In the past month I’ve spent a couple quality weekends helping my dad and his renovation project… Things ramped up quite a bit when my mom suffered some health issues and we needed to get things done… quickly! I’m slowly becoming an expert at insulation, drywall, tiling, painting, and various other home improvement projects. Something must have rubbed off, because I’ve gone ahead and started a couple of projects around our house as well.<\/p>\n
From what I’ve seen\/heard the average cost of an Invisible brand dog fence installation is ~$2000. Looking to save some green, we decided to do it ourselves. After a bit of research, I had found a site that sold a very similar kit (made by the same people as the Invisible brand dog fences) for under $300. Wanting to make the installation easier, I had wanted to rent a trench digger that automatically buried the wire. Somehow I was talked out of doing it this way, and needed to come up with another plan.<\/p>\n
After buying a riding lawn mower not too long ago (which is very, very sweet) and being a member of the Sears shopper rewards program, I had about 25 bucks I could use at Sears. I thought I would use this money towards an electric edger\/trencher. Edging with a weedwacker works, but I had wanted an edger anyway and this seemed like a good opportunity… or so I thought.<\/p>\n
When I went to pick out the lawn mower, the employees at Sears were super helpful and friendly. That was not the case when I went to pick up the edger. Wanting to get an early start on Saturday, I stopped into Sears after Susan’s award dinner (5 years at Dow Corning!) I got there about 15 minutes before the store closed, but knew exactly what I wanted. The person who was “helping” me wasn’t very friendly and didn’t seem to be very cooperative. Long story short, I went to checkout and when I told him I wanted to use my shopper reward points he said I needed my PIN number… which I had no clue of, but I could reset it on-line… I wasn’t exactly happy about this, because that was the only reason I was buying this thing, particularly at Sears…<\/p>\n
After a quick skim through the manual, I had the edger trenching in no time. I soon found out the directions for “locking” the extension cord weren’t very good and the cord kept unplugging itself from the unit. After messing around with it, I finally got it to stay in as I was trenching around our yard… this process took 4 or 5 hours to finish. I mounted the wall unit and started dragging wire around the yard, when I realized we weren’t going to have enough.<\/p>\n
The box says the kit was good for 25 acres, but I failed to see the small print that said additional wire\/flags would be required. Luckily they had the same type of wire at Lowe’s and we were able to continue with installation. Once everything was wired, we tested the system, made a few tweaks and started burying the wire. Our grass on the one side was pretty viney and I was having a lot of trouble getting the wire to the bottom of the trench.<\/p>\n
I pulled out my new fangled trenching device and was able to bury the wire coming from the wall unit to the outside loop (the cross wire). By this time it was getting dark and I left the rest of wire burying for the next day. It took another 4 or 5 hours to bury the wire, using lawn staples and caulk to go across the driveway… I was happy to see a green light on the wall unit when all was said and done.<\/p>\n
We wanted to take training really slowly with Waldo, I figured once he gets running, he would probably being going fast enough to run right through it. The first couple days we had him on his leash and went towards the boundary flags until the collar beeped. We used “retreat” to turn and run towards the inside. This went really well and I was ready for an off-leash trial… not sure if Waldo was though… He was doing good, fetching the ball and following me around the yard. He started doing his circles, then figure 8’s and started going faster. Sure enough he hit the boundary… he let out a cry and just stood on the other side… I was happy he didn’t run off into the neighbors yard, like he usually does. I managed to get his collar off and decided that was good for today and brought him inside.<\/p>\n
The next day we went out and did the same thing, this time however when we were walking around the house, he slowly made his way to the boundary… he heard that beep and turned around and jogged towards the inside… he got a lot of praise for that… success was at hand!<\/p>\n
The other project I’m working on is getting our basement\/garage into a more organized area. I’m putting together a workbench (hopefully pictures to come soon). I searched the internet and found some plans I liked and modified them using Google’s SketchUp software. Not having a truck, I knew lumber would be a pain to get home, but figured I could rent the Home Depot truck to get everything I needed. <\/p>\n
So Monday I headed over there to find out the truck was being used by someone else… did I put off getting the lumber? pffsssh of course not, I did the next best thing… rented a U-Haul truck just down the road. Once I got the truck loaded up and heading home, I got the great idea of dropping a couple things off at Goodwill on the return trip.<\/p>\n
I don’t recommend backing down our driveway in a 14′ U-Haul truck with no spotter, I managed to scrape a little paint off the truck on our mailbox… whoops! The other night I spent a bit of time cutting the 2×4’s to size. When I had about 3 cuts left (using my circular saw… yeah I need some real tools :P), our neighbor came over and offered me to use his stand which would have definitely helped to cut the boards. I really appreciated the offer, but like I said, I only had a few more cuts to do… I felt bad he hauled that thing over and didn’t use it, but he should have came over sooner! \ud83d\ude09 <\/p>\n
We did have a nice talk about what I was doing (I think its an unwritten rule to see what the neighbor is up to when they have their power tools out) and he wanted to know how the invisible fence was working. I did want to get my plywood cut to size, but figured I’ll wait until another day to do that as I told him I was just about done cutting…<\/p>\n
I’ve also put together a makeshift bike stand… I still need to put a base on it (that will come from the 4’x8′ piece of plywood I need to cut) and hopefully I’ll get some pictures of that up on here as well. I really like my new bike and was sad to see the bike computer wasn’t working properly.<\/p>\n
During one of my last rides I noticed the cadence sensor wasn’t picking up any information, but the speedometer was still working. I stopped and tried to fix it on the side of the road and quickly learned it’s not easy to clip in going uphill (totally biffed it on the road… nothing but my pride was damaged). Then the last time I took it out, I saw the speedometer wasn’t working nor the cadence sensor… I picked up a new battery and I think that solved one issue. I then realized the magnet for the speed sensor had moved and wasn’t crossing over the sensor, hopefully that fixes everything.<\/p>\n
With the dog fence installation this weekend, I wasn’t able to get my Sunday ride in to see if everything’s fixed, but I’m hoping it is. With the weather to surely get cold\/rainy\/snowy out I had wanted to get a bike trainer I could use on the really nasty days. Bike Nashbar was having a sale and offered free shipping on all trainers and rollers. I opted for the rollers and they FINALLY came yesterday. Not sure why, but two days in a row FedEx had a “delivery exception” and didn’t even make an attempt to deliver to the house.<\/p>\n
Once I got home, I took the dog out (who was really good) and decided I needed to give the rollers a try. Well, it’s like learning how to ride a bike all over again. With a trainer your bike is usually locked on the back axle, while on the rollers you are essentially balancing yourself on 3 drums. After a quick trial run I noticed the drum furthest back looked kind of funny. Sure enough there was a good size dent in the aluminum drum (heavy sigh…) It wasn’t long before I was packing the rollers back up and heading to the local FedEx office, hopefully my next set comes in on time and undamaged! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n
This triathlon bug has really gotten a hold over me. For some unknown reason I decided to throw my name in the Escape From Alcatraz lottery at the end of September. Names were drawn the first week of October and somehow I managed to get picked. After planning the trip out and looking at the cost (entry fee is $405) I finally made the decision I wasn’t going to do it next year… This would have been the longest tri I would have attempted and I was feeling pretty bummed about getting picked and not going (although I want to do this race someday!)<\/p>\n