Photo Blog

At this point in construction, everything depends on everything else, so it’s kind of hard to pick a single direction and go that way for a while. Instead, progress is incremental across a broad range of areas. Each one advances a little bit, then I come up against a dependency and have to move that … Continue reading Parallel Processing

Lots of little things going on right now, and some big things. First, another bit of supporting evidence for the axiom of there being two ways to do anything: right… and again. This time, it’s the pantry shelf pin holes. I don’t know why the first edition of them came out so badly – maybe … Continue reading Waste Not, Want Not

Okay! Block-and-tackle is here, time to raise the power center up to the Storage/Utility Loft. Gather rope. Rig the daylights out of it. Hoist. But before that can be done, something else must first be done: mount an anchor in the ceiling that can take a coupla hundred pounds. The douglas fir 2×6 rafters should … Continue reading Heavy Lifting

A few days ago, the power center arrived by common carrier. And when I say “power center” I mean this thing which is really three things. On the left, a device to tame the wild voltages and currents from the solar array such that the batteries may be safely charged by it. On the right, … Continue reading Power, No Glory

This weekend I spent rather a lot of time dressing up the windows. I wanted some simple, thin, narrow boards to make the frames but of course such things simply are not to be had from the home center, so I had to fabricate my own. Some time at the table saw and thickness planer, … Continue reading Trim Triminy

Remember a little while ago I mused about using foam floor tiles for ceiling treatment? The dinos? Well, the dinos were definitely too much of everything but I did kinda like the idea of a slightly resilient ceiling, especially in the Storage/Utility Loft, since crawling around in there it seemed pretty likely that accidental noggin … Continue reading Ceil the Deal

Our offer was rejected and no counter-offer was made nor was a revised offer invited. The seller wants a no-contingencies/as-is sale and clearly thinks his property is worth a lot more than we do. No surprise it’s been on the market for years, then. Ah, well, time to move on. We do like the town, … Continue reading Land…no!

After all that… and there was a lot of all that to all that… I have decided the power system with those former race car batteries (cells, really) is just too complicated and potentially dangerous to be worth the cost savings compared with the all-in-one units from SimpliPhi I had been contemplating at the start. … Continue reading SimpliPhi, improvise, and dinosaurs?

The weather is lovely and I’m now really back to work on the HomeBox. As per always, before anything may be done, something else must first be done (applies recursively). One thing that had to be done before a lot of other things could be done is I wanted to have a good, solid workbench … Continue reading Power and Glory

And by A Lot… I mean… a lot!! This particular 9+ acres of land not too far from our current residence came to our attention recently. This lot has a lot going for it… and a lot going against it. And that’s why we think we can get it for a lot…less than the asking … Continue reading A Lot Of Thinking