The Door, Part 736

I installed a new back door last summer (Independence Day, to be exact). My parents, Don and I spent an entire day making the perfectly-square, new door fit with the settled, off-kilter, old house. It took lots of shimming and adjusting, and Dad left me tasked with getting the wood for the trim, staining it, and calling him over to make the perfect miter cuts and install.

Busy schedules, multiple job changes, travel and winter got in our way. Finally, a full year after I bought and stained the wood, Dad came over with his miter saw. And we quickly discovered just how not-square the areas to be trimmed are. In some cases, there's a full half-inch difference between the top and bottom measurements! So some of the boards fit, but others don't. Dad and I took very careful, precise measurements, and he went home to make the final cuts.

He comes back this weekend. We'll dry fit everything (fingers crossed) and then (if all goes well), I'll stain all the pieces (provided the hosue god consents and blesses us with a proper fit) and install it on my own (fit-pending). Then, once the trim is done, AT LAST I can paint the door and the steps to the basement.

But I'm not getting my hopes up. Some projects never end. With an old house, there are always multiple fun surprises in store.

Our Lawn, Seattle Style

What do you get when April and May weather continues through July?

Jungle lawn!

It's the close of the coolest July in decades - with not a single day at or above 90 degrees. We've had tons of rain, inconveniently spread on multiple days throughout the weeks.

Hence, the jungle lawn. It just keeps growing! And it seems to rain just frequently enough that it's hard to find a time to mow the lawn when it's actually dry enough to work with.

Perhaps we should get a goat. Or a couple rabbits. That should solve the problem.

Technical Difficulties

I got a new netbook to maximize my two daily hours of train time. I can write! On the train! Every day!

So I started writing and had drafted six or seven blog posts. Of course, I hadn't yet synced up and actually published said blog posts. Then I installed a bunch of updates to the netbook, which set caused problems requiring me to recover everything. Which, of course, wiped out those six or seven posts.Grrr.

But now I should be back in business. Stay tuned!