Mutt and Jeff Winterize a Pool

So Randy and I decided to winterize his pool this afternoon. 

Here is where we start to pour antifreeze into the system. Randy held the hose and funnel while I poured the pink liquid all over his hands. What a team.

After that portion of the task was completed we stretched the cover across the pool.

This is just after he asked me if I wanted a beer or a wine. I told him I would love whatever he was having. The look on his face told me that he was having a tough time deciding.

This cover is very good. I wish we had something like this over our pool.

We Gathered This Morning

To visit Tracy's bench as a group. The out of towners who contributed to the bench couldn't make it but we were wishing they could have been here with us. There were 13 of us who showed up . We met in the parking lot of the park at 9:00 , Sunday morning.

At 9:05 we headed down the path into the canyon. We made lots of noise cuz of Bear scat on the trail.

Once we all got there we gathered for a picture.

Wayne and Lorna brought Champagne and Randy brought glasses and orange juice.

As we raised our glasses in memory to Tracy our friend Lorna gave a very nice toast. I know that Tracy  would have approved. I like to think she heard it .

Later we hiked down to the Chinese Ovens where we got a bit of a family picture. Carrie came with us this morning. She has been quite close to Tracy these last few years. It was a happy and sad morning. Lorna had said that it was sad to lose Tracy and we should be happy to have known her. So True.

We checked that the old car was still sitting in the creek bed before heading back up the trail to the cars.

The morning finished off at the Harvest where we all had breakfast together. Its a beautiful location.

Ruth and I Are Thinking Of Our Friend Tracy

So after our friend Tracy passed away there was a group of us who gathered together and bought a bench in memory of her and had it placed in a park that is on the greenway. This is a popular walking trail that goes thru Kelowna. Tracy liked Layer Cake mountain so we asked to have the bench face the mountain . I took this picture of Layer Cake mountain when Ruth and I entered the park this afternoon.

The bench was placed in the park last week and we wanted to see how it looked and make sure it was facing the direction that we all wanted. It is a beautiful spot. We know that Tracy would have approved of this. 

Ruth and I talked all the way down the canyon until we came upon her bench. It was very emotional when we got there . Not what I expected. I thought I would be telling Ruth how Tracy would like this spot and that she would approve of the location. I think that Ruth was thinking the same thing. I am a little verclempt writhing this. We both stood in front of the bench in silence for about 5 minutes staring at Layer Cake mountain listening to the river run thru the canyon below us. 

We are both very happy this bench is here in her memory .

So on Sunday morning there are about 18 of us (Tracy's friends ) coming here to see the bench and have a Toast to our Dear Friend. 

Its Been An Interesting Week

So I have a customer who bought a player grand piano off of me last summer and he wants the piano painted red. I picked the piano up at his home on Wednesday and took it to his friends garage to disassemble and get ready to paint. His friend has a body shop here in kelowna and is willing to do the red paint job. So his garage at home is about 6000 sq. ft and is loaded with custom cars and Harley's.    I loved walking around here looking at these cars. What a place.

This is one of his race cars. I understand that the motor is over 1300 horse. Unbelievable.

So I have this artist who is supposed to be custom painting a piano for me and he has stopped returning my calls , emails and texts. This has had me worried. The piano was started last year and was supposed to be done about 5 months ago for the tune of $18000. Unfortunately the artist has disappeared. I know where the body of the piano is but the artist has hidden the parts so that he is in control. He has only done the silver base coat and one coat of clear. There are still lots of clear to go plus the custom finish. I have been a little miffed to say the least. As I am walking around this garage guess what I saw. Yup. My piano parts.

Seems like the artist knows the guy who has this paint shop and took my piano parts to his garage to hide them all. Seems like the guy who owns the paint shop is more than happy to help me out here. Thank goodness. I thought I had lost this piano.It sure is funny how life works out.


On another note. We had a really nice evening . I made a lemon pineapple chicken dish . I love cooking. I love eating.                                                                   Once again ...........Life is Good..........This Life Sure Is Fun..........

I'm starting to feel back to normal

So we went out for brunch at a friends condo down town on the lake a few days ago. Ruth took a bucket of fresh fruit for them as a host/hostess gift. I don't know where she found the smiling pail but it was a hit.

Now that I have finished doing all of the renovations at the store with my kids I am going out tuning pianos again. Today I tuned three pianos in Vernon as well as installed a trolly in a church for their grand piano up on the stage. The highlight of the day was this little dog that laid by my feet for almost the whole time I was tuning their piano. It felt good to get back into my normal routine.

Back At The Store With Carrie

So now we have to remove a shelving system made of wood that is between the floors. It has 2x12 braces with 2x4 and 3/4 inch plywood on top. Carrie and I spent all day Saturday pulling it out and then part of Sunday finishing it off. It was a huge job crawling 50 feet down the 3 foot crawl space and dragging the wood out . Everything was nailed together making it a tough and time consuming job.I never want to do anything like that again. This is looking down the crawl space after Carrie and I had removed the plywood.

To top it off I smashed my finger and needed stitches. I went to the hospital at the end of the day to get sewn up but the wait was about 4 hours . I decided to leave . Ruth just cleaned it up and I have been keeping a good bandage on it ever since. I think it will be fine. Next job was to cover the hole with drywall . The workshop is on the other side and we need a suspended fire proof ceiling to get to code.

I came down on Monday with my helper and built a frame that we could raise up and drywall on both sides.

So it turned out perfect. This will make it easy to suspend the ceiling.

This is the before shot from inside the little shop. We were looking at the Q-deck here and the city wanted to make me install 4 sprinkler heads if there was no fire proof dropped ceiling installed. Cost was close to $1000. Being a Scot I decided to put in the new ceiling. Cost was under $200.

Carrie and I weren't really too sure on how to do the dropped ceiling but felt that it couldn't be too hard.
It took us about 2.5 hours to get it in . Richard , our helper was there to grab tools and hand us whatever we needed. That saved us lots of time. The new ceiling looks great. Lights get hooked up tomorrow . Carrie (as well as myself) was thrilled with how good it turned out.

So on my way home I really felt like I needed some fruit. Rob and Shelly are in Europe for 3 weeks and they told us to pick their grapes while they are away or else they will just rot. I went over there on my way home and loaded up on grapes.

I noticed that the apple pear tree was dropping all of the fruit because it is getting ripe. They are the best tasting treats I have ever had. I ate about 7 of them on the way home. Because of all the apple pears and all the grapes I ate on the way home I have been banished from the bedroom tonight.

Thanksgiving 2012

This was a really nice evening.We were planning our dinner at Carrie and Brads place but at the last minute we moved it to our place. We have a little more room around the table than they do and our cousin Wes and his mom accepted a dinner invite at the last minute. We were happy that they could come . There is nothing like family. So Carrie , Brad , Kids plus Anita and Wes joined Ruth and myself for a great turkey dinner. We laughed lots and sat around the table until late in the evening. Nice night.

I Failed A Stress Test

Nothing bothers me very much as a rule. The rule was broken this last weekend. We rented our commercial building out 3 weeks ago to a young man from Edmonton who is opening a business here in Kelowna. We were excited to see it rented out.

So he bought new office furniture for 6 people as well as couches and tables for a lounge area. Last Friday the city came thru the building to OK him for a business license but discovered quite a few problems with the building. He phoned me at 1:00 and said we had a few issues that needed to be dealt with.

I went down to see him immediately because I wanted to know what was going on. When we bought the building 7 years ago we knew that there had been a mezzanine built in the back warehouse that may cause a problem. It was built out of racking and we were hoping that would make it legal. No such luck. Racking is fine but once there is plywood put on top of it the racking become a floor. That's a problem. Other problems were that there were no plumbing permits pulled for a shower or a kitchen. No electric permits pulled for an oven or washing machine. No permits pulled for changes to the sprinkler system. There was also a caretakers suite on the second floor which was allowed in this complex but there were no permits pulled for that so it became an illegal suite once the city found out that it was up there.This means Ruth and I can't rent or sell the building.

I went to the city and the woman in charge of my part of town was great. She explained everything and said they would work with me in every possible way to make it work for us. The list of what I thought to be near impossible changes we  had to do stressed me more than I have ever been before. It was a terrible weekend. I never get too upset or stressed about very much but this bothered me more than I could have imagined. Ruth was away for 3 days with some girl friends and actually came home on Saturday evening because she was worried about me. I guess I didn't sound too good when she phoned me Saturday afternoon. I was glad to see her when she showed up.  Carrie later told me that she was worried I might have a heart attack when she was talking to me. I was more stressed than she had ever seen me. I told her that I was also concerned about how I was feeling.

So on Monday I spent the day getting all these problems figured out and lining up the people needed to make it right. By Wednesday I had the permit to fix the problems and the right people in place to help get it done. I was starting to feel better. My son in law ( who is a journeyman electrician ) was at the store by 8:30 with one of his employees tearing the wiring out and making it right. He removed the 220 wiring from the stove , washing machine and lots of other problems that were happening upstairs. It was / is  a huge job. He worked non stop from 8:30 until 7:00 in the evening. I took this picture of him sitting on the floor taking his first break of the day at about 4:00. I was on my way home but he was still at it.

This guy is usually very animated. He was very quiet when I left but was still going for a few more hours. The way he stepped up to the plate and helped when I had a problem was great. He tells me he is only about 50% done with the wiring that is needed to bring it back to being to code.

So today ( Friday ) the sprinkler engineer came to check out what was done. He is going to charge $1000. for his report and I will need to reconfigure the sprinkler system. All do able. But it is going to be  Costly. At this point I just want to make it right. The inspectors and city are all very nice to us and are willing to work with us . This we are very grateful for.

For the last 3 days Carrie and I have been working on the mezzanine to make it what the city will accept. The first order was to tear it down but that is next to impossible because it is also the ceiling to the main floor show room . I suggested that we close it off and make it not accessible . The city said they would accept that . This is the new wall we have built across the back. It is almost done in this picture. We have to lose the stairs and replace them with a ladder and here we have started to shrink the doorway at the top of these stairs into a large trap door.

Carrie framed and drywalled the two passage ways coming off the loft area onto the mezzanine . She is such a hard worker. She is also fun to work with. I wish that this was a happier project.

So we have had a fellow named Richard helping us do this reno. He is a great guy who is ready for any job we throw at him. He has made this project a lot easier to complete.

This is all going to be wasted space. Its too bad we are going to have it closed off . I'm glad that I have Carrie working here at the building with me. I find it interesting on how life is. The sprinkler engineer was telling me about two options I had for the main floor sprinkler system  to make it legal and I told him I would let him know which direction I would go with it once I talked with my daughter. She makes me feel confident in what is going on here .

We have lots more to do before the city will give us our occupancy permit and so I think I will likely do more blogs on how it is going.

The only good thing about this mess is how my family has pulled together as a family to solve this problem. It makes me feel so safe and happy to have the partner and kids I have.