Let's Paint!

[Zombie]

At the time when I cleaned the refrigerator out, it was absolutely necessary as we had a tenant moving in. So it wasn't a waste, in fact it probably saved us money by not having to go out and get a new one. I noticed the door under the sink too. Not sure what's going to happen in the kitchen in terms of color scheme so, yeah it'll be addressed at some point.

Speaking of refrigerators, the last time I painted the floor in the back cooler was in late June of 2018. There was a lot of stuff that went in and out of there. It's been on and off too many times to count and it went through 4 Christmases which can take a toll on the surface. I did touch it up once but nothing significant. I was noticing bubbles in the paint since we turned it on around Valentine's day and they kept getting worse. We finally turned the thing off in early July and the floor was terrible with all the humidity. Scraped it to get rid of the loose stuff:

And the next day round two:

I didn't have primer anymore and no polyurethane either except for a little bit at the bottom of a can. Took a trip out to the paint store and picked up a gallon of "gripping" primer and ordered two cans of gray polyurethane (eta was a week as it wasn't in stock). At least I had the primer to do the floor:

We turned the cooler on after this because we had a few weddings that week and the week after too and after we turned it off again I found more bubbles. Guess I didn't get everything. For some reason I forgot to take a pic but it was just more scraping and priming. When I finally got the paint (took a few weeks), it was all systems go.

In the past when I did the floor I used a sand finish for traction with the sand already mixed into the paint. That was messy and the sand settled out which required lots of stirring. And then what happens if you need to use the polyurethane for a different application where the sand is not necessary? Gotta have another can on hand. This time I did things differently. I rolled a section and while the paint was still wet I sprinkled the sand over that. Had the fan going full blast to help disperse the sand a little more. Then I went over the area with the roller again to "lock" the sand into the paint and also it alleviated any rough spots so it was more or less a consistent roughness across the entire floor:

Needless to say it was pretty rough. So I painted over it with two more coats:

I hope the pics show the floor wasn't as rough anymore. It's hard to capture that. You will notice that the pegboard on the shelves was removed. More on that in my next post (I think you can probably guess what's next).

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Woah, the back cooler. Even in a controlled environment the ravages of time truly are merciless, Zombie.

You decided to go with the gray polyurethane paint once again, so I surmise it remains the better option in spite of the degradation observed. Looks good now, don't get me wrong, but I don't know, I just imagine maybe some form of rubberised coating would help preserve things for a longer period.

Left hand side of the doorway on the pic before last - what's green and needs to go away? 😉

[Zombie]

On 9/9/2022 at 10:18 AM, Thorondor said:

You decided to go with the gray polyurethane paint once again, so I surmise it remains the better option in spite of the degradation observed. Looks good now, don't get me wrong, but I don't know, I just imagine maybe some form of rubberised coating would help preserve things for a longer period.

Maybe, not sure what's out there for industrial coatings which are intended for wet, cold and humid conditions for months at a time. I remember talking to the paint guys at the store and they recommended epoxy (expensive, unproven for our application) or polyurethane (same stuff on there now).

My guess is that I just didn't apply enough coats the times I painted it in the past. It was always either a 2-coat redo or a 1-coat maintenance and maybe that isn't a thick enough film to hold up to high wear environments. Polyurethane goes on thin the way it is and that might be to blame.

With that said I turned the back cooler off today for the first time in over 4 months of continuous use. After sweeping it out I cleaned the floor with straight bleach (5.25%) and bucket cleaner, let it sit, then mopped off the dirty water and put the fan on it. It looks just like the day I painted it - no scratches, no bubbles and no chips and the surface is still perfect. Might be too early to say for sure that the issue was not enough coats to build a decent layer on it, but that's what I'm leaning to right now.

On 9/9/2022 at 10:18 AM, Thorondor said:

Left hand side of the doorway on the pic before last - what's green and needs to go away? 😉

Green spray paint. As always, the women spray and never pray so it goes everywhere. I wish I could show you guys how bad stuff looks when the women spray things and the overspray lands on the floor or counter tops or down the steps or in the greenhouse or into the back cooler (rare that this happens). It's insane. I even have big pieces of cardboard around so the women can protect the flat areas, but they hardly ever use it.

- Zombie

[Zombie]

Was cleaning out the camera and found a few pics of some random projects from last year if you are interested. First up is a good cleaning and refilling our inventory of baskets:

Always looks nice when everything is combined into rows to make it easier to grab what you need in a hurry. I also did a little work on the metal top of our delivery table. It had some dents in it from when I hit something with a hammer years ago, plus there were some holes in it from a ribbon rack (on the left) which I took off years ago as we needed more room for deliveries. Anyhow, it's finally time to fix that. After some light sanding I mixed up some automotive body filler (Bondo) and filled in the holes and dents. When it cured I sanded again till it was smooth:

Then I primed the bondo spots:

And finally touched up the primer spots with the top coat color:

Better. I couldn't repaint the entire top because this paint smells really strong and with the doors closed in the summer with the AC on it wouldn't dissipate. So I waited a couple months till it was cooler outside then painted the top:

And even painted the smaller table so it matches:

Now it's much better. Oh, and when I repainted the cooler floor I also rolled a coat on the tables in the backroom as well:

Awesome! And I think I owe you guys a pic of the planting I did along the side of the small garage. This was taken on the 6th of August just as the allium were starting to bloom:

Not really impressed with this variety as it looks messy when the greens grow up and then topple over in the rain. I might put a little fence in front of it this year to prevent that from happening again. I'm shocked that as of today (March 21) the allium have just started to poke up so it will not be long till those will be growing.

Next post will be more back cooler stuff so stay tuned for that.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Can't really call you a basket case for wanting things to be properly stored and preserved for continued use, Zombie.

Very nice work on the metal top of the delivery table and small table; made to look as if new. Conservation-wise the same can't of course be said of the front-facing part, particularly at the foot level or so where paint flecked almost along a line.

Them tables in the backroom are bound to be grateful to you as, placed where they are, if it weren't for your efforts they'd be far more neglected.

Planting along the side of the small garage: always a welcome sight to behold no matter what, especially considering how it all used to look all the way back before you intervened.

Ooh, but what do I spy with my little eye on that garage's wooden doorframe. Work's just never done, is it?

[Zombie]

On 3/22/2023 at 7:19 AM, Thorondor said:

Very nice work on the metal top of the delivery table and small table; made to look as if new. Conservation-wise the same can't of course be said of the front-facing part, particularly at the foot level or so where paint flecked almost along a line.

Ooh, but what do I spy with my little eye on that garage's wooden doorframe. Work's just never done, is it?

It's on the list of things to paint obviously. It was previously painted by another employee when I was away at college and he didn't save any for touch up projects. I have gray primer but that color isn't dark enough. And I don't want to buy a quart to touch up just those spots or a gallon either as then I'd need to repaint the entire thing (which is probably what is going to happen anyway). I might just paint it with the gray polyurethane stuff at some point.

And yeah, the doorframe is on my list of projects to work on. It's so bad because the roof of the small garage leaks when it rains. And I'm not going to pour time and effort into that when the water will make it bad in a month or two. The garage is going to be getting a new membrane roof hopefully this year, but that's up to the bossman.

To continue on, I finished painting the floor of the cooler and one of the things I wanted to do was address the pegboard on the shelves. They were all water stained and some had black mold on the bottom (not heavy just small black circles). The original plan was to replace but that fell by the wayside as the cooler was going to be pressed into service sooner than expected. I bleached off the mold as best I could then rolled a coat of white latex primer on it (pained on the left, previously painted on the right):

With that done there was still the issue of the water stains. I decided to roll on a coat of solid color latex stain first:

It's fast drying when you put it on thin in warm weather so that took care of blocking out the stains. And what better way to finish it off than to paint it with gray polyurethane to match the floor:

I rolled on a couple coats right away... it was drying pretty fast as it was really warm out and I had the fan going full blast. Here they are all "installed" and in their proper place again inside the cooler looking like a million bucks:

That should make it much easier to keep the shelves clean in the future. Oh, and we had a new gasket installed around the door to the cooler by the refrigeration technician guy. He mentioned that the door was getting hung up on the threshold (no doubt due to all the coats of paint I've been piling on there for years) so I got out the rasp and 36 grit sandpaper and went to town removing it:

Not sure what type of wood this was but it was incredibly hard and tough to rasp/sand. My guess is oak. Took a lot of elbow grease to get it to this point, and I eventually rasped and sanded the vertical part too as the gasket was kinking when it was closed against this. I'll see about getting a pic of this at some point.

And I decided to try and fix the screen on the front door to the apartment across the alley from us. The screening was falling apart which wasn't doing anything in terms of keeping bugs out. So I took the screen inserts out of the door and then carefully pulled out the vinyl spline in order to get the screening out of the frame. The frame itself is aluminum and was pretty corroded. I ended up sanding all the black/gray oxide off to get it looking somewhat new again. I installed a new screen into the top frame to see how it looked. Not bad if I do say so myself:

I figured I better do the other frame as well. New on left, old screening on right:

And here they are all fixed up:

And here they are installed into the door:

Much better. Yeah, I know the screen door itself doesn't look all that good, it's old, get over it. And yes, there's peeling paint under the door. It's on the radar obviously. Including refinishing the threshold. More pics will follow probably in late May or early June so stay tuned for that.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Small garage doorframe: well, talk about higher priorities. Definitely no dice there if roof troubles aren't dealt with. Not something you'd ever want to let linger, that.

As for the pegboard on the shelves business, I can't find any holes in your execution with that multi-layered approach of cleaning, priming and neatly covering. They do look a whole lot better!

That back cooler's door threshold does look hardy so I can imagine how it must've taken some doing on your part to make it conform like that without power tool assistance. You do have finer control this way though, which might otherwise become easy to overdo with unpleasant consequences to then have to fix.

No task too big, no challenge too small, made clear before all, with good results on the the apartment door's screens closing up with a clean install. It's no surprise, with Zombie at work there's no stall! 😎

[Zombie]

The next project on my list is to do the wall with the window and storm door which exits to the roof. We had a professional painter do the top part of the wall on the east side (on the left side, this particular wall faces north). The contract called for them to scrape and paint the first two feet of this wall so I wouldn't have to get so close to the edge of the slippery roof to paint the rest. Well, they didn't do that so as usual this falls in my lap. I last did this wall in the fall of 2015 so it's definitely due for a touch up.

As always, you gotta scrape the loose paint off first:

Pretty rough shape above the old exit door which was bricked in ages ago (long before I started work here). After a quick dusting I primed it with a 50% tint primer:

At least it's not so noticeable now. I think you know what's coming up the next day: caulkpocalypse:

I was busy again after this so I was only able to brush on a first coat to cover the caulk. When it was all systems go time I did some more scraping above the door and caulked everything (along with some other spots) with gray caulk (ran out of the cedar tan stuff):

And then painted the caulked areas with the top coat:

Much better now. Notice anything with the storm door? That's right, I fixed the 5 pieces of broken glass. It just so happened I was doing garbage one day earlier in the summer and pulled out an old plexiglas storm window someone tossed in the dumpster. I cut some pieces off of that and installed that into the door. Here's what it looks like:

There's three panels by the door handle, another is 4 panels above and the last is at the very bottom. And I also addressed the inner wooden door as the glass was loose - so I caulked it in good:

I put a final coat of paint to the right of the door - had to be really careful with all the power lines up there. So here's what it looks like semi-finished:

Now don't start complaining that I missed a very obvious spot above the old door. I needed to pick up some more concrete mix for another project so I used some to fill in the gap and big ledge above the brick. This was pretty late in the fall (10th of November) so I was living on borrowed time for painting projects:

It took forever to cure as it was cold almost everyday but eventually it turned lighter gray and I was able to slap on a coat of paint on it:

The color looks wrong (too green) but the paint was still wet. You can't see any difference now though. So this year I have to put the final coat of paint over the wall to finish this off properly.

My next project is to finally deal with the crumbling limestone threshold of the door I keep painting almost every year. You'll want to check back to see what I did with that in my next post.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

The phrase "I know every inch of this place" is one you can fully employ with property. Even what's old history you get to be closely acquainted with from time to time.

Beyond that, your height is a real asset in such a task, as you needn't teeter on the topmost step of the ladder as others might've had to.

The caulk must flow of course and how it did, to good effect. Then the right top coat to aim for a top notch finish.

The scavenged plexiglas did the trick, though you can tell the panels apart, being more translucent than the rest. Better than what was, no matter how you slice it, and expense free.

As for replacing degrading stone, doesn't happen with loose change. So, to arrange, what other skills will Zombie hone?

[Zombie]

So yeah, the limestone threshold on one of our back doors is constantly chipping or chunks breaking off and that only gets worse in the winter. Limestone isn't a good choice for a threshold as it's brittle and soft but that's what was always in there. To really do a good job I'd have to tear the whole thing out and start off fresh - something I'm not willing to do as that would mean that door would be out of commission for weeks at a time.

My thought is to remove anything that is loose and let me tell you that was quite a bit of stuff I pulled out. I used a hammer and a cold chisel to knock it out and a small trowel to scoop it into a bucket for disposal. There was even a chunk of blacktop in there that the pavers jammed in there years ago. It all came out. I didn't want to get too close to the door jamb though as that might loosen stuff up. After everything was out, I put a layer of pea gravel at the bottom as it was moist:

I think you can see the metal door frame is also rusted out at the bottom. That needs to be fixed too. It's hard to see but this hole is pretty deep. I picked up a 40 pound bag of concrete mix and hoped that would be enough. I mixed it up and also put in some latex bonding agent so that it sticks to the limestone, then troweled it flat:

Not bad at all. It took forever to cure though (4 days) and here's what it looked like:

It was probably still a little moist at the bottom. I waited a couple more days just to make sure it was cured properly before messing with the frame. The metal frame of the door was hollow inside so I was at a loss on how to fill that in enough to get Bondo to stay put. I eventually decided on stuffing the frame with some crumpled up plastic garbage bags. Suppose I could have used expanding foam too but I didn't have that on hand at the time. Then I mixed up a lot of Bondo and pushed that in there:

The next day I borrowed an electric sander and used some 36 grit sand paper on it to sand the Bondo somewhat smooth. Then I went over it by hand with some 120 grit, brushed off the dust and vacuumed any remaining grit and primed it:

I waited a few more days and then primed the threshold too:

A couple weeks later I painted the frame with latex and the threshold with polyurethane:

Much better. Not perfect, but this should hold up better than that limestone. Our other door needs a little work too. There was a little rotten wood at the bottom of the frame so I stiffened that up with some wood hardener after scraping all the paint off:

Then I primed and caulked the frame:

It got painted with the top coat at a later date which I forgot to document. Bummer. To make up for that I did take a pic of our strainer basket for the front sink which I fixed up, put on new galvanized mesh and painted (not gray polyurethane, but gray enamel):

Stainless steel hardware so it doesn't rust either (if that doesn't get you excited I don't know what will).

Next project is repainting the fascia board of the small garage and then after that some miscellaneous updates and projects. After all that then we'll get to the main event which is unfolding as we speak.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

Limestone: Brittle is its full name. Using it is just asking for trouble.

Somehow you managed not to let it get to you (I just know I'd be tempted to blast it to pieces and get rid of the whole thing) and removed just enough for a reconstruction, which was well handled, to say the least. Got lucky nobody with their head in the clouds ended up stepping on that curing cement too.

Speaking of the other door, with the rotting wood in the frame, it looks like at the very bottom something stuck to it along the jamb, contrasting with the red paint (assuming that's not the door itself starting to go bad too).

And - strictly from a full-on preservation point of view - I'm not going to deny that is one sexy basket you've got yourself there. That combination of hardware and gray enamel is sure to turn some heads!

[Zombie]

8 hours ago, Thorondor said:

Somehow you managed not to let it get to you (I just know I'd be tempted to blast it to pieces and get rid of the whole thing) and removed just enough for a reconstruction, which was well handled, to say the least. Got lucky nobody with their head in the clouds ended up stepping on that curing cement too.

Speaking of the other door, with the rotting wood in the frame, it looks like at the very bottom something stuck to it along the jamb, contrasting with the red paint (assuming that's not the door itself starting to go bad too).

To respond to the green, I locked the door, put a string across it with a sign saying the door was out of order, plus put traffic cones inside and out. So I think that covered all the possibilities.

As for the the blue, good catch - it's a little bit of rust. I'm not sure if I fixed this internally, otherwise you'll probably be seeing more of this in a future post.

The fascia board under the gutter in the small garage was peeling something serious so I scraped it and used that electric sander to sand the areas smooth. Then I primed the spots and for the first coat I used some of that mistinted green exterior paint with about half a can of white exterior paint to lighten it up a bit:

Yup, I'm aware of the state of the frame of the garage door. And the dark areas to the left by the pipe is just dust - I pounded out a carpet against the wall. The area past the ladder is really soft with rot so I used some of that commercial wood hardener on it first, then caulked it and put on the first coat of green:

A couple areas I didn't fix yet as I was deciding whether to use bondo or caulk. I used a combination of both in the end. And I caulked in the two holes with the threaded inserts. The next week I painted the fascia with the final color so it looks nice again:

In that time I was reading up on what is in wood hardener (a plastic dissolved in a fast evaporating carrier, in this case acetone). Well, I have acetone and plenty of plexiglass cutoffs from making the replacement pieces for the storm door and wondered if I could make my own low-cost but higher quality alternative. So I put some acetone in a small metal container with a tight fitting lid and chucked in an excess of plexiglass and let that sit over the weekend. I knew I was going to need some hardener as the North side of the garage had some bad spots in the fascia too. As always, scraping comes first (sorry about the blurriness as the sun was low in the sky):

Then I applied the homemade wood hardener to the soft spots:

It actually worked really good. Worthwhile? Well, if you have the materials on-hand I'd say go for it as it's going to be cheaper than the store-bought commercial stuff. And I'll go out on a limb and say it probably has more plastic in there too. The only drawback is that it makes the wood pretty shiny as you can probably see. After the hardener and primer it was time for the first coat:

And here's what it looks like with the top coat:

Better. The paint was still wet as it was taking a long time to dry (understandable as it was the 3rd of November which is pushing it for exterior painting projects). You can probably see shiny spots in the paint to the left - that was due to the wood hardener. It wasn't as noticeable when dry, but my suggestion would be to sand those spots before applying the primer. As a proof-of-concept it was a good experiment. There's some rotten spots in the siding at the ground level which I need to fix yet. I'm probably going to put a "kickplate" of plywood over the bottom to cover it over. But I need to get some flashing for that first.

Here's what the planting looked like after I cut down the allium which were yellowing and unsightly:

Not too bad either. The coneflowers had stopped blooming but the foliage still looked ok so I let it be. Oh, and we started to get our Christmas evergreens in the week after Thanksgiving and those go in the back cooler. So I took a pic of it after turning it off, sweeping the floor and cleaning it:

Still looked good, no peeling or bubbling of the paint on the floor whatsoever. I'll try to take a pic of it tomorrow if I remember as it's been on continuously since the weekend before Valentines Day. Speaking of such, here's the first load of roses I cut in for that:

This pic was taken at 10pm on Sunday Feb 5. Another installation of a late night marathon cutting session - you can see the blue barrel at the bottom right filled with rose leaves. What's your favorite color? Mine is the green in the far left called "wasabi" (cool name for a green rose). We actually sold out of roses this year for the first time ever - though I did cut the numbers back from last year a bit.

- Zombie

[Thorondor]

You're getting adventurous with your experiments involving homemade chemistry solutions but the fascia board work came out quite alright all told. Costs were cut and you survived the fumes, so there's that.

Seems like the floor at the entrance of the garage is going to need some more of that break and rebuild with concrete mix job you did before though.

Back cooler: keeping its cool inside, but coming outside you can't escape what you see (green on the left, going white on the right).

Well, you always make the cut in the end, and what a way to part - with that beautiful riot of colours on display as a reward for your efforts.

Hard to argue with the classic deep red but I generally don't like to follow the pack - so my pick would go to those orangey ones right at the very front on the right side.

[Zombie]

13 hours ago, Thorondor said:

Seems like the floor at the entrance of the garage is going to need some more of that break and rebuild with concrete mix job you did before though.

Funny you should mention that. I worked on it a bit this past fall before it got too cold out. I filled in the big cracks on the floor with concrete (minus the bigger pieces of gravel which I sifted out). I got the loose piece mortared in to the right of the indentation and also made the lip a little more gradual by creating a ramp of concrete:

Quote

Back cooler: keeping its cool inside, but coming outside you can't escape what you see (green on the left, going white on the right).

Okay, fine. We had the cooler off this weekend so I was able to get rid of the green for you:

Can't do anything about the spottyness to the right. Someone painted the outside of this cooler a garish gold-orange right over the glossy white enamel and that paint is chipping off in spots. I did strip the orange paint off the door a couple years ago which made it look a little better at least.

After bleaching off the floor of the back cooler today and then rinsing it off I did notice a little chip of paint came loose to the left of the door. Took a pic of that:

The discoloration above it is from my footprint, but this is the only spot I could find on the floor without paint. When we turn it off again I'll touch that up again.

Quote

Hard to argue with the classic deep red but I generally don't like to follow the pack - so my pick would go to those orangey ones right at the very front on the right side.

That particular color is called "Cherry Brandy" in case you are wondering (the other orange variety behind it in the same bucket is called "Free Spirit"). Google image search those for bigger pics. We use quite a few of these two particular colors (pending availability and need) almost all year round. I just realized we never got any "Black Pearl" roses in for Valentines (a really dark, dark maroon red almost black in color). I'll see about snagging some of those for Mothers day.

So back on topic, I decided to scrape the wall (or part of it at least) going down the steps into the basement as the paint was coming loose from efflorescence (caused by water leaching salt through the soil to the outside brick below grade). Here's what that mess looked like:

It's hard to tell, but the air was white with dust. Some of the mortar between the bricks popped loose years ago. I caulked them in the last time I painted but I might do a little tuck pointing and fill those joints with mortar again (I scraped the caulk out). But that's probably going to be a summer project unless I need mortar for a reason before then. After this mess I washed the steps and floor to get rid of the white dust and pink spray paint overspray (it's all over).

Another little project I did was to change out two of the 9W LED floodlamps in the back garage for 65W "propeller" LEDs:

The propellers fold up to point the light into areas to the side. These aren't exactly cheap so I had bossman get me just two to cover the area as you enter the back garage from inside the building. They also suck 7 times more power than the normal LED spots. I wasn't happy about that. They put out a lot of light though. One burnt out on me the other day so I had bossman return it. The other one is still chugging along - who knows for how long though. The trouble with these new LEDs is that they all have integrated electronics which are made in China with the cheapest components possible. Any time you have a voltage spike or brownout the electronics overheat or short.

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

Damn, you're really making something presentable from what seems like a basket case...

On 3/25/2023 at 8:30 PM, Zombie said:

 

Stainless steel hardware so it doesn't rust either (if that doesn't get you excited I don't know what will).

🤣It does!

[Thorondor]

I should've known the state of the floor at the entrance of the garage would be too much of an eyesore for you to just let it be.

Speaking of such, my thanks for the eradication of the Green Spray of Death, at long last!

To briefly touch upon the rosy side of things I'd never guess "Cherry Brandy" was the chosen nomenclature for the specific tone of those flowers. I'm getting car colour naming vibes off that, with their oh-so-fashionable marketing department directives.

Moving on to the old-school brick wall, yeah, that sure looks like a proper handful. Seems to me scraping all that without some sort of protective mask is bound to have you washing your face and clearing out your nose in short order.

Quick aside: that imaginative pipe handrail could maybe use a lick of paint further down the line itself.

And, lastly, I'm duly noting that propelling things into the future with "cutting edge" tech is not without its drawbacks. We have seen similar issues over here whenever the temptation arises to let PRC quality standards light the way.

[Space Voyager]

As we're in the illumination area already, I might as well veer OT for a sec - have you guys noticed that it get harder and harder to buy a light with a lightbulb? Last time I was looking for a ligth in Tjaša's room and 95% of them were LED in-built systems. When it dies, you have to throw the whole damn thing away! I had to search pretty long to find a glass covering Tjaša was OK with...

[Thorondor]

Yep. I hear you, SV. It's clear by now we simply can't escape some market trends.

One being cheaply made low-cost and "eco-friendly" LED tech that flooded the lighting markets. There's just no walking back on that.

The other is the way "replacement culture" has been kicked into high gear because you have to be forced into buying more. Money must be made, things have to die, never be repaired, just replaced. People haven't forgotten how to do things well, they're merely no longer allowed to for the most part, artificially, for the sake of the "growth economy".

Yet another, less spoken of factor, is the incredible pressure on the availability of angular sand, that is required for so many uses. This BBC article sheds some light on the true global scope of it.

Do you see now how many people it can take for you to change that lightbulb?

[Space Voyager]

FFS, on one hand we're more and more vocal on protecting the environment, on saving energy and not using plastics... On the other hand this you are prevented from changing just the lightbulb. This should be prohibited, dammit.

[Thorondor]

Since *someone* opened Pandora's box by speaking of the challenges brought about by LED lighting I can't resist pointing out this article.

Just be forewarned there are inherent dangers in going down this particular rabbit hole - because diffuse and elusive is the path before us and perceptions are ever one's own.

Still, in the flower business this can be of particular importance. How is one to tell what's the true colour of the product you're selling or, alternatively, how to make sure you're not misleading a client perusing your wares in the store due to the lighting. Said person steps outside only to notice that, strangely, it doesn't look the same and goes back for a refund as this wasn't at all what was wanted.

Most likely nobody bothers to think of this stuff in the first place but there's a case to be made that, at some stage, someone probably should shine a light on it.

[Zombie]

On 4/3/2023 at 2:43 PM, Thorondor said:

Still, in the flower business this can be of particular importance. How is one to tell what's the true colour of the product you're selling or, alternatively, how to make sure you're not misleading a client perusing your wares in the store due to the lighting. Said person steps outside only to notice that, strangely, it doesn't look the same and goes back for a refund as this wasn't at all what was wanted.

I honestly don't think we ever had a customer return for a refund due to color. Like ever. And I've been there for almost 35 years now (will be my anniversary on the 12th of November). We sometimes have customers that get a delivery who ask for a refund if the arrangement doesn't look like the picture, but that's normally due to flower substitutions (or size) rather than color differences.

In the store where most of the selling is done we still have a variety of lighting sources which helps as it fills in the spectrum. Plus we have ample light from outside (when it's sunny at least) which is obviously the "standard" lighting source for CRI.

I read most of the article but had to stop as it was very long winded and factually inaccurate (the author kept using "degrees" after a Kelvin temperature even though that is wrong because Kelvin is an absolute scale).

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

19 minutes ago, Zombie said:

I read most of the article but had to stop as it was very long winded and factually inaccurate (the author kept using "degrees" after a Kelvin temperature even though that is wrong because Kelvin is an absolute scale).

I don't think this is such a huge blunder... True, we don't write the degrees sign before the K (like we do with °C or °F), but it still is customary to say degrees K. Probably because all other temperature scales have degrees so it is kinda weird not to have them for Kelvins. I don't see why Kelvin would be any more absolute a scale than say Celsius. Both even use the same scale step (degree of the same "size") and neither is a relative scale - none such can exist since we don't know of any upper temperature limit. The only difference is the starting point. Sorry if I got something wrong though, it does happen...

 

It is an article a few times too long, I agree.  Read some, flew over the rest.

[Thorondor]

I should have warned you to pack a lunch before reading.

It just strikes me as crazy just how generally lacking and therefore prone to mislead the information on LED light packaging can be, as mentioned in the article. Lumens, CRI, temperature, method of achieving tonality, all matter.

If you're going to make it something mandatory to use, clear standards to conform to, that simplify understanding and defend the consumer when decision time comes are the very least you can do.

Not to mention the issue of expected performance and sustained operation, which overall does seem more erratic than one might have initially come to expect.

The overall quality of the light depends on the LED chips employed. From what I could gather, larger chips are brighter and more stable, having a longer life; also being more expensive of course.

But if there's not an evident system of grading in place - comprising the full spectrum of relevant metrics - spending, say, $50 on a pricier bulb only to get home and find it makes you look like a ghost is ultimately going to be bad for the manufacturers themselves.

At the end of the day we all just want a light that works and be done with it. The trouble is that, when you do work under that light, you're going to start questioning if that customary swiftness and getting a result you can live with pretty much every time hasn't become a thing of the past.

[Zombie]

We've been having some seagull problems at the shop for the last 5 years or so. Early in the summer last year after the fledglings have started trying to fly - they jumped down off the roof onto the top of the greenhouse. I think the parents brought them food up there and they pecked some rather sizeable holes into the top. I did sorta patch them up the best I could but I warned the bossman that it might not last long and that we should get a new roll of plastic just in case. (I did take pics of this but deleted them as it was hard to see what was done). Luckily the plastic was still available and we picked it up the day before Thanksgiving.

All was going fine until we had a winter storm on the 22nd-23rd of December. The wind was too much and once it started to flap the plastic it was pretty much curtains. I got the call from bossman on Christmas morning that the top shredded on the 24th. I told him he should have called me then as I would have came out and tried to tape it up before it got worse. The damage had been done, so this is what it looked like on the 26th:

It would have been time to clean the greenhouse out anyway so I worked on that for a couple hours until it was sorta cleaned, then taped some of the plastic top to the ridgepole and hoops.

Three days later it was safe enough to venture out on the roof so I took a pic of the greenhouse from above:

That held okay till early March when it was very windy and cold and snowy almost every day. Remember when I did the greenhouse the last time - it was the beginning of March. Not happening this year. The weather finally broke the third week in and I immediately went to work shoveling it out. North side wasn't too bad (with my two shovels of choice for jobs like this):

The South side would require a lot of elbow grease:

I got rid of the snow on the table tops and some of the drift down the north walkway:

The South walkway was mostly clear as I kept up with the shoveling on that side:

I removed part of the plastic along the North side but couldn't do it all because there was still some stubborn ice on the ground:

And like I said before, it took a ton of work to shovel out the South side so I was in no condition to do any more work after that:

The next day I shoveled out the inside of the greenhouse which was also a big chore:

There was a lot of ice under the snow but I was able to get the steel shovel underneath it and pry it all up somehow. The next day was sunny and a little bit warmer so I was able to remove most of the remaining ice along the South side and took part of the plastic down too:

There was still snow in the forecast so I kept part of the plastic intact as a barrier to that. A week later and I had bossman get 16 new slats for the long sides of the greenhouse as some were either moldy or starting to rot (or both). I had a little time and pre-drilled the holes, then set it out in the sun to dry out (green treated lumber has a tendency to ship soaking wet sometimes):

So that was March in a nut shell. Next post will be April fixins.

- Zombie

[Space Voyager]

Damn, looks pretty severe. And it seems as if you had a premonition of things to come - the tables and benches with your new coating went through the ordeal more or less unharmed!

I'd try to go for something more stable/tough though. Probably a pretty big investment but this can repeat itself every year...