Hot Day, Put up the Pool!

I put the pool up on Saturday (by myself! no mean task).  Then we filled the pool Saturday and Sunday.  It actually filled up pretty fast in my opinion.  We probably just let it fill longer than in the past (we like to give the well pump breaks).  Then today we went out and picked up the sand and muriatic acid.

It is just starting to take on that brown color, tomorrow morning it will look really disgusting.  But in a week or so it will hopefully be crystal clear.  Chemistry it amazing!

Nicks Birthday Computer

 All Nick wanted for his birthday was a new computer.  Since the newest computer in our house is from 2013 I think it is probably time.  He is doing some amazing things on there and it would help him out to have a little more power.

Luckily Jen cousin was around to lend a hand, since I haven't built a computer in a long time.  Still pretty much the same, but reassuring to have more eyes on the process.

Everything went well and Nick is happy with the new blazing performance.  No GPU's to be had at this time, so we had to go with integrated graphics for now.  But still a massive upgrade!

A Water Softener for the house

 We have been in our house for 12 years now.  We really like our water, but we get a build up of calcium around the faucets and on the showers.  We also occasionally get some iron in our water, and when you open up the pipes it is very evident that some iron settles in there.  So we thought we would give a softener a try and see what happens.

The installation when pretty smooth, just followed the directions.  I also had to replumb the kitchen sink, since that line came from the left side of where the softener was going.  You can see the new 1/2 line going up right after the softened water comes out.

We also installed the shut off valve on the left there so I had to cut into that line as well since I wanted the shutoff to be upstream of the outside faucets.

The drains from the softener I wanted to keep out of the way, so I join them with the 3/4 inch pvc and run them to the drain (it is the same material as from the furnace).

We have had it running for about a week now and we are pretty pleased with it.  The phone app seems to work pretty well, though it is pretty spartan.  I wish you could see more history on it.  Dishes seem easier to clean and the taste isn't too bad, but we are going to get a RO system which my wife has wanted for a long time.

Mulch for the back garden

Thursday and Friday we spent tilling and putting down mulch in the back garden area.  It really cleaned it up!  It looks so nice now.

It took 2 loads in the trailer (1 yard) for $47 a load.  We were able to get it from the place just up the road, which was the first time we have used them.  They were very helpful.

 

Cabin Bathroom Remodel ++

 On Sunday we finished most of the remove work.  The floor is done (except for some final caulking), the sink is in (except for the water lines, since the ones I had were too short), the toilet is working, still need to finish the cabinet door, and the electric heat is back up (after a little tingle, I really wish all electricity came through the switch first).

We reused the medicine cabinet, but I did something pretty cool.  I opened up the wall and recessed it.  This will give us a little more head space above the sink.  We all took the opportunity to sign the back of the wall of course.

Fortunately, the drywall behind there is covered in paneling as some of the nails pulled through when I cut out the stud.  Overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out.  We are excited to get back up and finish off the few final remaining parts of it and get to work on the next project!

Cabin Bathroom Remodel +

 Now that the demo is done, Jen started painting the walls.  We went with a darker color which was controversal, but it turned out really sharp.  The drywall had been up for a long time and soaked up a lot of paint, which made the first coat challenging.  But once the first one was up the second went quicker.

While Jen worked on that I tried the old spray painter that Greg had in the basement.  It didn't work as well as I had hoped.  Paint came out and covered the wall, but it kind of made a mess too.

Once that was done I worked on building some shelves for the room as well.  Since we don't know what we want to do with the floor yet and I want to keep as much off the floor as possible I went with a hanging design.  I used old wood that had been shelves in other parts of the basement that we had taken done.

Cabin Bathroom Remodel

 The bathroom at the cabin is in bad need of a redo.  Greg had purchased a new toilet 2 years ago, but we never got around to installing it.  Since Jen and I had appointments for our COVID shot in Brainerd last week we went up early and spent the week working on it.  Here is the before:

It wouldn't have been so bad, but the toilet had a condensation problem and the floor around it was in pretty bad shape.  First we had to pull the baseboard tile off the wall.  It was attached with glue, so it was a combination of prying and using the oscillating tool.  There were some cracked wall tiles, which we were trying to preserve, but they were below where the new tiles would cover so we were OK.

Then we started pulling up the linoleum around the toilet and found that it was glued down plus the floor was in bad shape.

Luckily there is a subfloor that is in pretty good shape, so we started pulling up the floor which took most of a day.

That oscillating tool was the hero of the project for sure!  I used it and the circular saw to cut through the floor and pull it out in chunks.