Friday, March 14, 2014

Ceilings and USA journey.

Hi.
     I know it's been a very long time since my last post and I do apologize if by any little chance someone has been waiting. I guess one could say I took a break. I can actually remember a fellow blogging friend, John (The Analog Man), requested a certain post about solar power usage and  statistics etc. I hav'nt forgotten about you John, I will get something together sometime soon. I got kind of lazy in the building department there for awhile, but now, I am starting to get a little tired of looking at all the same ceiling joists in the kitchen and insulation up in the loft where I sleep at night. I think I need a change. I started the loft more than a month or two ago.
The above picture is what is done in the loft so far. It is the largest area of ceiling in the house. The total area of loft to do is 504 sq feet. I have 156 sq ft done and that leaves 348 to go. I'm just about 1/3 done the loft. lol. This stuff is pretty slow putting up, especially when doing it by yourself. The store ran out of this stuff after I started and I could'nt seem to find the same stuff in town anywhere. However I did finally find pretty close to the same in a different store now. Totally different packaging and brand etc, but it sure does look like the same product. I bought enough to do the main floor ceiling and I compared the loft with that. I think it will work. I'll have to go buy that store out too I guess.
Above pic shows the kitchen ceiling I just got done today. That is about 100 sq ft. And that leaves the living room (another 100 sq ft), and the bathroom (roughly 36 sq ft), and the rest is open to the loft.

In other news, I went on a little road trip recently from Feb 14-Feb 28.
 The map above shows all the places we stayed over night. We were in Las Vegas for 3 nights and the rest were one nighters. The furthest north dot is Grande Prairie, Alberta, the starting point. Then we rolled clockwise until we got back to Grande Prairie again. I really liked that trip, and about the only thing that was wrong with it is that I'm not still down there. We've been in 8 US states and 2 Canadian provinces.
This is JoAnn my travelling partner and her car. The gas on this trip costed a little over $600, which I thought was pretty decent. Rooms were not too bad either, as we were splitting the costs. We would usually book rooms one day in advance finding some good deals on expedia.com or booking.com.

 I'm looking at the Pacific ocean in the above pic. It is far away view from here, but it was my first look at any ocean and it was a pretty special moment for me. lol. We eventually did get closer looks and even walked  some beaches. Watched some elephant seals, and even saw signs of whales. Anyway, I went from temps of 22c-28c.   (71-86 F) here in the states.
To this again at home. The morning after I got home, it was -38c (-37f). What a difference. I am planning on spending some more winter time in the south in the future. Not sure if it will be next winter for sure or not, but sometime. 
Before I left on our little journey I had to do some preparations as my house was going to be left all alone for 2 weeks in very cold and snowy weather. The first thing was to empty out the deep freeze that is in the house. And then simply shut the power off. Just a push of a button. The bar-b-que became the freezer for a day or two until I put them into moms deep freeze before we left. Never know if a chinook is going to blow in or not. When I got back from the vacation, I used the bar-b-que to keep my frozen goods frozen again as there was really no point in running the deep freeze until the weather got warmer, and it eventually did. I haven't started the generator since February 12 2014. That's over a month now. I'm pretty much on the free power plan now until about November again, except for maybe the odd bad weather spell.  




8 comments:

  1. Glad to get your update! We DO check your blog everyday. It sounds like your trip was fantastic.

    We know what it's like to get a cabin 'finished enough' to move in to and be comfortable and then the urge to work on it seems 'not so urgent.'

    Keep up the good work. Your cabin is looking great!

    Bigfoot and Littlefoot in TX

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    1. Hey bigfoot. Ya the trip was great. The winter where we went is like our summers up here. I'm definitely planning on going again, but for a lot longer next time. I'll admit it, I got a little lazy on my house there for awhile, but hopefully I can try and stay motivated for a bit now. Thanks Bigfoot.

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  2. Hello Mark, wondered what your up to....Jan 22 was the last day I ran the gen...I think I am at 180hrs total run time for a full year, can cut that down a bit if I would quit being so lazy and shut the gen off rather than run until its out of gas....I bet it was fun away from the cold...I get a little nutty by Feb after a cold winter..Anyway, I look forward to your data when you get a chance....

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  3. Hey John. Good to see you again. Sounds like you got a pretty good thing going on. I know I could cut my power down a lot too. Not once did I crawl up on the roof this winter to remove snow, and I kept my deep freeze inside all winter too. That little deep freeze does actually cost me a little bit to run on generator gas. Next winter I will utilize the natural freezer a bit more. The warm weather down south really does make me wonder what I'm doing up here. lol.

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  4. Great pics Mark! Your trip looks awesome...you two covered a lot of territory!. What did you think of the ocean? Isn't it amazing? :)
    I was in Idaho and Utah not long ago, looks like you might have stayed close to where I went.
    Great to see you back posting! :)

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  5. Thanks Jeanie. The ocean was pretty exciting. I know it's all pretty common for a lot of people, but it was something pretty different for me. I can remember when I was young kid about 5 years old, I was going to ride my bike to the ocean one day. lol. Well, I finally got there. It is amazing. We stayed in Helena, Montana, and Salt Lake city in Utah. I will try and keep you updated a bit more Jeanie.

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  6. Hi. Nice to see you posting again. I find that I go through my favorite blogs once a week and you were missing but I had faith that you would be back posting sooner or later. Being a Michigander, a southern Michigander, this winter has hit us all hard. I understand what the folks in Minnesota or you Canadians go through in a given winter. I suggested to my husband that we travel to Florida next year to get warm if we have a repeat of this winter. Glad you got to visit the ocean. It's pretty neat!!!

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  7. Thanks for stopping in Westside mom. I totally agree with you on the migration thing. Millions of Canada geese do it every year and I really think they may be on to something. I love traveling and seeing new places and near as I can tell there would be no better place in the winter than somewhere that I can wear a t-shirt. The ocean was quite a thing for me. I'm sure I'll be back someday.

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