Another Productive Day As The Hounds Sleep The Day Away

It was during the lunch for the hounds on Tuesday that I changed my mind for the 2nd time in 2 hours about power washing. It was perfect weather for it. Not too hot and just warm enough that I would not freeze as the water spray drenched me based on wind direction. Heidi gave me the okay to get started as she enjoyed the front yard.

While I was stretching out 100' of electrical cord and 100' of garden hose to connect to the power washer on the north side of the house, I realized I had not done this last year. In fact I used an extended handle brush connected to the hose that I bought for washing my Class C in 2014. That took less than an hour to wash the side of the house and the overhangs. It took longer with the set up and washing this year.

I still wanted to use the power washer to not only clean the house but also peel any loose paint off the wood trim. The paint on the aluminum siding never moves and it does not matter what the weather does nor how many times it changes. I figured I could wash, scrape paint, sand it, prime it and paint it within 6 total hours spread over 2-3 days.

Of course with any old house and maintenance, one job might lead to two new ones. Mine wasn't that bad but it turned it from a two day affair to a three day job, yet it looks like it will be around 8 hours total labor time.

While I was moving both cars outside away from the house and then trash cans, a chair and anything else left standing in the carport so they would not get wet ... Sadie was more than a little concerned about what was going on. Maybe she though we were was moving or going somewhere ... being a confirmed 'homebody' ... she did act a little anxious as I was setting the project up. She does not like any kind of change .. even moving her food dish 6".

Stella didn't care. It was too hot for her, she wanted inside and she can't stop scratching even after another bath. My blog shows that in May 2016 she had the same itching problem ... so it's allergies.

Heidi wasn't going to move when I called her. She had found a spot she had never tried for sunbathing and was content to stay right next to the driveway as I started work. But on this occasion I did not have time to babysit hounds while I was out of sight. So Heidi headed for the couch and Stella was thrilled she could go back inside for her afternoon siesta. I confirmed it by looking in the window to see all three hounds sleeping while I washed the house.

Once the house and carport are clean, it's like they have been repainted. The dryer it gets, the better it looks.

There of course is humor to this project. I thought I was finished so I am rolling the machine over by the fence to stretch out the electrical cord and garden hose, then disassemble everything and put things away ... then I remembered ... I wanted to pressure wash the fence !!!

So I turned around and started that job. I am not sure it's good to pressure wash a treated wood fence but I did about 10 years ago and the only damage this fence has seen is when my pyromania fires have caught the fence on fire. So I continued to wash all of the fence only on this side. I did wash 3 sides of every fence post and the top edges of every piece.

As the fence dried it looked better ....

But it really looked the best this morning after it completely dried.

The Z went back inside on a clean concrete floor, so clean I almost hated driving on it. The car cover keeps all of the yellow pollen and light brown dust from the highway off the car. It does not take that long to take off when I want to drive it.

The top front edge of the porch was covered in black algae ... my old friend with the biology degree named that stuff today and explained it to me and I have forgotten the name and every thing about it an hour later. The concrete steps and porch only had dirt to remove but it looks much better cleaned.

Funny story about that little red paint you see at the bottom side of the steps ... my great aunt built this house and her 'dream house' was a yellow house with a deep red foundation ... I'm told. I've tried over the years of getting rid of what red is left as there are other places on the foundation you can see it. I have tried different solutions, painted gray paint over it 22 years later and then green paint over it 13 years later ... and you can still see it whenever I scrub the paint.

Here is an example of some of the bare wood that results from a high power wash, intentionally set to strip off any loose paint. Easy fix with some scraping, sanding, put on primer and then paint.

This spot drives me insane every time I look at it. Evidently with the carport floor flooded in water I missed a spot to power clean. I have no doubt that very soon I will haul that machine out of the closet, hook up everything just to power clean this spot. Maybe I'll try a scrub brush and soap first with a fresh water rinse.

Today right after lunch Heidi gave me the okay to start the process of scraping all the bare spots as clean as possible, lifting more bubbled paint off. By the end of the afternoon I had primed all the spots I needed to and will paint the trim color tomorrow in less than an hour.

My total labor time today was 3 hours and 10 minutes.

Before starting any of this, I was curious enough and by suggestions ... plugged in my other 27" monitor into my new iMac so I now have two large monitors. I have used two monitors for the last 7 years but was more than happy with just one Retina display. Yet the 2nd monitor comes in handy at times. I think I'll keep it set up and am glad I did not sell it. A few of the "mac geeks" told me to do this.

It's never wise to paint on the west side of the house in the afternoon sun. The back of my legs, my neck and arms are feeling their first sunburn of 2017. It feels good to feel tired and another solid night of sleep.

'To Do' List momentum here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Lens Hood Makes A Difference

My picture experiment today was using the lens hood that came with the Tamron 18mm-200mm lens. I saw a difference just after a couple of photos, that would be the same type taken every day at the same time of morning.


After the hounds have their breakfast, Sadie, Stella and I go outside for them to dump their tanks and while my coffee is being made. I only take 3-5 pictures during this time. The small picture I use to post here of the field across the highway, then a shot in back as I stand at the corner of the house and some of the hounds if there is something to take.

All of these pictures posted were not edited in any way and all were shot using the lens hood. I think that with this specific lens, the hood is needed at all times because the colors were being flushed out from the additional light.

Granted we are moving from winter to spring. Things are getting greener by the day if not by the hour. Pictures taken in the winter months in the Midwest are dull and drab in color.  Yet during those months the color of the hounds did not stand out unless I enhanced their color when I edited the pictures.

Stella decided it was going to be one of those days where walking was not her main priority, nor was tracking deer scent. After she moved from the spot above, this is what I found in the picture below. There was nothing there but the wet leaves from where she had been licking.

Sadie was on her own schedule and was always pretty far ahead of us, even after she would backtrack and wait on Stella and I.

I believe whoever or whatever was chewing the tree limb decided enough is enough and moved on to some other delicacy.

I was trying to decide while I waited on Stella if I should just walk on with Sadie and let her do whatever she wanted but I did not want to go get her near the end of the walk. Most likely she would have ended up by the neighbor's wooded area.

While Sadie was showing more energy than normal ...

Stella was walking and moving in an extra slow gear. I could almost hear her dragging her paws on the ground as she slowly walked along the edge of the field.

By the time I took this next picture, Sadie had already been up to the far right corner to check out the 'deer highway', then circled back to get Stella and I. That did not matter to Stella, she was on her own pace today and wasn't going to change.

Neither hound had any urges to take off out of bounds and as I turned the corner to head home they spent the majority of time walking right next to me with Stella right behind me, out of camera range. I had to stop and wait for them to get this far in front of me.

I believe you can tell just how slow she is walking. Each step is slow and once again she was falling behind Sadie. Based on the starter growth of the field and lack of weeds growing, it looks like their first cut of hay will be one of their best quality in June.

With temperatures headed to the 70's we were going to make a couple of more walks, fix the three screens that Stella destroyed last summer and do as much outside as possible.

I was off to a good start, with the 2nd hound walk complete right after their lunch, I went to work on repairing the small screen windows with new screen on two bedroom windows and one spare.

This is the new grass I planted a few weeks ago, really about a month ago. It survived freezing temps a few days after I planted seed the first time. I spread some more seed, then the heavy rains came. So I spread the last seed I had in the bag I bought in early March. It is filling in the bank quite well and looks to be right on schedule. It will look good next spring in 2018.

All the photos taken this afternoon were with the lens hood on, no editing.

I found out last summer the hard way that Stella was the escape artist they claimed she was. I made the mistake thinking there was no way she could crawl through a window that was only 16" tall and 39" off the floor.

She did.

By the time I returned from my Z4 drive with the top down, she was sitting next to the FJ, panting, ready for me to let her back inside for some water and a nap.

Before

After

If I don't have any more memory lapses when I get ready to leave the house, and make sure the windows are closed, then these new screens should last another 15 years like the others did. I guess there is one advantage of repairing them ... they will not have be cleaned with the high pressure washer in a few weeks.

I was at a good pace, getting things finished, and checking a few things off of my long 'to do' list, until I stopped at 2pm to eat some lunch. During the time eating a salad, a small carton of Chinese food, I remembered the final round of The Masters was on tv today. I usually watch the last 4-5 holes.

Around that was the Long Beach Grand Prix Indy Car race, 85 laps on a different tv channel. With some slight stiffness in my lower back from doing something as simple as repairing the screen windows I thought it might be the perfect time to cancel the rest of the list for the day and my rules in retirement. That rule is not to do more than one 'major' thing per day. LOL No schedules and no rush.

In the meantime we headed out for our 3rd hound walk of the day but cut it off short. Neither hound seemed too enthused and it ended halfway to to the first corner when Stella sat down looked at me and didn't move. So all three of us turned around and headed home. They both were sound to sleep within minutes after walking inside.

After looking at these pictures I am going to make one adjustment in the camera settings and set the light setting to -1. That will brighten them up just a little and other than that I think I have found part of the problem and it was the light that washed out the colors while using the lens without the hood. I never used the lens hood with the Nikon lens but need to with the Tamron lens.

You can take a look if you want at my photos on Flickr. This link will show about 1,000 photos I've made available for public viewing. I have all my photos in Flickr as a backup. The reason I bring this up, I think you will see a real difference in the picture quality when they are not compressed by Blogger. Also my Wordpress blog does not compress the images I load and they are the same pictures I use in this blog. I think you will see a difference.

Thanks for the emails and comments about my picture blog post Saturday night. It's always good to get opinions from blog readers. Check out these photos from today and let me know what you think. Maybe I have solved the picture quality problem by using the lens hood.

The 'to do' list is about to commence here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

Sadie Finds A Praying Mantis

With the AC turned off and all the windows opened, it felt like fall. I'm not sure where September went but it wasn't here long enough to remember.

Doesn't it seem like it was hot summer summer weather just a couple of weeks ago? Today the weather was great to get a few things done outside before it rains again.

Cleaning gutters was one of my projects today. With a lot of dry leaves inside them and not having the wet leaf problem it made the job that much faster ... and cleaner to do. I am hoping to clean and wash the Toyota FJ this week also. A lot of hound wear inside that needs to be taken care of.

Right after lunch it was time for a walk. It was beautiful today and most of the afternoon was spent outside doing something. You can see the leaves just starting to change color.

I bought a new spark plug for the Echo SRM-225U Weed Eater ... it still didn't start. I drove down to the local hardware store where I bought it to let them take a look at it. Their repair business must be good because they said they'd call me in a couple of days. I was tired of trying to figure out what was wrong with it and decided to let the 'pros' fix it. That also delayed the cutting of the giant ragweed until I get that back.

Sadie and Stella didn't care though. They took off running along the edge of the field and and didn't stop until they moved around the first turn. The scents must have been pretty strong for them to take off like that.

Of coarse Stella found her usual spot that she is always interested in.

Sadie was in full search mode and had been most of the walk today.

I'm not sure what spooked Stella but I caught her just as she turned, right before she took off running to catch up with us.

We headed back to the house but you can see that Sadie is very interested in something she had found. Once I saw her hop into the air right above that spot she is checking out, I knew it was something important.

If you look closely you can see what her prize was. I ran Sadie off to let the praying mantis continue it's movement through the field.

Sorry to be brief tonight, but the hounds and I just got up from our afternoon siesta a little after 6pm and still have a little daylight we can enjoy before the sun sets. For those interested, all the photos today were taken with the lens hood mounted.

It was a good Monday here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.