Creeker's Weekend Accomplishments

[Dennis Peacock]

28 Apr 2014

Good Morning Everyone,
I come to you this morning with heaviness in my heart as the tornadoes that went through our area last night left many dead. A couple of friends of mine we directly hit and lost their home and all they had. My buddy lost his mom to the storm so they are dealing with a double blow in their lives and I truly hurt for them. Today, many start sorting through what is left and others try to find ways to help all those that were in the path of the storms. I watched the storms pass just south of my house by a few miles. We are ok but many are not. I ask for thoughts and prayers for all those affected by the severe storms last night.

We are continuing to make progress on getting things ready for construction of the garage and apartment for my MIL. I expect to start construction this week. I'm sore, tired, and feeling like it's more than I can do, but I take each day as best I can.

That's it for me, so what did YOU do this past weekend?

Best of weeks to you all.

[Peter Kelly]

Jesus, sorry to hear about that.

[Matt Meiser]

Dennis, sorry to hear about your friends losses. That looks to be a really nasty weather system that is far from done.

We drove home on Saturday from a 9-day vacation in eastern TN. We rented a cabin up above Pigeon Forge, did a bunch of touristy stuff, took a day trip over to Asheville to see Biltmore, took a day trip in the national park, and did a lot of nothing. Sunday was laundry, grocery shopping, daughter had softball practice, and I did the annual maintenance on my parents generator and installed a remote monitor on it so I can keep an eye on it for them.

[Shawn Pixley]

Dennis, sorry to hear about your friend's loss.

Last week we had the solar panels installed on the roof. The inspector should come today for the final inspection. I finally got around to building a couple of dedicated sleds for the table saw. One was a 45 degree panel bevel. The other was a 45 degree miter. This allowed me to cut the panels for the supersized cut-off box I am building. The panels got cut, the bottoms installed and the box glued up.

image.jpgimage.jpg

I'm pretty happy with the sleds.

[Charles Taylor]

Sorry to hear of your friends' losses. Three years ago yesterday was the day of an exceptionally destructive and deadly tornado outbreak in my neck of the woods. Whole neighborhoods were razed. We're on the lookout for potentially severe storms today and tonight, too, but not like that.

Finished building a gate for the privacy fence and installed a new dishwasher for our soon-to-be rental property. Also finished the complete takedown of a 1966 Rockwell/Delta drill press I picked up several weeks ago. Next is to strip and/or blast a few layers of paint so I can make it look purty again. I'm looking forward to having this machine replace my little benchtop press.

[Mike Ontko]

@Dennis, so sorry for your friends and all others in the midwest. I still have family in and around Minneapolis who get to deal with those types of heavy weather patterns, but the central most states always seem to get the worst of it.

@Shawn, you're going to like having solar! The house we bought/moved into a little over a year ago came with a newly installed 3-array system that satisfies most of our needs and feeds back to the grid when we're not using it, reducing our overall electric bill. I think the highest monthly electric bill I've had to pay so far was around $30, probably for lighting use around the holidays. Of course, I've only recently had my garage rewired for shop use, so we'll have to wait and see how consumption goes up in the next year.

My shop-to-be has been sitting still for the past two weeks, while I've been doing all of the usual Spring planting (small garden with 5 raised beds, 4 fruit trees, berries, etc.) and yard maintenance. I've been waiting for the upcoming May tent event at Grizzly (I'm only about 15 minutes away from their Bellingham showroom), hoping I might get lucky and find a deal on a G0490 8" jointer and/or a G0513 17" bandsaw. I did receive a new set of Narex Premium Bench chisels that I'd ordered from HWW. They'll need to be flattened and honed before I can put them to use though--just another of the many items on my to-do list.

[Shawn Pixley]

@Dennis, so sorry for your friends and all others in the midwest. I still have family in and around Minneapolis who get to deal with those types of heavy weather patterns, but the central most states always seem to get the worst of it.

@Shawn, you're going to like having solar! The house we bought/moved into a little over a year ago came with a newly installed 3-array system that satisfies most of our needs and feeds back to the grid when we're not using it, reducing our overall electric bill. I think the highest monthly electric bill I've had to pay so far was around $30, probably for lighting use around the holidays. Of course, I've only recently had my garage rewired for shop use, so we'll have to wait and see how consumption goes up in the next year.

My shop-to-be has been sitting still for the past two weeks, while I've been doing all of the usual Spring planting (small garden with 5 raised beds, 4 fruit trees, berries, etc.) and yard maintenance. I've been waiting for the upcoming May tent event at Grizzly (I'm only about 15 minutes away from their Bellingham showroom), hoping I might get lucky and find a deal on a G0490 8" jointer and/or a G0513 17" bandsaw. I did receive a new set of Narex Premium Bench chisels that I'd ordered from HWW. They'll need to be flattened and honed before I can put them to use though--just another of the many items on my to-do list.

Thanks Mike. We're installing a 7 KW system. i'm looking forward to seeing the meter run backward. We're on a tiered system and unfortunately, we are also in an area with predominately vacation homes so the baseline is quite low. The top tier rate is over $0.38 a KWH. Just buying us down into the lowest tier pays off quickly.