Kitchen/Hallway French Door

R asked me tonight if we can do something tomorrow that doesn't involve saw dust. Sorry R, no can do. One door down...one to go.

The kitchen/hallway French door took two days to install. We first needed to trim a tad off the top so that it would fit the out of square door opening.We then needed to sand here and there so that the door would have a consistent margin around the door. Look at all the saw dust on the floor.
We then installed the vintage hinges I purchased on eBay. We decided to wait on installing the vintage glass door knobs until later just in case we need to sand some more.

Here is a photo of the door taken from the hallway.
And the view of the new door from the kitchen. Knotty pine, anyone? Visualize the knotty pine painted white. Are you visualizing or just humoring me????
Friday's plan......start installing the door between the hallway and the game room. Saturday's plan is for R to go to the race track with G for practice and to dial in G's sprint car.

Here is a link to a U Tube video of the Michigan Traditional Sprint Car Series 2009 Year in Review. That is the series R raced with last year and won Rookie of the Year despite being one of if not the oldest driver. See if you can pick out B, G, R, and extra points for picking out R's sprint car on the track. Make sure you check out Jack Hewitt's two seat sprint car. He actually takes people for a spin around the track. I was at a race track where you had to pay to enter a raffle for a chance to ride in it. The person that won changed their mind and they had to pull another ticket. Too scary for me that's for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKRY_cZQ3ik

B & G's Deck Update + Racing Announcement

Today was the day everyone was looking forward to........we started the railing installation.

Here is a photo of B and G making sure everything is on the level.
We used two 8 inch long carriage bolts to attach each post. The photo below is of R using a ratchet and socket to tighten the nut on the back side of the rim joist. We used 8 inch long bolts because we needed to go through two thirds of a 4 X 4 and one 2 X 8 and one 2 X 10. Next spring G will re tighten the nuts after the deck goes through a winter and the lumber shrinks even more.
There's those shorts again!!!!!

Just as dusk fell and after the posts were installed on the perimeter of the deck we started to install some the 2 X 4's that join the posts together to form the railing. A 2 X 10 will cap off the railing. The spindles will be square 2 X 2's.

In the photo below the railing looks rather tall but believe me when I say it is not...I am just short.

Notice how the patio door blinds are open at the bottom.....that's Twiggy making sure everything is done to spec, I think she's undercover for the building inspector.
Next on the agenda for the deck is to make 4 additional posts for the step railings, finish all the 2 X 4 installation, install 2 X 10 cap, cut spindles to length, install spindles, and touch up paint.

In racing news.....R finished his first season racing a sprint car in the MTS Series. He accumulated enough points to finish the season in 10th place and also at age 57 won Rookie of the Year honors. I guess this retiree isn't sitting home in a recliner watching TV. The trick is to stay active. Here is a photo of the happy guy today as he was taking the car apart to power wash it.
Speaking of retirees.....my newly retired sister has taken to writing letters to the editor of The Flint Journal newspaper. Seems one of Flint's favorite columnists, Andrew Heller, made a statement concerning the advertised mpg of his new GM vehicle and she had to set him straight.

Added 9-24-09 Seems Andy felt the need to pull that particular column. Maybe the formidable Marcia smacked him upside the head and said "Dumb Andy dumb."

And just for your FYI, the advertised mpg is the average after the engine is broken in. You may or not get that mileage right away. Remember with a new engine everything is tight because of the close tolerances that are used today. Tight equals friction, friction equals heat, heat equals less efficiency. When purchasing a brand new vehicle it is best to get an oil and oil filter change after 3k miles and after that change to every 5k for fossil oil and 7-10k for synthetic oil. Also unless the vehicle came equipped with synthetic oil, use fossil oil for the first 10k miles before switching to synthetic oil. DO NOT SWITCH TO SYNTHETIC on an engine with a lot of miles on it, you will be wasting your money and you could develop oil leaks.

All vehicles in this household have always used synthetic oil once they were broke in. Our vehicles have 260k, 430k, 330k, 8k miles on them. Who says GM vehicles don't last? The vehicle with 8k came with Mobil One and says to use Mobil One only because it was designed (due to the coating on the piston of this high compression engine) and tested to use only Mobil One. My husband uses Mobil One in all his vehicles and I use Valvoline full synthetic in mine. I think synthetic is the only way to go. It is more expensive (roughly twice the cost) but you can get twice the miles and it saves non renewable oil for more important uses. So I guess you could say synthetic oil is green.

In NASCAR news...The Chase has started. Tony didn't have a great day but it could have been worse. He had to pit to replace an axle cap. That is kind of an odd problem and usually a sign that you have damaged the axle spline from spinning the tires before they hit the ground when you are coming down off the jack. Tony still finished on the lead lap.

At the beginning of the season I joined the fantasy racing league on the Pepsi site. I am currently ranked 999th out of 55,980. I did pretty good this week and should move up a little when they tally the points from today's race.

So let me get this out of the way......Gooooooo Smoke!!!!! Good luck in The Chase.

Indy Pole Day

I realized that I needed to post more photos of Indy to satisfy all you gear heads out there.

The day was very cloudy and extremely windy. Some people wore shorts and just a t shirt, others had on winter coats. We knew better and dressed warm, nothing worse than going to a race and sitting there uncomfortable because you are cold.

On to the photos!!

This is a photo of the Pagoda (scoring tower). The photo does not truly represent how tall it is.

The pink #99 of Alex LloydThe #3 car of Helio Castroneves
A photo of the tunnel that goes under the race track. It's really something when a race car goes over this portion of the track at 200 + mph and you are under there.The museum that includes the Indy 500 Hall of Fame
This is the medical evac helicopter. They use this helicopter to take injured drivers to the hospital if their injuries cannot be treated at the on site hospital.Here is the medical facilities. All drivers go here after a crash if they cannot drive their car away from the wreck. My understanding is that it is equipped with an MRI and X ray machines plus all the other bells and whistles. This is also the site of after crash interviews where the driver says, "Mom, I'm all right and it was just one of those things." Or "I guess so and so didn't see me and drove right over me."
Each team has their own supply of fuel. They all use the same fuel.This is the electric motor that starts the engine. The cars do not have an on board starter. If you watch the race you will see them pull this out if their car stalls on pit road. It fits into the car at the rear under the wing and between the rear tires.
The garage area of the #14 car.The garage area of one of the Target cars.
The non wing sprint car of R. They decided to go with simple graphics package because they ran out of time and didn't have the time to take the car and leave it for a week so the graphics guy could do the vinyl. They still need to add the contingency stickers.Here's R sitting pretty. When he is strapped in correctly he can't even lean that far forward. The driver and seat are one. To keep your arms from getting broken in a crash, your arms have Velcro straps attached that keep them from leaving the seat area even if your hands come off the steering wheel. Ken Schrader once said that he "assumes the sprint car crash mode even in his stock car" places his hands under his harness straps to keep his arms from flying around and getting broken. R decided to give up his pavement racing number of #81 and go back to his motorcycle racing number of #88. A friend of our said "R went from racing on 2 wheels, to four wheels, and now to 3 wheels." **non wing sprint cars lift the left front off the ground when they are into the throttle heavy. Now all he needs to do is start unicycle racing.