RV Travels With Huggy

We in the Pacific Northwest are used to cool temperatures. Our "hot" weather in the summer might get up to 80F or maybe occasionally 84F. It is rare to ever see 90F. I think another record has been set today, after one from yesterday. Only once since they started recording daily high temps in Seattle has it ever reached 100F. That was in 1994. Yesterday 103F was recorded and that was the 5th consecutive day of 90 or above which tied that record. Until today. It isn't likely going to beat the 103 but it is certainly over 90, for the 6th day in a row, another record.

These are records that I don't like to see beaten. I'm ready to get back to normal, maybe even for a little rain. You know, Seattle is well known for its rain and when it is here the weather is from the southwest off of the Pacific Ocean and it wouldn't be anywhere near that hot. I think most of my readers here know that we built a sunroom onto our house last year. We and the cats have enjoyed that room most of the time since then. But, yesterday it was a bit warm out there. This photo was taken about 17:37 looking out through the window in the door from our bedroom into that sunroom. No way was I going to open the door. And this was with the sliding glass door from the sunroom outside open and a large box fan pulling in the outside 100 degree air.


Enough said.

Labels: Griping, Photos, Sunroom

We usually don't have much snow at all over a winter here in north west Washington State, but the last few days have been very unusual. Yesterday we started out from home about 11am to drive south to my grand daughter's 11th birthday party. It was raining when we left home but as we started up the hill on the freeway south of town we started into mixed snow & rain. A few miles farther, about at the Skagit/Snohomish County line for those familiar with the area, the snow really started sticking on the road as well as alongside the road. A mile or so farther we spotted the first car that had slid off the road. As we approached the Camano Island exit there was close to 4 inches of snow and it was coming down hard. The speed of the traffic was down to about 30mph and it looked like it was getting worse, so we got off the freeway there and turned back. Later we learned that there had been something like 6" of snowfall down at Smokey Point & Marysville that was about 12 miles ahead. I talked with K, my grand daughter, in the evening and we will go take her to lunch the week after next when she is on spring vacation from school.

Back home it was still just raining which actually quit later in the day although it never did warm up very much. When we got up this morning, this is what we had outside our windows:

This is our front yard with the new Thundering Plum tree and the forsythia, both in full bloom, although both with snow on them. You can see the snowflakes falling in the photo. The roads were just slushy but not any problem to drive, although I'll bet that farther south as you get into the so called convergent zone there was a lot more snow (like yesterday.)


This is a telephoto view of the condos on the hill just east of us. This is very unusual weather, especially for "spring."


A photo from the sunroom showing the little fireplace at work, trying to make it warm for the cats. The "flames" are visible here and the heat comes from the bottom of the fireplace. They love it out here but are not fond of cold weather, so we are spending electricity to heat the room. Also notice the hummingbird in the upper part of the window. More about these next.


A closer view of one of the other windows, with a hummingbird in it. Notice all the ice and snow on the pampas grass plant outside the window, and you can still see the snowflakes falling.


A closeup view of the hummingbird in the previous photo. Yes, it did stay there and wait for me to take a closer photo. That is because they are not real birds. Pat found some in a catalog that are split in half. Each half has a magnet attached so that you can put one on each side of a single pane window and they look pretty real. They say they won't work on a double pane insulated window and we haven't tried them on any of those but they work fine on the sunroom windows.


This is a different bird that is on one of the south facing windows. You can see the melted snow drops here as the weather system is coming out of the southwest, but you can also see how the birds are split in half. I used the flash unit to light the bird but it didn't penetrate the tinted window so the outside part is just in silhouette against the brighter sky. These things are fun and if anyone is interested in them I can post where Pat found them.

Our weather is supposed to change for the better after today. I am really getting tired of having winter in springtime. The temperature yesterday never got out of the 30s. This afternoon is supposed to have sunshine but the weather forecasts we get usually come from Seattle, 80 miles south, and it can be different up here in the frigid north. But, we are ready for better weather. Soon, please.

Labels: Birthdays, Grandkids, Griping, Photos, Sunroom, Weather

I'd like to wish a Happy Easter to everyone. I hope you are all able to spend at least part of the day with family and loved ones. We had breakfast with one of Pat's daughters and the other one is coming by this afternoon with her two kids to see the new sunroom. Her husband is in sunny Arizona to watch a Mariner's Cactus League baseball game with his brother.

Speaking of the sunroom, we and the cats have been enjoying it, especially when the sun shines. Friday morning we woke up to actually see snow falling, although it didn't stick nor amount to anything. But you know it was cold. We have heat out there set for about 48 degrees so that is what the temp inside it is in the early morning. In the afternoons it has been getting up to the mid to upper 60s if overcast and mid 70s with at least some sunshine. That is with outside temps of around 50. Spring officially came this past week but you'd hardly know it from our weather and the long range projections are not much better.

Peewee, one of our cats, has been making herself very unpopular around our house by wanting to go out into the sunroom whenever she is awake. And that seems to always be from about 3am on, while we are not ready to get up until closer to 6. She is very vocal about it and is pretty loud in the middle of the night when the house is quiet. Pat has been talking to her about that, trying to get her to listen to the cuckoo clock and wait until it cuckoos six times before coming in to "talk" to us. So far that hasn't worked too well. I guess she needs more training in math so she can count to six (Peewee, not Pat.) Then too I can visualize her hearing the one cuckoo at 03:30, four at 04:00 and another at 04:30 and figuring that makes six.

We had a water leak a couple of weeks ago that had water slowly dripping from one of our kitchen lights that are recessed into the ceiling. We had a guy out to find and fix the leak but have decided it is time to re-roof the house. The house was built in 1994 but these mobile homes, even the better ones, seem to use the cheapest materials they can get away with. All of the houses in our park are within a couple of years of being the same age and there have been a lot of them re-roofed over the last couple of years. Anyway, we got a couple of bids and the work starts tomorrow. That is almost $6000 we hadn't planned to spend right now but it needs to be done. So things will be pretty noisy around here for the next four days or so. At least it will be quiet at night. If we can get Peewee to cooperate!

Labels: Holidays, House, Our cats, Sunroom, Weather

The carpet was installed today. The sunroom is now pretty much finished, except for things we want to add to it, like plants. There are now a few pieces of furniture out there and the little TV. I have a few photos to post including one that is rather odd but pretty amazing to me.


This is a pretty standard wide angle lens (12mm) view of the sunroom, taken from about the door that comes out of the house. I just bought and assembled that bookshelf that is ahead on the left, with the small 19" HD LCD TV on the top of it. I have to find one of my hole saws to cut an opening in the back of it so I can feed the power cord & connecting cables through that go from the VCR on the top shelf to the TV. A DVD player is built into the TV. Past it you can see our little electric fireplace/heater. It gives nice "flames" while operating that look pretty realistic. Further over to the right is a boombox for radio/CDs, etc. although we may put a different music source out here that has better speakers. Next is the oak table I kept from my old house just for this room and a couple of chairs. Notice my Starbucks mocha cup on the table. It was ready for the photo. Below the table, actually in the corner behind, is an electric heater with a thermostat. We will probably use that one overnight to maintain a minimum temperature in the room as the little fireplace has no thermostat, so heat is either off, on low or on high, all the time, but you can run just the "flames" without any heat. This view shows the new carpet pretty well. We wanted fairly natural colors and a nylon material as it could have a bit of moisture at times since there is an outside door into the room.


Here the camera has turned a bit to the right from the last view, showing a bit of the outside patio and some of the common area in the park behind our yard. The barbecue unit also shows at the right. We haven't used it much since moving it here from the other house but I hope now to use it more. It was awkward to get to the patio in the past so we really didn't go out there very much.


Here the camera is behind the table, looking back toward the door from the house. The light on the wall outside the door is controlled from a switch in the bedroom and actually does a pretty good job of lighting the place at night. I have placed an old "bankers light" on the table but am not sure if it will stay there in the long run. We will probably look for other things to do in the way of lighting, especially mood lighting.


Okay, here is the odd one I mentioned. I put the camera on a tripod and in about the middle of the room and took 12 photos around a full circle with the 12mm lens. I then had Photoshop Elements version 6 stitch those 12 photos into a panorama photo that does show the whole circle. You can see from the way perspective goes that I was not in the exact center of the room and it really gives it an odd look, but notice the Starbucks cup on the table on the left side of the photo, then look across it to the other side of the photo. That is the same table and Starbucks cup on the far right side. So, the photo actually shows a little over 360 degrees. Does it help to see how the room looks? Maybe not. It is a bit hard to decipher but I find it very interesting from a technical point of view and it does kind of show how the whole room is setup.

There will probably be some photos in the future from this room and perhaps some of activities out there. I hope and expect that we will use it quite a bit, especially during the 2/3 of each year that has better weather. Keeping it comfortably warm may turn out to be too expensive in the winter. We will see, but at least it is now FINISHED!

Labels: House, Photos, Sunroom

Last Sunday evening I found the URL for the Canadian company that actually built the sunroom kit that we ordered from Royal Solariums of Everett, WA. I sent them an email note saying that the cranks for the three opening windows in our sunroom were missing when the kit was delivered. I also told them the contractor who assembled the kit told Royal Solariums that they were missing and I have called R.S. at least twice talking with two different people there. Both told me they would contact the Canadian company and let me know when we would get our cranks.

Monday morning, the first business day after I sent the email note to the Canadian company, Bob from that business called and talked with Pat. She again told him of all the problems we had with Royal Solariums of Everett, WA and that the window cranks were indeed missing. Bob said he would take care of it. So far this sounds a lot like what we have heard before from R.S. (maybe I should change that and call them B.S.) BUT Bob did initiate the call- he DID call us back. Bob also told Pat they had not heard of this problem from B.S.- err, Royal Solariums.

That was four days ago and with an International border for them to cross. The missing cranks arrived today in our mail delivery! That is a company that follows through on their promises and actually delivers what they promise and on time! They are Sunview Solariums, Ltd. of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I had said I'd wait until the room is finished before posting any more photos of it but I have to show you the windows, before and after cranks:


This view shows the full window, without the crank. The size of the windows is about two feet square and they are an awning type that is supposed to crank out from a hinge at the top. A big advantage of this type window is protection inside if rain starts to fall.


A closeup view of the mechanism that opens the window, before the crank or its plastic cover is put on. I probably could have made them work with a pair of pliers but was afraid that I might strip or mar the gear the crank goes on so I didn't even try.


The crank is really a two piece kit and includes a plastic cover that goes on first and covers most of the mechanical part that is encased in the metal cover shown before. In this photo both the plastic cover and the crank itself has been put onto the window previously shown "nude."


In this view the crank has been extended to its operating position and the window opened a bit over half way. You can see how it pivots out from the hinge in the top. These windows really seem to be well made and should last a long time.

So, you see the title of this post is not at all a reflection on how I am feeling today, as that is quite the opposite of being cranky. I wish they would have been here during the time I was painting and oiling the wood out there for better ventilation but it was going to be critical to have them before really warm weather comes later this spring. Yahoo!

About the only thing still hanging is getting the carpet installed. I went by Home Depot today and paid it in full but found they do not have the carpet in stock so will have to wait for it to come from Georgia, about 7 - 10 days they say. I told them I sure didn't want any long delays with the installers getting the job finished as we had enough of that kind of crap waiting for the unit to be built. They assured me the installers will not be paid until they have finished the job and we sign off on it. So, it sounds now like it will still be a couple of weeks before we can hope to be finished. At least we can use it now although I don't want to put much out there only to have to carry it back inside when the install date does get here. But the cats all like it.

Labels: Photos, Sunroom

I don't know if that post title is correct English or not but at this point we are so happy to finally have an almost finished sunroom that I really don't care if the word is a real one or not. We got the electrical part finished Sunday evening and all is working fine. It is soooo nice to be able to just flip a switch in the bedroom and have a good light out there. We are also appreciating having two 20 amp circuits so that we can run an electric heater without risk of blowing a breaker on the house circuit that the light out there is on. The heater we plan to use is a small electric fireplace with flames to watch.

Also on Sunday I located the web site URL for the company in Canada that built the sunroom kit and sent them an email about our missing window cranks. A guy named Bob called from there yesterday morning and talked with Pat about that and he said he would put the cranks in the mail right away for us. I don't know if they will come from Saskatchewan or from their US head office in Reno, Nevada, but either way it sounds like they will be here soon. It is nice to find a business that tries pretty hard to have good communications with their customers. He told her they have not heard anything from Royal Solariums of Everett, WA, where we bought the unit, about the cranks missing even though I have been told at least twice by them that the company would be contacted and those cranks ordered.

Last week we picked out a carpet and pad to be installed in the room and the guy doing the actual measuring came yesterday morning to do those measurements and prepare a quote for labor costs. He said we should be contacted by Home Depot within 72 hours to setup a time to have it installed. Of course I'll have to go there and pay for it before they come to install. Once that floor covering is in we can really start moving things in. The cable installer did come last week so the TV connection is there ready to use, but I do need to get something to put it onto. It is a small one, just a 19" HD LCD Sharp brand unit with a built-in DVD player so nothing very large is needed to support it. I'm thinking a small two shelf bookcase would work well and give space to put some other things on also, like DVDs. I will take some photos and post them when we get to that stage, with the carpet in and some furniture in place. But at least it does finally look like we can see the end of the tunnel with this project.

Labels: Griping, House, Internet, Sunroom

Last weekend I ordered a Tokina 12-24mm F/4.0 AF DX extreme wide angle zoom lens to use on my Nikon D200 Digital SLR camera. It came yesterday from the store in New York and I couldn't wait to test it, so took it outside for a few photos, then a few inside photos including the one here from the sunroom. I didn't have a lot of time to play with it as yesterday was also Pat's birthday and we did have some activities planned.

I love this lens! I didn't realize how much difference I would see between the other lens I have that goes to a wide angle view at 18mm focal length and this one. It doesn't sound like a lot, just 6mm less, but it is a big jump when you look at it from the point of view of percentage change. Anyway, here are three test photos from that short experimental shooting session:


For this photo I was only about two feet from the back of the VW Bug. The view shows from all the way on the left side of the house clear over to the right edge and has most of the Bug in the photo, too. And the vertical lines at the sides are pretty straight up and down. I could have bought a lens that is 2mm wider but it is a Fisheye lens and the verticals at the edges curve. By the time you crop it to fit into a standard view you do not have much more of a wide angle than I have here but you have given up a fair percentage of the pixels in the original image, thus limiting how large you can go with that photo. So, I thought this lens would work better for me and the way I like to take photos. My friend, G, in Fort Bragg, CA has the other lens and I've seen some exciting and different photos he has taken with it. I wonder if I need them both.....


This view shows another corner of the sunroom but it also shows the full length of the house from the back corner of the sunroom all the way to the front, plus the street in front! And it is all sharply in focus, from the nearest thing in the photo, the corner of the sunroom that was about four feet in front of the camera, to the clouds and trees on the hills behind our town. This is another thing that wide angle lenses do, give a vast amount of depth of field where everything is sharp.


This view inside the sunroom is somewhat similar to others I have posted earlier, taken from the door into the house, but this shows the full left side, all the way across the back and almost up to the sliding glass door on the right side. Notice how much of the ceiling is included. This also shows how a wide angle lens exaggerates perspective, making things look farther apart than they really are. It is only 12 feet to the back of the sunroom from where I took the photo, the same distance that it is across the back of the room, but notice how the wall to the left side looks so much longer than the one across the back. They are the same length.

I think I am going to have a lot of fun with this lens and hopefully get the chance to go out and use it soon. Our weather has been great here for the last week and I hope we have turned the corner to where winter is behind and spring is actually here. But there are things still going on that demand time so I can't just go shooting with the camera. Tomorrow the electrician is coming and I hope we can get the wiring finished in the sunroom. About Monday I can put the final coat of three of Danish oil on the stained wood parts, and then we can setup to have the finished floor put in. We also will go shopping for lights when we look for the flooring. This project may actually be finished within the next two weeks or so!

I did do something else this past week and the thing I ordered should be here Tuesday. That is the same day the guy from Comcast cable TV is coming by to run the cable out to the sunroom. We will soon have HD TV on a much larger screen than the 19" unit I have for the sunroom! More on that later.

Labels: Birthdays, House, Photos, Sunroom

This sunroom construction project sometimes has felt like it would never be finished, but yesterday The Contractor and his helper finished their part and left our house about 15:00. We have some things to finish including the electrical and the final floor covering in the room, plus some painting and oiling of some of the wood parts. This room was ordered August 25, 2007 and was supposed to be finished by Halloween. It is three and a half months late but I do like it and think we will get a lot of use from it. I do of course have a few more photos to post of the project:


I took this photo while they were working on the room on Valentine's Day. It shows the new door that is to be installed in the wall behind where it is sitting in this photo, where the large window is in the photo. You can see some of the wood planking that is going over the old wall of the house and the same material is on the ceiling of the little brow roof above in the photo. You can also see the screen for the sliding glass door that goes out onto the concrete patio from the sunroom.


The rest of the photos were taken today. What this one shows is pretty much completed. There is a usable amount of space left on the outside patio that we can enjoy it when the weather is good enough to be outside. It will also give us a nice direct way to get from inside the house to the back yard, through the master bedroom and the door into the sunroom. Before in order to get back here we had to either go through the garage and walk along the north side of the house or out the front door and walk all along the south side. I think the BBQ may get used more often now.


A view looking at the south west corner of the sunroom from the common area behind our neighbors lot. This is a bit of a telephoto shot- it really isn't quite that close to the camera position. They did a pretty good job of picking out new vinyl siding that matched the siding on the house.


The camera is looking toward the original house wall and the new door into the master bedroom, after it was installed. This shows pretty well the tone of the wood on the walls after it was stained and you can see that we decided to paint the ceiling part of the little brow roof at the top of the sunroom wall in white. It seems to look better and matches the overall look of the sunroom ceiling than if it had been stained like the walls. There will be a wall light and an electrical outlet on this wall but they still need to be cut into the wall. And we haven't decided what we want there for a light.


I left this photo in the larger size as I think it will work okay without messing up my blog template and it shows detail better. The roof of the sunroom is a poly carbonate plastic that is divided into four compartments so it is very well insulated. The vertical walls are 1/4" acrylic plastic and not so well insulated but we may add a plastic membrane during the winter. The support structure is aluminum. The knee walls have R19 fiberglas insulation and the floor deck is also insulated with R19 fiberglas. The 3 opening windows and the sliding glass door are all tinted double pane glass. The unit is pretty well insulated.


Here is Peewee coming out the new door into the sunroom. She likes it!


In this photo she looks like she is saying, "Alright, where is my food?"

We actually had some broken sunshine today with outside temperatures that got up to the mid to upper 40s. With the sunroom door closed the inside temp got up to 70. It was very comfortable to be out there working on it and tomorrow is supposed to have even more sunshine and be a bit warmer, too. Peewee likes the room and I think we will too. Now we have to get those window cranks before it really gets warm out there so we can open them for ventilation.

I probably won't be putting more photos of this project up here until we have it all finished. I am setting up a set of photos on my Flickr site and putting them in order so if anyone wants to follow the project through, click on one of the photos here and go there. There will be photos there that I have not posted here.

Labels: House, Our cats, Photos, Sunroom, Weather

The Contractor spent two and a half days this past week working on our sunroom and is due back today to get most things finished up. It is now fully enclosed with all of the glazing materials in place. There are a few places on the outside that need to be finished including putting 2/3rd of the vinyl siding on the wing walls below the sunroom part of the structure. He said the sealant they sent is the wrong color, a little too yellow to look good on the white of the aluminum so should be bringing that today too. He also found that when the three awning type windows were packed at the factory they forgot to include the cranks that allow the user to open & close them- kind of an important thing for us to have that the company we have had so many problems with, Royal Solariums, Inc. out of Everett, Washington that we bought it from, will have to get for us. Maybe- I don't have any faith left in them.


This photo shows the "front" of the structure, if you define the front as where the door to enter it from the outside patio is located. The vinyl siding is in place here but it needs to be washed. There is a fairly large area at the top where the room joins the house (see the wood in the photo) that needs to be covered and The Contractor said he would bring aluminum to cover that and about the same place on the other side. I want to also build a small step to place outside the entrance door as the rise of that step into the building is higher than is comfortable. I'll build that myself. This is the north side so it will rarely get any sunshine directly on it but it does give us a way to get to the patio and back yard without having to go through the garage or walk completely along the side of the house, and that will be handy and appreciated.


This view shows the north and west sides of the sunroom and how it joins the original house as well as how it sits on the concrete patio. It covers a little less than half of the width of the patio so that space will also be usable and easy to access from the sunroom through the large (and heavy!) sliding glass door. The type of windows we had installed allow them to be open for ventilation and still keep rain from coming inside and since we do get rain here in the northwest I think that will be handy. If Royal Solariums ever gets the missing cranks to us. We look in the photos to be pretty close to our neighbors back yard and we actually are but a cedar fence is part of the planned landscaping to do in our yard this spring and summer and that will make more of a visual divider between the yards than the split rail fence that is there now.


Here is the inside of the sunroom taken from about where a person would stand coming out the door from our bedroom into it. You can see a bit of moisture that is still on the floor from where rain water leaked under the plastic The Contractor put on the deck to protect it until it was covered. He thinks the rain came through the nail holes in the plastic where the wing walls were fastened onto the deck. The good news is that it doesn't look like there was enough to soak the insulation that is inside the deck. The wiring in those wing walls needs to be finished today, then he has to put the rest of the insulation in them as well as the little brow roof he built that the sunroom attaches to and finish the inner sides of them. Then there is trim to put in and the big job for today, putting the door that goes into the bedroom in. The other two wing walls need vinyl siding to be put in place on the outside and some trim out there as well as the missing caulking. There is really quite a long list of "little" things to get done.

I know he wanted to be able to finish it today. He planned to be back yesterday afternoon, stay overnight in a hotel and then get it done today. He didn't show up yesterday. He doesn't work on Sundays so it really wouldn't surprise me if he doesn't show up today but I sure hope he comes Monday to get us finished up. This project that was supposed to be finished by last Halloween has been dragging on way too long. We at times felt sorry for The Contractor out there working in the cold and rain, but if it had been built when it was supposed to have been he would have been working in much nicer weather. And then we would have been able to use it over the months since Halloween. Wish us luck!

Edited: Saturday, 11:00 A.M. He is here! The Contractor showed up just a few minutes after I posted this post originally. He doesn't have the door that goes from the house into the sunroom but will be back with it on Tuesday, plan to stay overnight that night and get it installed and the other things finished up then. Today he should be able to get a lot of those little things wrapped up. Maybe this project is finally going to get finished. Except for those d#%& handles for the windows and who knows how long it may take Royal Solariums to come through with them!

Labels: Griping, House, Photos, Sunroom

Our cat Peewee loves to lie right on top of the heat registers of the forced air heating system in our house. She also likes to be close to Pat so when we are in the computer room she would latch onto the one register that is in that room. We recently got a new table for Pats side of the room that her printer sits on and it covers Peewees register. Plus, there is a shelf down low on that table to both give support and give us a place to store printing paper, etc. The vertical support for the table cuts across the middle of the heat vent and the shelf has only 4 1/2 inches of space below it, so poor Peewee has been trying to figure out how to get onto HER register. This shows her latest and, so far, most successful attempt:

I think I had gotten her attention just before I took this photo as she raised her head to look out, so you can see her pink nose near the right side of the photo just below the shelf. Silly kitty.

The Contractor came back Thursday afternoon and also worked all day on Friday. Earlier in the week it was clear but cold and now after he has shown up the rains started again. Pretty hard rain. On Thursday they (he brought his 17 year old son along to help) got some of the aluminum supports for the sunroom fastened onto the knee wall. In the morning on Friday they got the part of the house roof overhang cut away that needed to be cut into in order to add the little roof across the back of the house that the sunroom will attach to.


This shows the first of the aluminum supports in place and the header for the little roof, with the older part cut away.


But then they decided to go get some 2X4s and plastic sheeting to build a tent over the whole thing. I wish they had done this sooner since some of the wood decking of the floor has gotten wet, even though it was covered in plastic. This photo shows a pretty good view of the 2X4s and tent and how far they got on the aluminum studs and rafters. This photo was taken on Saturday in the sunshine, while they are not here working of course, but it does show how far they did get on Friday. This view is from the back of our yard looking toward the house. Two of the awning windows are in place between wall studs. The bright blue on them is just a covering to protect the white vinyl while the construction is going on. They also have the vinyl corner pieces in place on the knee wall. It will be sided in the same vinyl siding as is on the rest of the house.


I took this photo with my back up against the house and looking out through the sunroom toward the back yard. You can see the windows in place and in fact can pretty well see how their glass is tinted. It is easiest to notice in the right side window if you compare the green fonds of the Pampas Grass plant as seen through the glass to that part of the plant to the left of the window. All of the vertical glazing will be tinted like this. I think this spring we will add a fence around at least the back yard, so there will be a cedar fence about six feet tall that will run across the yard at about the end of the crushed rock path that heads toward the common area yard beyond the edge of our lot. There will be a gate in the fence there so we can come & go into the common area yard.

This view also shows a bit of our community. The gazebo where our wedding ceremony occurred is just to the right of the area shown in this photo and the clubhouse is just beyond that gazebo. We are a gated community of 120 mobile or manufactured homes but all are mounted on foundations so they sit on the ground like a stick built house rather than up in the air three feet or so like mobile homes are often sited. The landscaping in the park is nice and all places have to be well maintained. I'm not used to living in a place where we have to ask permission to do something like building this sunroom, but this is one of those places. There are advantages and disadvantages to that kind of restrictions. But for us now, we are just glad that The Contractor has been showing up pretty regularly and that this project should (maybe) be finished before too long. He should be back on Tuesday and work all next week on our project. It is probably good that we didn't go to Arizona this weekend!

Labels: Our cats, Photos, Sunroom, Weather, Wedding

This will be a short post and without photos but the only thing that visited our under construction sunroom from last Wednesday to today was the snow Monday morning. Yes, our sunroom had about an inch and a half of snow in it! The Contractor finally returned this afternoon and worked about half a day and brought his 17 year old son along to help. I don't know how many days they will be working on it but expect perhaps through Saturday. Then he will probably go away and I don't know for how long before he returns again (maybe.)

We came to a decision over this week that we are not going to drive the motorhome to Arizona next week. The weather is crappy and we really don't want to risk getting stuck, plus our time available was so short that any delays would really cause problems in getting to where we wanted to be. There is also the 450 gallons of gas that it would take to drive to Tucson and back- about 3600 miles at 8 miles per gallon. Maybe next year.

But, we are going to go to Eastern Washington with it about the end of April and will celebrate our first wedding anniversary in the town we went to for our first short Honeymoon, Leavenworth WA. That is if the roads are finally clear of snow and ice by then.

Labels: Griping, RVing, Sunroom

We occasionally do get snow here in coastal Washington State in the lowlands, but not very often. This photo was taken in the early afternoon on last New Year's Eve from near our house, looking east toward Cultus Mountain, which is high enough that it does often get snow during the winter. You can see there is still snow even on the tree branches. The photo was taken with a 300mm lens and I did have to remove some power lines from the lower part of the image in Photoshop Elements. I am posting this as the weather forecast says we may get a bit of snow overnight tonight that should change to just rain by tomorrow afternoon. Fun.

Our sunroom contractor did come back this week but didn't make it here until Tuesday. He worked half a day then and got the plywood onto the bottom of the deck framing, then came back all day Wednesday to get the insulation in, the subfloor decking with a vapor barrier on it and the knee wall built. We paid him a deposit on the work at that point and he is due back today. But it is now 15:15 in the afternoon and there is no sign of him yet. I don't think he will be here today. He needs help for the next part which is putting up the metal support structure of the upper part, so maybe he wasn't able to find anyone to help. But I think he should have called me. He was planning to work on it tomorrow and all of next week. We will see what happens tomorrow.


This photo shows the deck with the knee wall. The open part on the far side is where the sliding glass door will go. The window wall at the left side of the photo will be a vertical one with 48 inches of bronzed acrylic plastic between the aluminum studs, from the top of the knee wall to where the roof starts to slope up to the house. The roof will slope up from that height of 6 feet to where it reaches the house at a height from the floor of 8 feet. The roof is to be glazed with insulated polycarbonate plastic. There is a 6ft. wide sliding glass door which goes in the big gap in the knee wall, half of which will open and 3 - 2ft by 2ft awning type windows, plus a regular door located where the window into the house is now that will go into the house.


This shows the special electrical box we installed in the knee wall to provide an outside electrical outlet. It is one designed to work with vinyl siding which is what the house is sheathed with and will also be used on the knee wall. We will have two 20 amp circuits in the room and have a small electric "fireplace" heater to use out there. I don't know if it will be enough- probably not on these real cold nights but we will find out.

The warantee work did get done on the motorhome Wednesday but they didn't want to install the inverter where we wanted it. I have talked with our local Camping World store and they can do it before we leave so still have that to do next week. We are thinking about our travel schedule for the Snowbird trip and I am sure looking forward to being on the road again with the RV.

Labels: Griping, Photos, RV equipment, Sunroom, Weather

Pat and I will be leaving next month with the motorhome to spend about three weeks in sunny Arizona! It will be a mini-Snowbird trip and one that I am really looking forward to. Huggy will stay home with Molly and Peewee. Pat's daughter C will take care of them daily as well as gathering in our mail. We are looking at leaving about Sunday Feb. 3rd and as I said will be away about three weeks, going as far as Tucson.

In preparation for that trip I bought a Xantrex 400 watt inverter that will be installed in the RV this next Wed. It is smaller than the 2000 watt unit I had in the Sea Breeze but this one has a pure sine wave output that will safely power sensitive electronics while the other one was a modified sine wave. We will hook it up to run the entertainment center with an extra outlet to hook up laptop computers, cell phone & camera batteries to charge, etc. It should work fine for our needs. This RV has only 220 amp hours of battery power VS 440 in the Sea Breeze (two big 6v AGM golf cart batteries instead of four of them.) So, if we are dry camping someplace and want to run the microwave we will have to start the generator. Not a big problem.


This is a photo of the inverter and the remote on/off switch that goes with it.

Our sunroom construction hit a snag. The afternoon that I posted the last post the contractor said we were going to have to pay for a lot of things that were supposed to have been covered in the fee we were paying him, per our agreement with the salesman. The contractor packed up his tools and headed home, since I wouldn't give him any money until the issue was resolved. The next week the salesman told him what was to be covered but by then he was at work on another room in the Portland, OR area. He called me and said he will be back tomorrow to get going again and since it is supposed to be finished within two weeks, it should be by the time we head south. So, I have no other photos to post yet of it's construction. Maybe by Tuesday. Maybe.....

Labels: Griping, Huggy, Photos, RVing, Sunroom

A near miracle occurred last Tuesday when Paul showed up to start building our new sunroom. Yes, the sunroom that we ordered back in August that was supposed to be finished by Halloween. It turned out that they didn't even order the kit until mid-October- the only construction drawing that we were sent had a drawn date of Oct 10th and that was before it was sent to the manufacturer of the kit in Saskatchewan, Canada. When we ordered it we were told it was a good time as in early September the company (Royal Solariums from Everett, WA) would be at the big Puyallup Fair where they always sell quite a few units. Ordering in Aug would put ours ahead of those.

Well, I think ours at only 12 feet by 12 feet was a small project for them and instead of doing as they said all those other, bigger (more money) went ahead of ours. The kit arrived at our house just a couple of days after we got back from Hawaii in very early November. We kept asking when the installer would arrive to start and there were always excuses, but no installer. When the last promised date had been missed we contacted a lawyer who wrote to them and faxed the letter on Friday, Jan 4th in the morning. We got a phone call before noon that day saying they would start construction on Monday, the 7th. The installer called us the morning of the 7th and said due to slick roads in his home area (he lives about 4 hours away) he wouldn't come until the next day. Wonder of wonders, he did arrive about 12:30 on Tue the 8th to start! But he arrived by himself, no help and he had to do everything himself.


This photo shows the concrete patio on the back of our house where the sunroom is to be built. The patio is 14 ft. deep and 28 ft. wide- the sunroom only 12 X 12. It will line up with the right side of the house as you see it in this photo and extend across to about a foot and a half before the window to the left. These two windows go into the master bedroom and the one closest to the edge of the house will be opened into a door with an external door put in place to allow closing off the sunroom.



This view is of the space behind our garage where most of the bundles that contain the sunroom parts have been stored since they arrived in early Nov. These parts are aluminum, glass and plastic so it should be no problem that they are outside, although they should not have had to be out this long if the company we bought the room from had done what was promised as to its assembly schedule.


Paul didn't arrive until 12:30 on Tue and it is pretty dark by 16:30 so there wasn't very much time for him to work, but he really did accomplish quite a bit in that short time. Rather than having to break up and take the concrete in the patio away, it was decided in Aug to build an insulated deck whose floor height is a match to that of the house, then build the sunroom on that deck. He has removed enough of the vinyl siding from the house to get an exact level for that floor and has cut three 10 inch square holes in the concrete for footings to hold the deck. The footings will broaden out below the patio level to provide a 2ft by 2ft solid concrete block at its base to support the deck & sunroom. He had already made a trip to the lumber yard for wood to start building the framing for the deck and that lumber is stacked to the left out of this picture.


When working this far from his home he stays in a local motel so arrived much earlier on Wed and the weather cooperated with no rain all day. He was able to finish the work preparing the footings and build the support structure for the deck as well as get the concrete in place to make the footings and hold that deck at the outer side, away from the house. Since it is cold here this time of the year, he didn't plan any work here yesterday but gave an extra day for the concrete to setup. He had another job to finish up in a town 40 miles away that he worked on yesterday.

It is now just after 13:00 here and he has arrived to drop off tools, then headed to the lumber yard for plywood. It sounds like he has an assistant to help today- Pat & I were out to lunch when they arrived and the only way I know they have arrived is the tools are out on the patio. I did phone him to let him know we are back although the back door into the garage was left open so they would have access to electric power. I think they will be working on it tomorrow and possibly Sunday too, and I will plan to take daily photos chronicling the progress. Paul told me that it should be finished in two weeks, but it is necessary to have a dry (no rain) day to spread the sealant along the edges between the plastic and the aluminum framing members. We also need to coordinate with our electrician to run two new lines from the power panel to the sunroom and make the connections there. It is finally looking like we will have a finished sunroom before too much longer. Maybe.....

Labels: Griping, House, Sunroom