More Victories

I was going to title this weekend's post "Declaring Victory" but I see that I already did that on November 5.  Of course, shifting the goal posts is endless.

This might be a good time to recap progress made in November.  At the start of the month, I'd still been keeping the doors open all day and night for outgassing.  The floor was getting muddy in front and was strewn with junk, much of it intended to go elsewhere (the Oakhurst tough shed), such as the solar lights which had only been temporarily installed then removed for mowing.  Temporarily stashing them in Lyndhurst brough in bits of dirt that fell on the floor, and that had not been the only source of dirt.  So on November 5, I cleared up the junk on the floor, installed some lights but boxed the rest and put in Oakhurst, and did a quick mop of the front area.  That was unsatisfactory, but enough for my first declaration of victory.

On November 18, I moved all the remaining stuff on the floor to the back, and thoroughly mopped the floor, rinsed, and dried with a towel.  I touched up some of the Mortite on the outside of the A/C unit.

On November 24, I washed the inside east wall starting at the north edge of the french doors, wrapping around all the way to just past the southwest corner on the west side.  The intent was to make it possible to move stuff from the first house bedroom that needs to be cleared out.  Such moving could begin today because no further pre-use cleaning is required in that area.  I also cleaned the top shelf (which was nearly black from bug dirt again), the exposed portions of the bottom shelf, and scrubbed by hand the southwest corner of the tile floor, which had previously gone uncleaned on November 18.  There was a rust stain in that area which I mostly removed with my Dawn and Baking Soda solution and scrubbing.

I also installed the LED lights as the last incandescent used for the outgassing phase burned out and the building turned dark on November 23.  I decided that running the LED's on the lowest dimmer setting 24/7 would be acceptable because it only uses about 10 watts.  Unlike the incandescent bulb, the Ecosmart LED's make no noise on the Hunter dimmer.

The key part that remains uncleaned in the north side wall, and wrapping around to the west side and the corner of the east side.  The north side wall is not intended for junk storage, so the lack of having that fully prepared is not important now anyway.

Another key achievement was setting up the 15 year old DeLonghi radiator heater.  I removed from the exercise room and vacuumed it off first.  It is very clean and new looking.  I mainly used it for the 8 months I lived in San Francisco in 1997.  Keeping the control near 6 was great on Saturday evening with the doors open and a 60 degree wind blowing outside.  After that, I turned down the temperature control to 3 and the heat level to minimum, which uses about 350 watts.  At minimum, it could probably run all the time without hurting anything, even if the thermostat gets stuck.

On Sunday morning I went out to test the temperature.  The room was warm, dry, comfortable, and there was no smell.  I set the control down to 2 and set up a remote thermometer sensor I can read in the living room, from which I noted that the temperature remained fairly constant at 78 degrees with the 2 setting.  So on Monday I moved the setting even lower, to about 1.5.

The previous week I also obtained new door seals for the bottom of the doors.  I think keeping the doors not fully sealed has been of further help in getting the smell to go outside, and I'm pleased it seems quite easy to maintain temperature even with the door not fully sealed so far, and I think that the current heat-on-inside-cold-outside condition can usefully be outgassed for awhile.

*****

Overall, this was a little less than I had hoped for the four day Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  However, I did not really have four days available, just 3 because Sunday was my monthly party.  Traditionally I then also require Saturday for cleanup of the living room.  And then Thursday itself was Thanksgiving.  I often find Thanksgiving very boring, but had a short and sweet Thanksgiving dinner because a friend brought some very good Turkey (in the short list for best ever).  Mostly, on Thursday, I was relaxing from my work (or, more precisely, recovering from excess partying to 6am on Thursday morning).

So then I could still have had a day or two to work on Lyndhurst, but I'll count this weekend's work as only one day.  I have a good excuse for not doing more than that.  My kitchen computer, the one I do most of my web browsing on, died two weeks ago.  On Monday (November 19) my new Mac Mini arrived.  Since it has the Fusion drive,  I had to order online, but instead of arriving on Black Friday, as promised by Apple, it arrived 4 days earlier.  I gradually started unpacking, but it soon became clear I couldn't do anything until clearing away the old computer and related stuff, so I held off until the quickly arriving holiday weekend.

By late Thursday night, I had started to get into this, getting all the old stuff moved out and the new computer moved in and connected.  I also ran the process of copying all 200Mb of uncompressed audio files (in three separate folders) from the old USB drive to the new internal 1.2Tb Fusion drive.  On Friday morning, after not sleeping very well, I was back at it, getting my iTunes and Sonos systems working with my newly audio files.  That was the main work.  I also spent much time tinkering with the new system to get it back to behaving like my previous one.

So this holiday weekend had many high points, of which the Lyndhurst cleaning became only a small part.

1) Wonderful thanksgiving meal brought by friend.
2) Setting up new computer (equivalent to 1-2 days work).
3) Cleaning living room and kitchen for party (1 day work).
4) Cleaning Lyndhurst walls and setting up heater (1 day work).
5) Sunday discussion and movie party (full day activity).
6) Cleaning up after party (including moving keyboard back to center).
7) Paying utility bills (often lost during party cleanup)
8) Shopping for weekly and party food
9) sterilizing cleaning cloths (before and after cleaning Lyndhurst, takes 3 hours per load)
10) second short visit by friend on Friday
11) mailing party announcement (done by temporarily using bedroom computer)

On Wednesday night, during my dinner break from work, I also managed to visit Gabriel's Superstore to get rare liquors including Rogue Double Chocolate Stout and Isle of Jura Single Malt Scotch) and have dinner at Aldino's.  That almost seemed like part of the holiday weekend as well.

The Lyndhurst cleaning was a small thing, but I'm glad it didn't get forgotten, and that I still have a sense that progress is being made on plan, the plan to have one bedroom cleared out by Jan 1.  That plan looks more do-able than ever right now.  But I also know December quickly evaporates into Christmas Parties and other activities, leaving very little time on the side.  So I could, and probably can start moving bedroom stuff to Lyndhurst this coming first weekend in December.

I also need to finish sealing the A/C area, and start installing door seals.  As well as finishing the inside wall cleaning.

Declaring Victory

I had set a goal of having Lyndhurst done, ready for moving stuff in, on November 1.  As of November 5, I'm declaring victory.

I mean this somewhat in jest, but I did clean out the building this Sunday.  In my all-too-typical-sounding boast nowadays, it was transformed...transformed from a garden junk pile to splendid little room.  It actually seems that way to me.

It looks like I could lease it out now, although I'm not really done cleaning.  I cleared away all the junk on the floor--which was making the whole room nearly impassible--and swept the floor, then did a quick mop on Monday afternoon. The quick mop got the most visible dirt near the door, and made the mop water very dirty, but obviously more mopping needs to be done.  And though the walls look clean, I haven't done my cleaning of them at all.  The top of the shelves could also be cleaned again, they've gotten dirty from bug grime, even though I already cleaned them in June.

The solar lamps (which had considerable soil dirt on their spikes) got put in a sturdy cardboard box and put into the Oakhurst garden tool shed, along with other garden-related items like string trimmer spools.  I put two of the lights up, which added some cheer after the sun went down.  The box used was a box (in which I had received an L-1000T tuner from Europe) which had also sat uselessly on the floor for months.  Three plastic bins which I had moved out of garage in July got moved up to the big back shelf.  There was some loose bug grime and dirt on the back shelf which I brushed off with a towel.  This isn't intended to be permanent--I intend to clean the wall behind the back shelf--but it could be semi-permanent for the forseeable future.

I kept on working past dusk on Sunday afternoon, with dusk coming early because of the change back to daylight loosing time (I like daylight saving time so much I'd like to see it year round).  I brought out the Mosquito Cognito and unpacked one of 3 refills I bought last month but didn't install.  I think I avoided getting any bites, though I was annoyed by some pesky flies or stupified mosquitoes.  I eventually quit working around 10pm when I otherwise would have mopped the floor, but I was beginning to worry there really was a mosquito or two after me and my luck might run out.

After re-opening the doors on Monday at 11am, I noticed essentially zero smell, an excellent result for having had the doors closed for 13 hours.

OK, there still is stuff in the room, including the ladder, the halogen lights, and the boxes for the Obelisk (that needs to be assembled).  But nothing on the floor looks out-of-place.  The room no longer looks like an abandoned junkpile.  It's staring to look like the storage room it is intended to be.  Victory!

Finally mowed the front again

How many weeks has it been?  2 or 3 at most.  The crabgrass in the very front of my front yard had grown to 20 inches or so.  Definitely not a good backdrop for my political signs.  Most of the rest of the front lawn looked OK, with just an occasional crabgrass sprout.  Squeezing this work in before going to my office on Friday, I did the minimum for good appearances, the very front section around the Palm and Mimosa back to the beginning of the garage, and the south strip just beyond the garage.  Took less than an hour, including the time needed to wash out my full face respirator.  With a picnic scheduled for Saturday and rain forecast for Sunday, this was the last chance, and possibly the best chance before Election Day.

Other things I did this week

I finally replaced the electrical switch cover in the bathroom with a Jumbo size Ivory color plate.  Home  Depot only sells the Jumbo plate I need (to cover up gaps in the sheetrock) in the white color, even through Home Depot Online.  I had been using the white color plate for the last couple weeks since I replaced the switches two weeks ago.  It is very nice to finally have the correct Ivory color.  I ordered it from Ace Hardware, and it arrived on Monday.

I finished cleaning the contacts on my living room clock.  That clock has been out of commission for about 5 months.  It stopped working, and just a month later I found the batteries had filled the battery compartment with terrible corrosion.  A month ago I removed the batteries and applied a heavy coat of Deoxit to the contacts and let them soak.  This week I cleaned off the Deoxit with Everclear (95% alcohol) using about 40 Q tips.  When the battery compartment was as clean as it could get (some contacts weren't shiny anymore) I applied a thin coat of Deoxit to the critical contact points.

Then I replaced the batteries and spent an hour going through the start-up ritual for this clock.  You have to give it 15 minutes before you press any buttons so it can establish radio contact with the outdoor temperature sensor (which I actually keep in the master bedroom, that's the temperature I care about).  And if you forget to do that, as I always do, you need to remove the batteries and then wait another 15 minutes before re-inserting them.  Then after inserting the batteries, and waiting 15 minutes, you press the buttons to select time zone, and key in the actual time.  Then it tries to set the precise time by radio, but that always fails during the daytime.  The clock did set time by radio that night.  So now it's back to normal.

October 26, 2012

Today I sent the final payment for my house to the mortgage company!  Twenty years to the month after I first won the bid to this house in a FHA auction.  It was purchased with a traditional 30 year FHA mortgage, though I put about 30% of the purchase price as down payment, and have been paying just a bit extra a month through the automatic payment system, and have given a few extra payments as well.

Most people would laugh, cry, or curse to hear the actual numbers involved.  This house originally sold in 1983 for $55,000.  I (and my mother) won the FHA auction for this house, which had been abandoned for 8 months, in October 1992 for $29,000.  I had intended to pay $11,000 or more down, but considering the closing costs, and the need for new A/C we were told by a neighbor, I lowered my down payment to $8,000, making for $21,000 financed.  (I was able to get the A/C working at first for modest repair costs.)  The minimum Principal and Interest per month was under $200, with total payment typically $350 or so including taxes and insurance.

You could multiply these numbers by 10 or 20 for an average house in California in that time period.

But that's only one side of the story.  I can hardly count the amount of money I've spent on repairs and improvements.  And there was the original sweat equity, making the place livable by repainting everything.  The siding in the front has all been replaced, all new A/C was installed in 2003 for $9000, the fence is all Fencecrete ($9,000 total cost), the roof, plus $5000 repairs on the chimney and gutters.  Most of the plumbing fixtures have been replaced.  The electrical system has been greatly expanded.  And then in the last two years I've spent around $33,000 on the back yard, with Lyndhurst, Oakhurst, 12 new trees, and the sprinkler system.  I've still got as much as $19,000 remaining debt from all those things, my most recent vacation, and other things, mostly financed on 0% credit offers (typically with 3% origination cost).  My typical revolving debt in recent years has been around $10,000, and I'm not worried about $19,000 since even that is but a fraction of my annual income.  One is supposed to feel badly about credit card type debt (as compared with serious debt to buy houses or cars) but the reality is that houses and cars can be taken away from you if you owe money on them, so it's best not to from a standpoint of personal security.  If you can get the low rates, unsecured credit is just as good or better.

Zillow tells me my home could sell for $66,000 or thereabouts.  The Zestimate was wavered around that same number +/-15% for 12 years.  There hasn't been much appreciation or depreciation.  You can't fall too far when you're already on bare dirt.  And pigs don't fly either.

Well, forget, that, I figure it's worth much more to me, in the $200K - $300K range.  I couldn't replace it for less than $200K, to get all the advantages that it has, and the effort in doing so would easily exceed $100K.  A house just like this could be $1M in a seedy subdivision of Palo Alto.  So I ain't selling for $66,000.  And nobody can make me now that I've paid it off 100%.

It is a very nice place to live, just for living's sake.  It's not awesome overall like homes some of my friends live in (though I think my new back yard is awesome) but it's very comfortable, very quiet, and yet I can play music as loud as I like for special reasons (good insulation, good separation, and no neighbor's windows face my house).

The downside by any calculation would be the neighborhood.  This neigborhood has developed a somewhat justified reputation for gun violence.  Now it's very very rare, even here, but it has happened.  Our rate for murders in this neighborhood is somewhat above average for Texas, maybe twice the average rate.  My corner of the neigborhood is occupied by very very nice people, but I'm only a few streets away from a street where a murder occurred last year, and a home burned out as well (it took awhile to get dismantled).

So the future of this neighborhood may be a question mark.  I think, given that this early development is now surrounded by higher priced developments and an all new high school, I think it's on the way up in general.  By and large most people who live here own their homes too.  So I think there's hope and potential.  A lot of people have a lot at stake here.  Some people obviously care a lot.  These homes were fairly well upgraded, certainly above the bottom level when built, with a mixture of wood, brick, stone, and stucco exteriors.  Maintenance has been mixed, but there have been signs of improvement there as well.

And by now I'm pretty well committed to it.  Barring miracles, or unknown unknowns, I'm staying here.  I've also developed a philosophical attitude toward the danger.  If not me, likely someone else would live here, perhaps a bunch of people or a family.  In which case, the probability of someone being affected by violence would be higher.  So I'm absorbing risk that would otherwise be greater for a larger number of people.

Anyway, given the layout of my house, with master bedroom in the back, and the quiet street I live on, and the good neighbors I'm surrounded by, I feel quite safe now.

This neigborhood is also special because it's where my lady friend has a home also, about half a mile away.  We've made the walk between our homes sometimes, it's not a scary walk, though she has become concerned about 3 of her neighbors who rent and do bad things like burning weeds in their back yard.

We talk about having her move over here.  We have talked about that for 4 years now, and she promoted and remains very receptive to the idea.  It will likely happen in the next few years, I believe.  But I have much house work yet to do to make that possible: moving lots of junk out to Lyndhurst while discarding some of it.  I've now moved the "second-bedroom-to-be-ready-by" date to January 1.  We'll see.

Tossing one of three outdoor lamps

[Corrections.  This post was originally written from a computer distant from the lamps, and I had made a few errors in my original examination.  All 3 lamps turn freely when their appropriate screws are loosened.  However the Kichler is still a problem in that it's far too easy to turn the knob just a little too far and have the lamp fall off exposing insulated wires not reinforced with mesh.  That is partly because you do need to loosen the knob so far to get it to turn at all.  On the others, you loosen a screw just a little and the lamp hinges nicely.  The Thomas lamp swings easily and smoothly from it's backplate so you can easily adjust to have the screws face outward.  I did that and found the lamp to hinge about as smoothly as the Craftmade.  The finish on the Craftmade is clearly spray painted on as I see ripples in the bronze finish now.  The finish on the Thomas is more perfect--such as it is--in crinkled white and aluminum.  The inner ring on the Craftmade is the opposite of a heat sink...it is a rubber seal.  This may be a good idea for an outdoor light if it is not being pointed straight downward.  I intend to point both lamps out to the yard.  The Miracle Bug LED lamp fit the seal with a little gap, perhaps intentional.  The Thomas lacks a rubber seal, perhaps it doesn't need one???  Or perhaps you can obtain such a seal separately.  I still plan to use the Craftmade the but the Thomas might be nicer in some ways.  I think the Kichler has a design problem.]

To replace the panoramic CFL security light at my back door with something less attractive to bugs, I bought 3 different brands of dual floodlight fixtures which will accept any brand of bug light with a standard bulb base.  I've decided I liked the Craftmade BF2 the best (the middle one shown with just one of two lamp bases above).  By my standards, it looks like it has the best construction even though it's also the least expensive one.  The Thomas SL-4942-8 is the runner up, which I plan to donate to Goodwill.  I am very concerned about the construction of the most expensive lamp, the Kichler 6052 AZ, so I decided neither to return nor donate.  I will see if UL is interested in looking at it because it is a UL listed lamp.

The Kichler 6052AZ (which I am judging unacceptable):

I started by ordering the Kichler which was the most interesting looking lamp with the staggered profile that has a distinctly 50's look.  It was the most expensive, but I was expecting a quality lamp as well as a cool looking one.  It arrived in a long box, with the flood lamps pointed in opposite directions to fix.  To correct that, I first needed to rotate one lamp, when I noticed that it had a nut held on with silicone, which seemed flaky, but I was able to rotate the lamp without damaging the silicone.  But then I had to straighten out the lamps.  Each has a knob which you loosen to adjust the angle, otherwise it is held in position by deep teeth.   But I quickly turned the knob too far and it simply came off, causing the lamp hinge to open leaving the lamp hanging from its wires.  Inside the hinge the plastic coated electrical wires were not covered with extra mesh reinforcement.  That's very strange, because the mesh reinforcement is used over the wire everywhere else in the lamp, including in the big surplus of wire available for connection at the back.  The hinge seems like exactly the point where you could damage the wire by doing something like I did: removing the adjustment knob.  Then you have to put the hinge back together and hope the un-reinforced wire doesn't get pinched, stretched, or otherwise damaged.

If they had done this with the mesh reinforcement used over the wire inside the hinge just as everywhere else, I think that would be marginally OK.  It is still a problem IMO that it is so easy to remove the adjustment knob and have the lamp come apart at the hinge.  Also, you HAVE to nearly remove the adjustment knob simply to turn the hinge, because the teeth are so large.  And although I like the idea of having a knob as compared with a screw if it were done correctly, the knob also invites people to fiddle with the lamp position, and if they aren't careful not to turn the knob too far, off comes the light.  Thus, it's an invitation to disaster.

I think the lack of wire reinforcement was not intended by the original designers, but the factory simply had some trouble doing it as intended.  It looks to me like the hinge may be too narrow to allow for both the wire and the reinforcement.  So possibly someone simply decided to leave that portion of the wire unreinforced so the wire would fit.  Another possibility is that the reinforcement is slipped over the wire from both ends, and simply got pulled apart by accident when the lamp was assembled.

Even if you don't remove the knob too far, the hinge moves rather stiffly.  The wire that comes out the back seems to provide resistance to twisting the hinge; it's easier if you simultaneously push or pull the wire out the back.  Of course that is not going to be possible once the lamp is installed.

Anyway, it looks wrong to me, and considering the possibility that I might have damaged the wire when it came apart, or that the fixture is improperly made, I will not be donating.  I will not be returning either because if I simply return this lamp it is likely to end up in someone else's possession, someone who might ultimately get zapped.  I will see if I can send it to UL for examination, and if not, I'll simply throw it away.

Another disappointment with the Kichler was that the staggered bulb cover is thin, much like sheet metal.  It does appear to be aluminum, or at least non-magnetic.  But it does not feel heavy like cast aluminum.  It was advertised as a "cast aluminum" lamp.  The only thing which definitely appears like cast aluminum is the hinge.  The other lamps I ordered were clearly fully cast aluminum construction as advertised, at least for the bulb cover.  You can easily tell the difference, the others are thicker metal which is obviously cast.

After realizing this lamp was not going to be acceptable for me, I ordered two other lamps, the Craftmade and the Thomas.  Both of those look OK to me, but the Craftmade seems a little better so that is the one I plan to use.

The Craftmade BF-2:

You can see immediately that the bulb cover is cast aluminum, much thicker than the metal of the Kichler.  I also dig the bronze finish.  It's a deep and rich brown color and it's so smooth it seems like it could be anodized rather than painted.  In contrast the other two lamps clearly seem painted, and I find the crinkly white on the Thomas lamp looks cheap from a distance (though actually, the white color might be quite practical, and the texturing must have cost them extra).

The wire coming out of the back of each lamp is the heaviest duty of any of these lamps.  Further, there is mesh reinforcement around each wire, as well as around the pair of wires.

The hinge on the Craftmade is larger than the hinge on the other two lamps.  In contrast to the Kichler, it is smooth as silk to twist the hinge into different positions.  The mesh wrapped wire moves very slightly in and out as you do this.  This is what makes me want to use this lamp above all.  The hinge also has some interesting degree marks.  The hinge is tightened with a large Philips screw.

The Craftmade lamp does not use a conventional ceramic base that would be required for the power level (150W).  Instead it has a bare metal base which is bonded to some kind of clear material, which is then bonded to an aluminum heat sink.  That is isolated from the outer shell with some kind of rubber material.  This does not appear to have been done to save money, but to make a better lamp.  Or maybe it was needed because of the compact rear of the bulb cover--but it is only slighlty narrower than the other two.

I suspect the rubber material serves as both electrical and thermal insulation so that the bulb does not transmit heat to the cover and vice versa.  Actually I was a bit worried about that at first.  I could see that the heat sink was bonded with some material to the cover and figured at first they were using the entire bulb cover as a heat sink.  That has the disadvantage that if the bulb cover gets hot from sunlight, it could transmit heat to my LED bulb and fry the electronics.  But further observation revealed that the material between the bulb heat sink and the bulb cover is rubbery, which suggests it would have both thermal and electrical insulating properties, and might even be better than the simple air gap used in the other lamps which could eventually fill up with bug debris.

Above all, it's the silky smoothness of the hinge, enabled by reassuring double-meshed thick wire that I like the most about this lamp, combined with the anodized bronze finish.  I don't really know whether the bulb socket is better than the others, but I suspect it's at least as good.  One potential issue is whether some LED bulbs will interfere with the heat sink on bulb base.

The Craftmade lamp was packed with the two bulb covers removed from the baseplate.  They leave it up to you to attach the bulb covers to the base plate, and so probably you can decided whether to have the screws facing outward for reasonably easy adjustment, or inwards for anti-theft in a high traffic area.

 The Thomas SL-4942-8:

The Thomas also looks like a well made lamp, with cast aluminum bulb covers about as thick as those on the Craftmade but coated in crinkly white paint.  As it comes in the factory box the two bare aluminum hinges are locked with Philips screws which are oriented toward the inside of the lamp.  That means it would be hard for someone to unscrew the bulb cover and steal it.  But it also means it's very hard to actually adjust the lamp.  So I haven't even tried to do that, to see how it would compare with the stiffly-adjusting Kichler and the smooth-as-silk Craftmade.  Actually I'm not so worried about someone stealing my lamp fixture and this is a big inconvenience.  Also the hinge is just as narrow as on the Kichler and so it might also be stiffly adjusting and might also have trouble with the wire flowing through the hinge point.  But I won't know, because I don't plan to loosen those !@#$ screws.  I could also loosen the nuts on the inside and rotate the stems so the screws would point outward.   I could, but I don't plan to bother.

I was thinking, however, just for a moment that I might be better off with the white painted fixture and its ceramic base which is isolated from the bulb cover with an airgap.  That would help keep the electronics of my LED bulb cool.  Now that I see the Craftmade does use a thermally insulating material between bulb cover and base, I'm less concerned about that.

What kind of clinches it is the color.  As it stands now, the white color of the Thomas wouldn't work very well on the back of my house, which is all earth tone colors.  The anodized bronze of the Craftmade is a perfect match for the earthtone colors on my house now.

I would have ordered the Thomas lamp in Bronze but it isn't normally stocked even at internet stores, I would have had to wait for several weeks estimated lead time, and I was curious as to what the white actually looked like anyway.

I might save the Thomas for some future project because in the future, I may be using more white paint in the back of my house, and nice lamps like this with ceramic base may be harder to find in the future.  I used a combination of pure white and Lyndhurst Estate Cream on my Lyndhurst garden house, and I eventually plan to repaint my main house in those colors as well.

Another weekend, another mow

I can't complain too much, I had a 3 day weekend with fun activities filling Friday and Saturday.

But by Sunday it was time to face the mower again, and tackle the back yard, which featured grass ranging from 6 inches to 4 feet high.  The worst was in the far west where I had to mow enough 4 foot high crabgrass simply to remove the solar lights before I could finish the job.  And the grass had wound itself around the solar light wires.

I only returned two solar lights this time, I will add more from my collection of 12 solar lights over time.  It occurs to me that after about mid November the grass will likely go dormant, so I won't have to be removing and re-adding the solar lights so much until grass growing re-starts in late February.  Whew!  I also intend to get the removal and replacement of the lights more easier, or find ways they don't always need to be removed.  But for now, I need to remove the lights before each mowing, and I am barely keeping up with mowing, which is why I haven't replaced most of them.

Hopefully, too, the crabgrass will eventually be overrun by St Augustine and other grass.  While the crabgrass grows 4 feet, the best part of the St Augustine grows about 3 inches.

I didn't trim around the fence or around Lyndhurst.  I also intend to do that over the next few weeks.  If I pull the crabgrass out, which is better than merely trimming it, but it is exhausting work.  Both are exhausting work, but pulling the stuff out is far worse.  This coming weekend I may do some touch up in the front yard instead.

I had an excuse for that.  I couldn't find my regular leather gloves, only my welding gloves.  The welding gloves are great for pushing the lawn mower, but not so great for doing work like pulling weeds.  I bought some new leather gloves on Monday night.

The same excuse also allowed me to avoid putting the Xeripave pavers in front of Lyndhurst, replacing the motley collection of pavers there now.  But moving any pavers definitely requires good fitting gloves.  It's easy to cut skin on fingers, which is terribly inconvenient when you are doing yard work.

Instead I hauled the trash can which has been sitting in the garden tool shed (Oakhurst) to the front, and also finally trashed the #3 rebar which has been sitting on the patio for two months.  The rebar needed to be bent enough to fit in a trash bag, and there's nothing better for that job than welding gloves.

On Monday afternoon I put ant poison on one new mondo ant mound in the back yard and around the tree in the front yard.

Last week I did notice some of the old chemical smell in Lyndhurst after the doors and window had been closed. I opened the window a crack, and after that it didn't seem as bad after that during the next few days, but that may be coincidence.  The smell is far attenuated from what it was in March, and doesn't even always come back when the doors are closed (which may be helped by the lack of door seals).  I think when I noticed the smell the strongest last week was when the wind was blowing from the north at about 10mph.  Perhaps that forces chemical smell out of the north building wall.  Still it's a bit disappointing when just a few weeks ago I had convinced myself the smell was completely gone.

Lyndhurst now needs a good floor and wall cleaning.  Even the shelves, which I have focussed my attention on, should probably be re-cleaned.  Now it's pretty clear I will not be getting to that by November 1.  But I want to get the building cleaned by December 1 and have the contents of my 3rd bedroom moved out there by January 1.

During October I've had the Lyndhurst doors closed mostly.  But re-smelling the smell leads me to want to open them.

Another concern is the bottom door seal.  Grass pokes through and it may be a good entryway for bugs also.  I noticed a walking stick bug inside last week, but it could have gotten in when the doors were open.  Next time I saw it, a few days later, it looked dead.  But there is some funny fuzz around the doors that looks like the evidence of some kind of bug.

Replacing the bottom door seal may require removing the doors from their hinges.  I intend to see if I can find out online.