We Turned A Corner

We are now officially broke. I have had this bill for the last 25 years . I spent it the other day on getting ready for our next 6 months. This has been my security blanket for a long time. It was hard to let go but it was time. I love the colour of this paper .
I wish I had more of them. LOTS MORE.

Daisy Got Her Official Import Papers Today

Daisy was so exciter to pick up the mail today. This isn't a faxed acceptance but a real hard copy. It was the first letter she has ever gotten and it is an important one. She is going to the Bahamas.

Daisy May - AKA -  Dr. Daisy  - AKA -  Snaggle tooth is now an official World Traveller.

Another Busy Tuesday Tuning Pianos

This was a great day. I tuned 4 pianos in the Vernon area for really wonderful customers. I love when I get people that I can laugh with and that was who had their pianos tuned today. The only problem was the last piano. Really nice people but the place was a mess. Here is a picture of the room they jammed me into. Note to self. Keep house tidy at all times because you never know when some crazy blogger is going to come over for a visit.

It is a very kid friendly house which I think is great but it would be nice if some of the activities could at least be shovelled to the side when the piano tuner is coming to fix the piano.

It may be a little hard to tell from this angle but there is a book shelf in front of the piano . This makes it hard to stand in front of the keyboard and tune.

I don't know if my friends have noticed but I am a big guy. I asked these people last year to make sure the piano was moved out from the book case when I come to tune it in 2013. I don't fit in tiny spots like this. Well, It never happened so if you look at my tuning hammer you will know which was the last note in the treble to be tuned.

It's A Busy Weekend

We loaded up the trailer with all of our larger  home plants. Ruth has had some of these plants for 15 to 20 years.We don't want to see them die but we are now leaving for the winters or maybe longer so Ruth and I decided we should give them to our friends Gus and Bev. They both seem to have that magical green thumb. We know that this was a good choice to make.

We also know that if we decide to stay in Kelowna and buy a smaller place they will start some healthy slips for us. Our house use to look like a jungle when Ruth brought these plants inside for the winter.

Breakfast was at Shelly and Rob's place this morning. They also had the Savages and McMillan's over for breakfast. It was a goodbye get together for us. Very nice. Rob is a talented furniture builder and he has built this wonderful coffee table out of some piano parts I supplied for him. Such a great imagination. If we were going to stay here in the house I would like to get this table from him. It's so cool. We just don't know what we are doing next year.

The iPhone camera doesn't do it justice.

After breakfast we drove to Lake Country to get Carrie . We drove her to the airport where she headed off to Vancouver. She is renewing one of her tickets this week that will keep her qualified on the ships with the Canadian Coast Guard. She sure looks happy getting away for 5 days.

When we got home this afternoon Ruth and I finished wiring up the hull of the Borealis Kayak that I am building. It's starting to take shape.

Tomorrow I will fibreglass the hull. Who Knows , I may even have it ready for the water before we leave in eight more sleeps. Yahoo.

Musicians Are Strange Animals

I laughed so hard while tuning a piano for a music teacher yesterday. She was going to be out when I got to her house  in Penticton so she said the place was open and I should just let myself in. She has an old Yamaha Grand that I have taken care of for years. It is a nice piano .  (For a Yamahaha)

In my opinion the older Yamaha's were fine instruments. That is before they started using all the plastic and Particle board parts. I would be hard pressed to buy one now for myself. It's like McDonalds. Likely the best recognized  hamburger known to man but it isn't the one I would want to put into my body. It's the power of marketing. That's what makes the world go round I guess.

 When I sat down at the piano in her studio I saw a note she had left for me. She said there was one key sticking for some reason and she had marked the key with an X pencil mark . If you look hard you can see the mark on the D above middle C.

I went to open the piano up but couldn't. Like any Grand piano , the key cover has a tendency to slam shut at the most inappropriate times. She solved the problem with her engineer husbands help. He glued the key cover in an open position to the piano cabinet. HAHAHAHA. You can JUST see the line of glue running the length of the fall board. Nothing like thinking ahead.

She came home as I was just finishing the tuning . I told her what my problem was. I couldn't open up the piano to fix the note. She rolled her eyes ( I don't know why) and we both pried on the fall board for a few minutes before it finally let go. I fixed the sticky note and laughed about this for part of the ride home. Unbelievable. I have never seen this type of fix before.

Daisy Got A New Ride Today

I saw this on Dragon's Den the other day and thought it was a great idea. Delivery day is by next wednesday. I told them that if it wasn't here by the 30th I didn't want it.

We are planning on buying two bikes when we get to Florida in October but were thinking we likely couldn't go on long rides when we get to the Bahamas because we can't see leaving Daisy for hours in the boat by herself. This will make a difference. Check out their web site. it's pretty cool. 

http://www.buddyrider.ca/

I'm Upgrading A Door Lock Today

While we are gone and renting out our home we needed to have a lock off in the house where we could store our contents if we wanted to have proper coverage with our insurance  company.
Not a big deal. Ruth bought the new door locks yesterday and I just installed them. Clean and Easy. IMPORTANT.Buy the proper replacement handle and lock.

Start with the original handles and remove 2 screws.

Next I had to slide the original latch out and replace it with a heavier duty latch.

Slide the new locking handle into the door.

 Slide the other side over the mechinism and attach with 2 screws supplied in kit.

Voila. Easy as pie.

I was a little concerned about doing this job because my friend Peter in Winnipeg did a similar changeover this week. He tells me he can do anything . Build bridges , design special snow plough's for the railway to move the snow off the track in the Rocky mountains. Even manage factories with over 100 men working for him but I am starting to wonder. It's just a little door knob and lock.

Nice Job Peter. Hahaha

The House Is Now Complete

Ruth and I like everything to be nice and we are both really proud of how our home shows except for our pool deck. Last week we decided to have Sierra Stone from Vernon redo the deck for us. They started yesterday and got half done. They were here today for most of the day and finished the job. Mike is the boss and he works harder than his employees. The guys were telling me that it is strange working for a man who does most of the really hard labour himself and they just have to watch.

Mike is a very nice man. Easy to talk to and full of great stories. He told me one of him diving into a pool that had a cover on and rescuing a little fawn that was drowning. He saw a doe in distress beside a pool next door to where he was working so he wandered over to see why she was acting the way she was. When he saw a fawn under the pool cover and laying on the bottom of the pool he dove in , dragged the baby out and gave mouth to mouth to bring it back to life. The fawn came to after a few minutes and joined the Mom. The employees backed up his story so I am sure it is true. Great story. It was nice to have him here for a few days. I really enjoyed talking to him.

The pool area looks like a million bucks now. We are so glad we did this. Now the house is back in pristine condition and we don't want to sell it anymore. Having said that , If someone comes along and offers us what we want I think it will likely be gone.

This Is What 40,000. Pounds Of Rock And Cement Look Like

So my friend Gus and his wife Bev bought a great place on the edge of town last year but they hated the sidewalk that ran the full length of their house. I can't say that I blamed them. The sidewalk was made up of 24x24 cement patio blocks that dipped terribly away from their house. I wish I had a picture to include. What is amazing is that they were in a terrible accident last year where they got rear ended by a girl on her cell. Dr . Marcus Thiel has been working with them for the last year and it seems to have been successful. I can hardly believe how strong these two are after such an ordeal. This sidewalk has about 16 - 3 foot deep footings all dug by hand and then a 4 inch cement sidewalk poured the full length of the house. All done by hand in a portable cement mixer that he bought from my neighbour. After that there was 16,000. pounds of stone hand laid and levelled on top. 

 There was also a set of cement stairs that were sagging terribly into the yard away from the  house. He built a new set of stairs out of those 12 inch cinder blocks , filled them with cement and then covered them with these black Granite stones imported from Alberta. No job too big for this couple.

All the earth he removed shovel by shovel went into a raised area that he built around the pond they put in this spring. It's like a little oasis.

He was telling me yesterday on the phone that he had started the second set of stairs going from the sidewalk in front of their main entrance of the house and would take them to the lower level of their yard. I dropped by this afternoon with my building inspector hat on to check it out. He had also welded up the hand railing.

 I also noticed that the grass has started to grow on the new lawn they just put in. I get tired just looking at all their work they have done .  It is a great job they are doing.

So as I was leaving the other day Gus dug up a bunch of potato's he grew this year. They were delicious. We took them to the Island last weekend and shared them with Sharon and her family.

This Damn Box

I built this box last summer to cover the pool cover when the pool was open. This is what it looked like under construction. It was a fairly big job. 

Here is the finished product before the cedar decking was placed on top. My engineer friend Peter suggested I build an internal reverse bridge system inside the cabinet to support the long open area. I did this but it still sagged. I was very disappointed.

I was a little choked with how this all happened. Ruth and I have decided to resurface the deck around the pool . The company that does this can fit us in later this week but I have to remove the pool cover and guides so they can lay the new surface. I have been resisting the new deck even though it was against my better judgment to do so because I didn't want the extra work load at this time. Common sense kicked in. Our house is looking great and everything works perfect around here except for the pool deck. Over the last 10 years we have developed a few crack in the finish and it drives me nuts.

 Here I go. Lets clear this thing out. Ouch. Another job to do on my list.

It took me two days to build this cover. One hour to destroy.

My Steinway

I have a lot of projects to finish before we leave for the boat and I am feeling a little stressed. I have accomplished quite a lot in the last couple of days. I foolishly bought a 9 foot Steinway five years ago that was a basket case. There are only a few of these pianos left on the planet so this one is special.

It had been rebuilt poorly by a piano tech in Calgary and after he did the job it was retired to a basement of a museum for the next 28 years in storage. Ego is a dangerous thing. When I got it I said that I could resurrect it. I will finish it and it will be a be a great instrument but this is one project I would never attempt again. It isn't worth the amount of work I have done for what I will get paid when I sell it.
This Steinway was built in 1869 . The instrument came out of the New York Steinway Factory and I contacted them to try to find out who bought it when it was new. It turns out that it was purchased originally by a family in New York who also built pianos. I imagine they bought it to try to copy it because there were quite a few pianos coming out of New York at this time that had similar cabinets. The cabinet is made from Brazilian Rosewood which is now on the endangered list. You can't even buy a piece of wood like this.

This instrument was refinished after I bought it by an artist in Calgary and since then I have also replaced the Sound board , Bridges , Strings , Pins and more.

The piano action had been so badly rebuilt I decided to go to Sacramento last year to take a coarse on how to do the geometry of a piano action and redesign it. This piano has cost me a fortune. After the coarse I built a new upper action as well as a new back action for this instrument.This is the back action. It looks simple but wasn't easy to design or install.

This is the cavity everything fits in. What a huge job.

I had a new key frame and keys made for this instrument in Germany by the Mason and Hamlin company last year. It took about 12 months to have it built . The key frame and top action alone were over $10,000. It will be worth it in the long run. I spent yesterday and today putting the action and hammers together. Big job but it looks good. I sure am happy to have Ruth cheering me on because I would have burnt this piano a long time ago. She comes in every so often to say it looks great and that I am doing a good job. It's that encouragement that has kept me going on this.

 I stuck the action into the piano tonight after I installed the hammers just to see if it would make some noise.  The tone is magnificent. This is like an old Stradivarius. I was very impressed with the sound. Next I need to install back checks and dampers. Jobs I have never liked doing but I know I can get thru it. I got this far.

Saturday At Sharon's

It's never boring here.I mentioned to Sharon that she should clip the wings on her two cockateels before they flew away on her. I said it was just a matter of time before that would happen . This is the voice of experience talking. That is exactly what happened to her bird when she lived at home with us. I didn't realize at the time that she heard me volunteering to hold the birds in a towel while she clipped the wings. I hate clipping birds wings. That is why her bird got away in the first place. Rats.

                                                                     She is very good at this.

She reminded me of that show "Edward Scissors  Hands".

Two birds. 10 Minutes. It was magical.

This little guy didn't know what happened. His head got out of the towel as I was holding him but his beak missed my finger when he snapped at me. Whew.

One happy (grounded)bird.

Sharon's Smile and Laugh is so infectious. I sure love being with her.

Here Jack is explaining to us how the birds have to stand on their perch after getting the wings clipped.

He is so cute.

So Isaac was showing Ruth how he can climb the rope swing to the top. So strong and so agile.

He is also so beautiful. This was a great shot Ruth got of him.

We spent the afternoon on the dock. They live in a great place.

Isaac wanted us to help scoop the water out of his row boat so we told him to bring it over to the dock we were sitting on from the other dock. He kept saying it was too hard but we made him bring it anyways.It seemed to take him forever to paddle the short distance.

We laughed when he got over to our dock. There was about 8 inches of water in this boat.

Once empty he took Jack for a row over to the beaver damn. He was thrilled with how easy it was to row with the water gone.

Jack loved the ride.

I laughed. Ruth brings her Kindle down to read but spends her time with a paper book.

After dinner Chris and I took the boys down to the Tuck Shop for an ice cream cone. Camp was over today for the year so everything is free. Yippee.

Isaac and Elliot fooling around.

Jack wondering if this ice cream treat is really going to happen.