Happy July! It is here, whether you like it or not, and with July comes monsoon season in the Southwest. As you will see later on…it did come down Saturday afternoon.
Glove retirement! Yes, finally it was to put my faithful leather gloves to rest. There is only so much duct tape can do.
Water Pump Rebuild v3
So, we first started the long weekend by arriving early, and attempting more work on the water pump rebuild. I realized that my previous week’s work, using all 1/2″ PEX wasn’t going to cut it. Too many 90 degree elbows in the mix and just not enough volume. I decided to go from the pump to the 3/4″ garden house, but found out that the 1/2″ adapters I bought to come out of the pump didn’t fit right, or thread right. Luckily I had some spare 1/2″ threaded barbed connectors and could snuggly fit the PEX onto those. Turns out, that was a great idea, yes by Sheralee. It was coming together, but darkness and the new threads slicing my hand determined it would be finished in the A.M..
Saturday morning when I got back to the pump, it seemed to all flow together. We ended up with a different mounting, for the pump, and it works much better now.
The pump idea works great….hopefully for quite a while.
Now came the start of our Saturday projects. I would start removing siding and the 48″x24″ window, that would be used later in our container. Sheralee started rebuilding our indoor Loo.
Loo rebuild
Sheralee determined there were a couple drawbacks to our indoor Loo build. First is that it was large…roughly 44″ or so. It also had a big material tub that without a lid let the moisture out and drying out the material. So, she decided to make it smaller, taller, and our material will be stored next to it in a closed lid container.
Unfortunately, I forgot to grab pictures of it finished…as it wasn’t finished until Sunday.
While Sheralee worked on the Loo rebuild, I was tearing down some siding from the loft, and removing the 48″x24″ window. The process went rather quickly, it helps having another container next to it to stand on. ha.
Well, this was about as far as we got, because around 1:45p the rain came…and boy did it come. We settled into the bedroom to watch it rain. Here is a short video I took out of the patio door.
Then I took some follow up pictures.
What a mess! Good thing is though, we are very thankful for the rain…because it brings a tankful of water to use! Love that part. This pretty much took care of our Saturday. The rain ended after a couple hours so we were able to get out and enjoy the evening, even with hot food and a good fire.
Sunday brought a sunny morning with some clouds in the afternoon…but no rain. We clumped around taking care of our projects. Sheralee wanted to rebuild the bed frame to make it thinner and put it on wheels, making it much easier to move around when making it and working around it. I started removing the framing and insulation where I was going to cut the window opening.
Bed Rebuild
What you see in the pictures above is the slimmer bed version, but we opted to go with a straight 2×4 connecting the bed posts, instead of the 4×4 blocks you see here. The overall height of the bed increased, but man it is nice!
Next came the funnest thing, cutting holes in our container.
Once the opening was cut out 50 5/8 x 26 5/8. I framed the opening with 2×4 studs, and then framed the window opening with 2×8’s to account for the depth of the container.
Then we finally mounted the window, caulked it, flashed it, and spray foamed from the inside.
Overall, we are so so happy. This will eventually be our kitchen window with a sink underneath. We had to compromise on the height of the window and it turns out there are more short people in this world than big birds like me. So, the window is at the top of my gaze, but I can deal with that.
I promise to get pictures of the Loo rebuild for next week.
Sunday, we had some visitors around dinner time. Obviously they were aware we were not having burgers.
We finished our long weekend with some manual labor. We are going to try and divert water around some areas…well started with that. Really a test to see what is possible. By walking around in the rain Saturday, we determined the water will flow wherever we want it too. What we really need is a back hoe, someday, but until then. Testing is a must.
I think that is it for this time around.