I went camping this weekend with some college buddies. We had a blast!
The weather was good. A bit stormy driving up, and it rained pretty good the last night. One of the tents packed up that last night and cut out early. They always leave first thing the last day anyhow I am told, and this way they didn’t have to pack a wet tent.
Everyone’s favorite camping companion.
CVS came over to my place on Thursday night, and he made up some of his Famous Doners. We froze them down in my deep-freeze so they wouldn’t spoil in a cooler. My Kitchen Aid stand mixer with the bread hook does wonders with 6lbs of ground Turkey.
The finished Doners. We baked them off in my camp oven. They sure did turn out delicious! Thanks CVS!
Going camping again for the first time in about 5 years really got my camping juices flowing again. Now I need to start taking Bella.
With the new house comes the desire to move into it. Funny thing, that.
I have a lot of stuff. Most of it is pretty cool stuff, but there is a decided emphasis on quantity over quality.
I was looking at renting a moving vehicle for two different days. Somehow, I convinced my wife it would be better to acquire a utility trailer to enable the movement of my copious amounts of junk… I mean treasures.
So, I am now the proud owner of more stuff! A vicious circle, I tell ya! I now own a flatbed utility trailer. But wait, there’s more! This one knows tricks – besides the usual stay, follow, roll down that hill into the car’s radiator. This ones knows ‘sit up’ and folds up like a ping pong table. That’s right, it stores in 1/10 the normal space a trailer ought to. This leaves room for… you guessed it… more stuff in my garage.
The trailer I got is a Harbor Freight folding trailer – a light-duty, bolt-together utility trailer with a 1,450 lb. GVWR rating. With the trailer weight itself around 275 lb. this yields a usable hauling limit of 1,175 lb. It was on sale for $299, plus I found a 20% off fathers day coupon on their website with my mad google-fu skills.
The trailer came in two boxes.
It came in kit form. It took me a couple hours to put the frame together. Some friends came over, and we built a bed and side rails for it.
The trailer kit set out on my garage floor.One part of the trailer kit assembledOne part and the tongue of the trailer kit assembledBoth halves of the folding trailer and the tongue assembledThe back half of the trailer folds on top of the frontMe putting a leaf spring on the trailerThis is the trailer folded up, now imagine it standing on it's castersThe finished trailer kitThe trailer is a dump-deck, but it doesn't look to convienient to meMy new driveway is looking a bit old, eh?One of my buddies helping make the side railsAnother of my buddies taking a nap under the trailer... I mean helping tighten nuts underniethThe side rails where precision measured... held up and bolted together when it looked good enough!The finished trailer. Note the fiberglass driveway markers so I can see the back of the trailer when backing it up
After all that, we went and moved my stuff.
The front of the trailer is taller then the sides, so I can stand tall furniture up at the front. When I need to make loading ramps for a lawnmower or whatever, they will be bolted into the empty space in the front rack to be part of that structure. Otherwise, you can see through it in the mirror quite well right now. The 2 orange markers in the very back are so I can see the back of the trailer in my mirrors. It makes it so much easier to back the trailer up. You can’t see the main part of the trailer, and just a little of the side rails.
Yesterday, I bought a house. Today, I am in Rhode Island and the Provodence Plantations on a business trip. Kinda makes it sound like buying a house is a trivial thing for me, doesn’t it?
I made the offer back in February!
The new place is a raised ranch with an english basement in Carpentersville IL. All that is Realtorese for a ranch style house 4 feet up in the air with a basement wedged underneith that you can have bedrooms in. It’s kinda awkward looking on the outside.
Its a three or 4 bedroom (depends on if you consider the tiny dinning room a bedroom because it has a closet and carpeting) with a full bath upstairs and half bath downstairs. The downstairs bath has room to add a shower – it is in the demolition stage of renovation currently. Adding 2 walls would make it a 6 bedroom, with a basement family room still. Another wall would make an awkward shaped 7th bedroom if needed. We looked at the house before we bought it and made shure we could make it work even if we had a good number of kids.
The kitchen is brand new. Granate countertops, new stainless appliances, gas stove. There’s even an upright freezer in the basement! We loved the kitchen, it was the “we love this house” item and out weighed the shortcomings.
The bathroom is new too and done up nice.
The living room is nice and big. The laminate floors goes throughout the upstairs (not the bedrooms). The window is a west window, so the tv has to be in the right spot or glare is going to be a problem.
The entry steps comes up into the kitchen/livingroom intersection. I want to put the big fish tank there. I will need to build a shelf or something in the basement to hide the support columns I would like to add so I don’t warp the floor from all the weight.
The bedrooms are small, and closet space is severly lacking. Two big bedrooms upstairs and one down. The downstairs one will be the guest bedroom. They all need paint and the upstairs ones need carpet.
The yard is small, and two narrow, so the 2 car garage is behind the house and you only have room to get one car to it. So they made it a 1.5 car garage with a covered patio. So cool! This made the small yard feel so much bigger. The garage may never have a car parked in it – it will have my tools and boat. I will finally have room to make things again! There is a spot for the garden, but its too grown over with trees to be any good for growing anything anymore. So the garden will need to go out into the main backyard area where there is more sun. This is fine by me as I am not a big fan of the waste of resources that grass is.
