Back to the Boat.

Work has officially resumed on the boat. Got out the grinder yesterday afternoon and proceeded to grind off all of the nails and staples holding the roof on the cabin. Hundreds of 1" quarter crown staples ! ??? Found some more rotten wood under the fiberglass near the center of the roof. Also found a couple of broken cabin beams. All 3 beams were loose and warped too. For that matter.... I've been finding a lot of loose screws all around the boat. I've been making a mental note of them and intend to come back and remove them one at a time and roll each screw in epoxy and re-insert it into it's respective hole, tighteng it... the boat, as a whole, should be much tighter/sturdier when this entire project is completed. Felt good to be in the shop :)

Cheap snow for sale now...

This morning it was back to shoveling snow again... My wife said we needed stamps. It was just a way to get me to go out (Valentimes day you know) and buy her Fanny May's Pixies... boy are those things expensive. I came up with a way to recoupe some of my money back though... anybody want to buy some "CHEAP SNOW" ?

We did get a total of 13.5 inches of snowfall. That's a lot of snow here in Central Illinois. Oh, guess what... it's going to snow again Friday and Saturday :) oh boy!
http://vicslittleworkshop.shutterfly.com/action/

The blizzard of 2007

Hey Hey ! It's snowing!
We're actually under an official Blizzard Warning here in Central Illinois. We are expecting a total between 10 and 15 inches by mid-night tonight.
I scrambled out the back door around 8:55 this morning to shovel the drive and I kid you not... by 10 am the back door that I had scooped out an hour earlier was drifting over 8"-10" again...
So, I scooped it out a second time and went back to shoveling the driveway. At 11:am it was blowing closed again! A fella can't get a jump on things no way no how around here today.
I shoveled and scooped for three hours, got the drive cleared, and the back door was drifted over another 8"-10" again................. I give up ! For the day :)
More pics of today's adventure at...http://vicslittleworkshop.shutterfly.com/action/

Kitchen work today

No work in the shop today. Still coughing up violently and taking meds. Oh well, I've got a project in the kitchen that's been on hold for awhile...
The kitchen faucet has been giving us trouble from the day we bought into this house 6 months ago and now is as good of time as any to fix it.
The faucet's handle was quite stiff and once you had it in the "on" position you couldn't adjust the temperature. So, I shut the main water off, disassembled the faucet into a pile of plastic, metal, rubber and ceramic pieces. Cleaned everything with a brass wire brush, sprayed it all with "food grade" silicone and then re-assembled it all to look something like a kitchen faucet.
I told the wife it works real easy now ! The first time she used it she nearly pushed the handle clean thru the wall behind it. :) I gotta not let things go so long.

Boat Repair:

This is where the boat stands now. The glue and paint are gone. The floor in it now is temporary so that I could get inside her to work. The white paint that is left yet(upper sides of cabin) will probably remain as it due to the fact that it is in very good shape and doesn't want to soften with the heatgun.