Ein Auto Das Nicht Faehrt ...

Today started with a drizzle, which stopped, so that E! could get back up on the aerial lift. After lunch, I drove it around the house to the front beer garden. That's when I noticed some dripping underneath the body. First I thought it was water from the rain, but a quick investigation (touch, smell) revealed it to be oil, hydraulic oil to be precise. It was dripping too much to make it safe for usage. So we called the rental company, and they'll send someone tomorrow. But that was it for today with the aerial lift.

I for my part spent the last two days cutting a 3 feet by 5 feet hole into the concrete slab in the dish station. The hole is for the grease trap, which prevents oils and grease from clogging our septic system. Cutting concrete is a nasty job, especially if you do it inside, and in a confined space. I had hung tarps around the dish station in order to prevent the dust from spreading throughout the house (we do live there, you know), which worked mostly, but because of that, the exhaust from the 2-cycle engine powering the concrete saw quickly becomes unbearable. So I would cut 15 seconds and then spent the next five minutes catching fresh air outside. Today, I started chipping away the cut concrete, only to find out that there are two layers, of which the second (the lower one) is quite tough.

Dirk

Painting ...

Painting on the backside of the house is coming along, though not as fast as we had hoped. The last three days we saw a lot of rain, and that threw us back a little.



Here now an action shot of E! working the rig:



Dirk

Dirk Diggler ...

We had talked for a while about adding electrical service to the parking lot side of our property, in order to provide lighting for the parking lot, and generally have service for special events, which we hope to host on the parking lot, like a Christmas market, or maybe an October Fest.

We had several options for getting service. Most of them would have required getting a pole to attach the wire to. They run somewhere around $1200 to $1500. That's a lot of dough for a piece of wood. Therefore we opted for the least expensive option, bury the wire in the ground, close to the existing power line pole.

So I spent today digging a trench, two feet deep (60cm), and 45 feet long (14m).


It all went smooth, until I hit some big rocks on the last six feet. Oh, well. They will most likely end up in our future stone wall around the beer garden.

Dirk

It all started with this ...

When E! and I first laid eyes on Gunk Haus it looked like this:


That was in the Fall of 2005. I immediately liked it.

After we bought it in October 2007, we started renovating it, and today it looks like this:


Yes, we are still renovating, but it's starting to get there. Just last week we removed the ugly asbestos siding to expose the original clap board. E! is working hard right now on repainting the house. We rented an aerial lift for a month, and E! is up there every day. Kudos to her, after all, she is afraid of heights.

Dirk