Summer Fun

Summer is here. I am happy to report that my electric bill, while still high, is lower than it was this time last year.  Duke Power finally stopped sending me nasty grams that my power usage is xx% higher than other comparable homes in my neighborhood. Wait... What neighborhood are they referring to? And do they not know we are running a dairy farm?

Anywho, summer is definitely here. I am about to put out my summer seasonal flag, and we have some new fun in the backyard that Holly is prepared for. 

Here she is sporting her new two bandana pool cover up. 

Here's what we have been enjoying. 

It takes about 3 days to warm it from 65 degrees to 96 degrees, so it is the perfect size!

AC at last!

Guess what died this year!

We made the old system last long enough. Between age and a couple of costly repairs a couple of years ago, we decided to put the Bryant out of its misery. Enter this 16 SEER York unit. Come to find out the Bryant unit was actually malfunctioning this past winter. Only the strip heating was working, which probably led to higher power bills than we should have had. This one will be much more efficient.

We also undertook a project that has needed to be done for a long time. We originally had just a small access door to the dirt side of our basement where the well tank and the air handler/furnace was. The farmer got out his saw and masonry blade and got to work.

After cutting out the opening, he fine tuned it with a hammer and put in new wood facing.

Yesterday we installed the new door. We used some of the parts of the old door as new cross pieces to give it sort of a rustic barn look. We will need to fine tune the closure a bit and then i will seal it with clear polyurethane and we will call this job done!

More Woodworking

Next project up is something I've been wanting to get done for a long time. I have a couple of very important paintings that my grandfather painted that needed to be professionally framed.  I didn't want to take them somewhere and leave them. So they waited. Until I saw these on Tim's Facebook:

And I knew I'd found the right person to frame these up properly. 

And the results:

This one, that hung in my Dad's office, now hangs in mine. And this one:

Now hanging over my mantle. 

I moved my favorite new art up to over the bed in the guest room:

Lots of woodworking progress!

Woodworking

This past weekend we left the farm in Andy and Karol's care and headed for Tim's house. The plan -- time to start working on the boat again. The next steps were dependent on proper (not freezing) temps, so here we are in the May/June temperate zone. We carefully pored over the next set of steps in the build manual and realized the next step was to flip the boat. Luckily with the application of the last bit of epoxy to the joints, it was stable enough for three people to flip. 

Next in the list, remove the wires

 and prepare for more epoxy. 

We are making progress!