The last week seemed like an endless sentence of pain, punctuated by well problems.

We discovered our well pump is great until we get a rainfall of more than an inch.  Then it quits working.  10 months per year that would not be a problem.  But we are in the middle of monsoon season, so the well pump quits working about every 2-3 days!

We discovered this inconvenient behavior early in the week and called our builder.  Since the pump guy was out of state at the time, our builder came over and diagnosed the problem with the pump guy over the phone.  The problem was a faulty transducer.

When I asked what the transducer does, he informed me it replaces those old fashioned pressure switches.

My follow up question was: “What is wrong with those old fashioned pressure switches?”

Our builder replied: “The new transducers are really cool because they can talk to your smart phone”.

“I don’t care if my well pump can talk to my smart phone.  I do care that it can pump water, even when it is raining.”, I responded.

To make a long story short, the builder showed me how to reset the transducer to get the well going again.  That proved to be a very short-lived fix because on Saturday we got about an 1 1/2 inches of rain and the pump quit working again and no matter how many times I reset the transducer, it did not start transducing again.

Finally, on Sunday morning the pump guy showed up and replaced the transducer with an old fashioned pressure switch.  Then, to make the builder happy, he spent a couple of hours screwing around with the control box to make the pressure switch talk to my smart phone.  It gives me such great comfort knowing that next week, when I am in Columbus, OH, I will be able to determine if Tina went to M.T. Acres and flushed the toilet from my cell phone.

On our part of the build…

When the builder framed the house he put two access panels into the attic, one in the garage and one in the laundry room.  The panels are typical of most houses where I just had to put a frame and moulding around the hole and a piece of the sheetrock from the ceiling would sit on the frame.

We were both plenty happy with that arrangement, but unfortunately the building inspector was not.  He insisted that we have a spring-loaded trap door with a folding ladder in the garage.

So after enlarging the hole in the garage ceiling, my plan was to screw two braces to the rafters to hold the door in place while I screwed a few sheetrock screws to hold the door temporarily in place.  Then Tina could remove the braces from below and open the door and I could climb out of the attic and bolt the door permanently in place.

It was a good plan that went awry during implementation.  I put the door up in the attic and climbed up after it.  Tina was below on the ladder helping me to get it into place when the back of the door slipped off one of the braces and the door came down right on her head nearly knocking her out.

Of course, I did not see any of this because I was up in the attic.

She toughed it out and we were able to get the door installed.

But the lesson for you youngsters is: When you finally meet the girl of your dreams and convince her to marry you, do not hit her in the head with a 40 pound door.  That may work in caveman movies but not so much in real life.

We also undertook doing the epoxy on the garage and laundry room floors.  The first step was to wet sand the entire floor.  Then once the water dried, Tina scrubbed the entire surface with a broom to loosen up the dust from sanding.  Then she was able to go over it with a shop vac to remove the dust.  She did that twice.  Finally, she mopped it with a microfibre mop and denatured alcohol.

Once the floor was completely dry, we were able to prime it.

After about 3 hours, the primer was dry enough we were able to mix and spread the epoxy.

We are both pleased with how the epoxy came out.  But it was much more difficult to do than the manufacturer’s instructions led us to believe.

I also got the wall tile behind the wood stove up and grouted.

Finally, I picked up all of the floor tile for the master bedroom and bathroom.

I got the last of the tile set in the pantry and both of us got the grout layed.  It does not sound like much, but this was a bitch of a job.

I am especially proud of that I was able to maintain the pattern from the living room, into the pantry even with the weird wall angle.

You will notice there is one extra grout line on the door frame to the right. There was no way to fit the tile with the wall without it.  Admittedly, it looks pretty bad, but there is nothing I could do to get it to fit and it will be under a door anyway.

Here is the rest and thank God it is done!

We only had about 2 1/2 days to work on the house last weekend due to my travel schedule.  I had to leave for the Tucson airport at 3:30AM Sunday morning to catch my flight to Montreal this week.

But still, Tina managed to the door frames done.  They came out real good.

I was able to finish laying the tile in the dining room and kitchen.

All that is left for that tile is a little bit in the pantry, but I did not want to be kneeling on the tile in the kitchen to lay those until the kitchen tiles were good and dry.  So I will put those down this coming weekend.

Unlike my disappointment with the job I did on the hall tile, I am very pleased with the job I did in the living room, dining room and kitchen.  In a span that goes over 25 feet, I was off by less than an 1/8 inch by the time I had worked to the far end of the rooms.  Furthermore, I was even able to hide that in an area of the kitchen that will be under the kitchen cabinets!

Finally, Friday evening Tina and I were sitting in the garage doing what rednecks do in a garage.  I.E. Sitting there watching the world go by, when I looked down about a foot from Tina and noticed we had a visitor.

Tina quickly got up and grabbed the dogs and got them in the house and I whacked this little guy with a shovel.

The two pistols that we alway carry out to the house (a Springfield .45 for me and a S&W 9MM for Tina) seemed to be a bit of overkill for a stupid snake.

Tina does have a Ruger Single-Six in .22 Magnum that I think we are going to start bringing with us as well.  They make snake loads for it and being a single action, it should work well.  I am going to have my friend Dwight make up a proper holster for it to keep the dust and dirt off it.  Dwight suggested a full-flap cavalry style holster for it which I think will be perfect.  I’ll post some pictures of it in a few weeks once we get details ironed out on what we want and Dwight gets it made.

Shameless plug:

If you are in need of a new holster, please take a look at Dwight’s web page:

http://www.dwightsgunleather.com/product-examples.html

He does outstanding work and his prices are about the same for full fitted custom holster as you will pay for a semi-fitted off-the-shelf holster.  Just tell him you found him on M.T. Acres!

Tina got all of the doors sanded, sealed, re-sanded and 2 coats of varnish!  They look great.  In addition, she started on the door frames.  She got the frame to the master bathroom completed so we could re-hang the door and have some privacy…

I think we will get the mouldings in the next few weeks and get started on those.  Moulding is a low priority item since we do not need to have those completed for the final inspection.  But it is a good thing for each of us to work on as filler while we wait for the other to complete the critical work.  I.E. Tina can be finishing moulding while she waits for me to build the cabinets and I can be hanging moulding while I wait for her to finish the cabinets.

When I first started the tiling, I could not figure out why I was having such a tough time getting things to fit right.  Everything measured out correctly, but when I got to a wall or a doorway, they just did not fit right.  Historically, I have always been pretty good at laying tile.  I am slow.  But things always end up square and looking good.  That is why I was having such frustration with this job.

At first I thought it was my new tile saw (pictured without the water tray).

The tile saw has been a source of severe frustration.  The blade that came with it started to burn after less than 10 cuts even though there was plenty of water flowing on both sides of the blade.  And by the time I had done 20 cuts it was as fried as the brains of our HVAC guys.  So I replaced the blade with a decent blade.  Then, I spent another couple of hours trying to get the table square with the blade.  Finally, I was having trouble with the table jamming up.  That problem was solved by pumping nearly half a small tube of lithium grease into the bearings.  After spending almost $500 on a tile saw who would have thought that grease was not included?  GRRR!!!!

When this build is over, before I sell the tile saw, I am going to find somebody that owns a monkey to bring the monkey over to the house and throw poo at that bloody saw for a day!

Even after getting the saw so it mostly works pretty well, I still found using a small angle grinder and a pair of nippers works best for angle cuts and complex cuts.

But after all my frustration with tools, correct measurements but incorrect results, etc. etc., I looked at a box of the tiles and finally figured out what the real problem was.

THESE ARE MUSLIM TILES!!!  The Muslims waged tile Jihad on my hallway!

Once I figured that out, I started treating them like Muslim tiles and they laid down nice and neat in the livingroom.

And of course my boy Boomer is always helping me…

Good friends help you hide the bodies…

We bought a wood stove for the house last March.  We had to pick it up a couple of weeks ago or begin paying storage charges.  So I drove up to Tucson and had them load it into the back of my truck.  My biggest concern was how we were going to get it out onto the ground.

I threw out a blanket lifeline call for help to get the stove down from my truck and our friends Danny and Bonnie responded.  We have known Danny and Bonnie for about 10 years (since our first visit here on vacation) and they are great folks.  But they do not owe us anything.  Still, they saved our bacon.

Last Monday, Danny showed up with a tractor with a hay fork!  We quickly repurposed hayfork as a forklift and got stove down with a bare minimum of physical labor!

We cannot thank you both enough.

The next day, our friend Eve, who we have also known since our first vacation here, called and asked if we wanted to come down and take a proper shower at her place.  HELL YEAH!  (This is a normal shower not some weird California thing.)

To those of you that I have not introduced Eve to, suffice it to say that she is a True American Superhero.

And having a real shower after a hard day’s work is a REAL treat.

Lastly, the photos I failed to post last week.  I got Tina a washer and a dryer.

I have this week off from work to spend more time working on the build house.  So we came out Friday night and will be staying until July 9th.  The wildfire that we were so worried about, directly behind us, is finally out.  The firefighters did an outstanding job on that one.  Only one structure was lost and a few more singed.  But nobody was killed.

There is another fire, also started by lightning, several miles to the north of us, the Frye Fire.  It started as a little nothing thing of less than 500 acres.  Since it has grown to over 40,000 acres.  It poses no danger to us as it is still over 30 miles away.  But it is definitely visible.

The photo above was taken Friday night.  After dark we could see the flames.  By Saturday night, the smoke was so thick we could not even see the flames (or the mountains).  Our prayers are with the firefighters and the folks in the Safford, AZ area that the Frye fire turns out like our Lizard Fire.

Back on the house…

Tina was able to get doors #5 and #6 almost done.  She only has one coat of varnish left on one side.

Doors #3 and #4 came out unbelievably good.

For my part, I got the floor tile done in the guest bathroom.

I am really pleased with how well I was able to freehand cut the hole for the toilet.  That was a real bugger to do and it came out better than I hoped it would.

I was also able to get the transition tiles set for the guest bedroom and my office.  They look pretty nice.  They are a lighter color in real life than they appear in the picture.

When we dry fit the tile for the main hall, we just did not like the look of it at all.  I was so disappointed with the look, I was prepared to rip up all of the main hall tile and redo it with something different.  Tina had a better idea that only required a little bit of rework.

Her idea was to put in a couple of transition rows of tile at either end of the hall to break up the monotony.  It also allowed me to mostly hide a mistake I had made.

Overall, I think it looks pretty dang good for a couple of rookies.

I have the last 6 tiles for the last row cut but did not lay them because it would have required me to kneel on wet tiles to do so.  Laying them in the morning will not be a big job and then the evil hallway and bathroom are done!

I am hopeful that I will be able to greatly increase the speed of my tiling now that I will be moving to more open space in the living room, dining room and kitchen and will not have nearly as much cutting and custom fitting to do.

Unrelated to the house, Boomer figured out a new way to stay outside, yet keep cool.  Sleep with your ear in the water dish.

Lastly, they say New York City has the greatest skyline in the world.  I have seen the New York City skyline dozens of times and it does not hold a candle to our skyline.