Icewind's Ramblings

During the bathroom remodel as I bored of working on it in what seemed like all of my free time I decided to build an outdoor kitchen area.   My brother-in-law Mike and I had talked about it since last summer when we were always cleaning and processing our fish on coolers in the driveway. At the time he was working out at the end of the world on Shemya Island which is on the far western end of the Aleutian Islands.   His work schedule had him working for three months at a time on the island with two or three weeks time off.   He has worked out the schedule so he could be home for the beginning and end of the fishing season. I needed a break from the bathroom work and headed to Lowe’s to grab some lumber.   Mike had bought a new stainless steel electric smoker over the winter and I wanted to make a place where we could smoke our fish out of the weather as many times it was always raining while we would tend the smoker for 6 to 8 hours. Things I wanted to include...

I finally had some time to upload the photos from my projects this spring and summer.  Travel has been taking up a lot of time this summer with several projects ongoing at any given time but I was able to finish several things going on. The bathroom project took much more time than originally thought.  It started during the winter after the first bathroom remodel went quickly over a couple weeks.  It was minor compared to the master bath. A quick make over with a new moose light fixture, paint, and remove and replace the vinyl flooring with tile.  I also relocated the sink and base cabinet to give additional room by the toilet.  I took bi-fold doors from the bedroom and installed them in the small closet.  Two weekends and the project was done and looked great. I can’t remember if I came home from a trip or just home from work a couple weekends later to find my wife had taken hammer and chisel to the tile in the master shower.  This was between Than...

I had every good intention to sit down this weekend and write a few things for this coming week since I will be out in the bush most of the week but as the weekend started there were many things going on closing out a busy week. Saturday morning started off nice with breakfast and conversations with friends one of which had some bad news for me.  I went to work for several hours booking flights and a couple of places for myself and superintendent to stay.  We are going out to start setting up our job camps in two locations and work with our survey crew.  I came home and it was a great Alaskan spring day with temperatures almost fifty degrees so I worked cleaning up outside and getting things ready for de-winterizing all of the deck furniture, and shoveling the last remaining piles of snow. I started planning out the work for my brother in law’s outdoor kitchen on the side deck so he can smoke his fish and I can BBQ.  I am going to build a cabinet for the smoker...

This is the big weekend for Daylight Savings Time where those that observe this will set clocks forward one hour in the spring and set them back an hour in the fall. We pushed forward last night losing an hour of sleep during a time I seem to need more.  It’s been busy these last few weeks and my stress level I’m sure is elevated too even though I try not to let on. Friday evening I felt a big bump on the back of my neck which was quite painful but did not have the redness one would think of.  I thought it might an ingrown hair or possibly an ‘old fart’ pimple and went to sleep with some discomfort but no real thought about it.  I woke up Saturday morning for my breakfast meeting and felt more swelling and tenderness on the back right side of my neck.  It was painful and when I returned home after a few hours I felt totally like crap and had chills and was wiped out.  I took a couple of Aleve and lie on the sofa and fell asleep for a few hours.  This ...

Crazy here in Anchorage with a little snow, the Iditarod start and working on the shower all weekend so not much time to write so I’ll post this one that I saw on Grouchy Old Cripple (GOC) site and could not resist replaying it here. I didn't check the numbers, but even so, CFC was a liberal wet dream and I know how liberal wet dreams always turn out.  They waste money and don't accomplish much.  In fact, they usually make things worse. A 15 mpg clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year uses 800 gallons of gas a year. A 25 mpg vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year uses 480 gallons a year. So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.  (Actually, I think it saved even less than that...GOC) They claim 700,000 clunkers were turned-in, so that's 224 million gallons saved per year. That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption. Mor...

The story continues from previous post . . . My wife learned quickly that things are not exactly as they are shown on HGTV where things are wrapped up nicely in a thirty or sixty minute television show.  They do not show the time preparing, marking lines on the walls and floor to install straight tiles or that time needed to mix the sand and mortar mixes used in the deck mud (concrete shower base) in the bottom of the shower.  With each batch there is the mixing to get the consistency of something that looks like toothpaste.  The adhesive thin set is applied to the walls and the tile itself and pushed onto the wall with a little wiggle and tap to make them stick to the wall surface.  What should happen next is the waiting time for the thin set to cure.  For us it did not happen that way for us . . . the tiles would slowly creep down below the line I had drawn to align the tiles.  This led to some heated words and a scramble to cut wood to make a ledge t...

If anyone has a decent memory you will remember I have been remodeling two bathrooms in my house.  The first one was completed with a quick pace using just a couple of weekends to accomplish the demolition and make the necessary repairs.  The changes were also done quickly and included installing new tile flooring, new moose light fixture, toilet and towel holders and relocating the lavatory/base cabinet giving more room next to the toilet. Moving on to my master bathroom I was reminded this week that the demolition pictures which started with tearing out the shower tile walls took place the last week of October, making this makeover several months longer than was initially anticipated. I worked on the demo and the repairs which were more than I thought we would find but nothing that really surprised me.  The work progressed getting the walls and floor stripped and the piping relocated for the water and drain lines.  The water damaged areas were cut out and the ...

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. Continuing to tile my shower so not much time to write, will post about this experience and provide a few pictures shortly. G’day! Ice

Or Getting the Bathroom to a point it can start being rebuilt. Today (Thursday 19 th ) started out frigid as we were again below zero this morning now several days in a row.  For some reason I was aware that this day had many small tremors and a couple of medium ones that gave loud “boom” noises.  At first I thought it might be the F-22’s coming back into Elmendorf for landing and dropping their speed below mach 1 creating a sonic boom as they decelerated.  But after several times I checked out the Alaska Earthquake Information Center for updates on today’s activity.   There was quite a bit of small tremors over 30 so far today and counting with activity in Cook Inlet between Homer and Anchorage and in the interior between Fairbanks and Anchorage .  It appears several fault lines are shifting plates far below the surface bringing with it the loud noise and jolt from the shifting surfaces. I am still amazed that there is quite a bit of activity on...

There are things that most of the HGTV type shows about remodeling never really touch on in their 40 to 60 minute shows.  Most of these shows (my wife watches, I don’t) seem to nicely wrap things up in the quick one episode.  What they forget to tell everyone is the little things that creep into daily life that slows down the process of getting things done. I have been involved in remodeling projects for many years now and things hardly progress in a nice linear flow on most projects, large or small.  There are the little disagreements between the parties on things like color, maybe how something should be torn out or what additional damage was discovered once the area was opened up.  In some residential projects between husband and wife it is that understanding, sometimes unspoken . . . for that plea to call in a professional to come in and complete the job.  These shows seem to wrap up everything in one quick segment.  Lost on the cutting room floo...

After a slow start to winter and warmer than normal temperatures we finally received our first decent bit of snow yesterday.  It started with the clouds slowly rolling in over the city and warming up just a bit just before the light flakes started drifting onto my deck and yard. We had cooled down over the last week so there was time for the ground to cool down so what little came down would stick and not melt away again.  I guess for most people it sounds odd to say it warms up to snow but when things are super cold it does not snow so much and only after the temperatures moderate a bit does it start to come down. It was nice seeing again the white covering everything and then the sun broke through this morning bringing with it crispness in the light and shadows.  The day waned with a beautiful sunset and the orange alpenglow over the mountains slowly fading into the dusk then darkness. I wanted to continue to fill you in on the master bathroom remodel.  Ye...

I was standing in line at the bank yesterday. As if there isn’t enough anxiety about banks these days, the branch where I go has a giant plasma screen TV behind the tellers so you can watch while you’re standing in line. Great. They always have it on CNN.  I’m worried about my account because of a mistake they made earlier and now I get to watch another war and more people with blood on their faces in Texas at Ft. Hood from an Army Major who is a coward killing soldiers and civilians as I wait to speak with a representative. Please pump all the fear and loathing you can into an otherwise normal trip to the bank, Wells Fargo! A shipment of Viagra was high jacked today I saw it on the news.  Police have put out an All-Points bulletin: Be on the lookout for two hardened criminals! They will face a stiff sentence when convicted and they'll surely be sent to a Penal Institution. Have you realized that in about 30 years, we'll have thousands of OLD LADIES running aro...