New it would cost me 10 times that. Used from an equipment dealer would have been $800-$1000.

It’s in perfect condition. No dents, no scratches. A few minutes with some BonAmi and a scrubbie and it will look like new.

This has a place in our commercial building. This is how we are trying to equip our upcoming business. Cash, no debt. Good equipment. There will be expensive things needed, but when I can save a couple thousand bucks on a prep table…well, that puts us that much more ahead.

It’s a start.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

We didn’t take full advantage of the holiday weekend…working on the house-wise. Rather, we cut it a bit short as I have some minor motorcycle repairs to do before my run to Michigan in about 7 days…minor repairs like a new tire, some new oil…maybe some sparkers and an air-filter…that and replacement or repair of some rather seriously damaged structural fender panels…ya know…details.

Anyway, Monday for that…another story yada yada…I’ll post those pics over here.

One of our tasks this weekend was some cleanup on our commercial building on the square. We’ve literally hauled tons of junk out of there…at least as much more still remains.

We were working on the mezzanine, which is a half floor at the back of the building between the first and second floor. Ours measures about 25′ x 20′. It was previously used for storage and also hosted a gift wrapping station. The problem with this extra, bonus 500 square feet of space is that it was packed…floor to ceiling and wall to wall…with junk.

We’ve worked several days cleaning it out. There are cash-registers from the last 30 years (maybe 12 of ‘em), typewriters of all ages (from the old royal portable manual to several electric models), at least 5 adding machines, dead computers, cases of flash-bulbs (yes, real flash-bulbs), and about 5000 boxes of packing material, old computer labels (heavy!), green-stamp machines, postage stamp machines, an ancient copier, and heaven only knows what else…I’ve mentioned that this building was a pharmacy and doctors’ offices since it was built in 1896 or so…a little imagination about the tools and times can generate nightmares. Remind me to tell you about the spreaders…(shudder).

All this is leading up to this…We were done with the mezzanine. Everything was cleaned out. All that was left were the shelves, and all we needed to do was sweep the place up and turn out the lights.

And then I poked my nose into a nook…or perhaps it’s a cranny.

The stairs that go to the second floor have a landing. The landing is over a corner of the mezzanine and the space was covered by what I thought was a wall underneath.

It turned out to be an old table/desk thing turned sideways and shoved underneath.

There was a reasonably large space underneath…perhaps 4′ x 6′ and maybe 4′ high. Is that a nook? Or a cranny?

So…me…being the fool…I pulled the desk thing out…well…it wouldn’t come quite out…something SOLID was holding it in…but it came out enough so I could look in…

The space was more than half filled with paint. Lots of paint. Cans upon cans of paint. Probably 500 pounds of paint…in mostly quart cans. Paint so old the cardboard boxes have rotted around it. More than a hundred cans of it.

What I SHOULD have done….was shoved the desk/thing back in, and then nailed a piece of plywood over it, painted it to look like the surrounding walls, and just forgot about it. The next owner could worry it…well, perhaps it would be me…after the cans started leaking and paint seeped into the downstairs.

Sigh.

What I did was crawl in and hand it all out to the wife, and then we passed it down the stairs, and now we’ll find a proper way of disposing of it.

Here’s some of it:

There’s something more than 40 gallons here. It has such color names as “meteor black”, “(something wierd) orange” and “pasty blue” or such. It’s alkyd based, high-build, glossy, and contains “dow corning silicone”. We’re guessing by the condition of the cardboard (and the amount of dust) that it’s 10-15 years or more old. Perhaps 20 plus.

So let’s see…if a gallon can cover 300 square feet then 40 gallons…divide by two, carry the three, multiply by pi…well…what, 12,000 square feet? A wall 10 feet high by 1000 feet long (we’d spill a bit)?

So…anybody need something painted in glossy, obnoxious colors? Something large? I have some paint here…free for the pickup…

Oh, and why the “part one”? What could possibly be “part two”?

Glad you asked. It’s an interesting question…could be several interesting questions actually…this nook in part deux is over 6 feet tall…but it really boils down to one VERY interesting one.

“Is the poison gas…still inside?”

Sigh.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Yeah, it’s summer.

Maintenance stuff more than rennovating stuff this weekend…I got all the tree limbs we cut a couple weeks ago (a metric sh!t-ton) and some more I trimmed Saturday all chopped up and burned.

I also cleaned up an old burn barrel site (glass, and tons of bailing wire for some reason) by shoveling it into feed-sacks and throwing it away…

Mowing got done…weedeating got done…

Oh, and we cleaned a bunch of trash out of our building on the square just for good measure.

A hot weekend for that kind of work…

I also fiddled more with the paint-sprayer…which I thought I had fixed but it is still not working right…this is a problem…I really need to spray some of these jobs to do it right…and the budget says I can’t buy a better rig at the moment…but this one is not cooperating. A date with a shotgun may be in its future…

There was a bicycle event in Clarksville this weekend…so there was live music on the square Saturday night…the square is very pleasant once the shade shows up…balmy, breezy. Texas summer night magic…

The band was Native Pride, a rock Band featuring Clarksville Native Wendell Davis. They are quite good and did a couple sets of great music.

Me and the wife spent a nice evening, arm in arm, sitting on a park bench on the square enjoying the breeze and listening to the music…

Music…a nice Italian dinner, a bottle of wine…

Yeah, Texas summer night magic.

Working hard and living well.

Hope y’all are doing the same!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Lots of food, great music, and pretty good weather made for a fun day. Lots of high-caliber artists with quality wares made for a “target-rich” environment for the discerning collecter.

I sold some books, made some friends, and generally mucked about having a good time.

Krashdragon came all the way out from Cleburne to pick up a book! THANKS for coming out! It was great to meet ya!

I expect to see the rest of ya’ll for next years festival!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

This year the 2010 Clarksville Fine Arts Festival will be Saturday, May 22, 2010, from 9:AM to 4:PM on the historic square in Clarksville, Texas.

This year’s festival is going to be a great one. The artists’ booths are all reserved! There will be glass blowing demonstrations, music, wood turning demonstrations, plenty of food, and a lot of talented artists to meet!

I’ll be there signing books and will also have original art and some prints.

Art. Music. Food. Fun. What else could you need? Come on by and see me!

We’ll have a house full of guests, be mucking about the square all day Saturday, and we’ll be at the Wine and Cheese event Friday night as well.

Come see us. You’ll have a great time!

Directions and more information are here.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Well…remember the one about scraping paint?

Yeah, we’re still there. We’ve done some other things…the standard yardwork, cleanup (this weekend was our town’s big cleanup week, which meant we could take some things to the city yard for disposal), and I’m certian we’ve reglazed at least one window pane.

But…The 2010 Clarksville Fine Arts Festival is coming up (and I expect to see y’all there), and that meant several things.

1) We are going to have a houseful of guests. That means getting at least a couple of the rooms of the house marginally habitable, right? After-all, we can’t really expect our guests to scrape paint, vacuum the room, and find a bed to set up…or can we? Hmmmm….
2) We wanted to finish the siding on the tower of our building on the square…at least for the most part. Since the courthouse is actually not in the the square’s center, that leaves our tower as a focal point…and it looked terrible. Now it looks better!

Anyway, haven’t posted much about the work on the house at this moment simply because even though it’s going on…none of it really yielded interesting articles and pictures.

We’re almost done scraping the sunroom. It looks truly cancerous now. I can’t wait to actually prime it. THEN you’ll have some pictures!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

In last week’s exciting episode, we did a bit of work on the tower. This week we moved it even further along.

Our scaling project is nearly complete. I’ve still got a lot of trim to do, the area around the windows to work on, and primer and paint, but I’ve got enough done for the moment.

The tower was looking rather dilapidated and that was imparting an “attitude” to the entire square. I didn’t like that.

My immediate objectives were to make the place look a lot better and to stop things from falling off the building.

We have accomplished that and so much more.

Sooo…off to the pictures!

Oh…a bit of a story on this one…see, my wife is not quite ready to run the saws yet. She’s never done that sort of thing (I grew up with it), and with nice, sharp, flesh-rending equipment it is important that you do it right.

I’ll teach her…when she’s ready…but she’s not asked me to yet.

Anyway, what do you do when every shingle left to mount needs a cut and there’s nobody handy to run the saw?

Well, I set the saw up in the window so I could reach it from the bucket truck.

This worked out well…the wife still providing the blanks and running other parts and materials for me, but I could make the cuts without exiting the bucket.

A couple hours of work or so…whilst I’m “up there”.

Occasionally coming back down to make a mess:

And the shingles are done!

The obligatory “this thing is really tall” shot:

The “distance” shot:

I was careful to catch most of the junk that came off the tower and put it in a five gallon bucket (okay, LOTS of 5-gallon buckets), but there was a LOT of material and some got away. We were left with a mess on the awning.

Stuff on the awning:

MORE stuff on the awning:

So…time to clean up the awning then. We don’t want this stuff blowing all over the square. There was also a bunch of broken glass, apparently from several replaced windows in the past…about 40 pounds of it, that I removed from the awning.

No help for it but a broom and a bucket…and some careful movement of the boom to avoid hitting stuff (signs, wires, lightposts, flags, small dogs)

Nothing left but a bit of dust! There were 5 buckets worth (2 full of nothing but glass!)

I still have to do trim, the shingles around the windows, and some caulking, priming, and painting, but our objectives have been reached for the moment. It looks so much better! We’ll work on the rest a bit later.

And just for a quick look-see…

From this:

To this:

Next weekend we are back at the Old Vic, scraping, priming (we hope), and preparing for guests!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Not that it was a bad excuse or anything…after all, when there is Fargle-snorkering to be done, ya really need the right tools to do it.

And whilst I had the right tool…since it had no brakes it was kind of hard to actually stop and work on anything.

Ah well. Fresh out of excuses…so here we go!

So, ya’ll may remember this tower:

It’s attached to our historic commercial building we bought on the downtown square.

Obviously, it needs repair. For starters, it’s full of holes. Unless it’s a colander, most things full of holes need repair.

Also, the cedar shake siding is seriously weathered…some missing and much of the rest loose and falling off, there is missing trim, and birds and weather were freely making their way about the upper floor of the building.

A few weeks ago we did some repair…here we replaced some missing trim and removed some other dangerous (heavy and loose) trim from the top of the tower. We also started shingling the bottom part and finished that here.

Anyway, step one…remove the old stuff:

As you can see, a Left-handed Fargle-snorker is a handy tool for this task!

To avoid a huge mess in the street and having to clean too much stuff off of the awing, all this I’m peeling away I put in the bucket hanging from…well…my bucket. Then to save time I’d lower it by strap to the window and my Dad would exchange it for a fresh bucket.

Up and down. Around and around.

I dropped plenty of small stuff on the awning anyway…a lot of the shingles were only held on by a wish and a prayer and disturbing one would let a sliver of another drop off. I’ll sweep off the awing (from the bucket) a little later.

I destructed about half to start with…as that’s what could be easily reached without moving the truck around. I then started the re-assembly process.

The underlay was in amazing conditon…with ZERO rot or serious problems despite the conditon of the shakes. I had expected substantial repairs to be needed but thankfully the only thing needed was some loose stuff renailed.

Here the pattern and jig-saw-puzzle nature of this beast begins to show itself. I did a bit of extra work to present some additional flourish in the form of pattern to the siding.

Down.

Up.

Round and round.

Nail nail nail nail nail nail.

It’s fun to note…the old siding was probably original…it was all nailed on with square nails. So…cedar siding can last 115 years or so in Texas weather…more I expect if better cared for. Short of mass destruction or some sort of catastrophic weather event…I don’t expect to have to do this again!

This is where we left it for this weekend. It was getting late, and I was just plain used up. There’s a lot of work involved in that big jig-saw puzzle. My helpers (my Dad and my Wife) were worn out too.

Almost done! As you can tell, there are just three rows left to apply. Of course, because we are approaching the top of the tower, every single shingle left to apply needs a cut. Excluding setup, there’s probably a couple hours work or so left to finish those off.

A good look at the pattern…

Once I finish the shingling, I’ve priming, caulking, and painting to do. There is also work needed around the windows to replace those shingles and get everything weather-proof. That will come as we have time…the main objective of this project was to stop further deterioration, improve the look of the city square, and to remove anything loose so it didn’t fall on somebody.

I think we accomplished that and SO much more.

A big thanks to my Dad and my Wife. They worked very hard…they probably hauled a ton of trash and debris out of the upstairs while also helping me (keeping me stocked with shingles/supplies, taking the old shingles I lowered, and making cuts for me).

Thanks!

Hopefully I’ll knock out the rest of the shingling and maybe some trim and caulking next weekend.

Heck…it’ll look downright spiffy for the 2010 Clarksville Fine Arts Festival (and I expect to see YOU there!)

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Those I got. Sort of a sign of the times that the brake fluid, brake cleaner, wheel-bearing grease, and hand-cleaner needed for this job cost as much as the parts…but there ya go.

Nothing complex…other than there are two wheel cylinders on each wheel.

Installed the parts:

Installed the hub (the Big. Honkin. Heavy. Hub.):

And bolted the tire back on.

A quick brake bleed…well, not so quick actually…as apparently, with the twin wheel cylinders it seems to prevent me from using the mighty-vac to vacuum bleed them from the bottom…so a conventional bleed was necessary.

Thanks to my Dad for the help there. Pump-spew. Pump-spew. Pump-bubble-bubble-bubble-spew! (Ah HA!).

So…now that I could actually stop this 15,000 pound beast…it was time to get her started.

And started she needed to be. There was Fargle-Snorking to be done! (next post)

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

A bit of creative driving and all was well.

Did the standard checks. All the fluid had leaked out over the last week.

Sigh. Remind me to tell you about “The law of conservation of mechanical maladies” sometime…it’s part of the laws of thermodynamics methinks…as in, “Mechanical problems cannot be created or destroyed…but they can be moved from one location to another (theoretically at speeds exceeding .999C).

See, I had JUST fixed the durn lawn mower…I’ll bet the micro-second I finished tightening the last bolt, the brake fluid went “blooop” out of the truck.

Anyway, leaking wheel cylinder…and I don’t even have a jack that’s rated to pick the 15,000 pound truck up…and the budget says I’m not gonna buy one soon.

But the Left-handed Fargle-snorker has feet…

Use the feet…lift ‘er up…

Unfortunately, that lifts the back wheel (I got it nearly a foot off the ground).

Moved the boom…shifted the weight…

And now my measly 2-ton floor jack doesn’t even have to strain to pick it up.

Biggest hub I’ve ever had to pick up…but it came apart easily.

Apart…

Just like any other front drum brake I’ve worked on…except with nicer adjusters and there are two wheel cylinders…the front (also called “lower” as it’s downnstream of the other on the line) was leaking. Ordered both. Got them today.

Will put ‘er back together Saturday…

More pics then I suppose. I need the boom to nail about a billion cedar shakes on the tower…

I just hate to think where “The law of conservation of mechanical maladies” is gonna strike about the time I finish bleeding the brakes. No ill wishes to anybody…but I hope it goes further away than anything I own or maintain!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer