I don't guess I've introduced myself here. Perhaps that is normal because I couldn't find an introduction section.
My name is Brian Rodgers I live in the mountains of northern New Mexico with my lovely wife Nell.
We have three dogs, one cat, one Guinea Hen and a hundred fish!
This is my second self-built home.
I can tell you about myself, but from the posts I've done here I hope you get a picture of where I'm coming from and going to.
I'm still going strong and seem to be holding remission from an autoimmune disease.
I suffer with tinnitus and will undergo a chiropractic procedure later this month which I'm so looking forward to.
Speaking of hearing loss I pulled out and dusted off my electronics repair tools and tackled the shop stereo that was cutting out as it was driving me a little nuttier. I''ve got one speaker pointed outside so I can listen to music while I work. I'm trying to get my grove on while hammering a gazillion furring nails in the
chicken wire and lath... then the jam would quit replaced by an even louder hum. :upset: No good.
A friend and I had a audio store back in the day and we had bumper stickers made that read
"If you can't Crank it Yank it!
I yanked it.
First-vintage-stereo-completely-dissasembled-resoldered-reasembled-tested-nope-negative-nada.jpg [ 99.12 KiB |
Oh well, long story short it wasn't any better after resoldering the connections. It is in the junkyard now.
I dug up one more stereo leftover from my old electronics repair shop. It doesn't sound great, but after cleaning the switches it stays playing although there is the scent of burning circuit boards when it's cranking out the tunes. That doesn't bother me one bit, hehe! Tunes!
So where am I at? Fish for some reason weren't hungry after we got another deluge of rain and that time it was full of hail too. It kind of creamed the back garden, but the
greenhouse roof seems fine, although two years ago when rain
water from the galvanized tin roof leaked into the fish tank, made our trout sick. I have to wonder if that somehow happened again. I still need to finish the harvest and buy the 2019 brook trout fingerlings. I'll do that as soon as we finish what we're going to do on the exterior of the house for this year.
So here is where that is:
Brians-stucco-lathe-Kitchen-and-west-wall-Sept-2018.jpg [ 142.84 KiB
wide-view-stucco-lathe-Kitchen-and-west-wall-Sept-2018.jpg [ 137 KiB
wide-view-stucco-lathe-Kitchen-window-problem-solved-Sept-2018.jpg [ 126.57 KiB |
I had done a crappy job of weather-proofing the windows in the kitchen when we built it five or so years ago and water got in and caused some minor damage. In my usual fretting and scrambling to think of a good way to not let it happen again I imagined putting flashing, or an aluminium sill under this large window. Then we figured out that these recycled windows are made for stucco siding and have tracks for the lath to sit in. As I was working installing the lath it occurred to me that the water can penetrate the cement, but the stucco (cement) protects whatever seal is under it, much like I did when I put plastic sheeting under the tarps covering the sacks of lime and cement in the stucco mixing station to give that perfect dependable water seal. For the stack of cement the tarp protects the plastic and here the cement protects the asphalt paper underneath. I used a liberal amount of good quality silicone sealant around all the window edges and shoved the plaster lath into the gaps all around the edges. Today the silicone
should be dry, I'll fold the lath over and make a nice square corner and that window is ready for stucco! I've got one more window to do and three light sockets to lath, plus one spigot which I'll need to do some kind of special cover to keep the stucco off the faucet in case it needs to come out for repair someday.
That's is though.
Thanks for reading
Brian