More adventures in materialism

It’s a good thing I had a pocketful of money when I woke this morning, because I sure don’t now.
But I do have full bottles of liquid refreshment. One of these propane bottles has been waiting empty since early summer.

Also! Swear I’m gonna get the tools I need for woodcutting all updated and sorted out just in time for…next year’s woodcutting maybe, I dunno.

I had an ancient Milwaukee Sawzall I literally scrounged from an abandoned RV, and it was the bee’s knees for cutting up pallets – except there was something wrong internally and it got so hot that even with gloves you couldn’t use it more than five or ten minutes or it would really scorch your hands. Plus swapping out blades was torture.

Big Brother sent me a cordless B&D saw last year and it’s great for light work, like trimming bushes from the road or doing yard work, but only a few hours into pallet-cutting and you could tell it was suffering. Plus the batteries take forever to recharge. Right idea but the tool was too light-duty. But I like the saw and use it for a lot of different stuff, so rather than beat it to death on hardwood pallets I emptied my wallet this morning to acquire…

This bigger, heavier recip saw. (In a way, Big Brother bought this one too.) Hopefully it’ll stand up to the work better, and then I can use the B&D for yard work because at 10 amps, I don’t really think the Lair’s inverter will run this one. (Ed note: Actually for some reason it will. Don’t ask me. Math is hard.) Of course I can use a corded saw because of the new Honda generator, which is doing fine running the chop saw.

And I finally remembered to take the hose off the new bedroom’s furnace and put it in the Jeep, because that allowed me to do the second-to-last thing needed before the addition is officially closed to the outside…

The heater came with a rubber gas hose suitable for a barbecue, which I was not comfortable using so close to the firebox. I bought a black iron pipe that would have worked perfectly to get the plumbing outside, but lining up furnace and the hole in the floor proved beyond my meager skills. So I hooked the furnace up and tested it with the rubber hose but never intended to run it that way. Then of course October came and went and I kept forgetting to bring the hose to the hardware so I could get a more suitable flexible pipe with matching fittings. Till I did that, I couldn’t plug up the hole in my floor.

But now at last I remembered that chore, so I’ll expend some filler and caulk this afternoon and that will be done. Yesterday I fixed the floor under the addition’s back door so it would stay flat under traffic, and now I can cut a piece of hardwood for a threshold and the last required pre-winter addition chore will be Officially Done!

Then I can turn my mind to fripperies, like…

Yeah, like that’s gonna happen soon. I’ve already stopped seeing what the light fixtures even look like. I’ll put up the undershelf LED bed light Big Brother sent me (as soon as I figure out where the HELL I hid it) because wattage, but other than that I’m about done with lights.

Probably the next trick will be building the sliding door between the main cabin and addition, because until I do that the new overnight furnace won’t do much more than heat up the loft. In which I no longer sleep.