O.K., now it's mid-August.......

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Here is the weather vane on the garage cupula, bright sun behind it.  It looked better early that morning, or maybe I just wasn't fully awake yet.....

We started taking out the fireplace, in anticipation of the building of the masonry heater.  Here we were trying to get the heat exchanger out of the hood before we tryed lowering the hood.

Heat exchanger out, I put up some flashing around the chimney to try to contain the sparks from the plasma cutter that I borrowed from work.  It works on the same principle as a welder, creating an electric arc that heats and melts the metal, but this thing also has compressed air at the tip.  That blast of air blows the molten metal away, leaving a nice clean cut through the steel. 

I cut out a strip all the way around the chimney so that we could lower it down at some point.

Somewhere in the last month, we had a visit from Hailee, always an interesting and enjoyable experience.  She certainly is growing up fast!!

The counter top folks came to install the tops.  The Corian type stuff gets epoxied together so there are no joints in the finished product.  These gizmos are vacuum clamps that hold the joint tight together while the epoxy sets up.

I was a little nervous when the guy started grinding the ridge of epoxy along the joint, but when he was done, you could not tell where the bonded joint was.

This was the most interesting spot. On the far side of that beam, the counter top ended right up tight to the beam.  The piece leaning against the counter had been notched to slide in around the angled beam.

Then they made sure it all fit together and applied the epoxy and clamps.

Out came the grinder and they ground and buffed the joint until it was all smooth.

Again, you cannot see the joint when they get done.  It looks like that beam was set down in through a square hole in the top!!

A view of the north, taken from the stairway.

And a view of the south end, again from the stairway.  So, the tops are in and secure.  I have a lot of finishing work to do, but a few larger projects are getting priority right now.  Actually, the fireplace stuff at the top of this post started immediately after the tops were finished.

So that's it for now, maybe I can get caught up with this blog in the near future.  Any of you Mattson types that may be reading this, I'll see you this weekend at the 'chicken shindig' in Phillips.

Laters, Carlo


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