Shade And Screen

We are supposed to have a lot of rain later this week, so we took advantage of a good day yesterday to get a couple of outside projects done.

The first was putting a shade cover over the top of the 10×10 foot outdoor kennel we put up last week for Alli. I originally thought about using just a tarp, but Terry reminded me that we had purchased some shade material from Amazon to use on the carport at our place in Florida. I don’t know what became of that, but I went back and looked through my Amazon purchases, and ordered a Shatex 90% mesh sunshade fabric. It’s the same size as the kennel and has taped edges with grommets.

It came with 10 ball bungies, which was not nearly enough, but from our years as fulltime RVers we know the value of ball bungies. They have a million or more uses, so I also ordered a pack of 50 bungees. That leaves us plenty of extra ones for whatever we’ll find a use for, and I know we will. You can never have too many ball bungees.

We started out just hooking bungees through the grommets at the four corners of the cover to the frame of the kennel and then worked our way around until all the grommets were secured.

The cover was made with some excess, which is good so it will have a little bit of flex when it rains. We crossed two pieces of ¾” metal electrical conduit underneath to give it a little extra support.

This is what it looks like all done, and now Alli will have plenty of shade and a swimming pool full of water if we have to leave her out there while we go to town or something like that.

Our bedroom has a sliding glass door, which doesn’t work very well. Terry is not sure if it’s the wheels on the bottom of it or if the track just needs cleaned out well, as it’s been too hot to remove the door to check. Either way, in her years working as a glass contractor, she installed many doors like it, and she tells me it’s not going to be a big deal. She also wanted a screen door on it, so we found a universal replacement door on sale at Lowe’s, and yesterday she installed that.

The only thing I know about sliding doors is that every one I’ve had either jams up or comes off the track, but Terry assures me that won’t be a problem when she’s done. She finished up by trimming the weather stripping on the screen door. This is the look when she gave me when I told her that when I grow up, I want to be half the man she is.

When that was done, she set the screen door in place and made a couple of adjustments. We all know I’m worthless when it comes to anything like this, but Terry probably can’t count the number of doors she’s put in, and she made it look easy.

And here is the finished project. It’s too hot now to have the glass door open and just use the screen, but when things cool down a little bit it’s going to be very nice.

As I said, it’s supposed to be stormy off and on for most of the next week or so, which is no problem because it will give me time to get a lot of writing done on my newest book, Big Lake Assault.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us. This one is courtesy of our friends Larry and Joyce Space. Signs like this make me want to become a pedestrian, but I’m too lazy to walk.

Thought For The Day – The probability of meeting someone you know increases a hundredfold when you’re with someone you’re not supposed to be seen with.