Sunday morning disaster!

After a hugely successful weekend of site work and lawn seeding, etc...

Around 11:15 am on Sunday morning, I drop a heavy iron rod on my finger while loading up Tim's truck. The tip of my left ring finger is hanging by a piece of skin. Not good. Panic sets in! I am covered in mud and need to leave the island immediately to get to the Emergency Room. So after trying not to bleed too much in the cottage, me and Tim bandage up my finger, I pack up my bag and rush for the ferry.

waiting...

waiting...

driving...

thinking...

By 1:15 pm I made it to the Firelands Urgent Care who took phenomenal care of me. I can't say enough good things about this facility, the staff and especially the doc who stitched up my finger like new.

THIS SUCKS!

dumb

So, several x-rays, 15 stitches and a Tetanus shot later, they send me on my way home.

--Kurt Cobain, "I think I'm dumb". 

Left hand x-ray

Bone tip sheared-off

Not to state the obvious, but I think for the rest of the season, I will be slowing down the pace somewhat.

I guess I should be thankful that I've done so much work alone with power tools and have not had any major injuries before this nasty occurrence.

Lot grading and grass seeding!

Big, big, big working weekend. The plan was to 1) finish the landscape wall and 2) get the entire lawn seeded. I finished up the wall, on Friday morning, by installing the 2 x 8 top cap, putting in some additional bracing, dropping in some drain pipe and finally back-filling to cover all the pipes.

Below is a photo of the finished wall, just waiting on final back-fill.

Landscape wall from front-to-back

Landscape wall - direct view

The work crew involved Chris and Tim Arnold plus Brian and Brandon Biltz. Here is a shot of Brandon on the Bobcat working on scraping and leveling the front yard.

Brandon on the Bobcat

Friday night, since Tim was staying at a cottage on the beach in trade for other work done on the island, he invited us over for a beach fire.

Beach fire with the crew

Saturday morning, we were back at it working all day with the plan of getting the seed down before dark.

Brian and Brandon working the property front-n-back 

Part of the new landscape wood wall was the backside of the dirt mound needed to cover the large drain pipe. Chris, Tim and me built a short 3-course stone wall to catch the dirt mound behind the cottage. Here is a series of photos...

Stone wall looking across towards Chris's new cottage

Stone wall from the patio door area

Stone wall and pipe hidden

Stone wall and septic

Shortly after dark on Saturday night, we finished up the seeding just in time for a light rain. The timing couldn't be more perfect. There were minimal to no visible rain puddles = job well done. Here is a photo from Sunday morning of the finished product!

Graded, leveled and seeded

 

Front driveway view

Since we had the heavy machines on site, we decided to push back the overgrown wooded area on the back edge of the property. So not only did we push back all the poison ivy and other junk foliage, we have like 15 more feet of yard to use.

New extended yard thanks to Brian and his tractor work

 Another shot of the extended back yard

Wishful thinking, the grass seed takes and comes in green and full...

Drain pipe/septic tank beautification

OK, sometimes weekends on Kelleys are not really that fun. Since we are hoping to get the lawn put in the following weekend, I needed to knock-out a huge job that I have been procrastinating for about 18 months. Time to hide the drain pipe and septic tank and make it landscape ready!

So Friday morning, I stopped at Home Depot to pick up all the lumber (11 - 4x4x8 posts, 30 - 2x6x8 boards and 8 - bags of Quickcrete). Sounds simple, but first you need to pick out all the straight boards from the pile on the shelves. This all pressure treated wood, so very wet and very heavy. After humping all this material up to the island, here is a photo just getting started...

Let's do this

The weather real bad earlier this week and I heard there were huge puddles of standing water around the property. Since I am working with a tight timeline, I needed to be able to tackle this job with minimal interference from mud issues. Thankfully, the yard/dirt was good-to-go and not too muddy but loose enough to help.

By 8:00 pm on Friday, I had 11 posts set in with 500 lbs of Quickcrete. Let me tell you, this was a colossal pain-the-in-the-azz. Although I did have a gas-powered auger, there was at least 4 times as much hand digging. Hand digging = no fun.

Work-in-progress and 11 posts set and plumb

It was too early to go to bed, so I hung Sophie's bedroom door, and set the rest of the standard closet doors in place, ready for final install some time soon.

Saturday morning, I got rolling on the wall install by 9:00 am. The weather was crazy windy and only in the high 50's. I needed to wrap this job up by end of day because, I had to leave early on Sunday morning for the Browns game. 

Coming along slowly but surely

By Saturday night around 9:00 pm... Pipe no more! I put a slick vertical 2x6 front fascia to dress up the look and cover the massive amount of screw holes. The kicker is that I installed these by screwing from the back side through, so there are no visible screw hole at all now. cool.  

Final product

This turned out great. I am super happy with the overall look. Plus, now I can hide the pipe and septic tank. I still need to install the top cap, put in some additional bracing and drain pipe to relieve any future ground pressure from pushing this wall.

Sunday morning, seriously before the crack of dawn, I had to pack up and head home for the Browns home opener.

Waiting for the 7:30 am ferry, here is a nice photo of the sun coming up from the east.

Early morning sunrise at Seaway Marina

After a back-breaking 20 hour manual labor marathon, it was a great to attend a big Browns victory over the New Orleans Saints to wrap-up the weekend. 

Go Browns!

More to come...

Labor day weekend - family style!

Big fun filled long family weekend after taking a quick break from the island...

The Cleveland Air Show was in town and as such the Blue Angels were practicing along the lake shore all day on Thursday. So if it wasn't difficult enough to get through the work day thinking ahead to the long weekend, try doing so while listening (and watching) F/A-18 Hornets fly by your window.

Blue Angels outside the EY office tower window - 16th floor

Thursday night, Anna and me started the weekend early and went to the Pre-season Browns game vs. the Chicago Bears. Check-out this photo below!

Me and Anna, my oldest baby girl

With the latest Browns stadium upgrades and colossal jumbo screens, our former seats in the upper Dawg Pound were relocated to a new section 351.  

Panorama view from the new seats

Friday morning, we got an early start with the first stop at Big Lots in North Olmsted to pick-up 2 queen mattress sets. Second stop, was Menards in Sandusky to pick-up 3 interior doors. I seriously don't think we could fit anything else in the truck bed.

Anna with a fully loaded truck

Friday afternoon, I worked on assembling Sophie's bunk bed. This is a nice unit that comes with one twin and one full mattress plus a cool angled ladder to get to the top bunk. So far, so good. Kinda nice to get some real beds in the cottage, since Sophie has been sleeping on a futon or air mattress for over a year. 

Working on Sophie's new bed

My mom joined us for the weekend on Saturday and booked two nights at the Venture Resort. This has been an annual Labor Day event. Mom and the kids love the Venture pool! 

The pool princess

lil' sis and big sis

 Nama and lil' Neil enjoying the pool

Saturday and Sunday, I installed more flooring, hung doors and worked on the main bathroom. I was able to finally fix the perplexing leak in the bathroom sink drain. This was my third attempt at this and I was starting to get discouraged. Anyway, I just wrapped the top of the drain, where the leak was happening, with some Teflon tape, and tightened it all back up. I checked for leaks probably 20 times over the course of the remaining weekend. So far, so good. Hopefully, this is the last time I will mention this drain.

Master bedroom flooring progress

By end-of-day Sunday, I had finished the flooring in the entire cottage other than the master bathroom. In addition, I was able to hang three doors including the one for the master bedroom. Even without a locking door knob, it is so nice to be able to actually close the door.

 Master bedroom door

When the crew was out shopping at Vi's, I slipped away to take this photo of the Kelleys Mansion

 The Kelleys Mansion

Labor day weekend calls for another rocket launching event! We made our way to the open ball field, checked the wind and set-up the launch pad. On our second launch of the afternoon, we had a system malfunction and the parachute did not open as expected. Needless to say, the rocket plummeted straight down and stuck deep in the ground tail-end up. The impact kinda smashed the tube, so now the rocket is officially out-of-commission. Here is a photo of the last launch...

The rocket's last voyage

Happy Sophie girl and Bon on the ferry

HUGE FAMILY NEWS!

Putting all of this cottage stuff aside, Amie and Scott's new baby boy, Aaron Kanengeiser, was born early Friday morning. Here is a photo of me and lil' Aaron on Monday, Labor Day.

Aaron Kanengeiser - 3 days old

Congratulations Amie and Scott! We love you guys!