Shelves for the office

Going through my phone I found pictures of a set of shelves I put in my office above the computer. They were built to display some of my knick knacks that were still in boxes. 

Boards cut to size, plane used to round over edges and rasp was used on the end grain.

Brackets up, leveled and squared.

Shelves finish, already emptied two boxes.

Shelves are made from 1x12 yellow pine since the hardware store was out of white pine.  I used three sets of adjustable shelving brackets since I wanted the ability to adjust the space between each shelf.

Cold floors

My has house has bare pine wood floors throughout the whole house except for the bathroom and kitchen which the wood is covered by vinyl flooring. This makes for a cold wall from the bedroom to bathroom in the middle of the night. Plans call for the two main bedrooms to have carpet laid with the living room, hallway and office to be simply sanded and finished.
Going bare foot is almost unbearable, wearing shoes all the time isn't ideal either. When I lived at home with my dad many years ago I had a pair of leather sole moccasins house shoes. I have searched recently and all I can find are moccasins shoes complete with rubber sole. I miss my old moccasins and hope to find another pair soon.

Living room renovation, new walls

A lot has changed since I last posted about my living room. Progress happened faster than I could take pictures of each step. I hope that no one is disappointed in missing some of boring stuff.

Walls are now insulated and have up to date electrical. The light switches were a challenge in themselves, and took most of one day to short the mess out. We added braces along the seam between where the panel boards stored and the drywall started.

We even finished putting up the drywall. Careful measurements were made to plan our attack to reduce the amount of extra work of added strips to screw too since some areas were not 16" centers. Dad has been in the process of mudding the seams and screw heads, one more final round off mudding and sanding and we can start to paint.

The Toyota received new tires

With the winter season upon us and many predictions of this winter will be colder and wetter than normal I have been making a few preparations. I have to travel to and from work so I need my truck to be able to make the daily trip. The tires that have been on my truck since I purchase the truck the years ago are showing their age. They have reached the last wear mark so I decided to go ahead and replace them. All terrain tires without much tread are not really all terrain are they?
The Hankook dynapro tires have at least 60,000 miles on them shop I think it's a good choice to have them replaced. Wal-Mart was having a sale on their Goodyear wrangler trailmark, with the idea of trading the truck within the next year or two I think these will be a decent tire, my last two trucks I have ran Goodyear wrangler and was pleased with them.

Had a few problems at the Wal-Mart I went to, had to wait about three hours due to most employees calling in sick, and the ticket being written up with the wrong tires causing a price issue. When all was said and done everything was corrected and taken care of.

The end of No Shave November for me

Had a great short run this year being able to participate in No Shave November, but it has come to end. My vacation has ended which means I must return to work and to an outdated idea of professionalism. For nine days I didn't have to worry about shaving and ended with a beard that just started to become soft after the rough stage. I didn't care how I looked all week since I spent my vacation either in the mountains camping or at the house working in the living room.

With returning to the routine of shaving, I have switched over to using a lotion based aftershave instead of the alcohol splashes. With the colder weather my face dries out quicker so the aftershave lotion helps to prevent that. I have stocked up on Nivea sensitive post shave balm last year when the local Wal-Mart's put several items on clearance to redo the shelves.

Overnight at Devil's Den

With months of preparation, I finally made my trip up to Devil's Den. I drove up Sunday afternoon and stayed overnight in the campsite. Monday morning I ventured out on the Butterfield Hiking Trail. The trail is roughly 15 miles, I only was able to make 3.5 miles before having to give up due to a old injury acting up. Couldn't ask for better weather conditions, sunny highs in the 80's, lows in the 40's with a full moon keeping me awake most of the night. Monday the wind was blowing good enough that I wished I had packed a hard hat with so many acorns falling to the ground.

My tent

Simple tarp shelter

Memorial to the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps.

Starting the Butterfield Hiking Trail

Suspension bridge marks the official start

The ruins of the old road bridge

signs like these were scattered along the trail

after a 400 ft elevation

Living room renovation, stripped bare

This last Friday I had removed all furniture from the living room, except for the couch since it was too large to fit anywhere else in the house. I have since pulled off each and every panel board from the three walls that will be redone. Two are outer walls which will have to be insulated. The last wall is shared with my bedroom, we decided to redo it also since it will look nicer. This leaves one short wall, the large walk through opening and heater is along this wall so we are leaving it alone to act as a accent wall.

All baseboards, window and door facing's, and the crown molding has been removed and will not be reused, everything will be replaced using the left over panels ripped down to width. This will give everything a fresh new feel and easier to have everything match in color.

Sneak peak of the panels being put back once they were cut down.

Movember and No Shave November

Working for a security company has it's down sides. One is the outdated idea that beards and facial hair in general is considered unprofessional. This means I cannot easily participate in activities such as No Shave November, I currently sport a mustache so participating in Movember already happens although I think the rules are I was suppose to shave everything off October 31st.

So glad to have the natural face warmer on such a cold day.

A loophole I have is I'm taking off for vacation starting today. So for the next nine days I will be participating in No Shave November. It won't be a proper beard in such a short period of time, it will be a short lived face warmer.

Beard was trimmed back during the summer months, but was never fully removed.