Archive for the ‘Home’ Category

Bricklaying

Sunday, April 19th, 2020

Like everyone else, we’re baking in lockdown! The first time was a bit of a failure and this weekend was attempt two.

Here’s the ingredients for kaiser rolls:

Activate the yeast, then toss most of the above into the mixer for 8 minutes:

Until it looks like this:

Then let it sit for an hour to rise:

Then form the rolls, which will then sit for another hour before cooking:

Then it was time to bake for 15 minutes at 425F. Here’s the before/after:

They look ok don’t they!?! But they were a bit dense and even – dare I say – rubbery.

They tasted like a scone and not a roll. And they got hard quickly. By the end of the day they were doorstops! KLS managed to salvage one for breakfast this morning but they’ll be squirrel food!

Next time she’ll try another recipe. Any suggestions?

Snowpocalypse 2019

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2019

In the last 48 hours we received a lot of snow. I took regular photos from the same angle to show the accumulation. Here they are:

The above three run from noon to about 5 pm on Sunday. The snow was falling lightly at first, but picked up after nightfall.

The above is a 10 pm shot. It looks brighter than the 5 pm one due to the remarkable low light camera mode of my new iPhone. You can clearly see the snow has been coming down since the last shot: the driveway is barely visible here.

Above shows 6 am Monday morning. According to the weather service we’d received about 16 inches (~38 cm) overnight, and it was heavy snow which proved difficult to remove. Down near the street it was as deep as our snowthrower can handle, and although we have a powerful machine it really struggled.

That’s immediately after we finished clearing the snow. It was still falling lightly at this point. Although it was Monday almost everything was cancelled and we were both staying home for the day.

By around lunchtime not much had changed. The footprints were from the postman, who isn’t stopped by ‘a bit’ of snow!

By evening though (this is around 8 pm Monday) you can see it had built up somewhat again: there had probably been another 3-4 inches by this point.

And then we woke today to this: another 6+ inches since yesterday. Once again it was tricky to remove due to heaviness and the cold (it was -4 C) but at least it had stopped falling.

And here’s the final shot, after we had finished this morning. All told the official tally is 22.6 inches of snow (57.4 cm) in Albany and slightly more where we live just to the south. It was the 8th biggest snowfall of all time in this city. I expect well remember it for a while 🙂

Home Improvement

Sunday, August 18th, 2019

Our driveway was in bad condition, cracked and uneven. It was 25+ years old and past time for a new one. Last week that’s exactly what happened!

Many large trucks and a small army of men turned up to work. They started by removing the old asphalt with a bulldozer:

Then dumping the gravel substrate:

Which was flattened by a roller:

Then came the new asphalt, edges first:

Then the main portion layed down by a machine:

And flattened again with a different roller:

Lastly a final liquid asphalt coat:

And after a total of about 2.5 hours, it was done:

We haven’t used it yet since it’s halfway through a weeklong drying/setting process, but it looks good 🙂

It was hellishly expensive, but what home improvement job isn’t? It should last longer than we are in this house though, and what more could we ask!

Cracker Night 2019

Friday, July 5th, 2019

Yesterday was July 4, which meant fireworks! As usual we invested heavily:

Probably the most absurd of the bunch:

Once the sun went down, the usual celebration ensued:

As you can see ‘the Kims’ joined us for BBQ and fireworks, and they even performed a (fake) ‘ritual Korean dance’ for our amusement using the handheld sword fireworks!

Halfway through us setting up fireworks, a guy ‘just down the street’ started launching incredible rockets and mortars into the air from his front yard! We walked a few driveways down and enjoyed a show that lasted for over nine minutes!

It was incredible, with endless skybursts and massive booming explosions right down the road! It may end up being one of the most amazing fireworks displays we’ll ever see!

It was a great evening. Not only was there good food (thanks Jessica!) and hours of fireworks, we were also surrounded with fireflies and even saw a beautiful big fox run along the edge of our backyard just before sundown!

I’ll have to put the wildlife camera out again…

A New Sink

Tuesday, May 14th, 2019

We had the trap under our sink rust out three months ago, and needed to call a plumber. A lot of money later – admittedly because I had him replace our water shutoff downstairs as well – the leak was fixed.

Then the other day we discovered a more insidious problem. A water line to our faucet had developed a slow drip leak and needed replacement. Once again the plumber was called.

He tore out the water-damaged undersink cupboard floor and we found a puddle. It’s possible water had been soaking into the wood a while, but there’s no sign of serious damage either here or downstairs so it looks good. The pipe on the left was corroded and had at least two slow leaks. It had to go.

That’s our old sink. And when I say old, I mean probably as old as the house. The faucet was terrible and wobbly, and the sprayer was lying in the sink since we discovered a few days back that it leaked into the cupboard too!

KLS wanted a new sink and faucet and as it turns out the plumbers company (who had also done our furnace and AC) was full service and he said he could install everything today! So we had a price estimate chat, I picked out a sink and faucet, and he got to work.

Most of this needed to be replaced, which essentially would erase half the work we paid for three months ago! It looked like hellish work due to how inaccessible it is, and he was both older and bigger than me.

He worked professionally and obviously had a lot of experience. All day he was cutting pipes, welding them together, removing the old sink and putting in the new. Including a trip to collect the parts it took him 7.5 hours in total before it was all done.

The only parts not new are the pipe from the wall and the bottom of the trap. The water lines were replaced from floor level. The black pipe is the line to the faucet sprayer, and the black cylinder is the weight to keep it in the faucet.

And there it is. As you can see I went with a simple design, and unlike our old faucet it can turn to the side thus freeing the sink (which is deeper). It’s all high quality stuff too; leagues better than the old.

Of course it was hellishly expensive, but anyone that owns a home knows the terror of calling the plumber. But this work should last longer than we’ll be in this house, and given we’ve hardly put anything into this place for all the years we’ve been here we reckon that’s not bad at all.