire.  And those not-trampled succulents.

This is a pile of old, damaged wood, and a rain spout or two.

It looks better already!












Alas, we cannot say that the next crew was as kind to our succulents or solar yard lights.  They did great stucco work, but in the proccess they blindly and callously walked on top of and through our succulent garden with no regard for our succulent friends (we mentioned this damage in the previous Episode).  And they broke at least one of our little solar yard lights.  They were the most careless of the crews that worked on our houselift. The company did compensate us somewhat, but we were quite annoyed.  As I said, they did good stucco work, as you can see below.

This is the first layer of stucco.  The workers were kind enough to leave the back door uncovered so that we could go in and out of the house.

This is more of the first layer of stucco.

This is the final layer of stucco.  Even unpainted it looks like a brand new house, except for the cable dangling in front of the window.

That's some nice texturing.

New stucco, meet old stucco.  And here are some more dangling cables that the stucco guys dislodged.

















Harvest Time

Some of our fruit trees have yielded bountiful harvests this year.  Our pear and nectarine trees, in particular, were extremely fruitful.

This photo shows only a part of the bountiful harvest.  We have harvested more pears this year than in the previous three years combined, and there are still a lot of pears ripening on our tree.  We think that the pear tree is doing much better this year because of our ongoing vigilance in keeping it free of fire blight.


Houselift Part Three

And now what you have all been waiting for, or what you impatient ones have skipped ahead for, the reveal of our houselift results.  See for yourself.

Voila!  Our houselift is complete.  As you can see, the painters did a marvelous job of masking off our house number, and the mailbox is now much closer to being level.

This is how our New House looked when we first bought it.

Continuing around to the garage area.  The colors we chose are Blue Glow for the main color and Burgundy Dash for the trim.

There was some left-over primer and paint in both colors, so let us know if you need something painted and you want the paint to last for forty (yes, 40) years.

The maker of the paint claims that this paint actually reflects the sun's heat, resulting in cooler wall temperatures.

We finish up with these two pictures of the back of the house.  How many different shades of off-white do you see in this first picture?

Finally, our New House has walls of one color all the way around!












Happy painting.
    bIsh