Dalke's Encanto House: Day off....get some work done on the house.

With the month of November getting busy I decided to take a Friday off and do some work on the house. Lourdes had been down during a big storm event about 2 weeks ago and we ended up with some water under the exterior wood doors and a leak at the round skylight (we fixed the roof last February!!!). Also, with elk hunting coming up in December, the ATV needed some work and I really needed to have it in Phoenix so that could be accomplished before the hunt.

With a list of things to do (sounds like a RCPM tune...list of things to do "fiesta number one, siesta number two!!") I took the the boys to school and got out of Phoenix at 8:00 in the morning on Friday. The drive down was nice...less the four hours door to door, including a couple of stops. I got to the house around 11:45, unloaded the truck and made a quick lunch then got to work. I started with the doors off the first floor patio. I purchased some stain and hoped it would match...and it ended up being perfect. As I have wrote about before, the salt environment here has got to be one the toughest in the world as anything outside gets abused, and the stained doors had been needing some attention. Also, the cheap door sweeps that the Mexican builder installed sucked, as they did not really seal the bottom of the doors. So I pulled the doors off, cut the bottom of the door to allow for a real aluminum door bottom and sweep, stain the doors and then reinstall them. All went well...but I had to keep moving to get all of that done, let the doors dry, and get the doors back on before dark. By 5:30 I was beat. I had a couple of beers while I got the work done, but I was ready to eat by 6:00. I made some cheese crisp on the grill, and fixed a gin and tonic. I finished the drink and food, turned on the TV for the Sun's game.....and fell asleep on the couch. Woke up to find the game in overtime!

New stain on the front door frame and trim

The morning sun.

Patio was nice.

The next morning was one of the those nice quiet morning's on the beach. The light at that time of day has a rosy color, and with the crisp air it was nice to sit on the patio drinking coffee and watch the day roll in. The plan was to get the last of the trim staining done, do some other odds and ends repairs done around the house, get the roof patch done last then take a nap before I had to get back to Phoenix. As it turned out I had enough stain to complete all of the wood door frames at the beach side of the house as well as the door frame on the front door. As I started on the roof work, this crappy red truck pulled up below the house and four workers get out. They started to work on the house in front of mine using an old generator to power up a grinder so they could sand the steel garage door of the the house they were working on. I got my work done, but it was so loud from the generator that a nap was not going to happen. I goofed around the house and decided to get the ATV packed up for the trip home and leave a little sooner then planned.

POS generator....messed up my nap plans!!!

With the ATV packed I got the house cleaned up, took a quick shower, and got rolling. The drive home was a quiet one, with some RCPM on in the truck the desert highway moved along in front of me. The new truck was great for the trip.