All Schnazzed Up

Here is Kiddo #1 all dressed up with her big monster sousaphone.  

She is the only girl sousaphone in the marching band.  

Pretty cool.  I'm very impressed!

New Paint and Hardwood Floors

 We had a rare sprint of home improvement motivation, and started painting our living room and entryway room (what I call the "shoe room") just last week.  Part of this motivation is:

1.  Cleaning up and moving the desk to a more suitable location

2.  Repairing many nail pops in the drywall, and subsequent painting

3.  Pulling out the old carpet and checking out the hardwood floors beneath.

I don't have many good "before" pictures, but below you can see how we have a ton of furniture crammed into a corner as we paint the opposite side.  Not the half-walls which are removed in pictures later.  

The breezeway entryway room.  I call this the shoe-room, but I think it is a formal dining room.  We removed the piano and all the coats and shoes from this room for this shot:

In the living room, the blue carpet was pretty faded.  

But beneath all that blue carpet is a beautiful hardwood floor.  It was in near perfect condition with only a few blemishes.

This is the shoe room leading into the kitchen.  That transition will need a little help.

We painted an accent wall, but I only have pictures of it late at night.  It is dark blue and it is a good contrast to the rest of the "latte" walls.  The patch of white on the wall is from where I removed the half walls that used to divide the 2 rooms.

I'll get more pictures in the days ahead.  But suffice it to say, these are big changes and it really makes the house feel different (in a very good way).

New Tires for the 420

This past week, I bought some new tires for the old 420.  I'm not for certain, but I would venture to guess the old tires are the original tires - circa 1987 or so.  The tire size is 26-12-12.

I measured the tread depth of the old tires, and I measured 0.200 inches - right around 3/16 of an inch. 

The new tires are Carlisle Multi-Trac, and the depth is approximately 0.430 - about 7/16 of an inch.  That is a full 1/4 inch more!  Pretty amazing.

And they look real good mounted on the 420.  I expect much better traction, so I kept my wheel weights off.  That, and all my mole hills are pretty well mashed down anyways.

An Old Tandem Bicycle

Meet Daisy.  This is an early 1960s Huffy tandem bicycle.  If you know the history of our family, you know why Daisy has a special meaning to us.

I bought this dude off Craigslist this past weekend.  It drives real nice, and has been fun for the last couple of days with the kids.  

I hope the kids and I can use it often.  I also hope the kids and their friends use it with each other.  I think it has a certain cool nostalgic flavor.  

Now it isn't named Daisy just for fun.  It's actually painted right on the chain guard! 

  

A Happy Father's Day for Me

As always, the family always make today a super special day...

1. Pancakes for breakfast.
2. Minecraft with all 3 kids
3. Brownies and ice cream
4. Little gifts of candies and cookies.

They always do a great job for me.

A Day at the Shades

We spent a day in Shades State Park in central Indiana this past Friday.  This gem of a state park is less crowded and more rugged than some of the larger neighbors, and it suits us just fine.  We had a good lookin' crew when we started out.

There's a cool log over Sugar Creek.

Lunch is always interesting on the trail.  

This is a favorite trail for obvious reasons.

Hiking is easier with a tiger in your backpack.

By the end of the day, all the kids had their shoes wet.

Sugar Creek was pretty low this time.  You could go out a pretty far ways.

It's a scenic place.

Deep, thick mud is always an inviting resource for these two.

Devil's Punch Bowl was nice and cool amidst the deep rock formations.

Tons of energy to go...

My last picture of the day.  But the fun didn't stop.  Ice cream cones  on the way home were a big hit for all.  It was a very good day for everybody.

Barn Improvements

I have been busy in the barn making work benches and shelves over the last couple of weeks / months.  

It all started with Uncle Jerry's awesome drill press.  The old Atlas drill press needed a permanent location in the shop, and moving it around from place to place by hand was getting a bit crazy.  So I made a smaller work bench specifically for:

1.  Drill press

2.  Band saw

3.  Belt sander

The fourth corner is unpopulated for now, but I can see another old power tool sitting there someday.

And more recently, I've been wanting to play some ping pong with my 14 year old daughter.  The ping pong table in the barn is awesome, but it has also served as a "catch all" over the last year or so.  I made some shelves to house all that junk.

Since we're redoing the garage, I removed all the corner shelves from the garage.  It looks really nice to not have any junk sitting in the corners of the garage, so this new shelf system will also support former garage items like car-care chemicals, gardening tools, and seasonal things.

(Tangent:  How many American garages have 2 cars plus no extra junk in them?)

I also mounted my new planer in a better fashion to be able to use it easier / quicker.  The planer bed is at the same height as my chop saw and work bench, so I can plane down long items and nothing gets in the way.  Likewise, I can put long boards on the chop saw, and use the bed of the planer to support.  

Another project I did a few weeks ago was to make this tool-tote.  I fashioned it after a friend's toolbox from work.  His is much older and has more dents and dings, hence, a lot more character.  He told me all the old ladies at work ask him if they can have it to serve as a planter for flowers.  

Thus, this is my "Old Lady Tool Tote":