Jumping into 2022
It’s been an interesting but mostly positive start of 2022, but I’m trying to figure out how January is almost over. Crazy. This month has mostly been about closing out and moving forward various projects that got sidetracked by the winter storms, but there’s one big news item I want to share:
One of the things I’ve talked with my boss about on and off for a while is cutting back my hours at work; a wish for some more free time for other stuff (like writing, or photography, or birding, or writing about birding) and just a general wish to slow down the grind without actually shifting into retirement. With the recent acquisition of my now former company (Farsight) by my now current company (DomainTools), and the inevitable re-orgs and re-thinking of jobs and tasks, it seemed like as good a time as any to make this happen, and so we came to an agreement for me to shift to less than full time employment. I’m cutting my hours to 70% of full time, which allows me to take every Friday, and every other Thurday, off. I bring home less money, but I’m not bringing home no money, and they get less of my time, but they still get a big chunk of it, and I think both sides are happy with this (I know I am, although I admit not sitting down at the computer and starting in on projects felt weird)
So I spent my first “not working” Thursday putting a few hours out in the garage getting some organizing and cleanup done, and we have successfully un-Christmas-ed the house and those crates are back in the garage until November. As I write this, I’m spending my first “not working” Friday writing, and then I’m probably going to go out and do a bit of birding and actually leave the property for a while.
A number of things that have been in progress happened all at once; we bought a new refrigerator in early November, at the time, it was in a container on a boat close to landing in Vancouver to be transported south for delivery; that was, of course, just before the massive storms that washed out much of the access in and out of coastal BC. We’ve been in a holding pattern waiting for the container to appear, which it finally did, and so now we have a nice new Fridge with ice and water in the door (a Frigidaire, if anyone cares), and we’re starting to look at doing updates to the dishwasher and oven as well (but… supply chain). Another ongoing project that was supposed to be done at the end of December were the new pellet stoves; the house has places for two stoves, and the garage shop has a third. The pellet stove in the main area of the house turned out to be > 20 years old and ready for retirement, downstairs the former owners took the wood stove with them, and I wanted to standardize on a single fuel, so we ordered a replacement pellet stove for the garage. All three stoves have arrived and been put in place, and one of them (in the garage) is functional.
It turned out there was an adaptor they found they needed for the great room stove, and so that’s now on order, and we knew the downstairs stove wouldn’t be fully hooked up, but at least it’s there — because, well, parts and supply chains. There are also some cosmetic pieces for the stoves that are on order and won’t be here until at least March, because, well, supply chain. I must say, though, that the stove in the garage is nice; takes the edge off the chill quickly, and it’s a push the button and it’s working thing, which I love. For those curious, the inside stoves are both Regency GF-55 and the garage is a GF-40. Sometime in the next couple of weeks the needed parts will arrive and we can finish the hookups, and I’m looking forward to having some supplemental heat to the forced air system we can use.
I was able to get the heating folks out and they vetted our system, which seems to be in really nice shape, and like so much of this house, solidly built. And we had them come out to repair the generator, which for reasons wasn’t kicking in, and they found and repaired a small problem and replaced the battery, so that’s all good as well. We have them coming in soon to tune up the engine as well, because — well, life as a homeowner.
I also have brought in the electrician, because as we got to know the house, we had some things to change or fix, and I have accepted a quote from him, and in the next couple of weeks, he’s going to spend 1-2 days here doing stuff. Most of it is fairly minor — replacing old smoke detectors with new ones in places I can’t reach easily, re-lamping parts of the house because it still uses, amazingly, incandescent bulbs in a bunch of places and we’re shifting to 5000K LEDs everywhere, and replacing a few lighting fixtures we want updated. We’re also having Eufy doorbells and security light/cameras installed to replace some existing basic flood lamps outside.
The garage is getting a fair bit of work to set it up for me, with some of the circuits being updated — they’re 20 amp 110V but with older sockets that need to be replaced. And both the workshop and garage are lit (poorly) with Fluorescent lamps, which are dim and need to be replaced, so we’re replacing them with 4’ LED fixtures, and adding three more since I think the garage is under-lit. It looks like this project will end up costing about $8K, but I think makes some big improvements, and the garage will be brighter and safer and the updated lighting will be a bit more efficient.
Having usable electricity in the shop means I can start getting it going; the miter saw (a DeWalt) turned out to be on sale during Amazon’s Christmas sales, so it’s here and in a box waiting to be set up, and after a lot of self-wrangling, I’ve decided on the Sawstop contractor model for my table saw. That’s more than I initially wanted to spend, but it’s a really well-built unit and I decided that going with a job-site saw would make it something I was likely to outgrow fairly quickly. This will get ordered very soon. For dust collection, I’m going with a Rockler unit and associated hoses and hardware. I’m still deciding on shop organization but I know the first things I want to build are a miter saw station and outfeed tables around the table saw, for which… I’ll need a miter saw and table saw. To be decided on down the road are a band saw and a lathe, and I want to figure out what else makes sense as I start building stuff, but I know a router (and router table, probably built into the miter saw area) and a workbench are needed, and a sharpening system for the lathe tools. The shop has two high amp 110V circuits, and somewhere (the electrician is going to find it) a 30 amp circuit marked in the sub-panel for a welder. My plan is to stick with 110v tools for the forseeable future, and plan to use one of those circuits for the tools and the other for the dust collection (I do need to build a filtering system, which I have ideas on). Not sure how I’ll use that 30 amp circuit once we find it, unless it gets the table saw on it.
I’m enjoying the process of sorting it out, and now that I’ll soon have electricity in there. can’t wait to turn my first pieces — which will probably be at least two months out, from the looks of it. It’s all a process…
The winter storm here was crazy; we got over a foot of snow, and our driveway as impassible for about ten days. Talking to some neighbors, that level of snow is pretty unprecedented; an inch or two for a day or two once or twice a winter is more normal. We were well-stocked with food but not really prepared for access, and so Laurie and I are working on ways to improve that for next time, if/when it happens. In retrospect, we could have put chains on the cars — we do own them, but never needed them before now — but California Boy here never thought about that until after the fact. oops.
A side effect of the storm is we lost some major branches on one of the fruit trees, and had a birch tree come down outside my office (but not near anything it could damage), plus some lesser damage in various places. I’m still assessing some of that, and I need to haul out the chainsaw and demo saw and start cleaning up soon.
And, once the snow all melted, I put up my new, third version of the bird feeder, and can now enjoy the birds again outside my office window. No sign of the woodpeckers yet, but I’m hopeful. The feeders also come inside at night, because, well, I’d rather not have to buy more feeders if and when the bears come and eat them again…
Come to think of it, I’m starting to see what happened to January….
