Good Morning All. 79° and mostly cloudy. The rain yesterday gave up before getting here, however the rain that has been in the ten-day forecast for today is about fifteen miles away and looks like it will be here before I finish this post. Hope that it amounts to at least .75", as I am tired of watering the parts of the yard that I actually water. If it doesn't rain today, I have to add water to the pool as well as I am losing about 100 gallons a day to evaporation.
Hit another snag on the bathroom remodel yesterday. Apparently the contractor installed the shower faucet upside down and you have to go right for hot instead of left. I don't understand how exactly this works yet! It actually didn't really matter to me or to the wife since we've always had two-faucet systems instead of these single levers, but he's insistent that he needs to fix it. So that means that he has to remove the sheetrock from the wall in the room behind those shower plumbing connections (another bathroom) to access the plumbing, rather than removing a bunch of tile. This is all on his dime so to speak, but it does add an extra half day or so to the job. Then I need to locate the fifteen year old paint that we used in that bathroom for him to repaint the new sheetrock. Counting this, he will have spent about two days at his expense fixing things that
he didn't like. He was happy though, that I had wired up all of the outlets and installed the lighting so he was able to see better. Finally completed the shower enclosure tiling with the special order tile that came in last week. Still need the door. OK, anyone contemplating bathroom remodels; new vanities come with only one backsplash, so if it is a corner installation, you have to go and buy another one for the side. That's on today's agenda plus my wife decided that the old toilet just wouldn't do so that's on the list also. It's been in there and operable for a week now and she finally decides.
Out in the train shed yesterday, I began painting the assembled factory that I am working on. While waiting for paint to dry, I added some more field grass clumps to the ROW and along some fencing. Spent some time running trains and repairing a P2K SD45. Somehow the drive shaft separated from the flywheel and the rear truck was no longer powered. There's enough play in the other end of the shaft into the worm geaar connector that it just slid out of the way, and I actually would not have noticed if I hadn't tried to clean the wheels before running (alcohol soaked paper towel on track method). I really like this P2K model (and most others) but it is a royal pain to disassemble, the entire rear truck mechanism is surrounded by the car-length weight which in turn is ensnared with wiring and circuit boards. Press-fitting the shaft end back into the flywheel really required three hands as well. While I had the option, I chose not to CA it back in place at this time.
Wind is now howling and the temperature has dropped to 68° and the rock that I borrowed from
Chet is wet.
Garry - A buddy of mine who is not a modeler, buys lots of boxes of trains off Craig's List for his nine year old son. I have shown him how to repair his now extensive collection of Tyco, LifeLike and Model Power cars. I have also made him some "converter cars" with KD couplers on one end and horn-hook on the other since he did buy an Athearn RTR engine to power things. Couldn't understand why the cars wouldn't reliably couple to it. The C/L engines ran badly if at all.
Mike - Continue to have a safe trip.
Everybody have a great day.
