Floored

Part of the slider installation project included removing the little pony wall to the right of the old door. This was essentially the cat's wall, and he wasn't thrilled about losing it.

This left a hole in the flooring, so tonight I tackled that. Luckily the previous owners left a few planks of flooring in the attic.

The flooring on the left side still had the tongue intact, so that would be easy. However, the cuts on the near end and right side were jagged and uneven.

The first row was pretty simple.

After that it took many cuts, sanding and fine tuning to fit the new flooring in properly.

After cleaning up the old paint and applying a little stain to the edges of the cuts where the natural wood showed, it looked pretty good.

It's not perfect, but this flooring is semi-temporary, so it will do for now.

Later.

The Forgettable Fire

When we purchased the house it had a fireplace that we would never use surrounded by a hideous mantle we hated.

We decided to go with an electric fireplace that would provide a little heat and some ambiance. First we yanked off the mantle to see what we were dealing with, and what we were dealing with was a real mess. At some point the tile went up the wall and around the fireplace, so there would be some thinset cleanup involved.

A guy installed the electric unit and tacked in some new drywall.

I wasn't thrilled with the quality of his drywall work, but I thought I could fix it.

After taping, a lot of mud and sanding, texture, paint and trim it came out pretty well.

I still need to patch the holes, touch up the paint and caulk, but otherwise it's done. The awful tile will eventually come out, but that's down the road.

Later.

Short Coast

We took a short trip to Monterey. Three nights is probably our shortest stay in many years, but it was just fine.

We only went on two rides which was also unusual. The first day we rode south on 17 Mile Drive. The roads were very quiet and it was a peaceful, contemplative ride.

The next day we rode north on the coastal trail with a loop through Fort Ord.

We saw a few people on gravel bikes as we first entered Fort Ord. After that we were all alone except for the occasional wild animal, like the coyote below.

I really can't get enough of this place. It's so cool to link together rides on car-free roads, and you also have gravel and singletrack options.

The climb up to Laguna Seca is tough, but Jenn did great and even pretended to like it.

Once we reached the racetrack (1000 feet), it was mostly downhill back to the hotel (barely above sea level).

All told we clocked 28 miles with 2000 feet of climbing.

After a shower and a snack, we had a great Russian Imperial Stout at Dustbowl.

One of the unusual things about this visit was the smell. It was . . . not great. This was caused by an unusually large presence of anchovies in the bay. This leads to more predation in the bay, attracting larger fish, sea lions and birds. These predators produce a lot of organic waste matter, and the process of breaking down all that waste creates a hypoxic environment, meaning there isn't enough oxygen to support all the fish. The anchovies are dying off because of it. Most of the dead are consumed by predators anyway, but basically the whole chain reaction results in a bad smell that we could never totally get away from. I could smell it in our hotel room even with the windows closed.

We have seen large numbers of sea lions before, but in different places. This is Sister City Park and I don't think any of the benches or tables will be salvageable.

Nobody likes a crowd:

Pictures will never do justice to just how many birds there were. We have visited Monterey more times than I can count and there were easily 20 times as many birds as I have ever seen.

Anyway, other than gagging on a few occasions as we passed sea lion central, it was a good trip.

Later.