It's giardiniera time again.
It never ceases to amaze me how I can just "place vegetation in cart" at the supermarket and somehow always end up with exactly 8qt once it's all chopped up.
Each jar lasts me about 2 weeks, so these 14 should do me for another half a year, give or take.
When we last left off, the door to my car hole was looking a bit like this.
Functional, yes. Weatheright, yes. But a tad ugly. It clearly needs paint.
But first, there's some outstanding issues with the existing stucco and paint that need to be addressed, namely some cracking that wasn't properly fixed. Now is obviously the time to fix it, so we'll start by veeing out the cracks a little with a utility knife.
Then we squirt in some caulking, just the regular paintable exterior stuff. The important thing here is the application technique: we want to squirt the caulking into the cracks, then use the putty knife to level it out and give it a similar texture to the surrounding stucco.
The caulk will shrink a little though, so be prepared to layer on a second coat after the first dries.
I'm also going to caulk up the edges where I scraped back the paint from the surface of the stucco. This will both help seal the edge of the old paint, as well as blend in the transition a bit better.
And we can't forget the bead of caulking around the door trim itself. This is primarily to help the paint bridge the gap without leaving an unsightly line of cracking; we already took care of making the door weathertight before we applied the stucco.
Again, leaving this more textured will help it blend in with the stucco better.
So that's the wall prepped and ready for paint.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We also want to fill the brad holes in the trim, and luckily you can get wood filler in white which makes it easier to cover up with white paint afterwards.
Remember to overfill it so you can sand it back without leaving a dimple.
So while this all dries, let's take a little plum break.
It's looking like a fairly small crop this year, but I also thought that last year and ended up with a ton of them so I guess we'll see.
And speaking of things to do outside while we're waiting for the caulking and filler to dry, let's take care of this light fixture.
It doesn't look that bad from below, and I thought I might be able to fix it with some epoxy putty but uhh...
I think I'll fix it with a new fixture instead.
That's much better. Hopefully this one lasts a bit longer.
Next up is the paint. After a quick blueberry break of course.
These are a "pink lemonade" variety and last year I lost the entire crop to some animal that came by one night and cleared out the entire bush. I've been keeping on top of munching them myself this year so as not to repeat that incident.
Anyway, I still have half a bucket of paint left over from when I redid the front of the house a few years ago, which should still be good.
Hmm, this might need a bit of stirring.
There we go, good as new. Now we slap it on the wall and while it's not a perfect match, it blends in well enough.
Then we just finish up by putting the last coat of white paint on the trim.
Which, granted, doesn't look that much different from here but trust me, when you get up close it looks a lot better.
Today on the bench is a classic from 1981, Radio Shack's proudest musical instrument: the MG-1
I picked this up used (obviously) for cheap since it was nonfunctional, but fixing it was a pretty trivial repair. However, this is only part 1, as the synth still has a few more issues that I want to clean up. Stay tuned for more!
While the stucco is curing on my new door install, I decided to take care of a little bit of termite damage that I found while I was doing the install.
The bottom of the king stud here is probably the nastiest part, and I think it's contributing to this wall being a bit more flexible than I'd like, though the majority of it is probably due to how it was framed out, since there's no bracing at the top of the wall and the double top plate really isn't stiff enough to keep things really rigid.
Anyway, the solution to the immediate problem is to sister this chewed up lumber with some fresh new toobiefors. But, since this is a stucco wall, there's not quite enough room for a full width board in here, since the stucco application process tends to cause some bowing of the tar paper when the stucco gets squished into place.
And then there's also these nails in the way.
For whatever reason, 3-1/4" nails are standard in framing, even though that leaves a quarter inch of nail poking out the far side of a pair of 2x4s.
But it's an easy problem to solve.
Anyway, we're gonna need to put the new toobies on a diet to fit into the wall, especially around spots like this.
So we send it off for some bandsaw liposuction.
Of course I also have to work around the mudsill bolts, so a little bit of blocking on the bottom seems in order.
And thus we get to the most important part of any home improvement job: buying new tools.
This is a 21° air-powered framing nailer, and is surprisingly quite a bit lighter than it looks. Let's give it a test run on this blocking.
Yeah, it figures it would split. Ah well, it'll still do the job well enough.
Next up we'll install some metal connectors to help stiffen up the joints between the joists and the top plate and mud sill.
I'm adding them to the existing framing as well as the new stuff.
These nails don't go in with the nail gun, to be clear. You can get a metal connector nailer that will shoot nails into metal connectors like these, but they're a bit spendy for a single-tasker. You can also get a palm nailer to drive the nails for you, or you can just hammer them in manually like some kind of chump.
I hammered them in manually, and I honestly should have got the palm nailer.
Anyway, they go into the new wood too, and I'm adding them before putting the board into place since they're much easier to access before they're in the wall.
Then the other side gets some construction adhesive.
And with some creative wedging to make it conform to the existing framing, it gets nailed into place.
And then the job is done.
Well, except for going out to buy a can of termite foam and squirting it into the chewed up wood. I'm 95% sure that there isn't an active infestation here as the damage predated me moving in (the termites had also chewed on some of the shelving framing that was nailed into this wall, which I removed shortly after moving in) but the foam is cheap so I really have no reason to not do it.
Continuing on with the saga of my Seiko watches, when we last left off I had replaced the batteries in both watches in the hope that this refresh would keep them from running down so frequently. The newer watch has, subsequently, returned to an acceptable level of functioning, but the old one still tends to run down to zero after a few months.
Of course this isn't entirely surprising, since I only wear the older one once a week, however I tried to address this, years ago, by storing it in an automatic watch winder when it isn't on my wrist.
Rather disappointingly, this did not solve the problem, and the reason why is pretty straightforward: the device is programmed to only rotate the watch for something like 15 seconds every hour. This rotational austerity is done in the name of not over-winding a mechanical automatic watch, since as we all know, overwinding a mechanical watch can cause the mainspring to be damaged or broken.
Except that watchmakers aren't idiots. A regular non-automatic wristwatch has a mainspring that's retained in the barrel by a hook and on the arbor by another hook, creating a positive connection to the spring at both ends, which is sufficiently strong that overpowering it will result in breaking the mainspring.
HOWEVER, automatic watches only have a hook on the arbor, and the barrel is instead smooth, with the mainspring gripping it via friction through a specially formulated sticky grease. If the watch is "overwound" then the winding action pulls the mainspring away from the inside of the barrel and this reduced pressure allows the spring to slip along, safely releasing the excess spring tension.
Never mind that my Seiko watches don't even have a mainspring. The automatic works runs a little generator that charges the battery.
But it's easier to sell people snake oil to alleviate their unfounded anxieties than it is to educate them and dispel their misunderstandings, so the result is we get an automatic watch winder that doesn't actually properly wind an automatic watch.
Now I've known this for a while and I've been mulling over ways to address it. I could replace the control board with one that's programmed more to my liking, or possibly just reprogram the control board that's already in there, but both of those options feel a bit tedious and excessive. Instead, I'm just going to install a switch to bypass the whole thing so that I can set the motor on to run constantly when I need to fully charge the watch.
And that starts with getting inside.
The winder can be optionally powered by a pair of batteries, but I run it off the wall-wart. Still, the battery compartment is one of the two main access routes to get inside the unit.
And the control board is just held in place by the nuts on the knobs and barrel jack.
The watch holder basket thing is held onto the gear motor shaft by a single screw, and another single screw holds the diagonal main plate in place. With those removed, everything comes apart.
There's not a ton of room in the bottom of the case, but I should be able to fit the switch here beside the basket where it'll be easily accessible from above.
Though the main plate is a little thick compared to the barrel size of this switch, so I'll need to carve out some space on the back side.
First up is drilling the hole.
Which worked pretty well, despite going through a layer of fabric on top.
And it's clear to see that we won't be able to get the retaining nut onto the switch without a bit more work on the backside.
But a little work with a 3/4 spade bit (which I had to run in my cordless drill because it's a cheap bit and not anywhere near straight) makes a nice little pocket for it to sit down inside.
And now we've got enough threads showing to secure the switch in place.
The nut and the anti-rotation washer go on just as planned.
And now it's time to solder. These two contacts on the programming header connect to the ground plane and the power input jack, so they make a convenient spot to tap into.
And then the switch gets soldered up to select between either the normal PCB connection or the direct power connection.
Then all that's left to do is pack everything back in the case like it was before.
So now whenever my watch is getting low on charge, I can just flip the switch to have the motor run constantly (and faster than normal too, since the new connection bypasses the 3.3v regulator) and leave it for an hour or two to make absolutely sure that the battery gets completely topped off.
