Kelly Miller Circus

Just got back from a few actual vacation days on the island, spending some time with the family and going to the famous annual Kelly Miller Circus. This is really a great show and experience. This circus is celebrating 75 years of road production. We were able to catch the 4 pm show on Monday. Here is a great shot of the elephants...

Under the big top - old school

Before, between and after all of the shows, the circus crew lets you ride the elephants, ponies and camels. All the girls rode the elephant. Lil Neil was terrified and would not go near them. So we will have to try again next year.

Anna, Bon and Nama riding the elephant

 

Check-out this awesome photo below, taken by Bon, probably 15 feet away. Just an amazing beautiful animal. In the morning before the shows start, the crew has to set-up all the tents and stuff.

 

One of the six Bengal tigers - great close-up shot

Bon, Nama and the kids decided to go to Put-In-Bay for the day on Tuesday. They let me have some time to work on the cottage. 

 

Nama, Anna, Sophie and Neil at Put-In-Bay

 



I managed to put up drywall tape in about 20 corners and the first coat of mud on the ceiling in Neil's room. What you see below, needs to be repeated in the other three bedrooms, 4 remaining closets, 2 bathrooms and the main living/dining area... And that is just the first coat of mud! holy frijole!

We all went out for dinner at Docker's on Tuesday night to watch the boats dock and enjoy the scenery and great food.

Me and my boy

I won't be going up again until the weekend of August 16th to continue working on drywall, and insulation. My high-level goal (as of today) is to have ALL insulation work done by end of August. Drywall will continue on into the Fall and hopefully we can get moving on the wood ceiling in the main room by end-of-season... fingers crossed.

Solo weekend - nice weather

I was able to take a vacation day on Friday and then get to the island later Thursday night. The weather was unseasonably cool for late July. Very nice for island work.

Friday night, the Arnold's took me out to dinner and I caught the sunset at Portside Marina.

Sunset at Portside Marina

 

Later on, I ran into my cousin John and family who were docked at Seaway Marina for the night. I met them Saturday morning for breakfast on the boat.

 

Back at it...

 

Spending hour and hours working alone and listening to classic rock, although I have heard the same songs for 25 years, I am discovering new lyrics that I never knew. Funny

 

Here is the rough cut-out for the recessed bar shelving to come. This will probably be like 3 shelves finished in either natural wood stain or painted white. Not sure yet.

 



Bar shelf nook - rough cut-out

Hanging drywall around the panel using left-over scraps. Every step of the way looking more and more finshed.

 

Drywall around the panel

In the utility room, I was able to finish the drywall, including the ceiling (and insulation), do the corners, and apply the first coat of mud.

I wanted to get this room the farthest along as far as drywall is concerned because I have it filled now with tools and stuff. I can't keep moving everything out of the way every time you want to work on/in this room. The biggest challenge with this room is that I am officially out of full sheets of drywall and I do not want to buy any more and lug them on the ferry. I do have a ton of large scrap pieces that I am using to finish up. So... this room will have many, many more seams than preferred. But joint compaound is cheap and you know what they say, "do your best and mud the rest".

Utility room drywall hung and first coat of mud

 

For the rest of the cottage, I was able to mud all walls (including closets) seams and screw holes with the first coat. Next time (when I get at least a day) I plan to do all of the ceiling seams and corners.

 



Lil Neil's room - wall mud first coat done

The insulation saga continues and will for the next few weeks at least. My goal is to be insulation complete by the Labor Day weekend, hopefully sooner. What you see in the photo below is my proof-of-concept for the vaulted ceiling. I wasn't sure the best product or proper size. These are 24 inch wide, 4 ft long batts with the kraft paper facing. Just staple them to the rafters and you are good-to-go.

Vaulted ceiling insulation started

 

All-in-all, a very productive weekend. I also, removed many of the smaller scraps of cut drywall to make more room for everything else and generally cleared out unusable crap!

 

Bonnie is headed-up on Friday for her new annual "Girls Weekend". I will be bringing the kids and Nama up on Sunday for the Circus next week and a few vacation days.

 

Hopefully, I can get some work done on the cottage as well. Have to wait and see...



Insulation "Fest" 2013

Big island weekend. It was officially Island Fest on Kelleys and the whole downtown was set-up with all kinds of food and vendors, etc. Saturday night included an awesome fireworks display that was really a great show, very cool.

After not going up to the island in nearly a month, I had a lot of stuff to do in a short window. Not to mention it was brutally hot and humid.

I had to stop at Menard's on the way to load up with over-priced insulation. The picture below does not really do this justice, because although is looks like a normal load, the Menard's guy had to use a fork lift to get this stuff in the truck. This is 4 packages of 11 - 4 ft batts all bundled together on top.

Insulation load #1 - boring

The Arnold's Food Truck made its debut for Island Fest Weekend. They served up all kinds of tasty Asian specialities all weekend long. If the Food Truck is rockin', please come a knockin'!

Good Eats Food Truck - Chris and Kiki Arnold

 

Saturday night, the Caddyshack featured Almost Famous from the westside of Cleveland. They packed the house, kicked some serious ass and had the crowd acting up in typical July fashion. Brad showed up to party on Saturday and we closed out the Caddyshack.

 



"Almost Famous" - live at the Caddy Shack

Probably the worst job so far with the cottage, is installing attic insulation. The material is so itchy, cumbersome, and it's consistently over 100 deg. But by far, beyond the heat and itch, the worst thing about it, is that you CAN'T get at the area you need to work on. Whatever technique you try to use to out think the insulation, nothing works, and you just deal with it sucking bad.

1st and foremost, I had to wrap the supply duct work because running the a/c in super hot/humid conditions causes the duct work to sweat and drip. I ran the a/c for hours on end starting on Friday evening and was surprised by the amount of dripping condensation on Saturday morning. Thankfully, I wrapped 75% on Friday night. The trick is, I had to turn off the a/c, towel off the wet duct work, and finish the wrap job as fast as possible while battleling the impending heat and humidity.

Finally, I wasn't able to capture a photo, I layed down over 500 sqft of R-30 insulation on top of the drywall ceilings in all of the 4 bedrooms.

Supply duct work wrapped with insulation

 

Below are some photos of the main bath room. Notice the sun tunnel installed in the ceiling. This is a great solution to bring in natural light in a small room with no windows. Thanks to Albert Hobar for mudding up this room and others when their family stayed at the cottage last week.



Main bath room sun tunnel and mud 

Sunday, completely burned out from insulation, I started drywalling the utility room.

The tankless water heater and pex manifold drywalled

Planning to do a ton of work next weekend. More to come...

Leach field leveled

The cottage still needs a ton of work done with the lot itself. One outstanding issue was that we had too much dirt (~approx 12 inches) piled on the top of the septic leach field. The problem with this is:

1. The septic field is based on an evaporation style leaching system and too much dirt may prevent this from working properly
2. The dirt supply (like most homeowners on our part of the island) is very limited, so any dirt that could be re-purposed is ideal

George, Chris and Tim were able to get it done on Sunday, July 14th.

Leach field, scraped and leveled... flat as a pancake!

Big thanks to George for using his Bobcat to move this dirt and do the grading. Another shout-out to Chris and Tim for coordinating and making it happen on a very hot Sunday in July. Very much appreciated!

You can't spell "KID ROCK" without "KI"

Although we have spent another weekend away from the beloved island, I had an extended 4th of July weekend that started with seeing KID ROCK at Blossom on Tuesday, July 2nd.

Me and Bon at Blossom ready for the show

The K-I-D takes the stage

Bon got this great close-up photo

In my opinion, no one says is better, to quote the K-I-D...

"In an old lawn chair,

And my family near,

Nowhere to go,

No place I'd rather be..."

 

- KID ROCK

 

Cottage updates...

 

Unfortunately, I have no updates to share. We have not been to the island in weeks. The weather has been real funny this season as it has rained some everyday for almost three weeks. I heard from the neighbors that our yard is a huge mud pit.

 

Next steps will be to get rolling on the insulation!

 



Anniversary "party" weekend

Ah yes, it's true. A weekend for Bonnie and me to spend together without the kids. Also, this was the first time we stayed as a couple in "Our House".

Friday night, we started off hanging out with the neighbors and then made it downtown. We painted the town and funny enough, when it was time to close-out the night and head home... we couldn't get the golfcart to start. Left with no options, we left the idle golfcart parked downtown and grabbed the island taxi home.

Saturday morning, after speaking to Chris, we learned that you may need to "choke" the golfcart to get some gas flowing before a cold start. Slightly embarrassed by our stupidity, we headed downtown for breakfast, found the golfcart and started it up (after "choking") with no problem. funny.

Bon later went to the beach and I worked on hard plumbing the A/C condensate line (more details below)

Early Saturday evening, we joined the neighbors for some fresh fried fish bites courtesy of Ron and Sandy. Then the whole crew took a golfcart caravan down to the Casino to see the Armstrong Bearcat band.

My stunning wife enjoying a Casino Royale Bloody Mary

 

Casino with the neighbors from the hood

Last stop at "Bag the Moon" for strawberry shots



Cottage construction update(s)...

One of the key reasons why the weekend was a success is because we were lucky enough to get a working shower installed earlier in the week thanks to Tim Arnold. He plumbed up the fixtures and shower head as shown below.

Working shower installed, yes!

 



Every step of the way is a nice step towards completion. However, having a working shower is huge. Big thanks to Tim for getting this done so quickly. 

 

I did spend a few hours on Saturday fixing a problem caused by the a/c condensation line draining directly onto the crawlspace floor. Over the past few days and weeks of running the a/c, at least 1/4 inch of standing water has accumulated on a good portion or the crawlspace and it was not drying up quick enough before more dripped/flowed from the condensation line = small persistent mess. To fix this, I ran about 40 feet of 3/4 inch pvc to extend the condensate line to tie-into the sump pump drain.

 

Next, I worked on the daunting drywall work as much as possible. I covered the attic access above the utility room and framed out the attic access above the main bathroom.

The attic access from the great room has been drywalled shut

I have not got a ton of work done lately, but we have been enjoying our weekends on Kelleys. I guess that was really the plan all along, so this is a good thing.

Next immediate step is to get the insulation situation under control. This includes wrapping the HVAC trunk lines (supply and return) and the ceiling insulation for the entire cottage. This stinks because I thought I had more time to get this done, but with the summer heat now upon us, the a/c is not running efficiently at all with the vaulted ceiling in the great room wide open. Of course the insulation needed for the ceiling (R-30) is way more expensive that I had planned for and installing it will be a serious hassle during the summer months.

Probably taking a break from the island this upcoming weekend...

Happy 15 year anniversary!

Today, June 20th, is our 15 year anniversary. To my wife Bonnie, happy anniversary baby!

Looking forward to another (yes, another) weekend on the island to celebrate. This time we will be leaving the kids home with Bob and Judy. Huge thanks to Mimi and Papa!