Of Skylights…..and the Dilemma of Dishwashers

Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf the Grey: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Gandalf goes on…. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo besides the will of evil.

Bilbo was meant to find the Ring in which case you were also meant to have it….

and that is an encouraging thought!

A conversation between the two in the Mines of Moria.

 

Yes friends of Middle Earth. There is more than the will of evil at work in this wonderful world of ours. Trust me on that one if you will.

And welcome once again to the wonderful world of Hobbit Hollow! Glad you all dropped by. Still trying to make sense out of this crazy election that just went down here in the good old U S of A. We won’t get into that here though. Trying to keep the politics and religion stuff out of the blog. Lets keep things simple.

Sounds like a plan Jim.

And plan we must. Just a quick blog this week if you will.

Oh yeah so the whole dishwasher thing. You know how they clean. I mean when you empty out your dishwasher you never really look at the dishes. You just put the stuff away. Well every once in a while you take something out and you just happen to look at what you’re doing and you realize that “Hey!!! That didn’t get cleaned!!!” What’s up with that?? Kind of annoying in a petty way. Not really a big deal in the scheme of things though. Right?

So remember last week I had found my long lost Dunkin Donuts coffee mug in Terence’s car….with a blob of fuzzy mold at the bottom of it. So I put it in the dishwasher to clean it. I was so glad I had found my long lost coffee mug. It was kind of like that biblical parable about the shepard who had lost one of his sheep. He left all the other  sheep and went looking for the one till he had found it. (Hmmm. Okay Jim take it easy it’s really not a good analogy) I did say I was going to stay out of the religion thing too.

Agreed.

Anyway I took my coffee mug to work and enjoyed a nice hot mug of coffee. But then something happened that I did not intend. I finished my cup and looked into my mug. And there at the bottom of my coffee mug was the hideous fuzzy mold festering at the bottom of my mug. That stupid dishwasher didn’t get the mold out!!!! I then proceeded to drop to all fours and be sick.

Moral of the story: Not really sure. I couldn’t eat for the rest of the day after that one though. Very disturbing on a number of levels.

…and I’m still wondering why in the hell Terence took my coffee mug in the first place.????

Let’s get back into Hobbit house building shall we before I go on another stupid rant.

Good idea Jim.

I put on the temporary door to the hobbit House this week. It’s one of those things that, as usual, took longer than anticipated. The idea here is to close the house and secure it for the winter. It came out pretty good. I put the self closing gate coil thing on the inside so that when you push the door open it closes right behind you. A nice feature. Check it out.

Temporary door into the Hobbit house.
Temporary door into the Hobbit house.

Okay fans of Hobbiton. Don’t despair about the door. Or in the words of my son Jude, “Chillax!” Translation: chill out and take it easy. Relax. Maybe even take a chill pill if needed. This is a bit of a long wait and see but that’s about all I can tell you right now. You’re going to have to put your trust in me on this one.

Okay Honestly. I really don’t know how I’m going to do this yet but I have  a couple of ideas that I think are going to be good.

So I had son Terence take care of the spray foam detail around the windows this weekend. Very important detail in a home like this. What I had him do was spray foam from the inside out. It is pretty hard to get all the spray foam done in one pass. I figured we would do one pass this weekend and the other from the outside in next weekend. Here he is having at it.

Terence spray foaming the area between the window and the framing.
Terence spray foaming the area between the window and the framing.

So the big ticket item this weekend was the skylight install. Which was really pretty simple for all intents and purposes. The first order of business was to cover the entire surface of the skylight roof area with Grace Ice and Water shield.

Grace Ice and Water shield over the entire roof.
Grace Ice and Water shield over the entire roof.

We ran the stuff over and down the sides of the pressure treated 2×6. If you look close you can see the brackets installed to support the skylight on the side of it.

Once we preped the skylight it was pretty easy it install. Center it in the opening and then screw the brackets into the wood deck.

Skylight installed.
Skylight installed.

After we secured the skylight we flashed the entire frame with the ice and water shield. Here is a picture of terence preping the frame.

Terence removing the metal cap on the skylight.
Terence removing the metal cap on the skylight.

By the way these are Fakro skylights made in Poland. Passive house certified.

Skylights on the Hill.
Skylights on the Hill.

Terence putting the metal cap flashing back on the skylights.

Sitting there at one point looking at my truck and thought that this was a good picture of the stone at Hobbit Hollow.

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Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Jim

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