Thirteen-hundred . . .

Thirteen-hundred holes, thirteen-hundred screws, thirteen-hundred pegs.... and you ask where have I been lately?

It all started when my last customer decided to move his children in to a better school system in neighboring town of Cape Elizabeth. So he bought a new house. Nothing remarkable really. Just your run of the mill 1970s split foyer that saw previous service as a rental and was in need of some serious mending.

It seems the tenants left their dogs alone all day and they needed some relief. There were multiple spots like this. So the carpets came up and the urine soaked particle board sub-floor as well.

Materials were ordered

And the lumberyard conveniently delivered to the second story deck for me.

Six hundred lineal feel of 1 x 12 eastern white pine dressed three sides

Easy walk in to the house... except for the painful shoulder and constant tingling in my arm

So I pulled up about eighteen-hundred screws and six hundred square feet of piss soaked three quarter inch particle board.

and two layers of ply and linoleum in the dining room

About 30 hours labor just in prep work alone ....

... til I could start laying the pine floor. Its just about here where I threw my lower back out and had to take four days off  to lay flat on my back and have it recover to some degree of function so as I could stand up and would not dribble on my self when I brushed my teeth.

after a quick recovery I went back at it . . .

Got the hallway done

then I tackled the living room

Pretty good for a lame back and a sore arm that tingles like the worst funny bone whack you ever had.

It was slow going as I was trying to make sure they were as tight to each other as possible.

All set with thirteen hundred counter-sunk screws....

...for which I needed to make thirteen hundred plugs....

A morning in the garage on the drill press

Produces something like this

Ripped in to strips and taped.

Then run through the table saw on edge to free up the plugs

Resulting in something that looks like this

A day and a half crawling around on the floor with a bottle of glue and a hammer....

and thirteen hundred holes are plugged.

Looked kind of nice with all the plugs standing proud like that.. but they all had to be chiseled flush with the floor

Then I got to dance with the buffer for about two days. Using a full blown floor belt sander would be way too rough on the soft pine.

Then the first coat of sealer goes down

Then I dance with the buffer some more

And first coat of polyurethane goes on.

After two coats of semi-gloss polyurethane are on it, it looks like this

It has that shabby chic look to it. Another fifty five hours of labor on the install and finish.

Then I tackle the oak treads on the stairs..... not good for my bad arm

and after two coats they look like this. Not bad, considered they had never been sealed and started out full of dog piss stains. Hoping to finish up this week.

Old Volvo Meet at Owlshead Transportation Museum

This weekend was the last event of the season at the Owlshead Transportation Museum and the headline feature was old Volvos. Anyone with an old Volvo gets in for free.
Well dad has an old 1962 PV544 he has been playing with for a few years now.
 http://www.vclassics.com/pv_od.html
So yesterday we ran up to Freeport and borrowed it for the day. Took a bit of coaxing to get it going as it had not been run since July. I had to clear out a mouse nest full of mama and babies and replace a couple chewed wires, but once she fired up and warmed up, the battery started charging, it was good to go. So we got a late start and after an hour and a half ride up RT-1 fighting the usual traffic jamb in Wiscasset we made it to the front gate about half past noon.

And we got placed at the head of the pack. As soon as we arrived we were mobbed. I suppose it is one of the advantages of arriving late. Folks had drooled over all the other earlier arrivals and were hungry for more, so they pounced on us as soon as I shut it off. Some of the insiders recognized the car and gave me the evil eye for a few minutes figuring dad had sold the car from under them to some unknown scoundrel. But as soon as I made them aware it was still dad's car, they all got cozy with us. It was good for a laugh anyhow.

There was a PV444 that came all the way from Rhode Island

With a slick looking velvet interior

And another PV544 that had been sectioned and lowered taking about six inches out of the side of it. The fenders had been welded on and bondoed.

A nice looking Duet was there

With a pristine interior

A bunch of P1800s made it as well

The sporty Volvo . . .

. . . in assorted flavors and colors

And the wagon version of the P1800

Of course it was not only Volvos. There was a nice Jaguar XK140

With its big engine on display

An E type Jaguar

A Triumph Bug-eye sprite

And an old Citroen that was an even later arrival than us

They even let in the Rif-Raf like my friend Marty and his Ford Escort powered Mini Cooper

My favorite of the show has to be the 1962 BMW R60/2

Another XK140

With a very tired Scottie taking a nap

As the wind picked up the museum stared moving a few of the panes back in doors. A 1923Fokker C-IV might have even been worked on by my great grand father once the chief mechanic for Fokker.

 We took a quick run through the museum.

 1929 Rolls Royce

1905 Panhard Levassor

A Big 1930 racing Bentley

A big string of early MGs on display

And a neat four seat cabriolet MG

1912 Fiat Racer

1907 Renault Vanderbilt

1919 Model J Harley

1913 Excelsior

1922 Royal Enfield

And a Steam-Punked BMW-R series

And this one lacked identification other than the ABC emblem on the tank. But I am told it was the first horizontally opposed twin cylinder boxer engine on a motorbike. According to Wikipedia the ABC stands for All British Engine Company, and they were manufactured between 1919 and 1923. The engine had a displacement of 400cc.

1918 American LaFrance fire engine

1918 Standard J-1

1916 JN-4D Curtiss Jennie

1913 Etrich Taube whose wing is patterned after a Zanonia tree seed pod

The 1930 Pitcairn Mailwing

1912 model D Curtiss pusher

1917 Fokker Triplane

1917 Spad

1930 Curtiss Travelair

1913 Deperdussin racer

The Wright brothers diorama with a replica of the 1903 Wright flyer and the 1963 Gemini space capsule

Bob Weymouth's Piper J-3. Bob, aka "The Flying Farmer" was a feature at all the Maine airshows and events doing the drunken flying farmer skit. Those of us who used to hang out at Merrymeeting field had the chance to meet him on several occasions.

 1935 Chevrolet straight six cutaway

1946 28 cylinder 3000 hp Pratt and Whitney

 1895 Corliss 600hp steam engine with a 16 foot flywheel