November 19, 2023 - November 25, 2023 - Trip Down to Florida and Setting Up the House and Settling In

Trip down:

The trip down to Florida this year was much different since we were not pulling a fifth wheel trailer, as we did for the last 10 plus years. Since we weren't hauling we let Apple Maps lay out our route. It took us to places in Tennessee and Alabama we didn't know existed. It was a zig-zag route which ended up being 50 miles shorter but took the same amount of time. It was an interesting route but we won't go back that way. 

Sunday:

We arrived at the house about 2:30 p.m. on Sunday and wasted no time unloading the contents of the truck onto the lanai. (They don’t have porches in Florida, they have lanais. LOL) Celina invited us over for supper, which was great because we had no food in the house.

Monday:

Monday was spent getting the Spectrum internet hooked up, buying groceries, unpacking totes, and deciding where we wanted things to go. I brought down a rolling toolbox and found space for it in the shed and loaded it with the tools I brought. I also unloaded and glued together a shelf I made by cutting down a wider folding shelf we weren't using at home. We are using it as a spot to hold our phones and haring aides when they are charging, as well as a place for small items like sunglasses. We had been using the kitchen table, which created a constant mess. Here is a picture. We may paint it in the near future the same color as the accent wall. I like the natural wood color but I've always been partial to the natural wood look.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was spent buying a TV, organizing the shed, getting the golf cart operational, and attending a Golden Nuggets meeting here in the park. The Nuggets are a group in the park which puts on potluck suppers, dances, etc. throughout the year.  At the Nuggets meeting I mentioned that I wanted to try shuffleboard and a lady invited to come Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and she would show me the basics.

Wednesday:

Wednesday morning I met with my new Florida GP for the immediate purpose of getting my allergy shots. I brought the serum down from my allergist in Perryville. Dr. Iyunni was quite busy and, as a new patient, I had lots of paperwork to complete and they needed time to put it all into the computer. The visit ended up being a two-hour affair. I was pleased with the time Dr. Iyunni spent with me. I then headed to Walmart to pick up a few things we needed.  I hate the local Walmart for a lot of reasons, but it is handy since it is next door to our park.

Thursday:

Thursday morning I switched out a number of light bulbs to LED to get more light. The lamps and the ceiling lights had fluorescent bulbs, which I hate.  

The new LEDs are brighter and more efficient. Thursday I also started individually charging the six golf cart batteries. It took a full day to disulfate each battery, so I got the process started. I also put all the empty totes in the back shed to get them out of the way until we head home in March. 

Then, on a whim, I next decided to check the AC filter. I was absolutely shocked at what I found. It was totally black. I never saw anything like it. Here are a couple of pictures. We thought maybe it was a charcoal filter, but it wasn’t, it was just a cheap Home Depot filter. Crazy! I think it was a lot of mold, which you fight all the time down here because of all the humidity.

The inside of the grill needed a good cleaning as well.

I also checked the master bath toilet because Kelly said it was running at times. When I pulled off the tank lid it was easy to see the problem. The flapper was crusted in calcium deposits and sometimes would not set down right to make a seal. Here is a picture. I never saw anything like that before either. The flapper color was black.

We had Thanksgiving Dinner at Celina’s. She and Kelly split the food preparation chores. Since there were just the three of us, we had a roasted chicken for the main course instead of a big turkey. It turned out great and nobody went away hungry. After dinner Celina taught us how to play Mexican Train dominoes. After dominoes we had our pumpkin pie for dessert. A nice evening.

Friday:

Early Friday morning, as in 6:00 a.m., I went to Walmart and got a new AC filter and a new toilet flapper. I learned that early in the morning is the best time to go to Walmart here because it is not crowed. People get up later here. Many businesses do not open until 10:00 a.m. I came home and installed the filter and the flapper both of which have to help with the utility bills.

The hall closet is very dark. There is no electric in there so no light. I installed a battery-operated ceiling motion light I bought. Before I could install the light I had to hunt up a piece of plywood to cover a whole in the ceiling. We have no idea why it was cut out. The light works great, here is a picture. 

Once Kelly was up and moving around we started moving furniture and hanging pictures we brought down. We rearranged the living room furniture and hung the Sandhill Crane wall hangings above the couch. My friend Ron bought these for his Florida condo in 2006. We bought the contents of his condo from his estate ten years ago and had the cranes hanging in our basement at home. They are back in Florida where they belong. Here is a picture.

On the lanai there was a wreath of colorful plastic flowers hanging over the water heater access door. It was ugly. We took it down and hung up two items Kelly purchased the other day. Here is a picture

Also on the lanai we hung a three-dimensional hanging of parrots in a tree, which we also got from the contents of Ron's condo. It really livens up the area.

On each side of the shed door on the lanai there was a little shelf with plastic flower baskets on them. We took the flowers down and replaced them with bottles of silver and gold tequila and margarita glasses. It gives the lanai a little party atmosphere we think. Here is a picture.

On Friday all of the golf cart batteries were finally individually charged. I headed up the street and down the next but barely made it back to our place. In fact, I had to hook up the charger to get it all the way up beside the house. I won’t be going anywhere in the cart until new batteries are purchased. LOL

While moving furniture Friday Kelly vacuumed with the Hoover vacuum cleaner that come with the place. She turned it on and OMG it smelled like twenty-year-old dirty socks. It was disgusting. I took it outside and opened it up, removed the bag, and began cleaning it out. The area behind the bag was caked with white stuff. I don’t know if it was baking soda or what. After I cleaned it all out and sprayed the guts and hose with Febreze it smelled fine. There is supposed to be a filter on the side. It was missing. In opening the filter holder the plastic tabs broke off. I superglued the pieces back on then used JB Weld to reinforce the area. I ordered a new filter and bag for it.

Here in the park people put things they don’t want out near the sidewalk. Sometimes they notify everyone via the Facebook page but often not. People walking by can take the stuff if they want it. Wednesday morning I put a plastic lawn chair, the plastic flower wreath, and the little flower baskets out. Within an hour all of the items were gone. It beats having to drive to a donation center. Here is a picture of the next pile of items we took off the walls and will put out on the street. You can see the prior owner loved fake flowers and little shelves, we do not.

Saturday:

Saturday morning I had my first experience playing shuffleboard. The courts were packed. We played three games. Folks play on Saturday and Tuesday mornings. It costs $.50 to play. If you get the high score, you get your $.50 back. LOL. The rest of the money goes into a pot for a party at the end of the season.

While waiting for the TV to be delivered we put a couple of strings of Christmas lights out on the porch. I also decided to clean the shower doors. They had lots of water spots from the hard water here. I took them off and scrubbed them with vinegar then sprayed them with Rain-X window cleaner. It is supposed to shed water. Time will tell. They look better for now. I also installed a new Oxygenics shower head. It is a big improvement.

My friend Gary asked what the size of our place was. I didn't know so I went out and measured it. It is 43 feet by 23 feet, which comes out to 989 square feet. It also has an 8 x 10 shed attached which provides space for the washer and dryer, storage, and a small work bench. There is an addition metal shed out back that is 5 x 8 foot. That is where I am storing the totes, my bike, etc.

About 4:00 p.m. Best Buy delivered Kelly's new TV. She wanted a large one. This one is actually smaller than the one she had her mind set on. I'm glad she settled for this "smaller" one. Here is a picture of it in the living room before we unpacked it.

I

It was a two-hour ordeal to get it unpacked and set up. We switched to Spectrum TV and we could not get it to work without a call to tech support. The guy was very helpful and got everything going. Clearly the instructions were not complete. Here is a picture of it up and running. I need to work on hiding the modem, router, and all the cables. Kelly agrees it is plenty large.

Sunday:

Here is a picture of the raspberry accent wall in the living room as it was when we moved in. This wall is going to be painted a medium green next week, along with the wall behind the China cabinet in the dining room, which you can see on the left edge of the picture.

This is a current picture with the love seat there instead of the couch. Yesterday Kelly purchased the two prints from a man in Clearwater, about fifteen miles away. They are framed St. Petersburg "Mainsail Art Festival" prints from past years. He delivered them and we quickly hung them up to enjoy, even though they are on the Rasbery wall.

Yesterday the plastic handle broke off the sprayer in the kitchen sink. I HATE plastic.

I went to Walmart this morning after church and purchased a new one and installed it. Of course it leaked until I made a modification using parts from the old one.

Three plumbing projects and we've only been here a week. LOL.

Our first Golden Nuggets event is this evening - a Sunday Social consisting of a light dinner and a dance with live music. It should be worth the $10.00 admission charge. I will report.

November 11, 2023 - November 16, 2023 - Early Thanksgiving - Backup Camera Saga - Module - Christmas - Audio Books

Early Thanksgiving Dinner:

On November 11th Alexa and Aaron came down from St. Louis to share an early Thanksgiving dinner before we leave for Florida. Kelly outdid herself once again with a great turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and buns. We were too stuffed to attack the pumpkin pie Alexa brought for dessert.

Dead Battery and Transmission Module:

The backup camera, monitor, and second wiring harness were returned. I went out to install them Tuesday and found that Homer's battery was completely dead. What? A little investigation while the battery was on the charger revealed that the dome light had been on. The doors had been closed and I hadn't gone near the dome light switch on the ceiling, so this befuddled me. Upon further investigation I found that sometimes the dome light would go off when the door was closed and sometimes it would not. I have no idea what that is about all of a sudden. I never had this issue before. I sprayed both buttons with contact cleaner and watched to make sure the light went off each time. From now on I will have to watch every time I close the door. 

Upon opening the hood to hook the charger to the battery I found the old transmission module laying on the top of the air cleaner on the top of the engine. I was shocked that it did not fall off on the fifty-mile, winding, two-lane trip home from the transmission shop several weeks ago. It is sizeable piece of equipment, about six inches by six inches by an inch and half thick. It could have done some damage. Here is a picture.

The good news is that this is absolute proof they replaced it with a new one.

Backup Monitor and Camera:

I plugged the monitor and camera into the wiring harness and hooked up 12-volt power. The monitor worked. Yippee!!! I then spent an hour fishing a wire from the top of the dash, where the monitor sits, to the bottom of the dash where the wiring harness connects to the cable going back to the camera. I got the wiring harness through the dash. Before continuing with the installation, I checked that the monitor was still operating. IT WASN'T! NOTHING! The monitor would not come on no matter what I did. I could again hear a low clicking noise coming from the monitor. That doesn't seem right. Why it has worked for the RV Cam guys every time and won't work for me I have no idea. I believe something is wrong with the monitor, but I don't want to buy a new one from them because I cannot return it if it is not the problem. I gave up on this project for this season and put Homer in storage. In the spring I will buy a new system. The current monitor is ten years old. The camera is much older than that and only in black and white.

Christmas:

Alexa is coming to Florida for Christmas this year, as well as Erin and the two grandsons from California. We will have a house full for a week. We are not used to having a toddler around so we will have to work on making the place "toddler proof" before he arrives. (If that is possible.) It will be great fun for these old people.

The Trip South:

While driving on long trips we like to listen to audio books which we download to our phones. In Homer we take a Bluetooth Bose speaker and set it on the engine doghouse and Bluetooth connect it to our phones. It works great. The Toyota truck has an upgraded Pioneer stereo system that has Bluetooth capability so we can communicate with our phones. Kelly and I tried multiple times to pair our phones to this stereo but it wouldn't recognize our phones to pair them. Encountering this technical glitch, we planned on using the "Homer method" (using our Bose Bluetooth speaker sitting on the counsel connected to our phones). In talking about this with my daughter, Annie, she informed me that if the stereo has an "Auxiliary" plug we can just buy a cable to connect the auxiliary plug on the stereo to the phone charging port. I had no idea you could do this. When cell phones had headphone jacks I had a cable to connect the auxiliary port on the stereo to the headphones port to broadcast from the phone through the stereo speakers. I immediately went to Walmart to pick up the cable we needed. They had 10,000 plugs and the only one out of stock was the one I needed. I got online and ordered one from Amazon. It arrived yesterday and upon plugging it in, the stereo will broadcast our audio books. YIPPEE! All we have to do Saturday morning is load a backpack with a change of clothes and our medicine and we are ready to roll with a one night stop over somewhere! 

October 31, 2023 - November 10, 2023 - Getting Ready to Head South - Backup Camera Issue Continues

Getting Ready to Head South:

Well, now that the house windows have been installed, we began to think about the trip south. Part of that process was getting doctor appointments out of the way. Monday I had an eye doctor appointment, Tuesday my annual visit with my GP, and Wednesday a visit with the Allergist for an allergy shot. I should be good to go. I found a doctor near our park in Florida who will give me the allergy shots each week. I'll use her as my Florida GP as well. Kelly made all of her doctor appointments and blood work as well. 

With all the stuff we want to take to Florida and leave down there, we have to take the truck down. We decided to start packing the truck today (November 10th) so that we could figure out what was going to fit and what had to be left behind for a future trip. We picked today to load up the truck because we had nice weather, Alexa and Aaron are coming down tomorrow for the weekend and an early Thanksgiving (so no work then), and we didn't want to run into any snags with last minute packing. Before the packing process started I filled the gas tank and checked the oil so we are ready for the road.

Almost everything we want to take to Florida fit in the truck. Some wall hangings will have to go down on another trip. With all the stuff in the back seat that couldn't get wet, there was little room for our clothes. We crammed a bunch into totes in the bed of the truck. There will be a lot of ironing to do once we unload. I know we have an iron in Florida but we may have to hunt up an ironing board. We should be able to find one at a thrift store because nobody irons anymore.

The back seat is stacked to the ceiling with items which cannot get wet or which we need to access during the trip. There is a small space on the blue cooler for the overnight bag we will use on the way down. Here are a couple of pictures. 

Interestingly the back seats left in their normal positions provided more room for larger items than flipping them. I thought this was odd. In my Ram truck, flipping the seats up created a lot of room. Not so with the Toyota.

The bed is tarped, bungeed, and cargo netted. Almost the entire bed floor is covered with totes.  By using the totes nothing packed in the bed should be harmed by rain or other foul weather. To be safe I Duck taped all the lids on the totes. The reason the pile sticks up so high is that we are taking down two rod iron rockers for the front porch.

I am happy to have this project completed and the truck in the garage until we leave. 

One last traveling detail was to connect my phone by bluetooth to the truck sound system so that we could listen to audio books on our way down. The truck has an updated, sophisticated Pioneer sound system but it would not pair with my phone. We tried Kelly's phone and it would not pair either. Our phones showed they were connected but the readout said that the connection failed. We will take our Bose speaker and Bluetooth to it. We find listing to audio books makes the trip go faster. 

Homer's Backup Camera, Monitor, and Wiring Harness:

When the new wiring harness arrived the other day I hooked everything up. Still nothing worked. I called RV Cams and was online with a tech for almost an hour. He had me get an alternative 12-volt power source so that the system got its power from that rather than the motorhome, in case that was an issue. Still nothing worked. I boxed up the monitor, camera, and new wiring harness and sent it back to them once again for testing. They tested it and found that the new wiring harness was bad. They are replacing it under warranty, but I still have to pay shipping for the third or fourth time. If, upon getting everything back, it doesn't work, I'm going to give up on it until spring when I will buy a whole new system.

While waiting on the camera issue to get resolved I took the two chassis batteries out and put them on a smart charger in the garage for the winter. It is a chore to get them out of battery compartment. The compartment was not designed for the taller 6-volt batteries I use. After testing the monitor and camera when I get it back next week, I will put Homer in storage and pull out the chassis battery and put it on a charger in the garage as well. Lots left to do this week before we leave.

October 23 - 27, 2023 - Backup Camera and Monitor - New Front Windows on the House

HOMER'S BACKUP CAMERA:

On the 23rd RV Cams called and said that both the monitor and backup camera I sent them checked out fine.  I told them I had power at the harness so he said he would check it some more and call me back. On the second call he said it had to be the cable from front to back, or the wiring harness. I decided he should just send both units back. Thursday afternoon I received the monitor and camera back from RV Cams. Friday morning I reinstalled the camera and the monitor and still had nothing. 

I put this wiring harness in about ten years ago when we first got Homer. The wiring harness picks up power under the dash, runs through the passenger side of the dash, and down behind the kick panel on the passenger side of the cab. I took the camera back out of its bracket on the back of Homer and plugged it directly into the wiring harness. - still nothing. Here is a picture of that area. I plugged it into "Camera 2", but nothing there either.

By taking the kick panel and door step panel out and plugging the camera directly into the harness I eliminated one possible problem - the cable which runs from the monitor in the front to the camera in the back. I had mice eat on it two times in past years. 

After not getting any results, I called RV Cams and ordered a new wiring harness for $22.00. Surely that will solve this problem! To be continued. . . . . . 

NEW FRONT WINDOWS:

In July we ordered all new front windows for the house. The original front windows were shot. Some were rotting out, some had cracked glass, some lost the seal between the two panes of glass, and some slid out of their frames so that they were not even watertight. 

The new windows were made to order and then had to be scheduled for installation. On Wednesday I got phone call that two installers would be at the house at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, the 26th. It would take them two days to remove the old windows and install the new ones. They arrived on time with a trailer full of windows. (There are fifteen windows just on the front of the house.) 

Rain was predicted all week for Thursday and Friday. Fortunately, that forecast changed and now the rain to come Saturday. With great weather the installers were able to get all the old windows out and the new ones roughed in on Thursday. They spent Friday trimming everything out inside and outside, caulking, and cleaning up. A painter will be out soon to paint the half-moon trim pieces on the inside. For some reason these pieces do not come pre-painted from the factory.  The windows look great. Here is a picture. They will certainly outlast me.

Now that the window project is complete, we can begin in earnest to decide on what we want to take to Florida next month. We already have set aside a lot of larger items so we will need to take the truck. The truck bed will be heaping full and the back seat as well. I have a tarp and I borrowed a cargo net from John to tie it all down. This will be our first trip to Florida in the last ten years without the fifth wheel. A different experience. 

October 17 - 23, 2023 - Homer Repairs and One Improvement

Now that Homer is at the house, I can make a few repairs before he goes into storage for the winter. The first repair was the venetian blind over the table.

The Venetian Blind:

This blind fell down while we were driving on the road back from the Natchez Trace trying desperately to make it back to the transmission shop. Upon investigating why this happened I found that the plastic peg that fits into the metal bracket, which holds the blind on the wall, had broken off. Here is a picture of the black plastic cap. You can see that the plastic peg in the middle broke off leaving a hole. I looked all over but could not find that piece in order to attempt to glue it back on. I would have to make a new piece. 

It would have been optimal to have been able to take the black plastic cap completely off to make this repair but, as you can see in the next picture, the string which pulls the blind up and down, runs through the black plastic cap and on across the top of the blind and down the other side. The repair would have to be made with the black cap in place. Fortunately, I was able to pull the cap out of the rail to make the repair.  Here is a picture of the string running through the plastic cap.

I made the repair by drilling the hole out and gluing a dowel half in and half out of the hole. One end of the dowel protrudes out the plastic cap to fit into the metal bracket on the wall. The other end was inside the rail for a lot of glue holding surface. For this to work all of the glue would have to be on the inside of the cap. I had to be careful not to get any glue on the string because it must be able to move freely for the blind to work up and down. I placed masking tape around the inside of the cap to keep glue away from the string. I then used J B Weld to attach the dowel to the black plastic cap. Here is a picture of what the glued dowel looks like from the inside. It was hard to be neat with the glue in such a confined space.

The next picture shows the wooden dowel sticking out on the outside of the black plastic cap. The unglued portion of the dowel is inserted into the metal bracket on the wall to hold the blind in place.

Upon taking the masking tape off I found that no glue had accumulated around the string. Good news. I inserted the black plastic cap back into the top rail of the blind for installation on the wall. Here is a picture.

I reinstalled the blind by inserting the peg on each end of the rail into each metal bracket on the wall. There is a lot of pressure on these pegs to keep the blind down and tight against the wall. It worked. Here is a picture of the final result. I hope the repaired peg lasts 30 years as the original peg did. LOL

Passenger Door Armrest/Handle:

The next repair was the passenger armrest/handle, hereinafter referred to as the handle. The handle is made out of plastic and foam rubber covered with vinyl. The plastic and foam rubber have deteriorated over the years allowing the screw, which attaches the handle to the door, to pull through. Here is a picture. You can see the white screw from a repair by the previous owner. You can see the mounting screw and washer I used for my previous repair, both are still attached to the door bracket.

This handle had been repaired by the prior owner at least once and by me once. Each repair lasted for a few years. The washer was part of my last repair. It was a necessary addition because the plastic under the mounting screw had deteriorated and broken away. 

This time my first attempt was to repair it with E6000 adhesive, which is awesome stuff. I did this and it looked like this. I was happy.

However, when I went to reinstall the handle, I immediately realized that I had screwed up. I forgot that the washer must be mounted on an angle for the handle to tighten against the door mounting bracket, which protrudes about a half inch on an angle. I cut out this repair and, with my Dremel tool, cut a groove in the handle on an angle to accommodate the washer. The mounting screw goes through the washer, which is glued to the handle. Here is a picture of the groove cut into the foam and plastic.

I then used J B Weld to hold the washer in place and to fill in the cavity on the inside. After more thought I was afraid the E6000 wouldn't be stiff enough for this project. Here are a couple of pictures as the J B Weld is drying.

I reinstalled the handle and it appears to be holding well. Time will tell. It is interesting that this handle keeps failing when the driver side door is open and closed much more often and it has not failed.

The Backup Monitor and Camera:

The next project was the backup camera. It worked fine on the way home from the transmission shop.  After getting Homer home I decided to eliminate the CB radio mounted to the doghouse. We never use it and it is in the way. I unbolted it and cut the wires. I then stuffed the wires up under the dash. After I did that the backup monitor was dead when I tried it. I assumed that by shoving the wires up under the dash that I had broken a wire connection to the backup monitor. I took the access panel on the top of the dash off, as well as the doghouse, to access all wires. With John's help Friday we traced all the wires. We found a bad ground wire connection. Yippee!  We found the problem! We fixed the wire but still the monitor did not work. We had 12-volt power in the connector that plugs into the back of the monitor but nothing came on when the power button was pushed. I called the company I bought the monitor from a number of years ago and was told that it could be the monitor or the camera. If I would send both the monitor and the camera to them, they would test both to see which was the problem. Of course, the monitor model I have is no longer being made so if it is bad, I will have to buy something else. I sent both items off on Friday for testing. I await their feedback. Here is a picture of the open access panel on the top of the dash awaiting a monitor reinstall.  You can also see bobblehead "Homer", who has been mounted there for almost ten years, as well as the 12-volt power outlet, which had been mounted to the dashboard where indicated by the yellow arrow.

In getting the doghouse out to check for bad wire connections I had to remove the 12-volt power outlet 3M taped to the dash. I had tried Velcro for this mount but with pulling plugs in and out, it wouldn't hold. I will have to buy some new 3M material to reinstall it. This power outlet is quite handy in that the Garmin plugs into it, our phones plug into it, and our Bose speaker plugs into it. We listen to audiobooks downloaded on our phones while traveling. We listen to them via Bluetooth to a Bose speaker which sits on the top of the doghouse. New technology adapted to an old rig. 

Winterizing:

We will not have time for an RV trip before we leave for Florida. While waiting for a resolution of the backup camera issue, I winterized the plumbing in Homer and emptied all items which could freeze during the winter. I still need to remove the house and chassis batteries but I will wait to do that until just before he goes into storage. I always put the batteries on smart chargers in the garage for the winter.

New armrest/end table project:

During the last trip we came up with the idea of making an armrest end table for the couch. Whenever I sit on the couch there is nowhere to set a cup of coffee or another beverage. I decided to make a simple end table that slips over the couch end cap. Why did it take almost ten years to come up with this great idea? Here is a picture of the couch end cap, which is below the cushion. It is not meant to be an armrest. The mechanism that operates the jackknife sofa is attached to it and the end cap is bolted to the floor.

In this next picture you can see how the end cap, which is only 2.25 inches wide, is well below the seat cushion. 

Here are pictures of the armrest I made. It rests on the end cap and the sides slip down about eight inches so that it does not "wobble". It will work great. It will have to be removed before pulling up the jackknife couch for any reason. This is not a big deal because we rarely raise the jackknife sofa for any reason. I'm looking forward to using it to enjoy my morning coffee come spring.

Homer repairs blog to be continued when there is news about the backup camera . . . . . . . . . . 

October 12 - 16, 2023 - Home Maintenance Project While Homer is in the Shop and HOMER COMES HOME!

While Homer has been at the transmission shop, I decided to take on a much-needed home maintenance project - scraping and painting the deck. I had put this maintenance issue off all summer because of the heat. I just don't do well in heat anymore. 

We have a large wooden deck, approximately 750 square feet. It was last painted in 2020. The deck is over 25 years old so as the wood ages it needs repainting more often. There was a lot of prep work this time scraping off loose paint and putting putty in some broken out areas. I tackled the rails first. Unfortunately, I did not take any before pictures to show how bad they looked. A lot of the rail prep work was on my knees. Being on my knees with knee pads isn't too bad but getting up is. LOL 

The rails are wood and painted gray while the balusters are black metal. After scraping all the rails I taped off the bottom of each baluster to keep from getting paint on it. This was time-consuming to do and time consuming to get the tape back off. The rails and posts all had to be painted on all sides. Scraping and painting the outside required me to stretch all I could while standing on my 8-foot ladder. Here is a picture of the painted rails and posts.

The next few days I tackled prepping the deck floor. I power washed it, I blew it off with the leaf blower, which really helped lift off loose paint, and, on my knees, I scraped off paint by hand. Here are two pictures of the deck surface after all that was done.

The plan was to paint it on Sunday the 15th because rain was forecast for Saturday the 14th. However, the forecast changed. The rain was called off for Saturday and moved to Sunday. My daughter, Alexa, had volunteered to come down to help with the deck painting so I contacted her to come Saturday instead. Luckily, she was available.

In the past I had always painted during summer weather. Now, it being October, the weather was much cooler and we had to deal with constantly falling leaves. Alexa did all the trim work and removed leaves as they fell on the deck before I painted. In the past I had painted the entire deck with a four-inch brush. I then went to an 8-inch-wide paint pad to speed up the project. This year I decided to try rolling the paint on. It went well. Here are a couple of pictures of the finished deck. I am happy how it turned out. I will not put the furniture back on the deck for a couple of days to let the paint cure well in this cooler weather.

HOMER FINALLY CAME HOME:

Homer has been at the transmission shop for weeks the second time. The technicians were still not able to duplicate the problem of it falling out of gear and into neutral. It would not do it even one time for them. Whenever they drove him, he shifted perfectly, never dropped into neutral as we experienced hundreds of times over the last two or so years and dozens of times on the way back from the Natchez Trace last month. No fault codes were ever detected using their diagnostic equipment. Without being able to verify the problem they did not want to rebuild the transmission at a cost of $3,500.00 - $4,000.00.  After much diagnosing and studying by several different technicians, they came to the conclusion that the transmission module must be causing the problem, although that is rare. I authorized them to put in a new transmission module at a cost of $800.00, parts and labor. If this solved the problem, it would be much cheaper than a transmission rebuild. If it did not solve the problem, WE WOULD ALL KNOW IT IS THE TRANSMISSION.

Friday, the 13th, I received a call from the shop advising that Homer was ready to go. The old transmission module never put out any codes. Once the new transmission module was installed it immediately threw a code indicating that the MLPS switch on the transmission, which has something to do with telling the transmission to drop into neutral, was faulty. They replaced this switch as well and are confident they have found the problem. The bill was $1,133.97. There was an earlier bill of $201.00 for cleaning various connections hoping to correct the problem. A total of $1,334.97 spent.

Today we picked him up and brought him home. Here he is raring to go on a trip somewhere. I powered up the generator to exercise it, which I do monthly when he is home.

I doubt we will have good weather and/or time to take him on a trip before he needs to be winterized and stored for the winter. While he is here at the house I have several items to repair. The first is the broken window blind, the second is fixing the passenger door arm rest/handle that has pulled loose, the third is the TV antenna not working, the fourth is the bathroom sewer vent seal, the fifth is making new AC filters, and the sixth is revamping the bathroom closet to better accommodate how we use it. Tomorrow Homer is scheduled to be inspected for new license plates before we head South next month. I hope to have all the little items fixed soon.