Busy, Busy, Busy

Saturday morning was the annual French Creek Mountainbike race held by Dirt Bag Productions.

Served my six hours doing data entry. All the people who register “day-of” have to be manually entered in the timing system. That was me behind the tiny laptop banging away.

Not a very glamorous job, but I got to sit next to all the walkie-talkies. The best were the park ranger conversations. They had a possible rabid raccoon they were going to find and shoot, a turkey harassing children by the lake they were first going to capture and move, then decided to shoot, and finally an injured riders teeth they contemplated looking for.

When my part was done, I headed home to load up and head over to my Mother-in-laws house for a little yard work.

Some pine limbs had come down over the winter and needed cutting then hauled off. I had scoped that out a few weeks ago and deemed them not a big deal. What was a big deal was the yard in general. I had been under the impression “someone” was cutting it. Turns out that wasn’t true or hadn’t recently been true.

The worst was around the downed limbs. There were places where the grass was knee high and the branches completely grown over. I couldn’t figure out if I should cut the limbs or cut the grass first. I quickly realized to get to the limbs, I was going to have to cut some of the grass. (Totally my fault on the limbs. Should have been done months ago.)

I loaded and hauled home (now what to do with them?) two loads of limbs. The second trip coincided nicely with Abigail’s bath and bedtime, then I went back to finish the yard and put the tractor back together. The grass was so high in one area, it actually pulled the belt off the mower deck. Finally finishing the weed whacking and ornamental grass trimming, I loaded up and headed home after dark. Probably have to go back next weekend to do the grass again before it gets to a place where “someone” can cut it with a push mower.

Sunday morning it was up early and into the attic before it got hot. The plan was a fan for Abigail’s room and the other front bedroom. Over the past week I’d been preparing her room by removing her old wall switch and doing some re-wiring in the basement to make things simpler when it came time to put it all in. From under her room there were a total of five wires headed up (or coming down) the wall to her switch. Turns out two of them were for the old electric heating system (pulled them out). Two of them were related to the wall switch directly (hot going up, switched hot coming down and going to switched receptacle). The final a daisy chained hot coming down. Instead of using the switch as the junction for everything, I put a junction box in downstairs and ran a single hot to the switch.

Now all that was left was installing the fan.

Which means finding and cutting a hole in the center of the room, mounting a fan worthy bracket/box in the ceiling (kind of improvised on that one, though I didn’t get a picture), and running wire back down to the switch.

Obviously I had a great helper for the day.

The original plan was to get both rooms cut, bracketed, and wired, but by 2:30 the attic was too hot to get up there anymore.  I only managed Abigail’s fan, which she appreciated.

You gotta keep an eye on that kid. She can climb 6′ ladders in a heart beat, though obviously aided in this picture. I got the fan up and wired to a temporary switch, but there’s no power going to it yet. I ran 12/3 wire from the fan to use a light/fan combo switch on the wall. That way you’ll be able to power the light and fan independently of each other. The temporary switch is to insure the fan is in high mode before the combo switch goes in – something about possible fire/death/destruction if the fan and combo switch aren’t both talking the same language when installed.

Hopefully tonight I’ll get power going to the switch (and cut my grass), then tomorrow test that it’s in high mode, and sometime later this week wire in the correct switch.

Yes. The fan is super cute.

Maybe next weekend I’ll get the other fan installed (at least hanging from the ceiling and wired to the switch).

In order to get all this done (trying to beat the coming heat), we “moved” mothers day to next weekend for us. That means next Sunday will be off limits for work. Somehow between now and then I have to figure out how I’m going to cut two yards and get a fan up all next Saturday.

We’ll see.

– b