I think it's a bit of both actually: bad mortar and a long time since it was originally done.

Oh gosh, where do I start on this project? Well, I glued up the broken brick with Gorilla Glue yesterday so I had to scrape off all the squeeze-out. That went really good - a sharp putty knife is where it's at. So then I went out to the wall and dry-fit it in place, no problem there. The issue was all the bricks underneath it were all loose. Once I started pulling on them, it all came out. Spent a bit of time cleaning off the old mortar from the bricks, then dry-fit them all in place again:

This is turning out to be a bigger project than I anticipated. I started it, may as well continue on. Took everything back out to show that it's hollow in between the two walls and there's hardly any mortar in the joints on the other side:

Probably should have tried to tuck point some of this but it would have been really difficult to work in there effectively. Maybe could have used one of those frosting bags for cooking and loaded that up with some thin mortar and then squeezed that in the joints. Meh, this had to get done pronto. With all the bricks cleaned off, I arranged them so I knew what went where:

And then it was all mortaring. That took a long time, but in the end, got it all squared away:

Mixed up 3/4 of a bag of mortar for this job in multiple batches. Had a little leftover so I filled in the crack between the walkway and the wall. Figured that crack was probably one of the reasons the mortar was failing there, with it closed up, that should prevent water from getting down in there as much. I'm having a little trouble filling in the last crack though:

I can't push mortar in there because it's hollow behind it. Hmmm. Suppose maybe I could stuff some steel wool in there. Or maybe that expanding foam? Got any other ideas?

-Zombie

A larger project indeed, Zombie, but all that reconstruction was just waiting to happen and you saw it coming.

I was kind of surprised by how much of a "hollow" space there was between the two main faces of the wall (south/north) though.

You didn't let that scare you off and you soldiered on like a champ for what almost ammounts to a full rebuild. Which means that final (deceivingly) little gap on your last pic isn't going to be much of an obstacle on your path.

If you want my opinion, I think you'll do fine with expanding foam. Something like Great Stuff Big Gap Filler should do.

On 11/16/2025 at 3:29 PM, Thorondor said:

I was kind of surprised by how much of a "hollow" space there was between the two main faces of the wall (south/north) though.

Me too, in one of the pics I posted you can see the gap is the width of a brick.

On 11/16/2025 at 3:29 PM, Thorondor said:

You didn't let that scare you off and you soldiered on like a champ for what almost ammounts to a full rebuild. Which means that final (deceivingly) little gap on your last pic isn't going to be much of an obstacle on your path.

If you want my opinion, I think you'll do fine with expanding foam. Something like Great Stuff Big Gap Filler should do.

I picked up some Big Gap Filler at the hardware store the other day. Just haven't got around to trying to fill the gap yet.The main reason being that the weather has been rather iffy lately. Starts out good, but by the time the afternoon rolls around it either rains or stays clear overnight... which means really chilly mornings - today it was 25F (-4C). I did manage to prime everything the other day though. Here's the south side of the wall:

And here's the north side:

As you can see, I cleaned up all the crumbling brick and mortar and swept everything up too. I maybe would have had a chance to apply a top coat over this, but it was getting late in the day and I was afraid it wouldn't dry before the temps dropped below freezing. Better to play it safe. Didn't do anything to the crack, I just put some chunks of brick in front of it.

Had to do an emergency repair on an old plastic watering can today since it was leaking water all over the place. The designers had put duct tape over the handle ages ago (like that will be a fix, right?) so I had to pull all that off and cleaned up the crack with lacquer thinner to remove some of the residue. Then it was just a matter of zipper welding all the cracks and smoothing it all out:

The cracks were along the center line since that is a natural weak spot. Underneath the handle was all cracked up too. I plastic welded what I could, and just filled the rest in with melted sacrificial bucket strips. That was kinda rough so I sanded it smooth:

I told the designers that if it leaked again to just bring the can back by me so I can fix it again. Don't want them to continue using it and making a future repair job more difficult.

-Zombie

Prime time for the north wall has it looking solid once again at least, Zombie.

And don't let the weather "go south" on you too much as December is nearing at a fast clip.

Weathered aplenty too, is what one might remark upon coming across that watering can. After your peeling session and treatment course it's now all stitched up and good to go! 

On 11/24/2025 at 9:31 AM, Thorondor said:

And don't let the weather "go south" on you too much as December is nearing at a fast clip.

Yeah, it's been one long cold snap for the last week. Supposed to get 6-10 inches of snow tomorrow too. Then another cold snap for about a week more. That may be it for painting unless we get a few days of sunny warm weather. The paint has been pulled and is waiting at the ready.

With all the cold weather, I figured it would be a good idea to get the small garage sorted out. Swept it out over two days, put some more stuff away, and pulled one of the delivery vans inside to protect it from icing over. There's more to do yet, but it's shaping up.

On 11/24/2025 at 9:31 AM, Thorondor said:

Weathered aplenty too, is what one might remark upon coming across that watering can. After your peeling session and treatment course it's now all stitched up and good to go! 

I made a huge mistake with the watering can actually. I just assumed I knew where all the cracks were, taking someone else's word for it without leak testing the darn thing. Did that today and found that it still leaked due to a crack in the side near the bottom:

Did my best trying to zipper weld it, but the plastic was pretty thin. Just melted some sacrificial black bucket plastic into the spot to button it up:

Leak tested it and found no wet spots on the outside. Should be good enough, if it fails again I can always melt some screening over it.

- Zombie

Keep your cool (not that you have any choice ), Zombie, your painting days shall return in due course.

Your impeccable readiness levels have served you well in the small garage too, as it was thanks to your efforts that it's presently both clean and far more spacious to safekeep whatever needs harbouring from the fast approaching days and nights of harsher weather.

And, I'm calling it now, that watering can is an escape artist: it surely gave someone the slip and likely landed poorly, then it tried to keep that gash from you to mischievously go on leaking in some corner.

Oh no, you don't - it's back to active duty for you! 

On 12/21/2024 at 11:24 PM, Zombie said:

Sometime when I remember, I'll take a pic of the lake from the shore when it's really cold so you can see the swirling clouds of vapor just above the water. Kinda neat!

It was really cold this morning, not as cold as the last time I took a pic of the home thermometer, but yeah, chilly:

On the way in to work I remembered to take a pic of Lake Michigan:

Unfortunately, there was a strong west wind which was pushing the vapor out over the lake instead of rising straight up. Maybe that was a plus as you can see the water at least? It was even more interesting this afternoon as there were patches of ice forming on the surface. Supposed to be as cold tomorrow so I'll see what the lake looks like on the way to work.

- Zombie

Talk about a cold reception on your way out, Zombie. 

Over here depression Ingrid has also brought us colder temperatures, particularly so in the northern part of the country.

Also, strong winds, abundant rains and unusually tall waves. Where I live it's not so bad, mostly nasty wind, heavy showers and the occasional hail fall, but no snow - not fun to be outside.

Anyway, take care out there and stay warm when you can!

BLOODY HELL that's cold. Some 30 years ago I'd say "It does happen" but since then I've not seen temperatures this low in Slovenia...

Not much painting going on yet except for some minor touch-up on the delivery table inside. The weather is still iffy - partially good one day, then raining the next. Today was ok so I decided to start filling in some of the holes in the blacktop in the back driveway (the snowplow guy gouged it all up with the plow blade). First up is next to the patch I did by the back door (new patch is at the 3-5 o'clock position on a clock face):

After that, I found a low spot by the greenhouse:

Can't forget about the area by the garage door in front of the small garage:

(Six o'clock position). Also filled another small pothole by the first window of the back garage which I didn't take a pic of for some reason. Oh well, you get the idea at least. Nothing major here, just filling in low spots. The leftover blacktop patch was getting a little bit hard in the plastic pail so I think I probably should have put more paint thinner in there. Still worked fine though. There are more spots I could do, but I want to wait a bit.

The plow guy smashed into one part of the gate in the driveway in the back. Took a pic of the damage:

The post is also bent. Surprisingly, the gate can still be opened and closed, but it's difficult. This type of damage can't be fixed, it's going to be a complete replacement. Not by me mind you, it's beyond my skill... although I have fixed up this gate too many times to count. The gate on the other side of the driveway escaped any damage, but it too will supposedly be replaced:

There are some areas of the blacktop here which need to be filled with patches, but I don't really want to start messing with that until the gate situation has been addressed. Timeframe on this is within 30 days. The plow guy also smashed up one of the big rolling gates in the parking lot. This is going to be a fix to the frame of the fence and total replacement of the 4 wheels (one was also smashed up). The new wheels have nylon bearings which means no more greasing. So yeah, sucks for the plow guy as this comes out of his pay, but at least we'll have functional gates again.

- Zombie

Pretty smooth job filling in those holes in the blacktop, Zombie. No extra paint thinner spent, thanks to your steady hammering no doubt. 

On the heavy handed side of things, I've gotta say, that plow guy did a... smashing job of it - floor, gates and all.

He should either lay off the juice or find a job less connected with good motor skills, and other people's property. 

It was too wet for the fence guys to do a different job, but by us it was mostly all pavement so we were dry. So they expedited our fix. Didn't get a pic of them working on the rolling gate on the parking lot unfortunately, but it was just like I said, replace a length of pipe that was bent (cut out the old piece weld in a new piece), and also swap out the rollers. Tried it out and it works great now, can open it with one hand.

As for the gate in the back driveway, they decided to just selectively fix and not entirely replace the whole thing. Makes sense as it's significantly cheaper and only part was damaged. I told the crew I wanted them to straighten up the pole on the left side since it was bent at the bottom (check out the last pic in my previous post). They obliged and got it pretty straight:

As you can see, it now sits on top of the pavement, not in the gouge in the blacktop. This was the reason why I wanted to wait till the fix was completed as I didn't know where the pole would end up again. With the repair done, it seems pretty safe to fill that gouge with blacktop patch now.

The other side is where all the action was. The post in the driveway was cut off and a new piece welded on. The gate was off for this process, so it made it easy to remove that bent section of pipe from the fence, a new piece inserted and tack welded on. The team also welded on a cross member between the post and the bracket on the wall to stiffen things up. Welded on of course:

They also added caps to both poles so water doesn't collect inside. Ditto for the left side: new cap and a cross member added:

And this is the final product:

More or less good to go I'm probably going to spray it with some black paint sometime this summer. At least it's easier to open and close and the two poles in the middle are nearly parallel.

-Zombie

Given how much there was to fix and the metal work involved in multiple places I'd say the outcome stacks up alright, Zombie.

I mean, one can certainly see some "wavy" bits but what matters is things are back in working order. 

I was doing a little cleanup in the front cooler a couple weeks ago and noticed the fan guards were caked full of dust. Here's what one of them looked like:

And this is what it looked like after cleaning:

Much better! There's some small spots of rust forming in areas so I'm planning on spraying them with paint this summer sometime. In fact, I'm going to take down the entire drip pan assembly again, clean that off and possibly repaint the inside.

There were some chips of paint that broke off the edge of the rolling tables so I touched them up with some primer:

I also found a few more areas on the tables in the greenhouse which needed to be scraped and primed too:

I was looking for the gray polyurethane to apply over the primed spots on the rolling tables. Couldn't find it. Maybe I'm out? Going to have to search for it soon. Anyway, found an old can which felt like it had something in there yet. Popped the lid off and the paint was a chunk of rubber - hard. I was able to jam a stirring stick under it to grab the blob and pull it out. There was a tiny bit of paste at the bottom yet. Not enough to paint with though. In a last ditch effort to get the job done, I added a splash of Xylol and swirled that around the bottom. It looked somewhat ok so I applied it to the spots with a brush:

While not perfect, it at least covers up the white primer spots. I was a little worried that this concoction may not dry so I put a fan on it overnight. In the meantime, I touched up the white primer spots on the tables in the greenhouse:

That's going to have to be good enough for now. I'll repaint these after the planting season is over. I was working on cleaning out the small garage to get some space in there for Mother's Day deliveries and noticed that some of the cardboard boxes on the shelves in there were wet. Took those off the shelf and grabbed a flashlight to investigate and found that there were leaks along most of the west wall (it had just rained).

Not sure what caused the leaking. I think water was getting under the top cap of the wall and getting behind the flashing. So the roofers are going to have to come back to address that.

With flowers coming for Mother's Day I filled up a few buckets in the backroom:

My camera pooped out after this sometime. I think the battery is dead. Going to have to get a new battery soon otherwise you'll be left in the dark on what I'm up to.

I think Mother's Day was a success this year. Not too many leftover flowers. We were short a couple delivery drivers though. Normally by 2pm on Saturday we are wrapping up deliveries, but not this year. I took out a load at 4pm to speed things along and we got them all out somehow. This past Monday was a mini-Mother's Day too - plenty of deliveries. I think we are kinda getting back to normal around the shop, still busy though it's tapering off.

- Zombie

12 hours ago, Zombie said:

My camera pooped out after this sometime. I think the battery is dead. Going to have to get a new battery soon otherwise you'll be left in the dark on what I'm up to.

Please, prevent this disaster! 😱

Nice job on the fan guard.

BTW, you said you used a polyurethane lacquer on those desks, right? That seems be holding up insanely good and I'm sure it gets its share of abuse.

I see you're keeping things well in hand, Zombie - in the painting department and otherwise. 

And it's on the "otherwise" side of things that your keen eye has proven to be invaluable here, preventing further degradation from going on unnoticed. Man, those leaks in the small garage sure weren't supposed to be in the program after all that recent insulation work in the roof.

Those guys better get their behinds over there pronto as their reputation is kind of on the line here. Not exactly stellar work on display...

16 hours ago, Space Voyager said:

BTW, you said you used a polyurethane lacquer on those desks, right? That seems be holding up insanely good and I'm sure it gets its share of abuse.

Yup, the stuff wears like iron. The edges of the table get the brunt of the damage normally when we put deliveries and such on the top. Or it gets bumped into when I move the tables around to sweep under them. Other than that, the tables really only see cardboard boxes full of flowers on it a few times a week and those don't do any damage.

- Zombie

Oh, I was imagining full buckets being constantly dragged over them. Lucky for the tables I guess. 

I did a little troubleshooting on my camera the last few days. Read the manual, not really much help there. Sometimes a battery will work, and then after a bit will blink that the charge is too low. I checked both batteries on a multitester and they appear ok. Stuff them on the charger for a bit and then put the battery back in the camera, may work for a bit though that low charge thing rears it's head eventually. Not really sure what's going on there.

Couldn't find a replacement battery from WalMart even though it's listed on their website. Talked to a tech in the electronics dept and he mentioned that battery hasn't been in the store in years. Um, ok. Checked at BetteriesPlus but their batteries are something like $60. Hello? The camera itself isn't even worth that anymore. AliExpress has them but will not ship to the US - kinda don't blame them for that with Lithium Ions though. Found a 2-pack at Newegg so we're going that route for now. Will probably be another few days before they get here though due to the Memorial Day weekend.

You (and I) aren't missing anything. All I've been doing lately is bleaching buckets and cleaning the cooler. Had a lot of funeral work this week and next week it's a wedding and more funeral work. If I can stay ahead on the buckets that's the main thing (I cleaned about 80 this week and 100 last week and still have a stack to do from Mother's Day yet).

- Zombie

And so our endless fight against forced obsolescence continues, eh, Zombie?

Wrangle that bucket list! 

On 5/25/2026 at 6:41 AM, Zombie said:

I did a little troubleshooting on my camera the last few days. Read the manual, not really much help there. Sometimes a battery will work, and then after a bit will blink that the charge is too low. I checked both batteries on a multitester and they appear ok. Stuff them on the charger for a bit and then put the battery back in the camera, may work for a bit though that low charge thing rears it's head eventually. Not really sure what's going on there.

Couldn't find a replacement battery from WalMart even though it's listed on their website. Talked to a tech in the electronics dept and he mentioned that battery hasn't been in the store in years. Um, ok. Checked at BetteriesPlus but their batteries are something like $60. Hello? The camera itself isn't even worth that anymore. AliExpress has them but will not ship to the US - kinda don't blame them for that with Lithium Ions though. Found a 2-pack at Newegg so we're going that route for now. Will probably be another few days before they get here though due to the Memorial Day weekend.

You (and I) aren't missing anything. All I've been doing lately is bleaching buckets and cleaning the cooler. Had a lot of funeral work this week and next week it's a wedding and more funeral work. If I can stay ahead on the buckets that's the main thing (I cleaned about 80 this week and 100 last week and still have a stack to do from Mother's Day yet).

- Zombie

This is exactly why the last time I bought a camera (15 years ago?) I went for a less prestigious camera just because the abtteries it uses are AA. And those you can get everywhere. Sadly, that camera is now collecting the proverbial dust as the only camera I used in years is the phone camera...

I get it, SV. Personally, I don't have a cell phone (*reasons*) so my camera is kinda important to have. Be it painting/maintenance projects to post here or for work (pics of flowers etc).

Anyhow, got my 2 new batteries the other day. Put them on the charger which took quite a while to get to full, but I can report I'm back up and running now.

- Zombie