Santa Is Trying To Kill My Child!

Santa Is Trying To Kill My Child....

....Or at least that's what she's convinced is happening.  Our daughter Samantha really isn't afraid of much - to her detriment really.  She seems to have no fear of heights, sharp objects, falling - pretty much anything that can hurt her - but she seems convinced that every time we try to hand her to that old dude in the red suit it's a struggle for her very survival.

Her initial defense at just a few months of age was to play dead.  After explaining to her that this worked with bears but not Santa's, she moved on to more positive defensive techniques.  

Her next effort was to attempt to stare down her attacker.  She discovered quickly that mom and dad simply watched and actually seemed to enjoy her impending doom so she abandoned that approach.  (I've told her to keep this one in the bag of tricks for Water Buffalo, dogs, and Cobras.)

The next time her parents tried to hand her to the Red Death, she went completely the other way and refused to make eye contact - or even look at really - her would be assailant.  She also clung to mom for dear life, and it worked! (She's stronger than she looks.)

We tried to convince her that Santa was a jolly old man who brings Christmas cheer (and presents) every year and not a raving homicidal maniac with odd fashion sense by dressing daddy up in a suit.  This, sadly, did not have the desired effect.    

We'll see what this years batch of Santa's has to offer and what fun new ways of defending herself Samantha has come up with.  She's gotten fairly proficient with a light saber, but she rarely has it on her when it would come in handy.

1992 Mercedes Benz 600SEL

1992 Mercedes Benz 600SEL

In what has to go down as one of my all-time biggest mistakes, I traded my frame-off restored '71 Mustang Mach 1 to MotoExotica in Missouri for this 12-cylinder Benz.  Value wise is was a fair deal at the time, but I spent 10's of thousands of $$$s on this thing (I really wish I was exaggerating).  I even had to swap out the motor.  God help you if your German V12 needs an engine transplant.

To be fair, the car was in great shape cosmetically when I got it and was a joy to drive when it ran well.  After I had replaced about every conceivable part on the car I sold it to a guy from Corpus who's probably still driving this thing 15 years later with not so much as a burned out bulb.  I was just the lucky idiot that caught it at the wrong time.  To make matters worse, a few years after I traded for this thing the value of my Mustang quadrupled.  

These 12-cylinder German motors are amazing to drive, but can be a nightmare to maintain.  They don't like to sit and they're so complicated that every little issue has the potential to be catastrophic both mechanically and financially. This one cost me a fortune.

One interesting thing about this car was that it had the factory "Protection Package".  Basically this consisted of bullet-proof glass, run-flat tires, a filtration system to combat chemical attacks, and other various goodies.  Mercedes and BMW (and maybe a few others) used to offer these cars with this as a factory option back in the day.  It was VERY expensive and usually only ordered by companies and governments.  I'm not sure what my cars history was, but other than incredibly thick glass and a shocking amount of weight, you couldn't really tell it from a normal 600SEL.  If you want a "Protection Package" today, you have to go to an aftermarket company (one of the largest in the world is in San Antonio). 

Guest House Construction: Part 12

"We've been framed!"

So the guest house is now basically framed.  The framing crew flew through the initial stuff in about two weeks, but then it slowed down as it took just as long to do a bunch of little things.  It actually looks like a house now and not a spider web of lumber.

 
One thing that seemed to take forever was adding these metal "straps" everywhere.  Basically, just about every piece of lumber is strapped together. We are in the zone that requires us to build for "windstorm" compliance, and I imagine these are a product of that.

The additional garage spaces (pictured here is the 4-car tandem section) seem to draw the most comments.  People walk in and say things like "Man, this is a big garage" - and I'm thinking "I should have doubled it".  You can never have too much garage space.

Exterior sheeting is already underway.  I'm guessing a few days and this will be done.  It's funny, but when you walk through a house that's open - just framed - all the rooms seem smaller than you imagined them, but when they're closed up, as they are with the sheeting, they start to feel bigger.  Strange.  

I came home one day and there were all these orange notes spray painted throughout the house.  I assumed it was the inspector telling us what we needed to do to pass.  Turns out we had already passed our framing inspection and the notes were from my builder to the framing crew of things he wanted done before they were finished.

The most fun part of the build has been watching the upstairs space take shape.  We weren't really sure what we would end up with but it's turning out cooler than I had hoped.  It has been referred to as a "Man Cave", but that's not really accurate.  I'm trying to think of something clever to call it and I'm open to suggestions.

- The Manetarium?
- The Fortress of Solid-dudes?
- If I call it "The Gym", I can honestly say things like "I spent 3 hours at the gym last night."

Any ideas?

2003 Land Rover Freelander SE3

2003 Land Rover Freelander SE3

It's post-election day and I'm trying to keep myself from posting anything political, so.....Random Vehicle Blog!

I think this Land Rover is a perfect choice for today:  Freelander - "Land of the Free".  I bought this in 2004 with less than 4,000 miles on the odometer, so it was basically new.  Land Rover had stopped importing the Defender and wanted a third model to go along with the Range Rover and the Discovery. These started popping up all over Houston, but mostly in the more refined 4-door version.  I bought this on a whim (shocking, I know), and for some reason went with the very Jeep-like SE3 with its 2-door / removable rear cover configuration.

It turned out to be a pleasant little truck to drive.  It wasn't particularly spacious and certainly didn't have enough storage space to work for me as an 'SUV', but it was comfortable and well-appointed.

I ended up keeping this for less than a year and then sold it to a nice young female military friend who was stationed in Utah.  She flew in to get it with her mom and couldn't have been happier.  All in all, I liked it.  I never took it off-road and I never even took the removable roof off, but I'm sure it would have performed well.  

Perhaps the world's dumbest cup holders!  Are you really going to put a coffee thermos or a soda in the middle of the dash and then drive around?  

1996 BMW Z3

1996 BMW Z3

My random program has selected this Z3 for me tonight.  I won't spend a lot of time on this one, although it was probably a more interesting car than I will give it credit for.

This was the first year for the Z3 and they were pretty much all the same.  I got this one fairly cheap because it had about 100,000 miles and it wasn't in pristine condition - really it was just a nice driver.  I owned this car for years and it even ended up in my parents garage back in Wichita Falls for a time.

The Z3 was actually a lot of fun to drive with the top down, and it really didn't give me too many problems either.  The only issue I had was that it wouldn't pass an emissions inspection due to an odd computer link-up problem that BMW refused to fix.  As a result, I ended up just taking it to Wichita Falls (non-emissions county) when I was done with it here in Houston and leaving it.  I always had images of my mother zipping around town in the car with the top down, but in truth I don't think the folks drove it much.  I ended up just selling it to a local dealer in WF that was a friend of my parents.

I'm not sure I would buy another Z3, but they're ridiculously cheap and are really fun so you never know.  I might do an M Roadster - the muscle version of this car.

Project Log: Antique Bench

Project Log:  Antique Bench

This is really my wife's project.  It was her idea and she did most of the work. She has been saying she wanted some kind of a bench in our entry hall for some time now.  She always looks for them when we are anywhere "antique-y" and we've come close to buying a few of them.  The original idea was for a church pew of some kind, and we even found a really cool bench that was made from the tail end of a 1950's Ford pickup that we were both on board with but was already sold, sadly.  

She decided we should go to Round Top, Texas, for "Antique Days" a few weeks ago - a leisurely day trip, as it was sold to me.  I had no idea about the scale of this event.  It would take weeks to see everything and it's laid out over dozens of venues in multiple towns.  We went on a Saturday and it was a madhouse. The traffic was ridiculous and we really only had time to hit a couple of stops. Branelle had no trouble finding a few options and we had wisely brought the trailer with us so she decided on an 1800's era trundle bed.  It probably wasn't the one I would have chosen, and it wasn't cheap, but she seemed to really like it so I was on board.

We lugged it home without issue and Nel went to work on it immediately.  The first step was keeping Samantha from using it as a chalkboard. 

This is how it would have worked as a trundle bed.  The front folds forward and a mattress or bedding of some kind would have been inside.  It would work...if you were under five feet tall.

After cleaning it up, Nel went to work sanding the whole thing down.  She still hadn't completely decided how she wanted to finish it but it was going to need to be sanded regardless.  

It cleaned up really nicely.  If the outside had been the same sort of tobacco shade that the inside was I would have voted to keep it like that.  The reddish tint on the outside didn't really work though.

Nel went to work painting it (and herself) with multiple coats of a non-glossy white.  It took a while but she meticulously trudged on.

Here I am jokingly telling her that we should have left it bare.  What you don't see are the objects flying at my head.

After the paint was finished she went to work distressing the bench.  It's a much more basic process than I would have thought.  You basically just sand layers away where you want to show distressed wood.  She let me help with this part.  After the scuffing she painted it with a couple layers of a clear coat.

Before

After

The original hardware had seen better days, and in fact one of the latches was broken.  I thought about going on a scavenger hunt at local antique malls but decided that nice antique-look gate hardware from Home Depot would work perfectly.

This just shows a closeup of some of the distressing details.  It's a popular look right now and pretty easy to do.

This is the hand-carved construction detail on one of the arms.  It's still pretty sturdy for a piece of wood built a couple hundred years ago.

The happy ladies with their ridiculously expensive but very nicely done antique bench.  On a plus note, the trundle bed makes a great place to store things.

Guest House Construction: Part 11

Framing Continues

I'm not going to type on and on about this tonight, but here's a pictorial quickie of the progress last week.  Every Monday somebody comes and pumps out the port-a-potties.  I still have no idea why we have two, and no idea what it's costing me, but the service seems to be good at least.

After getting the initial lower floor framing up the guys seemed to go to work on details.  They framed in all the windows and doors and put in all of the metal connectors that are required by code.  They also framed in this half bath that's in the garage.  You may assume that this was my idea, but you would be wrong. Branelle pushed for this one (I hadn't even thought about it).  I think she is planning on this being a pool bath.

After they finished all of the ceiling joists, they headed upstairs...even before they had built stairs.  The first thing they did was start constructing all of these weird platforms and beams and ladders.  It was confusing at first.  Turns out they were building work areas so they could reach what they needed to when putting the roof up.  Very cool!

They put in all of the 2nd story sub-flooring and headed up from there.

They finally got around to building the stairs.  I'm guessing they wish they hadn't done this because it made it a lot easier for me to drop by.

The roof and second story went up shockingly quick.  You leave in the morning, come back in the afternoon and BOOM!

They continued the roof line but also started framing up the 2nd story space. These guys got to this point in nine days of work!  Our framers are rock stars!!