Beam Me Down

Wednesday: The rain did come. It rained very heavily from about 6pm last night until after 8am this morning. It then cleared. I remained inside most of the day playing with the computer. It was quite soggy outside. I did get out late in the afternoon to strip the forms on the fence post anchors i poured yesterday. Lou and Dawn remained in San Jose for their classes and etc and, of course, enjoyed the return trip visiting several thrift stores on the way home.

Thursday: One of the new post anchors inserted into the existing mow strip. The old fence was actually adjacent to the mow strip. I moved it into alignment with the lot line and the rest of the fence on that side. The fence boards now rest on the mow strip. I can attest to the strength of the concrete in the mow strip. It's 7 inches thick and 7" wide with a 1" pipe as the rebar. Chipping it out was good exercise. I installed the fence on the new anchors today. The result seems to have been worth it. The RV hides behind the new fence as before. The posts and rails are all new but the split redwood fence boards are the same. I like the patina.

Thursday started with the arrival of a crane at the house construction site across the street. They needed to drop in a couple of beams to support the first floor. Note, the carpenter working in the basement is not a short guy, he's about 6 feet tall.

Placing a steel beam. This house isn't going to be cheap. They started with a perfectly good old house, which they "de-constructed". Now, their constructing an over designed new house on the site. The total investment will be much more than i could sleep with. And all this before the general housing cost downturn that has affected most of the country, but fortunately not this area, yet. If it does? I do like the effect of these monsters on our estimated home value, I just don't really like the shadow they cast due to the second floor in an older single story neighborhood.


On a simpler. and cheaper construction project, here is the new canopy by our shop. It was installed just before the rain, a rare good timing event.

Dawn and I enjoyed an evening walk down to the San Antonio Shopping Center in Mountain View. No purpose other than the walk, but we did look around while there.