29 February 2012

Baking Bread Yesterday

Baked some bread yesterday. Very quick and easy recipe--no kneading required. It turned out quite nicely and complemented our beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, and salad.


26 February 2012

recycled lumber etc

Here's my recently purchased '97 E250 cargo van I got just to haul stuff from the jobsite. Alot of good stuff going into the land fill from there. This van only has 52K miles but gets 13mpg...so won't be driving it often, as the Ol' towncar gets 22mpg.
10' long stick of angle iron....and many more to nab if I stay alert...but heavy. Old phone booth wall mounted box...aluminum I think.
old 1964 end stud....and new Temple Eastex stud.
I made a Saturday trip to the jobsite and wished I had a couple of younger helpers to pick up some of the dumpster lumber. I really hate to see all this old 1964 era lumber hauled to the landfill. But that's what's been going on for the last few weeks here.
I pulled a few old studs out of a full roll-off container, and found an old 10' long 4x5" iron brick window lintel that the scrappers had left behind, and loaded it ....afterwards I huffed and puffed and thought....maybe I need to get some help to load these? I can get several if I remind the brick demo crews to "save" a few for me instead of scrapping them all.

Well I have a pic of the saved old 2x4s...and the steel lintel...and the old Bell telephone payphone wall-booth thing....that had been abandoned on the project.
AND a pic of a modern stud-grade end grain versus an old '64 stud end grain....before the modern Monsanto-big corp method of growing pine trees like Johnson grass for cheap, high profit, fast growth lumber harvesting during the huge 15 yr Govt enabled housing boom.
Thats all for now..
Bigfoot.

22 February 2012

When Pigs Fly . . .

I have refilled this bird feeder (which holds several pounds of seed) about 5 times since the first of February! I'm like the mom who makes kool-aid and cookies for all the neighborhood kids. The most popular house on the block!

At the Legion

We took a quick trip to the cabin last week. We left Thursday evening, spent the night in Odessa, then made it to the cabin Friday mid-morning.
We had a wonderful (although too short) 2 day stay. As usual, we didn't want to leave.
Below are photos of hangin' with friends at the Legion.

15 February 2012

The Foots' Valentine's Day

We made a pact for Valentine's Day--No cards, no candy, no flowers, no nuthin'.
Don't need that stuff. . . A kiss, a hug, and "I love you." Every day is Valentine's Day!

And it worked out just fine.

13 February 2012

Jobsite progress...4 weeks from start

Muddy after heavy rains a couple weeks ago. We attempted to use the old sidewalks for "roads" for heavy dumpster trucks (roll-offs), and forklift traffic. But since they were poured with the wire mesh sitting on the ground, not up in the cross section of the concrete...it does ZERO good to hold conc together. But it did hold up for foot traffic since 1964. We planned on ripping them all out anyway, now some are crumbled up and stuck in the muck.
Alot of the first floor cast iron pipes are major clogged with 48 years of rust. I don't know how there were folks living here only 3 months ago. We are going to try jetting them out...very gently...don't want to knock a hole in the side of a rusted sewer pipe. Then we'd have to cut open the slab to replace the pipe...(not in the budget)
"pick-up-sticks" anyone...copper scrap.
Kinda like Nancy Pelosi getting a make-over, but these 48 year old apts are due for a facelift. Stripping down to bare studs on the inside, moving a few walls. New windows and doors, gable roof, and an entire new look on the inside and out.
The old metal roof porches come off easily, with a skytrack to lift off after the framing is knocked loose and metal roof peeled off.
Too muddy after 6" of rain a couple of weeks ago, here in Dallas. Framer had to rent a crane at $250/hour to set trusses on 2 bldgs inside the courtyard, due to mud keeping his skytrack out.
Old mansard roofs with vinyl siding come off in 20-25 foot long sections. Takes about half a day to do a building.
These pics are all about 2 weeks old....more fresh pics to come.
Adios...B'foot.

06 February 2012

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LITTLEFOOT..!!

Happy B-day to Mrs Foot....

from Mr Foot.!!