New World Datsuns...

It's easier and quicker to cut them into 37" pieces and load them than to cut them into 18" pieces, but once home it takes way longer to get them cut up and stacked, I got tired today and quit at 8:30 with 3 pieces left to cut in half, it had started raining and I was soaked.
I have made 6 trips so far and I have close to 5.5 cord, I also have a lot of saw dust piling up.

I made 2 trips today, only took photos of the 2nd trip, it was pretty heavy, I only have room for maybe 2 more loads and the wood shed will be full.







I put a new chainsaw blade on both chainsaws yesterday, they both cut fast now, but the big saw chain is on its last cycle, there is not really much left to sharpen anymore, it will be tossed when dull, need to find a new chain to replace that one, I have 3 for each chainsaw.

Well I have not really posted a photo of the shed lately, I think I have just over 8 cord in the shed, I will need to move the dry wood on the right(have a place for it) to get around 4 more cord into the shed which would be around 3 years of firewood with what I already have(couple cord), this will be 3 years of heat for me during the winter months at a very reasonable price.



The pickings were getting lean at the guys place, but there are supposed to be 7 or 8 large trees left(3'+ round at the base) that are supposed to be taken down tomorrow, I suspect there will be around 20 cord or more available, but this stuff is green while the stuff I have been bringing home has been down for a while, long enough to season check.

I feel pretty good today, I split half a cord of wood today after working 5 hours, after this is all over(the wood thing) I should put this energy into working on my Datsun's.

I am already eating strawberries but so are the squirrels, I need to do some weeding soon before it looks overwhelming, the corn I planted doesn't appear to have done well, I have a few coming up but I expected more, the watermelon doesn't seem to be growing much either, the ground likely has to be warmer, I am burning wood tonight to get warm, it is 54 out right now and my house was around 60 degrees when I started the fire(60 degree high today), it is finally 73 degrees inside now, I used one foot round/16" long piece of wood to have a warm evening.

I have a bunch of glass I have collected over the years, I was considering making a small green house next to the shed but do I really need a greenhouse.(insert face palm here)

One to two more cord and the wood shed will be full.

Stay toasty next winter.

I went and got this big log the guy cut up into 15" thick pieces, his tractor would barely lift the pieces, to get it high enough for the second level he would move forward and backward and use the momentum of the bucket to get it higher, a couple of the pieces were 4' across, once on their side I cannot lift them back up, one I had to split on the truck as i could not move it(lower back one in photos), the lower front one slid off when I raised the flatbed.







I got all but one split and stacked, one had a nail in it and I hit it with my chainsaw when I was cutting it in half, once split in half I could do the rest with my splitting maul, but splitting them in half with the splitting maul is a bitch, it is easier to have it on its edge and cut it 2/3rds of the way down and then split it, that's the one I hit the nail right near the middle, that nail was likely put in that tree a 100 years ago.





No one wanted this log, it was huge, he cut it in 15" thick rounds, loaded it, and gave it to me for free, but my chain hit that nail so it wasn't completely free, I am going to have to pay someone to sharpen the chain now, if that one had fell on its side like the rest I would have split it with the maul and not hit a nail.

I think one more load and I am done getting firewood, then I will likely get back to my garden, snails are chopping all the corn starts down, not sure I am going to have corn this year at the rate they are eating them starts.

Wow, that nail is a one in a million hit. Did you count the rings?

I can hardly believe it, I counted the rings on the one not split yet, you can see the gray hue on both sides of the center radiating out from the center, that was caused by the nail/nails, the gray circle out of center is a branch, that round has exactly 100 rings, so the nail was likely put in the tree 90 something years ago, that 100 years I mentioned was just a guess.
I now know why the wood was gray, next time if I see gray I will avoid using my chainsaw in that area.

In the photo below you can see the nail that appeared after I split the wood, this part was buried in the wood, the part I hit was angled so I had to go thru more nail, maybe it was bent over or something, it really dulled the chain.



This is why lumber mills do not want trees that were cut down inside the city, nails and other metal inside of them to ruin or blow up the giant band saw blade, bullets are a softer metal and don't destroy the blades, nails destroy the blades, you do not want to be around one when it breaks, that is one of the reasons the operators are in a box with safety glass with metal screen inside the glass, to keep them safe.

You should be good and toasty for a while.



Another thing to think about as far as building a greenhouse is that if you are close to a ceramic tile store you can get some of the contractors to save the glass from shower doors and shower surrounds where they are replacing the glass and shower tile. I work at a flooring store and once saved enough glass for my father in law to build himself a greenhouse.

I already have more than enough glass around here to build a giant green house, I have 50 pieces that are 22" X 62" and 25 pieces that are 32" X 76", and I also have 7 pieces that are 36" X 60" with bird designs etched into them, behind them are 5 pieces that are 34" X 79", all are thick glass except for the 50 pieces, they are fairly thin but I suspect would make nice roof pieces, the hard part would be figuring out how to put it together and still be able to replace pieces if they got broke without having to take a bunch of stuff apart.



I could make it but not sure if it would be worth the effort and if I were to die or sell this place it would just be another thing that would have to be tore down to make it legal to sell the place, I have a shitload of that kind of stuff around here already.

Yeah you’re probably covered on the glass then. I understand completely about having too much stuff around the house that you would probably never need

I did this over the last few days, I should have done this when I put in the hardwood floors, but I thought it was a bad idea for a bathroom, but the kitchen has had no issues and I spill shit all the time, so I am going to do both the bathrooms, this is the master bedroom bathroom, I didn't take a before photo, the floor is in, I counter sunk holes on the edges and screwed the strips of wood in, I will fill the holes with something and seal everything with the same stuff I used on the rest of the house, I also have a new toilet to install when I finish everything including painting the walls.



I blended it into the existing floor, it was a bitch to do this and get everything to align since I had to start at the back wall and have everything blend in when I got to the door opening.



This was my only goof, I had cut that board off(staggering the ends) and forgot when I pounded in the board, I forgot to cut the tongue off before I pounded it in position, and there was no way I was going to get it out as it went in with a lot of resistance, if I had tried to cut it out it would have just pinched the saw blade and it would have seized, I will fill that groove with the same stuff I fill the counter sunk holes.

OK, so I tried a spot under where the toilet will be using clear wood satin sealer, it was not going to work for me, it was too light colored, you can see that in the photo below where I took the photo after I had put some golden oak stain on everything, it didn't change the color of the wood on the test spot.



Here are a couple photos of that spot with a piece of flooring I cut out of the door area next to that test spot, the piece of board almost disappears into the stained flooring.





So here are some photos of it after it was stained.









I need to let it dry for at least 8 hours, tomorrow I will put on the 3 coats of sealer, I hope it is close after it is done and the sealer has dried, this is the first time I ever tried anything like this, adding flooring and trying to make it match, the other bathroom will be easier as I will only have to blend in the sealer color as the boards will be oriented the same direction as the boards in the hallway, no cutting boards out of existing flooring, it would have been so much easier if I had just glued in a trim piece in the crack but I wanted it to look proper having the boards in alignment going all the way to the far bathroom wall and not have anything to catch my bare foot on when walking into the bathroom at night, also having a stick of wood 90 degrees off would always catch my eye, this way it looks like it was all done at the same time.
Keep it mind I am trying to match 10/15 year old sealed wood.

Excellent work Wayno. Especially since you’ve never done anything like that before. Toothing the boards in, what do you called blending them, is not an easy task. Especially on nail down hardwood. You’ll most likely not have any problem with water on the surface, given you will probably put a bath rug in front of the shower. The problem you might face is water from underneath; i.e. the wax ring under the toilet leaking. It looks like that is a true solid hardwood in the pictures so if you do get water underneath the boards they could swell at the joints and do what is called cupping. If that happens, and it is a true solid hardwood, just put a fan on it and when they dry out they should settle back down. Don’t walk on the polyurethane sealer for at least a day. I think you did a fine job, and matching existing stain is not as easy as someone would think. Well done sir

That does look like a nice job. One comment I will make is in general the toilet flange is supposed to sit on top of the finished floor. May want to check the measurement from the bottom of the commode to the area where the wax ring sits and compare that with the thickness of whatever type of ring you have and the flange in the floor. They sell double thick rings but in my opinion it’s better to use a spacer to get the flange surface to the correct height. Don’t need waste water leaking all over (or under) your new floor, especially since it’s wood.

The wood flooring is the exact same height as what was in there that I tore out(fiber board and what ever you call that plastic floor covering, linoleum??), I have never done a toilet before, the wax rings are different, I am not sure what I am going to do on that yet, the wax ring on the existing toilet fit the flange tight while this wax ring is smaller and doesn't make a seal.
Also under the wax ring assembly my flange had another smaller ring or caulking that also made a seal, and the new wax ring is slightly shorter when they are sitting side by side on a level surface, I really do not want to change out the flange.
If the flange was sitting on the wood flooring it would stick up too high for either toilet.

I decided that I should not have used that golden oak stain, I should have put the clear sealer on the bare wood I think, it actually darkens the wood a little, the stain made it even darker but not enough for me to worry about it, I will likely do the other bathroom without using stain and see how that one blends with the old flooring, that is what I get for taking a piece of the cut out flooring to the hardware store to compare with what they had as sample colors, they only sell pre-stained flooring now, how does that keep the spilled water out of the cracks between the boards.

I have also decided that I will likely not shop at Home Depot anymore, I stopped by to pick up some "weed and feed" and walked up to the self serve cash registers and all but one were card only(there was a line for that machine, and most the other machines were empty), they had like 12 or 16 machines and only one took cash, I will go somewhere else like Lowes from now on, and the guy that waved me to his register 40/50 feet away didn't look happy when I mentioned that having only one take cash was a load of crap, I told him to tell the manager what I said when he said he had no control over the machines.

I painted the bathroom today(2 coats), I originally planned on baby blue like half this bathroom was painted already, the other bathroom is painted that color blue, but I found some white paint that is everywhere else in the house, so I painted it with that, I will let it dry and ask the question, should bathrooms and kitchens be painted with gloss paint instead of satin?

Well the guy that bought the flatbed/Tommylift came over with his brother and we mounted the flatbed in 4 places on his stripped down Toyota motorhome truck, it took around 4.5 hours, he says he will be back for the Tommylift this next week or weekend, he paid me in full before leaving, it really needs 4 more mount places but the flatbed is out of my driveway which is good.
He came over kinda late and I didn't think we would have the time to get it mounted, but he pulled out just before 11pm, they were just kids, maybe 20/22 years old, but the brother was very interested in how I did stuff and was following me around.

This is my opinion. For a bathroom satin should be fine for the walls but I would do semi gloss on the ceiling. Kitchen should be semi gloss. I generally would use semi gloss any place there is a possibility you would have to occasionally wipe the surface.