Then I go and post nothing in May either. Oh well, been busy lately. Still haven’t had time to get the APRS antenna mounted, but now I’ve got a ladder sitting in the garage (on loan from my father) which I can use to get high enough on the house to mount it. Think I’m just a 3/8″ hole saw away from finishing that project up, and having full use of the charcoal grill again without first having to turn off the APRS radio and move the magmount. Speaking of the garage, I picked up some shelves on Friday evening and put them together in there, and got all the stuff that was littering the floor onto them. Between that and some organization kits from there, all the yard tools are hung up nicely on the walls now, and I even made a spot for the lawn chairs so I’m not tripping over them either (nor are they falling over if I bump into them slightly). Finally, for the first time in.. 5 years?.. I got all my tools organized and put away into the toolbox. When we moved from Mays Landing to West Deptford, I never bothered to do it since they hadn’t moved around too much. But when we moved to Ewing, they definitely got jostled and I just didn’t bother at all since I rarely used any of them. Kinda hard to work on a car in a parking lot when your tools are on the second floor, and I didn’t have stuff around the house to fix either. Now there’s a place for just about everything, and the shelves that were already in the garage are almost cleaned off. Maybe tonight or one other night this week I’ll vacuum the junk off of them, and then I can start pulling them out to put down the second shelving unit we purchased as a workbench (instead of stacking the two halves on top of each other, they also suggest putting the units side by side as a workbench). I’ll have to measure things out, the wood currently used as a top for the old shelves might make a good workbench top for the new ones so it’s sturdy and consistent across the two units. After that, the pegboard on the back wall will probably come down, and either go back up with spacers or get replaced, as well as expanded. Then a lot of the hand-type tools that are in the toolbox currently will go on there, and I’ll have more room without needing another toolbox yet.
The basement hasn’t had much done lately, though the oil tank is on end and ready to be cut up into pieces – both to get it up out of the basement and for easy disposal. Quite a bit of stuff has collected down near the work bench though, and I really need to get down there soon and clean things up so there’s room to work again. Stephanie wants me to make some benches to go in the dormers upstairs – one cedar lined, and one regular – and I’ve also got to fix up a couple of the dining room chairs. Need to grab a couple large clamps for those, and though people have offered to loan them to me, I’ll want them around anyway, so I might as well buy them :>
Finally, in one of our last trips to Lowes, I realized that copper has come down in price considerably. I think I paid around $79 for 250′ of 14/2 wire, and $119 for 12/2. Now 14/2 was around $49, and 12/2 was $79. A 10′ length of 1/2″ pipe was $10 and change, and the best part was a 1000′ spool of CAT5 cable for $80. The last of that list came home with me, so once the NJ tax return comes through I’m going to pick up the patch panel, switch and the last of the stuff needed to do the home network and new phone wiring so I can get started on that. Since the office (2 drops) and shack are the most “important” ones, followed by the living room, I can probably do all of that in one weekend, maybe even one day. The two upstairs drops will likely be the hardest, but they’re also the least important, so whenever they eventually happen is good enough. Probably not until we rip the rooms apart to insulate them.