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By Sylverstone, on May 28th, 2009 so with the exception of some trim around the hot tub and some work on the roof over it, the deck is done…
which of course means that i need to tackle the storage buildings that were on the old deck next…
i think one of them is going to be the laundry room with a work bench… (the whirlpool duet washer and dryer i have are made of awesome, but they cause a lot of traffic problems in the kitchen, so i’m thinking i’m going to move ‘em…)
so the joists are fine on the floors of the storage buildings (just off the deck to the right when you head out into the backyard) but the decking is shot, so up it comes…
it came out pretty easy…
so then we start disassembling the buildings. i had been hoping that i could just jack them up and deck underneath them, but it was such a pain in the butt that we just took them apart instead.
yes, that is 27 runs of cat5 network cable run down the fence. the blue ones are high speed data, and the grey ones are dialup trunks.
and one lone dsl router that i ended up bagging for the duration, since moving it right now would be a pain in the butt…
looks like i need to do some foundation work too.
(pressure treated 4×6′s across the front, middle, and back solved that neatly…)
taking apart the second building…
i ended up cutting the frame in half between the buildings, (there was a 3 ft gap) and moving them both closer to the house… gives me 4 feet of my yard back, which means i can park the kitchen trailer in the backyard between events…
so out comes the skillsaw and the drill, and…
away we go…
in hindsight i should have redone the joists on the second building to match the spacing on the first one, as i ended up having to do a lot more work to lay the decking… (see the double floor beams about 8″ apart in the middle? that’s where the middle was removed to put them closer together, causing the board spacing to be wierd for the top decking)
looking good though…
laying down the building frames… the white stuff is dap silicone adhesive that dries clear. (glued the frames down with it before i put the screws in)
all the dots and so on are filled in screw holes and a few knots, as this is between the buildings and i don’t want water standing in the screw holes…
adding the second set of frames…
it goes together kinda like legos 
and, the finish product
note that the floor under the buildings is 1/4″ higher than my deck… this was done so the deck doesn’t interfere with the doors, and the seals on the doors don’t brush the deck.
yes, that post is in the way of the doors…
temporary support while i move the support post to the space between the buildings… (gutter mount will screw to the backside of it)
and now i’m off to change the support structure for the roof…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on May 26th, 2009 so someone pointed out to me this morning that i have a tendency to be colorful…
sometimes it’s the garb, or the car, the project, whatever…
and sometimes, it’s the bruises, scrapes, and other miscellaneous damage…
so, without further ado, i present to you a gallery of “not dead yet…”
top to bottom, this happened yesterday…
never occurred to me i would need my safety glasses to sweep a floor, but i slipped and fell, and shoved a broom handle into my left eye socket. :/
it only hurts when i blink…
or look at things.
or, well, all the time. not recommended.
that lump is about the size of a grape :/
anyway, so the other ouch i’m currently annoyed at (it’s healing very slowly due to it’s location, and how it was done…)
this lovely bit:
was done with an 8″ angle grinder…
it’s been a week i think, and this is what it looks like today…
the problem with it is that the scab doesn’t flex and the arm does, so it keeps coming detached, and it’s big, so it’s healing from the sides and ends moreso than the bottom.
so that brings us to my legs.
this set here…
was kinda confusing…
cause it’s high up on the back of my right thigh, and it’s huge, deep, hurts, and i have no idea how i got it…
this one here:
was the result of a bit of miscommunication between myself…
and the object i was standing on, while fixing a dryer vent…
express ride out of the attic for the big bruise…
here’s to hoping i have an uneventful day…
(i’m going out to finish my laundry room…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on May 21st, 2009 so i’ve been doing a much needed overhaul on my house…
spent 3 weeks under it with a bunch of 30 ton hydraulic jacks leveling it…
then spent a couple weeks doing drywall, mud, tape, texture and paint…
the kitchen is on hold for a moment, so i took some time to overhaul the deck…
first thing we did was strip it to the rails… once upon a time i had a carport, and the deck was built from the original rafter framework, so it might look a bit different than you’re used to seeing under a deck, but this is way stronger than standard deck construction… better be, and with that many 2×12′s and 2×8′s it made sense to use it…
so, stripped off the old decking, lowered the hot tub to ground level so we weren’t trying to support it’s weight, and i had an idea…
so i pulled the pump, heater, and everything else out of the tub, and laid myself a concrete footing…
the studs you’re looking at are actually 4″ bolts in the concrete to bolt the pump to.
my friend chris gave me a set of rubber motor mounts from a pressure washer or similar (he’s a small engine ninja) so i’m going to use them to isolate the motor…
so i set the pump on the pad, and looked at it for a while…
when i first bought this place i had to replace the sewer line, and i had put a cleanout in it, where the sewer line exits the house…
so when i was in the plumbing dept i realized that the parts i needed were 50 bucks… but they had a 3″ diameter pile with (2) 1 1/2″ pipes coming in the sides that would fit the bill nicely… for 5 bucks. … so i put a cleanout cap on top of it, cut off the old pipe and glued it inside of the old one…
now i have a 3″ cleanout instead of a 4″, but it’s no big thing… and i have (2) 1 1/2″ connections on the sides of it…
one of which i plumbed the hot tub drain to, so i don’t have to mess with the hose anymore…
then i extended the connections from the tub to the new pump and heater location…
the big valve on the right is the drain valve, and the high volume directional T fitting in the upper right is going to be a drain for a sluice shower (take a quick rinse off before and after using the tub) …
the weirdness with the upper line in the above picture is because i wanted to go under that deck beam, not through it… (if the deck sinks or settles or anything i don’t want to break it and have to deal with 500 gallons of hot water under my deck)
i used gentle curves wherever possible to make things flow easier, especially where it’s being pumped…
yes, the T fitting to the drain would make it work faster for draining the tub if i turned it around… but it flows better for standard operation (pump running and recirculating) when done this way…
everything to the right of the double beam in this picture is the old carport rafter frame, re tasked for this. it actually ends behind the hot tub at the top of this image, the new wood is where the old 2×6′s where removed to allow us to set the tub on the ground…
framing in an access hatch…
and here we start laying decking.
the stain is olympic “maximum waterproofing sealant” and the color is “canyon brown”…
we stained the bottom and sides of each board, and then i screwed them down with “phillips II plus high performance deck screws with evercoat coating” (these are awesome) while they were wet. a pain in the butt, but i was pressed for time, and it worked fine…
gives you an idea of how long this took. the deck is 22×18, and there’s 70 2×6′s in this pile…
you can see here that carol, aiden, and argyle are staining faster than i can align, force together, and screw down, the decking…
here the pump access is framed in. i have 5 pieces that fit in here to cover it…
here’s a shot along the side of the house from the back door looking t’ward the pump…
here’s a shot from about halfway between the back door and the pump, facing the ramp off the back…
starting to stain…
long way to go…
and half of it finished…
and the other half…
now i just need to trim out the tub (the deck isn’t actually going to touch it, but it’s going to come close) and then put the side walls back up and stain them, and it’s a wrap
the lines are from the light coming through the polycarbonate roofing over the deck…
i suspect heavy deck use this summer
-stone
By Sylverstone, on May 16th, 2009 or, “how to destroy something to make it better”
so my friend tony called me up and said he knew where there was a trailer i might be interested in. it was free, it was hammered, stripped, and was a 5th wheel to boot.
*sigh*
my rig isn’t set up for a fifth wheel, being a van and all
… so the woman called me, told me about it, and i told her i’d get back to her.
so a week later i go look at it.
eek.
someone, in the process of stripping it, had cut the front of it off, so there wasn’t even a way to tow it if i had the rig to do it.
so i figure i’ll head out there with my generator and a sawzall, cut it up into manageable pieces, and load it into my buddy chris’ truck. (f-450 for the win …
then he mentions his boss has an 18 ft car trailer…
now we’re talkin’
so today, we headed out there to get it… when i said it was in rough shape, i wasn’t kidding…
it was kinda a mess.
i shook my head and laughed at myself when i realized it’s got dexter wheels on it.
the irony is that i was desperately looking for a pair of these a couple years ago, and now some little old lady gave me five of them
anyway, so we used a bunch of cargo straps and a come-a-long to load it onto the car trailer…
and we then headed out…
of course, we had had a lot of fun backing the 8 ft wide car trailer down the 7 ft wide road to go get it… heh
and the 5th wheel was too wide to pull up past the car trailers wheel wells…
so we kinda had to make do
7 ft of overhang is a bit… much, but we weren’t going far, and it was secured very very well
so we get to our destination, and decide that most of the work can be done where it sits… so out comes the implements of destruction… (8″ angle grinder and a sawzall for the win
note the style of the spare wheel… that’s a 4 lug dexter wheel. if you have any kicking around, let me know, i’m short one, or 7, depending on how you do the math
anyway, what truthfully amazed me was how bent everything was. stick and staple construction sucks, *cheap* stick and staple is even worse… although i was amused by the steel rod bridge trussing…
chop…
chop…
and the rear floor supports are gone, and now we have the front floor bracing and the front bulkhead…
which cannot stand up to the mighty sawzall from milwaukee…
i used the angle grinder for the small stuff, but this is 1/8″ wall 2″ x 8″ “C” channel for the outside beams, and the center one is an 1/8″ wall, 2″ x 6″ box tube… tough stuff.
the horizontal cut was also through 1/8″ gussets welded on the corners, so it was slow going…
i thought about making a utility trailer out of this:
but truthfully, it sits higher than i like. (all my trailers have a really low center of gravity for a reason, and i’m picky as hell about my engineering)
so the impact wrench couldn’t touch the suspension bolts….
but the angle grinder made short work of them…
and off comes the frame rails (don’t worry, most of this steel will be used for other projects, or recycled)
and now we’re down to what i was after…
a set of lightweight (2500 lb rated) 4″ drop, dexter axles, with brakes.
when i build trailers, i pretty much insist on double axles and brakes. it’s a whole lot safer when someone does something stupid on the highway… and they will.
i’ve been looking for a set of light ones for a while, since i’m putting together a 12′ pop top gypsy vardo, with the goal of keeping it light enough to tow behind a small car. these should fit the bill nicely. truthfully, i expected a 25 ft fifth wheel to have a lot bigger brakes… but these are plenty big for my vardo, since most 12 ft trailers don’t even have dual axles, let alone brakes…
so we clean up all the parts and load them into chris’ truck…
breaks down surprisingly small, although it weighs about 1000 lbs or so…
so yeah… new project coming down the pike when i get my house done, and get some time…
but now you know how i spent my afternoon
thanks for the help chris
-stone
By Sylverstone, on May 7th, 2009 so between being sicker than a dog (spent most of mayfaire in my tent sleeping) my normal mundane business stuff, and happy distractions like the world rhythm festival, i haven’t had a whole lot of time to do the blog thing.
so, without further ado, i bring you a grate:
this was a spot i didn’t get a chance to finish when we originally built the trailer, and i’m glad i didn’t, since we have had several events that we packed down so wet that we had literally 40-50 gallons of water in the trailer.
so a big drain:
isn’t a bad thing
we had a few nervous moments at hortings hideout, with the size of the drop from the back wing to the ground (we were level, on a hillside that was far from it) so we figured it would be a good idea to add some tiedowns for the sink cart, and the freezers…
… but now that you mention it, i’d been wanting a freezer cart for a while… (those little wheels on the bottoms were never intended for what we do with this) so here’s the freezer cart:
the center grate is for a wastebasket, to collect all the crumbs and such from loading chicken nuggets into the frybaskets (they get the oil really dirty realy fast otherwise)
the back grating is to protect the back of the freezer (the heat exchanger primarily) from damage, and you can see the overkill casters in this pic. i salvaged them off a bunch of sun microsystems sparcserver 1000e servers i had in the scrap pile.
the clearances are tight, but i’m really happy with how this turned out. they’re argyle proof
in the above pic, chris is welding the frybasket hangers in place.
here is the finished product, complete with the anchor points welded on (salvaged from a set of heavy duty truck chains tuck snagged from the side of the highway) the anchor points sit over the tiedowns on the wing mentioned earlier, and overlap the ones on the sink cart.
so i really liked the way tucks trailer turned out, especially the back bumper…
so i bobbed the one on the kitchen trailer, and punched a bunch of holes in it for lights (mine are clear with red led’s, and my trailer requires more because it’s larger) i added an extra set of stop/tail lights for visibility’s sake, and roughed in the holes…
running out of time for mayfaire, i painted the bumper (holes are still roughed in) and ran with my magnetics again. note the spiffy new fold up steps i added to make getting in and out of the trailer with the wings up easier:
they work great, and they’re argyle proof:
when i designed this thing, the goal was to make it so i can set it up anywhere. so far it’s been set up on a steep slope, over a 6′ deep ditch, over a huge puddle, etc. a lot of time and thought went into the design, and i can’t help but change something that bugs me.
so those 8 legs that are a pain to mop around, under the deep fryers?
gonzo…
here’s the new fryer mount. it’s welded solid, and tacked into the trailer:
here’s chris welding the back brace to the fryer mount:
and welding the bottom of it….
the finish product (the silver square in the back is a frymaster deep fryer with the legs, front trim, and front door removed)
here’s the first fryer mounted:
and the finished product:
they worked great at mayfaire, and i must say i really like how they turned out.
so, the big top doesn’t work at every event, since there are many that it’s just plan too big for… so one 15 x 20 panther with a 10 x 20 dining fly later, and the problem appears to be solved, as we try it out for the first time at mayfaire:
looks pretty good all things considered…
i’m going to need to make some longer poles and do some repairs to it, but the crew loved it, so it’s a keeper customers seemed to like it too, although some had a bit of a hard time finding us…
so far so good.
i’m not much of a photographer, but there was a few things that caught my eye, so i snapped a pic.
this one is a welding arc, being reflected off tucks sunglasses in the rain…
this one is the same welding arc through the windows of my car
this one is a shot of chris welding in the dark:
gotta love the rain…
and that’s where we’re at.
mayfaire was fun
well, what i got to see of it.
thanks to everyone who’s been worried about me.
i’m not dead yet
-stone
By Sylverstone, on April 28th, 2009 so it’s been a busy couple days, with the world rhythm festival, and a lot of mundane business stuff going on…
so here’s the latest update… short on pictures and details, since the last round of welding and so on was done in the pouring rain…
we ended up putting up one of the wings and stringing a tarp to keep the water off chris while he was welding…
you can see the pieces being cut out for the new freezer cart as well…
one of the things i did was take some of this:
and after a lot of tedious fitting:
the flush out grating is in place…
i haven’t gotten a picture of this yet, since chris welded it in the dark, but i’ll try and get one today.
the freezer cart got protective grating for the condensers on the back of the freezers as well (again, in the dark, pictures soon…)
-stone
By Sylverstone, on April 25th, 2009 so tuck’s utility trailer is coming along nicely…
here’s the decking going on… (gorilla glue and screws for the win
note the glue and screw blocks that are bolted to the frame:
here we’re fitting the pressure treated vertical back piece and the back deck:
and here we’re cutting the side walls:
there’s a bit of a bow in the plywood:
but it should flatten out over time.
here’s the side walls on the trailer:
those taillights turned out nice
more coming soon…
-stone
By Sylverstone, on April 20th, 2009 so i’ve been over at my friend tuck’s a lot lately, working on my kitchen trailer, and his utility trailer.
a bit of history…
so once upon a time i had a little beat up holiday rambler travel trailer… typical stick and staple, water damage in a few spots, etc.
in the sca i run a small eatery by the name of the dew drop inn… (what else would you call my bar?
aerial shot…
we do burgers, fries, espresso, sno kones, gyros, chicken nuggets, and whatever else i have a craving for…
anyway, unloading that 600 lb grill out of the small trailer every event was going to be the death of someone (probably me) so i spent about a year trying to come up with a better solution…
the solution was a trailer that unfolds into a kitchen, and fits under the pavilion in the pictures above…
i seem to be missing the original build pics, but i found a few…
this is the above mentioned rv trailer, stripped to the frame, the fold out wings installed, and i’m working on mounting the aforementioned grill… (the original cart is right behind it)
i also designed it to be easy to clean out and so on, so nothing is braced directly to the floor…
and since this never leaves the trailer, i had to account for some wierd loading and so on, which is why it sits in deep pockets built into the frame… (notice the wheel wells aren’t finished yet)
here’s a picture of it being packed up for it’s debut event (notice the back wall has not been completed yet)
of course, i built myself a few accessories to go with it…
anyway, within about 3 weeks we realized that we hadn’t painted the trailer properly, or the paint was the wrong stuff, or something… not sure exactly, but it was coming off…
but of course, we’re mid season, there’s no way to fix it, don’t have the time or the place to do it in…
fast forward to last week, when my buddy tuck says we can do it at his place since i’m working on his trailer over there anyway…
so after a few hours of unloading, setting down the wings, the jack legs, etc…
and so on, we broke out the industrial simple green, and washed the trailer…
as you can see, it’s a mess. large patches of rust from standing water, and a thick coating of grease from a grease spill (deep fryer drain valve wasn’t closed) and all sorts of other unhappiness…
so we let it soak for a while…
then we got serious…
very very serious…
(fayd has a “wow that’s going to be a pain to clean off” look doesn’t he?)
of course, tuck had us set up with all we needed to kick out the jams…
including a pretty dj
then we started the strip show…
(yes, we let naomi play with razor blades)
and with the help of our super epic (but biodegradable) degreaser, a couple angle grinders, a pressure washer and a lot of elbow grease, it starts to come clean…
this is under the grill…
facing the rear: (keep in mind we never had a chance to paint that rear wall)
and the front where the stove, the small grill, and both deep fryers live…
almost done…
customer side…
and while we were waiting for things to soak, chris and i built a freezer cart…
the casters came off giant sun servers, so they were probably a million each originally, and came with a free mainframe… (same ones as are under the sink cart… i retask a lot of stuff)
so, considering what happened with the “recommended” paint last time i painted this trailer, i decided to take matters into my own hands…
rustoleum “9100″ 2 part industrial direct to metal epoxy mastic.
this is the stuff you paint battleships with, so i figure it might, just might, hold up to my little inn.
customer side, wheel well deck piece removed…
same side, different angle…
back of the kitchen, wheel well deck piece removed…
center of the kitchen, facing the front of the trailer (customers would be to the left, that’s the grill mount on the upper right)
front of the trailer. the deep fryers go in the gap in the right hand rail…
random angles…
this paint takes forever to dry, and it’s the stickiest substance i have ever seen when it’s been mixed for 2 hours or so. looks promising, but the bugs couldn’t stay away from it…
special thanks to fayd, nami, naomi, kera, chris, tuck, nez, argyle, jamie, and of course, riley, who, being “top dog” just had to supervise (and like any supervisor, he’s looking the wrong way)
till next time,
-stone
By Sylverstone, on April 20th, 2009 so once the dew drop’s kitchen was painted, (for now, it’s getting a second coat) it was time to move on to the important stuff (to tuck, our host for this circus…)
remember that little trailer i was hacking on last time?
well, it got some spiffy new holes cut in it…
because while no one had led taillights in the 70′s…
we’re going to use ‘em now…
since the grommets fit, time to move on to paint…
we used some of my battleship paint for it…
and it looks great if i say so myself…
looking good so far
-stone
By Sylverstone, on April 16th, 2009 so today was all about seeing things in the light of day, and shopping for paint and the little things…
first stop was home depot, who was next to useless for what i had in mind…
followed by lowes, who wasn’t much better. lowes used to have what i was after (direct to metal industrial paint)…
a quick consultation with my gps for “industrial paint” got me kelley moore, who had a 150 bucks a gallon preventative/primer/topcoat solution… ummm.. no.
second hit was applied industrial technology in olympia, who had the hookup for me…
rustoleum’s industrial paint division has a high abrasion resistant high performance 2 part epoxy paint that is designed to stand up to severe environments…
this is the stuff you would paint the extruded steel walkways on your battleship with…
it has an abrasion rating of 160 psi…
so it comes as a gallon of paint and a gallon of hardener, making 2 gallons of product when you mix it together, and you have 2 hours to apply it.
i figured the kitchen trailer i use in my inn was going to take probably 3 gallons total, and tucks trailer would be less than a gallon, so i bought 2 gallons of hardener and 2 gallons of paint, (grand total 221.44 + tax, ouch) in black of course (i will paint everything black until they make something darker … and it should be here tomorrow.
here’s what the trailer looked like this morning, with the temporary lights on it, since we had to take it to get new shoes…:
you can see a lot of the work that’s been done so far…
and eagle eyed readers will notice that the trailer tires don’t match, and that one has a big bulge in it and the other one has a split in the tread…
so, off to tire dogs in olympia we go… (absolute best place to pick up used tires cheap.. this trailer isn’t going to see enough miles to buy new ones right now…)
the trailer is so light right now that even with argyle and myself standing on it, the leaf springs still hold the axle solid against the lower framerail (we may end up taking a leaf or two out of the spring packs). a side effect of this is that the trailer bounces around *a lot* whenever hit hits bumps in the road.
so the first thing i did was add 15 lbs of air to one tire (it was flat) and let 20 out of the other one, and we ran them at 15 psi for the trip into town. enough air to keep them on the rims, but keep them as soft as we can get them.
we had to do the same thing for the trip home to keep it from bouncing around so much.
here it is with her new shoes:
note that this is capital industrial’s parking lot, when we stopped to pick up the led lights for it…
as you can see, the trailer has a very low, wide footprint, and the new (to tuck anyway) tires are a massive improvement over what was there…
on the “still todo” list is:
1) find the light cover we lost on the way here (totally kidding)
2) hinged hanging license plate holder
3) recess the led lights into the bumper
4) paint
5) repack the bearings
6) check the brakes
7) install a trailer brake controller
 build the sidewalls
9) build the fenders
onward and upwards
-stone
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