Drywall Shims

Drywall shims. Ever heard of them? Probably not if you live in Texas. These are pretty commonly used in other parts of the country. Home Depot and Lowes carry them in stock in places like Oregon, Washington and Utah that I am personally familiar with. I have also seen them used in new construction in Florida. But when I have looked for them in Houston, whether it is Home Depot, or a drywall supply no one has ever heard of them. You can find them at Lowes and Home Depot online.

I picked up a pack while vacationing in Utah recently and brought them back with me. I am putting up some new drywall in a bathroom. I could not have screwed the drywall on the walls without using the shims. The studs do not line up resulting in screws that get sucked through the drywall as in the photographs below.

 They are thin strips of cardboard (think of a shoe box) that are 45" long, 2 1/2" wide. You simply staple as many to the face of the stud as needed to make the faces level when you hold a straight edge across the studs.

If you get the faces leveled properly you can avoid screw pull through like those below.

A Van is way better than a Pickup truck

That's what I'm talking about! 4x8 drywall and a 13' piece of trim and the doors still close. Nothing on top, nothing hanging out over the tailgate, everything is secure and dry. And I still have one seat in back! I fabricated some metal brackets to hold a couple of 2x6's vertical so I don't have to remove the jack holder in the back. The sheet goods ride up off the floor. I will post pictures later.

Router Table Tool

A few years ago I bought a Router table top from Rockler along with a lift to hold the router. The lift has Rockler's name on it but the crank says Jessem so I assume the whole set is made by Jessem and branded for Rockler.  the lift has a collet that fills the hole around the router bit with two holes to facilitate removal. Included with the lift was a little lucite Y shaped tool with two metal pins that fit the holes in the collet. I may have used the router table once or twice in the first two or three years I owned it so I was pretty disappointed when I went to use it last year and the tool had self destructed. I wanted to use the router yesterday and was looking at the collar when it struck me that the holes looked to be about the same size as  metal shelf support pins. I tried one in the hole and it was a perfect fit. All I had to do was screw two pins to a scrap of wood and I had a new tool to remove the collet. It actually works better than the one that came with the lift and the price was right.

Broken Rockler tool.

My home made tool

Texas Drought 2011

Those who do not live in Texas may have heard that the state is suffering the worst drought in history. Those hardest hit are the ranchers and farmers. It is reported that the Texas cattle industry has lost over 5 billion dollars this year. Ranchers are having to sell off their herds because they can't feed them.  While the effect on us has not been that serious we have suffered some loss none the less.

The pictures below depict the effect on our lawn and trees. We would have had to hand water the grass to keep it alive and the city has asked everyone to cut back on watering. Most of our neighbors disregarded the request and their lawns look pretty good. Ours is way to big to water with a hose, especially in the back. You can see from the photos that most of the grass is dead and has been replaced by a very healthy crop of weeds. I guess weeds are a lot more drought resistant than St augustine grass. The gates I built have all sagged due to the weight and ground shrinkage. they will have to be dug up and re-set, with better footings I guess to keep them from moving so much in the future. The large tree in front of the circular driveway seems to be dead although there are still a few leaves on a couple of the branches. I doubt it will come back when the drought ends. But who knows when that will be.

Fur Trapper

A month or two ago I started finding what resembled dog piles in the back yard. I thought this was very odd since our yard is completely fenced with six foot wood fences so there isn't really any way for a dog to get in except to squeeze under the fence in a few spots. This seemed kind of unlikely since only one of our neighbors has dogs and there is no way those two could get under the fence and there are no openings on that side. The more of the poop I scooped I realized that it was not left by a dog, but some sort of wild critter. There are actually websites that you can go to in order to help identify animal scat. After a little research I decided it must be a raccoon visiting my yard almost nightly. I may never know for sure, but what ever it was the scat piles were as large as the piles our dogs used to make. So I am thinking this is a pretty large raccoon. We have lived her five years and have never had this problem before. From my reading on the internet I learned that raccoons tend to expand their territory during mating season which is in the early part of March. A sister in the ward offered to lend me a trap so I decided to trap the critter.

Because I had to go to Dallas and Lubbock for a week I got a late start on my trapping venture. I set the trap the first time Saturday the 26th. The next morning the trap had a critter. With great anticipation I lifted the tarp I had covered the trap with to find a cat in the trap. This was a black feral domestic cat that I think has been living under our deck for  quite a while. Six months to a year we have seen the thing in our back yard from time to time. I put the trap in the truck and drove out to a remote spot in Alvin and turned it loose. In the words of our wacky Tumwater neighbors Lou and Jerry, I expect it will have a "short but happy life". I just wanted to make sure I would not be playing a game of catch and release every night.

There does not seem to be as much evidence of nightly visitors, but undaunted I re-baited the trap and in a couple of days I had another critter. Again I gingerly lifted the tarp and was again disappointed. Just a large male opossum. I did not release him, not alive anyway. My friend told me the best bait for raccoons was sardines. I had been using cat food. So I bought a can of sardines and re-set the trap in an area where the latest scat deposits were most common.

First night nothing. Second night the trap was sprung, but by another possum. I made the mistake of letting it out of the trap alive and it scurried under a gap in the fence in the back corner of the lot. So I am going to give it one more try. The nightly visits by the critter that was soiling the back yard seem to have ended.  I would like to catch the opossum that got away.  These things are sure ugly!

Private park

With the weather turning cooler in Texas it is actually quite pleasant to spend time outside. I do not mean to sound boastful, but I have done a lot of work on our yard since we bought the place. It was over grown with trash trees, brush, poison ivy/oak banana trees and bamboo. I had to cut down twenty or thirty trees, I forget exactly how many. Digging up the bananatrees proved to be a challenge. Spiders like to live in them and I got a bite on my leg. I was afraid it was a brown recluse but it healed up ok. Hurricane Ike took down most of our fence which was in pretty bad shape before the hurricane so it was kind of a good thing. At least we got reimbursed for half the cost of replacing it. I finally finished up the front facing fence. It only took two years! I have been documenting the gates I built for the front sides of the fence. I finally finished putting all the boards on and I have to say they turned out pretty well. I learned some things I would do differently but overall I am very happy with the final result. As I was working in the yard Saturday I was struck with how attractive it is. It is like our own little park. five years of working at it a little at a time has paid off. There is no pool, as Robin continually reminds me. There is an outhouse though. I am thinking of planting more fruit trees, possibly orange and grapefruit. It would be the perfect location for a casita (small guest type house) and a shop. I guess a person can dream.

 From the back looking toward the house

 With the gates blocking the view from the street I burned a pile of sticks and wood I had collected. I thought this would make a great spot for a fire pit. This part of the yard was completely overgrown with brush and weeds about 4 ft high and a bunch of trees when we moved in.

This is taken from the deck looking back.

 This is the North side of the house. When those two gates are both open it is wide enough to pull a mobile home through.

This door was added by the previous owner so their son could come and go from his bedroom. There was a fence around the concrete pad. That room houses the quilting studio and Robin wanted the fence gone to allow in more light. I think it looks good. There used to be a huge photinia bush in front of that window next to the door. That window is in the shower. Who would design/build a house like that?

More Gates

Ok, it may appear to the casual observer, if there are any, that I am obsessed with gates. That may be true, probably is true. Ever since we purchased this house I have had a vision of back yard access that would allow anything from a pick-up truck to a mobile home to be pulled into the back yard. My dream was to build a shop back there, but I doubt that will ever happen. But if it does I have created a way to drive back there with a semi load of building materials. I can't say this will be the last post on gates because I am not finished yet. I worked on these two Friday evening and all day Saturday. I am learning as I go. After I finished the first gate I tried to correct some of the problems and the second one went much faster and with better precision. Also better welds. Still after it was up I thought of things I could do that would make it better, which I incorporated into the design f the third and last gate. These two gates together span over 20ft. the center post is removable to create one huge opening to accommodate anything you could ever want to put into a back yard.