Gloria Rauber Birthday Party - Yosemite

Many months ago, our friend, Ed Rauber, from Seaside, invited us to come this past weekend to celebrate Gloria's 60th birthday in Yosemite.  He had arranged for a discount to let all the guest to stay at the Cedar Lodge in El Portal, on Hwy 140, just outside the Park.  The party was to be at a place called the Hunter House, which is just down the road from the Lodge.

As many of you may know, there is a fire that was started by an RV fire right by the Cedar Lodge on Thursday!  When the Raubers tried to drive up on Thursday night, they were told that Hwy 140 had been closed and were rerouted back down and up Hwy 41. Three hours later, they arrived to discover that the Cedar Lodge had been evacuated!  They managed to get rooms in the Yosemite View Lodge, a little further up the road.

We had made plans to go hiking with friends in Yosemite before the party Saturday night, but with the fire and the uncertainty of whether we would have a place to stay, we decided to postpone our departure until Saturday morning.  At that point, we were hoping that the fire would have, at least, moved far enough away that the party could go on as planned. We left home about 8am Saturday and called Ed from Oakdale.  He said that the party would go ahead as planned, except it was going to be at the Yosemite View Lodge, and that could get rooms there as well.  After calling the Lodge and getting a room, Nancy and I headed on up to Yosemite, planning to hike to Chilualna Falls, by Wawona.  After a 1/2 hour wait to get into the Park and a couple of wrong turns, we found the trailhead.  We headed out at 1pm, knowing that the 3 hours we had was not enough to get the 8+ miles to the falls and back.  Of course, by the time we got to our turn around time, the falls were just up one last hill...  After a quick stop at the top of the falls, we headed back down, getting to the car at 4:35 - 35 minutes late.  The party was to start at 5:00 but I figured that dinner probably wouldn't be served until 5:30 or 6:00.  As we drove down into Yosemite Valley and back to the Hwy 120 / 140 junction, we were thinking we might make it.  As we approached the junction, we could see that they had the gate for Hwy 140 partially closed and had a couple of people stationed there.  This was not unexpected, as Hwy 140 was still closed to through traffic.  As we drove through, the elderly couple, with NPS Parking Staff vests, flagged us down and said that the area was being evacuated!  We told them we had reservations at the Yosemite View Lodge.  They said it had been given evacuation notice 30 minutes before and unless we need to go retrieve our belongings, we needed to turn around!  We ended driving down to Groveland for dinner and then on home. On Sunday morning, we checked the status of the fire and saw no mention of the Yosemite View being evacuated.  I called their hotline and was told that there were some other evacuation on Saturday but the Lodge had not been evacuated and was open for business.... 

We did have a nice hike and we hope they had a nice party!

 The fire was down and around to the right.

 The falls are just to the right of the tree behind Nancy.

 These cascades are about 1/2 mile up from the trailhead.  We wish now that we had taken more time to explore and enjoy.

 This is the trail just before the top of the falls.

 Over that edge be a long way down...

There are pools just above the falls and then another smaller fall above there. Was very nice. And the trail goes on.....

2011 Zentner Family Get-Together

On the weekend of August 5 - 7th, we had a Zentner Family Get-Together. Nancy and I went up on Thursday night with William. Nancy worked from the cabin on Friday while Wm. and I did yard cleanup and made a trip to the green waste disposal site.  In the afternoon, Wm. and I went swimming and kayaking at White Pines Lake.

Friday night, Jeff and Ian, Jim and Scotty L'Heureux, and Eric and Ben arrived.  Saturday morning Jeff, Eric, Ben, Jim, and I went mountain biking while Nancy watched the others.

After lunch and a little R and R (rest and rumblings about how I tried to kill everyone on the ride,) we  went to Calaveras Big Trees State Park to play in Beaver Creek.

Saturday night we had birthday cake for Scotty.

After breakfast and church on Sunday, some of us went on a little bike ride by the cabin. After lunch, Eric and Ben headed home, Jeff and Ian took naps (Ian wasn't feeling well) and Jim, Scotty, Nancy, Wm. and I went to White Pines Lake for swimming, kayaking and windsurfing.

To those who came, it was nice to see all of you.  To those who didn't, we hope you come next time.  You were missed.

Boston

Nancy and I had a very nice, week-long visit to see Andy and Carrie.  We enjoyed seeing Boston, kayaking on the Charles River, and camping in Vermont.

They had told us they were going to move to a new place in September.  We were surprised to find out that they had  moved in early.  This meant we that we would get our own bedroom, as their last roommate had not moved in yet.

Their new place is an old brick, three-story duplex. They, and their two roommates, share the upper two floors of the right half of the building.  Their lower floor has the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and a balcony.  The top floor has three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a utility room.  It also has a balcony which leads to the roof where there is a garden, courtesy of the previous tenants!

Their house is very large and their bedroom is huge

Jewels

 In Vermont, we went to a place very similar to Candy Rock, where you can jump and slide into pools below.

And free blueberry picking,

Vermont is very beautiful, very green and we found out why.  Both nights we camped there, we got rained on...  Sorry, no pictures.

Thanks Andy & Carrie for an awesome visit!

I'm Starting a New Blog

When I first talked to Nancy about starting to write about our house project, it was my intention to start a new blog but she talked me out of it.  Maybe it was the name I proposed - "The Broken House."  I have to agree that sounded too much like a broken home.. That was not the idea I was after.  So, I started posting to this blog.

Now that I have started writing, I am finding that I really enjoy it.  I am now thinking of writing about subjects that have nothing to do with Zentner family doings.  Instead of hijacking the Zentner Family Doings blog for my personal ramblings, I have started my own blog.  I have named it "Dave's Roundabout Ramblings."  The url is:

http://davesroundaboutramblings.blogspot.com

If you would like to receive an email to notify you when I've published a new post,  you can fill in the "Follow By Email" box on the right side of my posts.  If you want an RSS feed, click on the "Subscribe to" box.  If you have trouble, shoot me an email.  If you want, you can do the same for Zentner Family Doing,

I hope you all continue to follow the progress on our house project and enjoy my other miscellaneous ramblings on my new blog.

Skip Trowel Texture

Today I textured one wall of the living room (in addition to buying a Network Extender off of Craigslist, getting an awesome deal on some new hiking boots at REI, a stop at Home Depot, installing a TP holder and towel bar in the hall bath, selling some wheels on Craigslist for my son-in-law, and babysitting the grandkids.)

We are doing a texture called "skip trowel" which we first had done at the cabin and really like. This can be done by spraying the texture on the wall, waiting for it to start to dry, and then knocking it down. I am doing it by hand, instead. This involves putting globs of texture randomly on the wall and then knocking it down with a mud knife. The idea is to make it look like you just put it up there without a care in the world. It's harder than it looks!



The first challenge is that you need to get the consistency of the mud so it is thin enough that it knocks down smoothly but not so thin that it doesn't have enough body to leave a good amount of texture. Then you have to glob it on randomly so that when you knock it down, it covers most of the wall but not all. You want the "holes" to show. You also need to get the globs fairly consistent so that when you drag your knife across it, there aren't places that you have to push harder or go lighter so that the texture ends up uniform in thickness. You need to knock it down before it stars to dry, but don't work it too much. Wait for it to dry a little and hit it one more time. Don't move your knife too fast or it will "judder" or vibrate and leave little waves... Start with the knife handle high when you make the first passes, lower it for the final ones or you will get lots of knife edge lines. Don't get any debris in you mud or you will get streaks... You get the idea - just make it look like you threw it on there.



To make it harder, all the while you are doing this, you have a little voice in the back of your head saying that you know that your brother, the farmer, is going to inspect it. Farmers like to go on drives after church on Sunday. They look at their neighbors fields and cluck their teeth. Look at those weeds... At least my rows are straighter than that... What kind of an idiot would plant that... He'll never make any money watering the road... Maybe I just think this because I know when I go to his place, I'm always checking out his work. He's probably thinking, "Damn electricians, always think they know everything..." Maybe this doesn't have anything to do with my brother after all. Maybe it's my own inner demons, always searching for approval...

Anyways... the texture is looking good.

PS. Don't ever put old mud back into the bucket. You'll get streaks for sure next time you use it! And those hiking boots... I got a pair of $300 boots for $50!!! And I can return my old ones I don't like. Gotta love REI!

The Broken House III

In my previous post I said that the living room had a flat ceiling. As you can see, it wasn't really all that flat!


Originally, I had decided that it wasn't bad enough to crawl into the attic and fix but the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. Plus it was going to be tough to do the skip-trowel texture we have been doing on something that far from flat. Off to the store again. Two 2x6's, some Simpson Strong-tie connectors, some screws, and plumber's tape. Time to install a couple of strongbacks.

It was a little tricky to push the 2x6's up through the garage ceiling into the attic. (I had a nice hole into the attic from the family room but I closed it off a few days prior...) Once I got them there, I had to lift the ceiling joists up to the strongbacks. (Actually, what I did was more like push the strongbacks down to the joist. In hind site, I wondered if I should have used one 2x12 instead of the two 2x6's. Not sure I could have gotten it into the attic, though.) To do this, I used the plumber's tape and a piece of pipe, like so;


The end result looked like this;


I knew from above that I had actually lifted the joist some because before I started, I set the piece of pipe down across the joists and it rolled towards the center. Once I was done, it stayed where I set it! Here's what it now looks like from below;



I did have some popped drywall nails before I started, which is what I was fixing when I decided that the ceiling needed to be flatted. Once I was done installing the strongbacks, I had lots of them so I ended up screwing up the whole ceiling. (Screwing things up is what I do best!!!) Now, with the screw holes filled and the ceiling floated out with drywall mud, we are just about ready to texture.

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I had to fix the sagging roof. I had noticed before we bought the house that there was quite a sag in the roof on the front of the house. Upon inspection in the attic, I discovered that the builders had failed to put any vertical supports up to the rafter strongback between the two front bedrooms. There were a couple of diagonal braces. After putting a jack under the strongback, I removed the diagonal braces and jacked the strongback up 3 1/2"! After installing two vertical braces, I reinstalled a diagonal brace. I still have a bit of a sag over the back bedroom where the rafters are bent after so many years without much support. We will have to deal with that later. Here is a picture from the attic;


The string you see there that I used to level the strongback is now push up by the heater duct. You can also see where I have added insulation over Nancy's office. The rest of the ceiling will get more insulation after we finish working up there.

Also, while I was doing attic projects, I used some leftover foam insulation and silicone to make an insulated attic access hatch;


By the way, those plastic netting scrubber things that ladies like to use in the bath (http://www.amazon.com/Cain-and-Able-Bath-Sponge/dp/B000FUMCPQ) work great for cleaning insulation out of your skin...

Once in a Lifetime - Hopefully

We had a very nice time at the cabin this past weekend with our friends John & Shannon and their boys. One advantage of having the tree fall on the roof is that we now have a great sled run right at the cabin! In order to tarp the roof, I had to clear the roof of about 3' of snow. Most of it ended up in a pile outside the kitchen window. With the snow we have had since then, along with the snow we shoveled off the deck, we have ended up with quite a pile of snow!