I know I have been scarce of late and I apologize. I haven't done much in the shop except for rebuilding the benches in the pictures below. We have been doing a lot of yard work. Brought in 5 yards of topsoil and 60 rolls of sod so far.
This last week has been horrible for me. On Monday I took my new truck in for it's first scheduled service, and while I was waiting for it I wandered into the showroom. That was a big mistake. There was the Camaro of my dreams, a 2010 2LT Transformer Special Edition. I called the spouse to come see it, and if any of you remember the miter saw story, this one went much the same.
The conversation went something like this: (if you haven't seen the Transformers movies you might not get it.)
Me: "Can we get it?"
Spouse: "Are you sure you want it in yellow?"
Me: "It's NOT yellow, it's BUMBLE BEE!"
So we offered the 2001 Blazer as a trade and struck the deal and we are picking it up on Friday. Waiting all week has been pure HELL! I have been too distracted to do ANYTHING! The spouse told me to stay away from the power tools!
Then today I came home from a meeting at work and the spouse tells me the Blazer won't start. I went into PANIC mode. The Blazer has to be running when we bring it in to trade tomorrow! It's the first time since the day we bought it it hasn't started. WHY TODAY!!!!
The spouse went to work and I called a local mechanic who was too busy to look at it, so I called our regular Blazer mechanic who is 25 miles away. He told me it was probably the anti-theft system and gave me some instructions over the phone. 10 minutes later I had it running like a top! That man is in for a BIG reward!
So if the sky doesn't fall and all the stars align just right tomorrow I will have my BEE! Keep your fingers crossed for me. You can see what kind of luck I have.

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Nice going Deb, that's a beauty!!! I've been having the same problem as you, yard work and all, I just can't get back into the the shop. A couple of weeks ago I did finish my new RT top, now to build the cabinet.

I still have two more chairs to assemble and one 6 foot matching bench. I still have to cut and finish the wood for the bench.
I did get to try out my HVLP spray kit for painting the cast iron bench parts. That worked very slick, except that I did it outside on a bit of a windy day and all the maple keys in the driveway kept flying into the wet paint. Most of it just brushed off though. I'll have to rig up something to do it indoors next time. But yes I like HVLP painting very much!

That is a real nice looking camaro...but where are you going to put the lumber?

Chuck, we jus bought a new Silverado for the lumber. I got it all covered now!

That's a nice patio area you have, Deb.

BTW, your'e not going to move any tools out of the garage to house that new addition are you?


James

I want to see it in your driveway, Deb.. That's a beaut!

James I will love that car to death but it will stay in the driveway. The garage is for tools! The spouse and I have had this discussion several times. The tools always win.

Jim I will be posting pics of me and my new baby tomorrow. Right now I am already shopping for aftermarket mods for it. Not that I can afford any of them for the next 5 or 6 years. LOL OH I can't wait!!!

All I need now is to win the dang lottery! I guess in many ways I already have.

James the patio/backyard is a long term project. 2 summers so far. We were hoping to put a new deck on the house next year, but with the new vehicles that may get pushed a bit further along. I don't feel confident enough to build the deck myself. I don't know enough about construction to try it. We have a deck but it is too small and it is rotting in spots. I'll have to patch it for a while yet. Hopefully we will get the "lawn" finished this year. We haven't decided whether we want to do more sod or rototill the other half of the back yard in the fall and put seed in. We tilled and seeded the front yard last year and didn't have grass until the middle of July. The "mud yard" wasn't pretty. So far the sod seems to be working well. It's just very hard on the water bill. We had a heat wave last week so we were watering for 2 hours a day. A little rain this week has helped.

I remember the *horrendous* water bills the few years I lived in Colorado, and that was during water rationing!

That's one thing we're fortunate with here in Anchorage... There are no (residential) meters and no restriction since we have *lots* of water and about 20 years ago they did a system upgrade to provide all Anchorage can use at least through 2050, homeowners are on flat-rate. Commercial users are metered, however.