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Lessons in patience to me

Inside of the garage is painted now. They will put the exterior dark blue on the foundation portion later. Priming the new stuff and prepping the other areas began today.

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The first load of blue is on the garage. This will be the lower color on the house too. More to come!

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The upper gray got put on yesterday. They just have to do the trim and doors. Electrician started putting in plugs and switches. Garage doors scheduled for the 20th. Going to rent a scissors lift for a day to put up dealer sign, metal signs, high lamps, pictures etc.

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The painting is wrapped up on the garage and house now, looks bitchin. I checked out a few of my signs to see which one I want outside so it can be seen from the street. Going to go with the vintage style yellow Mopar one. I mounted up the new outside light fixtures. Found out that the Lutron switch I chose is only good for dimmable bulbs and these are not. New switch shows up on thursday. We'll be able to use our phones to operate them. I took apart the Dodge truck sign yesterday to see what I need to swap it to LED units. I'll mount that inside the garage along with all my other signs, pictures, plaques, WW2 aviation art, P40 Nose fan [I'll mount it horizontally] and other stuff too. The garage doors got put in yesterday. Man, can my honey pick colors! Check out the house number sign she came up with. Easy peezy. Look very nice against the blue, grey and redwood. I got the WIFI option so we can operate them by phone too and get alerts when something isn't kosher. My general contractor friend and I will get started on the deck this week. I'll be his helper learning some badly needed wood skills.

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I got my truck sign cleaned up and retrofitted with LED's plus a new pull switch. Its probably 20lbs lighter now since the ballast units are out. New gutters are on. Randy and I got started on the deck. I'm learning skills and hoping I don't end up with a pile of Redwood firewood as woodwork is NOT my bag. My awesome wife had a banner made up to thank the companies who helped make this happen so far after the initial company hosed us. Thats still being dealt with btw. Randy Brindley, who has been a godsend with knowledge and a great bunch of subs got the top billing on the banner. And the main reason we've kept it together without going totally bonkers is Jesus.

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Making progress on the deck. Once I got past one area where it ties into the house deck I picked up some speed. The house portion took awhile since there were items to be moved, added on, trimmed etc. I'm going to put a sliding gate in to replace the swinging one I installed when we first moved in. That meant moving one area out. All good so far. I don't think I've blundered yet. I'll get this area filled in then do the other.

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Got some more deck played down yesterday. Most of the north portion is done, yesterday started heading south. I was layed up for a week after a dentist repair. No lifting or bending over. Got cleared thursday so back to work. My wife had an idea new address number sign for the house. Simple stuff. Layered a piece of tinted acrylic plastic on top of a piece of aluminum thats painted white with another piece of aluminum painted hammer tone grey which I cut the numbers out of. Epoxied those together. Expoxied them onto a piece of tile. Put a couple of turtles on the tile, epoxied also, as she likes turtles.

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Got as far as I could on the deck until I ran out of lumber. In the meantime I'm doing payback to my friend for helping us out on the project. In exchange for his expertise, connections and no charge for project management fees, I'm replacing the roof skin on his truck. It was rusted through in a bunch of areas due to scratches and the fact he lives 150 yards from the ocean in Cayucos. I made a run for the border and picked up a cut off donor unit. Lots of spot welds to cut since I'm doing two trucks essentially. Once I got his off the rust was more extensive that I thought. Luckily I took three more parts off the donor to do the repair. I got the under stuff stuck down yesterday, had to borrow a welder from a friend since I can't get to mine until the trailer that all my equipment is in gets emptied. That doesn't happen until the garage and driveway get done. I'll get the replacement skin on today I hope and would like to get it back to him next week. This is a good example for those in the hobby to do work exchanges when they don't have the skill to do a job but have skills elsewhere. Without my new friend, we would have had a much more difficult time on this garage. God blessed us with a devine appointment.

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Excellent! I've swapped labor many times, I enjoy seeing it when it works as it should... I hate it when one side is always to busy to do their part... good on you..
 
Thanks. I've been holding him off since the garage is not done, trailer not emptied, facility not operational etc. He asked me a month or so ago when I thought I could do the trade. I felt bad after talking to him, especially since he helps us out at the drop of a hat. I then decided to just make it happen since I don't know when my pad will get done. Its not the way I had planned on doing it but it turned out that I needed to do it this way because of the extent of the damage.
 
The payback project is almost done. Treatments, seam sealers etc done. Got the interior back in. Today will do some vacuuming to clean up the grit/debri etc. Waiting to hear from the glass company about when they can come reinstall the front and back glass. Now I have first hand experience about using used weld on components. At the shop I managed in the past, we would sometimes have to use them because that's what the insurance companies dictated. The techs would complain about the times provided to harvest what was needed. Never enough time. We would get creative with wording on the repair orders to get time back. What I did was take apart two trucks worth of parts. Lots of spot welds to cut which sucked up a huge amount of time. There are faster ways to do it but I don't have access to them so I used what I had available. The owner is ecstatic on how its turned out. We are happy with how he has helped us. I'm glad I would not spend my entire time in the office and lurk in the shop as much as possible. Help out, observe, ask questions. Did the same thing working at dealerships in the parts department. Take stuff to techs, help, learn. Suck up that free knowledge. Without that, I would have had a much tougher time taking this on.

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Now that the payback project is done, I got back onto the deck this week. I borrowed a couple of saws from a friend to help things along as I preferred them over my Skillsaw for the tasks. I still have to deal with the N.W. corner, have to come up with a workable solution for that spot. The 3 north pickets I dropped down so we can still see the bay and Morro Rock when we are kicking it by the fire pit. If the pickets are high, they kill the view. Getting bids to wrap up the driveway, gutter drain pits, retaining walls and some other stuff. Hopefully soon it will get done, final inspection completed then get my trailer back here to unload it of equipment/supplies/car stuff etc.

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My neighbor across the street, Harley and hot rod guy, had these neon units made for me to put in the garage. My wife and I started hanging up some of the repro'd race posters. More to come!

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One of the posters I have on the wall is interesting to the Mopar brethren. If you look at it you'll see the #18 car which is a Shadow UOP from back in the day. What gives? Shadow was based out of Marina which is next to Monterrey. The shop was off of Reservation Rd very close to Laguna Seca. Back in the 70's, Shadow was a skunk works for Ma Mopar. They developed a lot of stuff for the company dealing with the race programs. Not 100% sure but the #18 car may have been running an A-motor, 5 liter, with the Lucas timed injection. There is a picture of that in the old S.A. Design engine book from the 70's that covered both the small blocks and B/RB engines. They also did a lot of work with King Richard Petty to develop the W2 heads that were made available to us. I remember from that time when Car Craft ran a monthly feature called "High Risers" which did an article on them and the work they did for the mothership. Later on in the mid 80's I was building a 340 for my 73 Duster using the W2 heads. I was working at the speed shop at the time and one of the customers said I should get ahold of a guy named Lee Muir as he was quite knowledgable on these. I got ahold of him and then took my block and pieces to him to machine, order pistons [ I used a 360 crank to make it a 372], modify the oil passages etc. Guess what I stumbled across! Shadow! Man did I hit the mother lode. He told me lots of neat stories of back in the day. Plus did bitchin work.
We got the neon sign mounted today. We are going to make up a diamond plate aluminum frame around once the material gets here. Putting more stuff up tomorrow.

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I wrapped up the deck last week. The one odd little area turned out fine. My wife discovered that a dog bed fits well in that spot and it gives the older one another observation post where she can trash talk the cur's walking by. We did the frame around the neon signs with some diamond plate. Turned out great. I got the lights up in the lower section. Just need to get the rest of the cords cinched down. My wife is laying out the west wall sign and picture placement so fit doesn't look like I just tossed them up in no order. Since the walls are tall, she is using rows of paper cut to the wall dimension for the layout. Once that's done we'll tape the paper to the wall and mark sign/picture locations by using a scissor lift. Some of the pictures and signs are too wieldy to try and hang off a ladder with one person. Especially the Dodge Truck one. We have a bunch of WW2 aviation art, most signed/numbered, that will go on the west wall. There is also a P40 Warhawk ceiling fan that I'll hang horizontally at the top just below the windows. We got a bid on putting pavers in for the driveway, retaining walls for the back, rock gutter runoff pits and some other stuff so that will hopefully happen soon once we secure some dough. Have to get the old garage drywalled since there are fire sprinklers in it now. Hopefully end of this year we get it finaled so I can get it occupied. We have not heard anything back from the state board inspector on his findings from the investigation. In the meantime our attorney filed the lawsuit forms with the courthouse for our suit against the old contractor. The first get together on that with the judge and other side is supposed to happen in January. From there, only the Good Lord knows.

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We are getting more stuff dialed in. Monday I pick up the lift so we can do the high stuff. In the meantime, we are almost done with the paper templates for picture placement. I'll put those in place Monday using the lift. From there punch mounting holes and hang. Same with the signs, other lights et. I did manage to get the WW2 stuff uncovered. They've been packed up for almost 3 years. Its nice seeing them again. The Spitfire was a cheap print but because of the size and colors, was the hardest one for matting/framing. The way that picture looks, you can just hear that Merlin at full song coming at you. Nothing like the sound of a Merlin. When we lived in Ramona, there was a P51, Corsair, Skyraider and some other stuff at the airport. Always stopped to watch them when I heard the sound.

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With the lift I rented, got quite a bit knocked out yesterday. I'll grab it again on Friday to finish the west wall. Got all the lights up and stuff on the other 3 walls. Since I just love heights [NOT!], even being in the basket had me death gripping with my feet through the boots. I was a pooped pup when I called it a day. Was thinking about getting the rest knocked out since the lights are in but I was getting tired/punchy/careless so I called it a day. Have pushed through before on some stuff but ended up making too many mistakes. I'll get some other stuff done between now and Friday.

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