Comes with the house

This is our latest barn cat.

We call him Simba because he looks like a lion. He's one of four or five adult cats someone abandoned in a nearby rental. The other cats gradually disappeared -- presumably picked off by coyotes -- but Simba seems to have adopted us.

We can't bring him with us when we move (Don's allergic to indoor cats, and Darcy does everything in his power to kill him) so he'll stay with the house.

It's clear Simba used to be an indoor cat. He often sits by our front door (which drives Darcy nuts), silently asking to come in.

But we can't let him or we'll have a dead cat (and a sneezing husband). However he's becoming a fine shop cat and is an incredible mouser. An unbelievable mouser, in fact.

Don made a nice cozy box for him in the shop, complete with comfy blankie piled on top a hot pad set on low during colder weather. Simba already knows where to go during chilly temperatures.

Simba will be a credit to whomever buys the house. After all, every farm needs a good barn cat.

Excellent news site

Lately Don and I have become soured on the Drudge Report, since Drudge seems to be soured on our president. However Don discovered an excellent news agglomerate site entitled Whatfinger.

Check it out.

A bird in the mouth...

Mr. Darcy has a new philosophy in life.

On our twice-a-day walks, we let Darcy loose for the first half (on the flats) and keep him on his retractable leash as we head down the hill through the woods (or he'll dash off and we'll never see him again). Frequently after he's leashed up and the road goes into the woods, we'll see flocks of quail.

Needless to say, Darcy sees them too.

Being a hunting breed, his instincts are to chase after everything that moves, so whenever we see quail, we keep a tight grip on the leash. Until last week.

One afternoon we saw a small flock of quail which trotted on the road ahead of us, well out of Darcy's reach. Then suddenly, as quail do, the flock flew off into some bushes away from the road. Thinking they were out of danger, we released Darcy's leash length and let him roam a bit further ahead. Suddenly he lunged into an embankment and seized a stray bird.

Well, no sense trying to force him to release the quail only to have an injured bird flopping about. May as well let him mercifully kill it, so we let him keep the quail in his mouth.

Well I must say we had a most peaceful walk after that. Darcy didn't tack from side to side across the road, chasing after scents. He didn't pull or yank on the leash. He just walked sedately ahead, conveniently out of close grabbing reach, with his trophy. "Uffing 'oo 'ee 'ere, I'm uss 'ine..."

He didn't dare drop the bird, of course, or we'd have taken it away.

Most of the time he stayed well ahead of us, clutching his prize. And oh, was he a proud boy. He caught a quail! All by himself!

The only time he would release his precious trophy was when he knew we were too far away to grab it from him.

So Darcy's new philosophy is: "A bird in the mouth is worth two in the bush." Why chase after other quail when he has one firmly in his mouth?

Road trip!!!!!

I'm on my way to Virginia in early November!

What's in Virginia, you ask? Well actually, Older Daughter.

After four years, our oldest has buttoned up her nanny job in New Jersey and will be coming home, regrouping over the holidays, and then looking for work in the Seattle area. She's been shipping her possessions home, but the one thing she can't ship is her car.

So -- I'm flying out to Virginia to spend a couple days with my dear friend Patty (whose daughter GG attended a nearby boarding school many years ago). Older Daughter and GG are old and dear friends, as are Patty and myself. Older Daughter will drive down from New Jersey, camp at Patty's, then meet me at the airport in Virginia.

After visiting for a day or two, Older Daughter and I are off for a mother-daughter road trip as we cross the country toward home. We'll keep a sharp eye on the weather and probably opt for a more southern route as we go, but we won't be in a tearing hurry and can stop to see any sights that catch our fancy.

Poor Don will be baching it for the two weeks or so I'll be gone. I anticipate he'll be eating a lot of sandwiches.

A new kitchen countertop

When we first bought our house back in 2003, one of the only breathtaking aspects of its construction was the kitchen cabinets and countertop.

I say "only," because the man who built our house was an excellent rough carpenter but not the best finish carpenter. Over the years Don's had to correct a lot of issues.

But the cabinets and countertop were hand-crafted wood and quite lovely. Most homes have wood cabinets, but wooden countertops are less common. People (mostly, I'll admit, women) would often walk into our kitchen and gasp in admiration. It was such an earthy, lovely combination.

But, true to the nature of the guy who built the countertop, he misunderstood certain principles of wood, i.e. shrinkage. The countertop was beautiful, but the boards from which it was constructed had shrunk over time, resulting in gaps (sometimes very wide gaps) between the boards.

For sixteen years, we've dealt with debris falling through the cracks. (One time I defrosted some bags of garden strawberries on the countertop but neglected to put the bags in bowls. Sticky strawberry juice leaked between the gaps and dripped all over my spices, which I keep on a lazy Susan in the cabinet below. What a mess.)

In the last couple months, Don tackled a major home improvement project: making a new countertop. Talented man that he is, he worked hard to retain the best parts about the original countertop (the lustrous beauty of the wood) while eliminating the bad parts (the gaps between the boards).

He carefully planned everything on paper first, measuring and re-measuring and re-measuring again.

He used the same type of wood for the new counter, Spanish cedar. Here it is, my kitchen countertop in the raw!

This is a dowel jig, which spaces dowel holes exactly to measurement.

Use of this jig allows long boards to be matched up and joined together using dowels.

Once the holes were drilled, he used wood glue to hold the dowels...

...and added extra glue the length of the board as well.

Here are the dowels which join the boards together.

They're inserted into the pre-drilled holes, then hammered down.

Joining two boards together.

Clamps draw the boards together and hold them firmly in place until the glue dries.

He uses a bit of pipe for extra torque when tightening the clamps.

This sat overnight to let the glue dry.

Using the same procedure, he added the L-shaped wing where the countertop bends around a corner near the stove.

We got a new sink for the occasion. Despite his careful measurements, Don took the precaution of making a cardboard cutout of the sink's dimensions before cutting the hole in the countertop where the sink will go. This is the part he really really didn't want to screw up.

Armed with both the measurements and the cardboard piece, he measured yet again and then cut.

The sink hole is smaller than the sink's lip that fits over the edge of the countertop.

He trimmed things to size using a circular saw with a fine-tooth blade.

Whew -- it fits!

Looking good so far!

And then the sanding started. He sanded and sanded and sanded, staring with 60 grit and ending with 220 grit. He sanded multiple times with the belt sander.

He used a palm sander to remove any scratches made by the belt sander. (The belt sander does a fast but sometimes rough job, and the palm sander cleans up any issues left over by the belt sander.)

After all the sanding was done, he used the shop vac to vacuum up all the sawdust.

Then it was time to coat. He started with three coats of wood hardener. This is a liquid plastic that's easily absorbed into the wood, then hardens. This step could be skipped with hard woods such as oak; but because he was using a relative soft wood (Spanish cedar), it was necessary to toughen the countertop.

Now the beauty of the wood emerges.

The first of three coats.

As helpful as wood hardener is, and no matter how well it does its job, it's something of a pain in the patookus. No matter how quickly or how smoothly it's applied, it tends to clump and get stringy as it dries. Then afterward, the wood surface needs to be sanded again, and the hardener residue gums up the sander. (Don used a lot of palm sander sandpaper during this process.) Additional rough spots needed to be scraped by hand.

Here, a portion of the wood is scraped, the rest is not scraped. The difference is dramatic.

Don let the hardener dry eight hours between coats of hardener. After the last coat was applied, he let the countertop dry for 48 hours.

Then it was time to apply varnish, the same Minwax high gloss varnish we use for our tankards.

He put on nine coats of varnish, letting the countertop dry between coats. After each coat dried, we rubbed the countertop down with xxx-grade steel wool (the slight scratching this causes helps the next coat of varnish stick better).

He used a spray gun for applying the varnish, same as with our tankards.

He also gave two coats of varnish to the underside of the countertop, just to seal things in. Since this didn't have to be as smooth, he used a brush instead of a spray gun.

Then the unit was complete. We brought it into the house and leaned it against the kitchen wall for a day or two, to let the wood adapt to ambient house temperature.

Then came the messy task of removing the old countertop and sink.

Naked kitchen!

When all the prep work was done, we lifted the new unit into place. It. Fit. Perfectly.

Look at that! Just look at it! No gaps!

Next step, the wood backsplash. While Don worked the wood, I scraped off the icky grungy silicon grout from the old backsplash.

For the backsplash, Don used half-inch oak to match the rest of the trim in the kitchen. He varnished the side facing out, and applied adhesive caulk on the side facing the wall.

He used a nail gun powered by the air compressor to fasten the backsplash in place.

To seal and waterproof the joint between the countertop and the backsplash, he used a line of dark brown latex caulk.

(And yes, I later touched up the paint.)

He also learned the excess latex caulk can be removed without smearing by dipping his finger in rubbing alcohol and wiping away the extra. He also used a cloth dipped in rubbing alcohol to remove any smears on the wood.

Beautiful, no?

After Don was finished with the wood parts, I ran masking tape and touched up the paint.

The result, folks, is the most beautiful kitchen countertop I've ever seen. Glorious! All thanks to my clever woodworking husband.

And best of all ... no gaps!