Another beautiful day to enjoy outdoors

[Clipper]

In the fifties and going to 76 degrees with sunshine. I am hoping that the RV dealership calls for us to pick up the motorhome today. We took it in to have the roof re-coated and re-caulked, to have the entrance door latch and lock replaced (worn out and hard to operate the lock with a key), and to have the generator and the hydraulic leveling jack system serviced. Having the motorhome serviced and ready to go is a plus, but writing that check for about $700, not so much.

Kathy's nephew and his girlfriend are coming on the 18th of November and staying until the 25th. They normally come once a year for a week in the fall and they like to stay in the motorhome. Jim and Deb always help by completing a laundry list of fall projects around here. This trip he will be replacing the laminate floor in the kitchen with a cherry finish snap lock product that is fully guaranteed for life for residential use and for 10 yrs commercial use. I installed the snap lock flooring that we have now when we first moved here and I removed the nasty carpet that they had. I don't see why anyone would use carpet in a kitchen, OR a bathroom. I bought the old laminate at Lowes and it was cheap and on sale, and is starting to show wear where our kitchen chairs with wheels are starting to chip it at the seams. The second project will be to replace the garage personnel door and framing, as well as the framing around the two overhead doors on the garage with treated lumber. The bottom of the personnel door and the trim around the overhead doors is showing termite damage. Termites are a real threat to any wood here in the south. Thank goodness it is a cement block garage and the termites have not traveled to any of the structural wood. When the project is done we will have the area treated to prevent any future problems. We have a termite inspection of the house itself a couple of times a year. Termites are a very real threat here due to the climate.

[BHU]

How do you like the laminate flooring? We have a bedroom upstairs that is carpeted & it's just about time to be replaced. We don't want carpet & I was thinking of laminate but I've never worked with it. Do you need to lay down padding? Gonna be a job as the house is a Cape Cod & the previous owners converted the attic to bedroom space & the room is huge. It's either laminate or refinish what I think is hardwood underneath the carpet, another huge undertaking. Just pulling the old carpet & getting it out of there will also be a job.

[Clipper]

Whether or not you have to use and underlayment under the flooring depends on the flooring you buy. When I did the cheaper floor that we are replacing I had to lay down a real thin blue foam that came in rolls. It supposedly allowed the floating floor to move. The snap lock products don't use any adhesive or fasteners. The flooring I am buying this time is thicker and has no need for a foundation layer of any kind and the finished side is so durable that he took his box knife and slashed at it an banged on it with a hammer and it didn't leave any mark. I hope it doesn't for $3.69 a square foot.

[BHU]

Thanks. I pulled a small section of carpet & it looks like hardwood underneath. In all the years we've been here I never looked. Why people cover hardwoods with carpet is beyond me, but to each his own. I can rent a drum sander for $50@day plus the sandpaper but I'll probably wait till after the holidays to tackle this job. Laminate will probably not be in the budget & I'll bet that $3.69 a sq. ft you're paying will be more up here with the sales tax included. We shall see.

Good luck with your project.

[Clipper]

Thanks BHU. I went and purchased the treated lumber for the garage project today. That treated lumber is heavier than hell. 2 ten foot 2x8s, 6 eight foot 2x8s, 2 ten foot 1x4s, 6 eight foot 1x4s, and 72 feet of stop moulding to trim it all out. I also bought an 80inch by 32 inch entrance door. By the time I loaded all that on my trailer and unloaded and stacked it here at home my back was killing me. I bought the door used at a local building materials salvage store for 50 bucks. The same door at Home Depot is over $200. Tomorrow I will give it a quick sanding and throw a couple of coats of exterior spar poly on it.

Congrats on finding hardwood flooring under the carpet. We found beautiful maple hardwood under the living room carpet when we tore it out. I bowled with a guy that did hardwood flooring. He sanded it and put two coats of poly on it. We have 8x10 area rug in the center of the room. The master bedroom also has hardwood floor but we are not pulling that carpet up for a while.

[Clipper]

I was waiting for the RV dealer to call about the motorhome. They called. No $700 as first quoted for the roof coating. Would you believe that the cost will be $1300? I figured while they had it in the shop they might as well do an oil change in the truck engine and air filter change, and also in the Onan Generator and grease the chassis. Now all I will have to do when our company leaves is blow the water out of the lines and pour RV antifreeze in the drains. We had the generator serviced in anticipation of spending time next summer at a Cherokee National Forest campground on South Holston lake. wilderness camping. No utilities available but the sites are only $12 a night and it is only 20 miles away. It is known to be a decent place for fishing and the campground is seldom crowded because most people don't want to boondock with no power or sewer connections. We found on our last trip that we can go 4 days without needing to dump the black water or gray water tanks. We just have to watch the gas gauge fairly close. The 5000 watt generator burns about a gallon of gas per hour depending on the load so one needs to conserve the time running the generator and won't want to run the AC 24 hrs a day.. At night we will open windows and use 12 volt fans instead of the AC.

[BHU]

Oct 27, 2023 22:54:07 GMT -5 Clipper said:

Thanks BHU. I went and purchased the treated lumber for the garage project today. That treated lumber is heavier than hell. 2 ten foot 2x8s, 6 eight foot 2x8s, 2 ten foot 1x4s, 6 eight foot 1x4s, and 72 feet of stop moulding to trim it all out. I also bought an 80inch by 32 inch entrance door. By the time I loaded all that on my trailer and unloaded and stacked it here at home my back was killing me. I bought the door used at a local building materials salvage store for 50 bucks. The same door at Home Depot is over $200. Tomorrow I will give it a quick sanding and throw a couple of coats of exterior spar poly on it.

Congrats on finding hardwood flooring under the carpet. We found beautiful maple hardwood under the living room carpet when we tore it out. I bowled with a guy that did hardwood flooring. He sanded it and put two coats of poly on it. We have 8x10 area rug in the center of the room. The master bedroom also has hardwood floor but we are not pulling that carpet up for a while.

We have a deck that is pressure treated. When I needed to replace some boards I would buy PTL, but no more. Imho the stuff they sell now is crap. So I just get common lumber, give it a light sanding & stain with a few ounces of poly added to the can. Maybe I should buy from a better supplier then Lowe's. I've bought ptl from them that twisted a week afer laying it down.

It rained this morning here but now it's nice & sunny with a good breeze. The fall leaves are looking awesome but will be gone in a few days.

[Clipper]

I learned early on to buy my lumber from Jay K rather than Grossman's or Lowes. The quality was 100% better than the other places and was well worth the price difference. I hate having to go through a half a pallet of lumber to find 4 or 5 pieces straight enough to use. Home Depot is a bit better than Lowe's but nowhere near the quality you get at Jay K.

[Clipper]

Another day of "on again, off again" with the bagging attachment on the mower. I need to do the leaves about every second or third day until they are gone, and I also need to have the bagger off so I can hook up my garden cart to work on other things. I have dirt to move today that I took out of the raised bed and the 8 containers we had pepper plants in. No more gardens or planting in containers unless the produce market closes up. We will just pay the price and buy a case of this and a bushel of that for the freezer or canning. I want to pile the dirt somewhere out of the way to be used to cover grass seed when i get around to doing the patch work and over-seeding one of these days before we get any real winter weather. We expect a hard freeze shortly and that will finish the roses from blooming so I can go ahead and cut them back to a manageable size. We still have that big pile of wood in the side yard that Asplundh left us. We are waiting until it is cooler and a friend is bringing their splitter down and helping me split it and dispose of it. I am hoping that there is a needy family that heats with wood who will be glad to have it for next year. I would say there is probably a good 3-4 face cords of firewood and maple makes great firewood when it has had time to season out.

[Clipper]

I ended up putting on leather gloves and my Kevlar sleeves that I bought online and I cut all the rose bushes back to about 2 foot. Looks strange but much better than the unruly and out of control bushes did. I also mowed a portion of the lawn that I hadn't mowed since the grass slowed down with the growing. It was in need of mowing and washed and cleaned the tractor up before I put it away.