Gulf Island Building.

cocobolo

I see you guys are getting wise to me now.

Truthfully, when I put the steps in, I just sort of followed the lay of the land up the bank. And naturally I had to skirt that old fir tree.

Each of the steps is actually a mini deck, and sits on the step below. So far they've been OK, but each time I have had to drag a stove up there...

jlhaslip

quit using stoves...

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cocobolo

That's the last one jl. Next time it'll have to come in by helicopter.

Not much to tell you about today. There was a leak in the skiff and the bilge pump was going off every 10 minutes. Drove the boat up on to the rocks at 5:45am and waited for the tide to go out. Found the leak quickly and fixed that. The boat floated off again around 3 this afternoon and now seems to be OK.

Did some staining on the woodshed - 3 sides now done - and ran out of stain. Put some more linseed on the hot tub, so that looks a bit better now.

And cut some wood up to make a set of thin lattice screens to go up against the glass in the windbreak by the middle deck. We had a little finch hit one of the panes today and it didn't make it. So we don't want to be seeing that happen again.

Also got the area behind the hot tub screen cleared out ready to receive the wood stove. I'll probably move that into place tomorrow. Need to do a quick sketch of what will be going there.

cocobolo

Ahhh...what a mess! Cleaned all this stuff out from behind the screen. By the end of the day I had it either all cut up for firewood, or cut into framing members for a woodshed I will be building for the neighbour.

Actually discovered some ground under all that!

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cocobolo

Lots of work to do in the garden today. But we thought it was important to get some screens made for the birds so they wouldn't hit the glass any more.

This is what I came up with.

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cocobolo

Looks like this from down below.

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gma2rjc

They're absolutely beautiful!

FWIW: I was showing my mom some of this thread Saturday evening. She was amazed. Among other things, she said, "He should write a book!". That was without her seeing tpolk's suggestion in post #868.

cocobolo

I always seem to find myself thanking you over and over again, so "thank you!"...again!

I have a few pics of some of the flowers when they were right at their peak, and more are getting there every day. I'll post some of them just for you.

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gma2rjc

Thank you! They're very pretty.

How did you make each of the screens identical to each other with perfect spacing?

drtbk4ever

Those are gorgeous. Simple, yet sophisticated. I love them.

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Bill

A DIY Noob that knows just enough to be dangerous.

cocobolo

Simple little trick really.

What I did was to lay out the first one on the workbench and nail it together. I used the brad nailer for this. Then I drew pencil marks at each intersection of the 1/2" by 1/2" cedar strips right on the bench surface.

Then it was a simple matter of laying the succeeding strips on top of the marks and nailing. That's it.

cocobolo

OK, everybody knows I'm not the best at all this electronic gadgetry, but I just got a scanner a few days ago. Still haven't quite got it figured out, but when I do, you're likely going to be bombarded with some of the original pictures I took with the old film camera many years ago.

I was just looking through them, and of course they made me chuckle.

Amazing how quickly we change over a few years...

cocobolo

Promise not to laugh too hard if I have a few foul ups here.

Before we came over to Ruxton Island, the last thing I did was to build and modify a few boats for us.

This one is one of those nice easy rowing boats. 15' overall. The wife didn't like it, claiming it was too unstable.

I used it here for a few years and then gave it to a neighbours' son, but the neighbour pilfered it and still uses it to this day.

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cocobolo

Hey hey hey, I'm pretty chuffed about that...it worked!

Let's see if this one does...it is the dinghy I made for her. She always loved this little boat, only 8' long. Except that now she is no longer physically able to get in and out of it, so I use it instead.

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cocobolo

This one is a different kettle of fish all together.

Originally, it was a lifeboat on one of the B. C. Ferries. I understand that after 20 years, they are required to remove them from service and install new ones.

In any event, the chap I got this one from bought 3 of them at auction for $500 each, a real bargain. His intention was to turn them into little pocket cruisers, perhaps with a small diesel.

But as often happens...the best laid plans of mice and men and all that...

When he advertised them for sale, he still had all three in his yard and his wife wasn't quite so enthused any longer. I got my choice of the three - they were just an open lifeboat at this point remember - and had it trucked to our boatshed.

After several months and several thousand dollars, this is what emerged.

That funny looking thing on the roof is a crane. We needed it to load and unload our mooring weights that I made to bring over to the island. I had four of these concrete weights, each 400 lbs. The blue barrel was filled with water to counteract the weight of the concrete mooring.

I would hook the crane up to the weight, push the button on the electric winch and just lift the weight right up. Then push the crane around and drop the weight into the hull. Worked like a hot damn.

When we got to the island, the procedure was reversed and the weights put right where we wanted them. I tied tugboat hawsers to two weights and then added the float in between. This prevented too much swing on the mooring.

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