February 12, 2024 - February 15, 2024 - New Patio Table and Chairs; Trash Can Repair; Valentines Day Dance

Monday: 

This is the set of patio furniture that came with the place. Last winter we found the plastic rollers falling apart so I purchased new, steel rollers for all the chairs. I installed the new rollers. While the rollers worked great, the chairs are too high for Kelly to sit in comfortably. We decided to replace them.

On Facebook Market Place I found a set of four swivel rocking chairs and patio table at a good price. The table is much larger than we would like but it is in perfect shape. The table and chairs sat outside for some time. As a result each of the chairs had several rust spots on them which needed to be addressed.

I ground off the rust the best I could but had to wait to paint them until the windy weather conditions ceased. Bringing them home twenty miles made me a little anxious because the wind was rocking the truck even when just sitting at a stoplight. Due to the gusting wind I decided to stop halfway home to double check all the straps to make sure they were tight. 

I put the PVC table and chairs for sale on our community Facebook page and sold them the first day for what I spent on the new wheels.   

Tuesday:

The city collects trash twice a week, Tuesday and Friday. They do not supply a trash can. Last March I purchased a new plastic trash can with a hinged lid because the one left here had holes in the bottom. I wanted a can with a good lid because I keep the can in the shed and don't want any smells in there. The can has only been in use for five months and the plastic hinged lid is already showing signs of failure. (Did I mention I hate plastic?). In fairness to plastic, the trash collectors aren't exactly kind to the cans. Plastic doesn't stand up to a lot of abuse. Over the last several weeks after trash collection I found the lid popped out of its plastic "hinge locks" and hanging off the side of the can. I decided to improve the lid hinge system before it totally broke off. I drilled holes through each hinged side, ground off some of the plastic in the handle, and put a threaded rod through from one side to the other. I put double locking nuts on each side to be sure the rod never comes out. It works like a champ. I had the threaded rod and nuts from the "axle" project I did on the grill last winter. Here is a picture of the finished project. It should last quite a while now.😁

While the city does not provide a trash can, it does provide a blue plastic can for recyclables, which are picked up on Wednesday. We always have more recyclables than trash. I hardly ever need to put the trash out more than once per week.

In the afternoon I played Cornhole once again. Like the week before it was windy and quite chilly. Fewer people were playing so we played four games instead of three. My partner and I managed to loose all four games. (I need practice.) It is a fun way to meet people. My partner, Don, was from Bangor, Maine and had just bought a place here. 

Wednesday:

The wind died down so I was able to paint the chair frames. They turned out well. The chairs won't rust hereafter because they will be inside. Here they are on the lanai ready for a party. Now all we have to do is make four friends we can invite over. LOL 

Here is the new table with the two chairs which were brought down last summer to use on the lanai. These two swivel chairs were also part of the contents we bought from Ron's condo here in Florida. They are back home as well. I may paint their brown frames black to match the other chairs.

We have decided the table is too large for the lanai. We will take it home to use on our deck and replace it with something smaller next winter.

In the evening we attended a Valentine's Day Dance in the clubhouse.  It was certainly a dancing crowd.

The band was "At Large Band", a husband and wife team. He was a great Saxophone player. They played music everyone liked.

A friend took our picture in front of the Valentine wall. The lights were rapidly  flashing different colors so the pictures turned out a little weird.

Kelly won an attendance prize of two tickets to any future dance. I won one of the 50/50 drawings and received $30.00. We should have gone out and bought a lottery ticket that night. LOL. We had a great time and met several new people, two of which were Mike and Carol, who reside on our street.

Thursday:

We did last minute laundry and packed for our trip to Panama this weekend. We will drive five hours to Miami and catch a flight to Panama. No more blogs until after the Panama trip. We are looking forward to this inland tour, it is not a cruise as most assume. Pictures and report to follow.

February 2, 2024 - February 10, 2024 - Bagwell; Showerhead; Voltmeter; Cupholders; Drawers; Cornhole; Floormat; Serial#

Friday:

Upon purchase Buster had brown indoor-outdoor carpet on the floor, in the dash compartments, and in the rear bagwell. Luckily the pieces in the dash compartments were not glued in so I just pulled them out and threw them away. I used a hose on the floor carpet and the dirt just flowed out. The carpet is old, worn, and still dirty.  I ordered a new rubber floor mat and will take up the old carpet when I get the new mat. 

The bagwell carpet is a different story. I can't imagine why anyone would glue carpet in there. Here is a picture after I scraped off all the carpet, which was nasty dirty, and moldy as you can see in the picture.

It is not a fun area to work in because it is under the back seat. To take the entire back seat framework off to work in the area is a big job. I passed on that. Now that the carpet itself is off the problem is getting all the old glue off. I looked online and didn't find any "great" products for this task. Carpet glue is a pain to get off of anything. One idea suggested using Acetone. I poured Acetone on it, let it sit, and it didn't touch it. Another suggested "Goo Off Gel". I went to Home Depot and bought some. I let it sit as the directions indicated. It did somewhat soften the glue which is then followed by scraping. This is a picture after about two hours work. This picture really doesn't show the significant amount of hard glue still remaining. 

At the rate the "Goo Off" worked it would take many hours of spraying, waiting, and scraping to get the remaining glue off. It is not worth it. I found a black plastic bagwell liner online that covers the area. It cost $47.00. I decided to buy one rather than spending many hours trying to get the glue off. 

Saturday:

We went to several garage sales. I bought a small set of Forstner bits and a small box of router bits cheap. I will take the router bits home and leave the Forstner bits here, since I already have a larger set at home. For a dollar I bought a new stone for my grinding wheel at home. The one I have is chipped and I had planned on replacing it. 

We thought about bringing our Instapot from home but decided against it. At one garage sale Kelly procured a smaller Instapot, which was like new, for $20.00. I can now make my famous stuffed peppers. LOL  Kelly will make other delightful meals I'm sure. (I didn't figure you needed to see a picture of it.)

Kelly also purchased a painting for $3.00 by a well-known Newfoundland artist. She said the woman's smaller works are selling for $250.00 online. Kelly hopes to put it on eBay and turn a tidy profit. 

Finally, I bought two brand-new Oxygenics showerheads for $2.00 each. They retail for $31.00 a piece. We have been using these showerheads for years at home and in the RVs because they mix air with the water to increase the pressure of the shower stream.  I had already purchased one for the hall shower. It is a different style. It has a handle which attaches to the flexible shower hose. Here is a picture of the old showerhead in the master bath. Just a Walmart cheapie.

On the Oxygenics showerhead you will notice a white lever where the showerhead connects to the pipe. On the RV version the white lever stops the water flow so you can conserve water when showering. On this model the lever just controls the water flow it doesn't shut it off.  This is fine for this application.

 

After chasing around garage sales we finished off the morning with lunch at "Jack's London Grill". Kelly heard from a lady here in the park that they had excellent "Fish and Chips". We ordered that and it was quite good. It's a place I have driven by hundreds of times and never noticed it. I'm sure we will be back.

Sunday:

After church we went to see a movie called "Poor Things". Kelly loved it, I hated it. I thought it would never end. I did enjoy my "M & Ms".

Monday:

We had a good amount of rain in the morning. When it quit I tackled two more small golf cart projects. The first one was cutting a hole in the dash and installing a digital voltage meter I purchased. It is more accurate than the old analog gauge and it can be toggled to show battery voltage or percent of charge in the batteries. I wired both gauges to work. I had already installed the toggle switch on the left, which kills the power to the meters so they don't draw on the batteries 24/7.

The dash looked pretty crappy and was scheduled for a new coat of black paint as the weather allowed.

The second project was removing the broken cupholder and bracket on each side of the dash. One was twisted and one was completely broken off.

The dash looks better without them. 

New cupholders are $20.00 each. I don't know if I will buy two new ones or not. I really don't carry a drink around with me on the golf cart very often.  If I can find some used cupholders on eBay I may go that route.

Tuesday:

An early morning project was addressing the hard to pull out hall bathroom vanity drawers. They would each pull out a little but then get really hard to pull. I waxed the tracks to no avail. Upon examining the drawers and track I noted that the drawers were made a little too wide for the track and opening. The track on the drawer was binding against the cabinet mounted track. A sixteenth of an inch or so taken off each drawer would correct the problem.

The drawers are made out of particle board wrapped in white plastic. I took off the drawer track and cut the plastic paper from under the track. I tried the drawer. This was not enough to free up the drawer. I then used my Dremel tool with a sanding roller in it to take off some of the particle board on each side. A router would have done a much neater job but I don't have one here. The sanded sections are under the track so it really didn't matter if they weren't perfect.  Here is a picture with an arrow pointing to the area where I cut the paper and sanded down the drawer sides. Now all the drawers pull in and out smoothly.

In the early afternoon I was going to wash the back of the house to get the green mold off but it was windy so I decided to stay off the ladder.  Kelly was gone shopping so while the truck was out of the carport I took the opportunity to wash it all down. I went to Walmart to get a scrub brush and a handle, but they had neither. I guess with power washers people don't scrub much anymore. I scrubbed it all down on my hands and knees with a smaller scrub brush we had on hand. 

With all my jobs done for the day I decided to head up to the clubhouse area to play Cornhole. They play every Tuesday and Friday. It was quite windy and cold. I had a long sleeve shirt on plus a jacket. When I got there I was surprised to see how many people play. There were six cornhole sets set up. You drew a number for your teammate. I liked that idea so good players couldn't gang up on those of us who aren't so hot. We played three games. I was paired up with Tod from Quebec. A really nice guy I had never met before. We lost two games and won one. I asked Tod if there was a prize for first. He laughed and said one time the winners got a bag of cookies. LOL

I enjoyed the games and will definitely go back at least once per week. Between games I had a long conversation with Jackie from Newfoundland and met a lady from New Brunswick who has been in the park since 1985! I told her she was an institution, she laughed and agreed.

To end the day I went to the Men's Club Meeting where preparations were made for the Pancake Breakfast this Saturday. Plenty volunteered to help so it will go well.

Wednesday:

The old indoor-outdoor carpeting on the floor looked hideous and held a lot of dirt and I was ready to take it out when the new rubber mat arrived. 

When I pulled up the carpet I found a piece of metal with a couple of holes in it just laying on top of the "GO" pedal arm. Strange.

I turned it over and there were numbers stamped on it. This is the cart's Serial Number tag that was missing from the dash area! I carefully flattened it, cleaned it, and, with the aide of a bright light and magnifying glass, I was able to read the letters and numbers. I finally know that the cart is a Club Car 1985 DS. I recorded the Serial Number on my computer for future reference since the tag is hard to read. I reinstalled the tag in its rightful place under the dash on the passenger side. You can barely read "Club Car" on it. How cool is that!

Upon laying in the new mat some of the aluminum floor with glue on it was showed around the opening for the "GO" pedal. I spray painted it flat black to match the mat. Here is a picture of the floor with the indoor-outdoor carpet removed and the spot sprayed. 

The mat fit perfectly and came with four clips to hold the mat in place at the top. The clips didn't work as the instructions envisioned so I screwed them to the aluminum plate. You can see a couple of them in the picture below. They work perfectly. I'm really happy with the mat and how it fits.

It was a nice day so the next project was to wash the mold off the back of the house. This part of house gets virtually no sun so the trim and siding had some black and green mold on it in various areas. Additionally, the entire wall was dirty. The siding mold remover I purchased worked great as did the extendable brush handle. With this handle I didn't even have to get on the ladder. The project took about two hours and looks 100% better.

Thursday:

The bagwell liner arrived so I got to work putting it in. Unfortunately the back seat support brackets were in the way. I had to unbolt them to be able to slide the plastic cover in place. It looked great but at a distance some of the dirty old glue was still showing above the liner. I solved this by taping the area off and spray painting it flat black to match the liner. It looks great. Here is a picture.

Friday:

We went to a couple of estates sales which turned out to be busts. I bought three small tools for $2.00. Kelly bought a $5.00 bowl.

It was another nice day so I came home and got to work on painting the golf cart dash area. Here is a picture after it was all painted. It isn't perfect but its a 1985 cart.

Saturday:

I worked at the Pancake Breakfast put on by the "Men's Club" here at the park. There was a good turnout so we stayed busy which made the time go by faster. 

After that I installed in the pantry a wooden organizer for rolls of Saran Wrap, aluminum foil, etc. I made out of a wooden cigar box. It's not fancy but it keeps the rolls together and frees up some shelf space.

Later in the day the vinyl lettering was delivered for the front of Buster. It was easy to install. 

Here is a final picture of Buster, no more projects at this time. He has kept me busy. The old boy looks quite different from when we got him last year, especially the front end.

Before repair:

After repair:

 

Tomorrow is the Super Bowl and after church I plan on doing nothing other than watching the game. GO CHIEFS! I'm also looking forward to Taylor Swift's appearance pissing off the "Broflakes" LOL

January 28, 2024 - February 2, 2024 - Fender Repair Continues; Pilot Light Switch; Shower Doors; Fender Repair Finished

Sunday:

A day of watching football playoffs. We are thrilled that the Chiefs are going to the Superbowl but sad that the Lions aren't. I sent my condolences to my Michigan friends. Maybe next year.

Monday:

I started spreading Bondo on the front fender and in the holes in the hood after removing the black plastic "Club Car" plague ("Club Car" is missing by the way) and the aluminum "Cart Haven" plaque over the top of that They were both riveted on. Here are pictures of the first layer of Bondo after it was sanded down.

Tuesday:

Here is a picture of the second layer of Bondo on the fender. It is shaping up nicely. There will be lots of hand sanding since I don't have an electric sander here. 

With the sun out the Bondo dried quickly so I wet sanded everything down with a lighter sandpaper. Ready for primer. I got the primer and paint from Walmart because I knew they would have the best options for matching the rest of the cart. I bought two different shades. One color matched pretty well. The color may change a little over the primer. After one coat of primer I could see a couple of small spots that needed attention. I sanded them out and hit it all with a second coat of primer. Here are pictures after two coats of primer.

While waiting for the primer to dry I chucked the decal eraser I purchased in the drill and got to work taking the pinstriping off the sides. I had to take the pinstriping off because I can't match it on the newly painted front clip. It would look dumb just being on the back. Here are pictures of the pinstriping off on one side and half off on the other side. 

I ran out of battery power and also finally finished burning up a Craftsman drill. I smoked it some weeks back trying to raise the cart with the scissors jack. Knowing it wasn't long for this world I bought a used drill off of eBay. I have two Lithium batteries and both went dead at the same time. A characteristic of Lithium batteries is that they just quit with no warning.

We decided to name the cart "Buster". I will order vinyl letters for the front after all the bodywork is complete. The name "Buster" is in keeping with our longtime system of naming all of our vehicles after Simpson cartoon characters. Buster was the name of the Crazy Cat Lady's first cat on the show. We also think the name is fitting because the front fender was "busted" when we got him. 

Our bathroom vent fan is extremely quiet. As a result people don't hear it to remember to turn it off. Our daughter was here in August and left it on. It ran until we got here in November. I wanted to correct this issue by installing a pilot light switch. With this switch, when the fan is on the red pilot light will be on. I purchased the switch. Here is what it looks like.

I usually have no problem installing switches but I did not totally understand the instructions included. I sent a copy to my friend, John, who is quite good with electrical issues for his input.

Wednesday:

While waiting for the sun to hit the golf cart so I could paint it, I installed the pilot light switch for the bathroom fan. I followed John's instructions and it works perfectly. Here is a picture. No more concern about leaving the fan on in the future.

Thursday:

Another project I'm working on is reinstalling the master bath shower doors. When we bought the place there were no doors on the master bath shower. There was a shower curtain with all of the sliding door track still in place. Kelly bought a new shower curtain and we put it up. We both thought the shower looked dumb with the shower track all around so I took it off.  Here is a picture with the new shower curtain and the track removed.

It is a small bathroom and the shower curtain takes up more space than sliding doors.

The king bed mattress in our bedroom is on a wooden box, not box springs. I had assumed the box went all the way around but in looking for something on the floor last week I found that the foot end of the box was open. I looked in there with a flashlight and low and behold, there were the master bath shower doors. We pulled them out and they looked fine. 

Being the packrat that I am, I had stored the four sliding door track pieces I took off on a high shelf in the shed rather than throwing them away. We decided to reinstall the track and the doors, thus eliminating the shower curtain. All the aluminum track and and the aluminum on the doors needed a good cleaning and polishing. I cleaned all the track pieces with aluminum polish. I purchased sealing tape for reinstalling the door framework with so no leaks. After all the track and doors were cleaned an polished I installed them. It looks great. We are happy with the reinstall.

The final coat of paint was sprayed on the golf cart. 

Friday:

Kelly had to go for a checkup before her cataract surgery. After we returned home I installed the new headlights in the golf cart and enlisted the help of a neighbor to reinstall the roof.  With a quick bath Buster looks pretty good for being almost 40 years old. 

What he still needs:  A new speed controller, a new rubber floormat, the dash painted, the carpet and glue scraped out of the back, and the digital voltage meter installed.  All in due time.