I bought a bottle of local single malt whiskey from this store, aptly named whiskey business:
Besides an excellent selection of whiskey, they also had some funny T-Shirts like this one:
This wouldn’t work in Amsterdam as Beer is actually the Dutch word for Bear.
So I had to get a cedar board to replace the one on the siding. As I only needed half of it, I was left with a piece of cedar. Combine that with nice weather and my fondness of making stuff from cedar, I made this little beer caddy
It fits a six pack of bottles or cans. I’m not likely to use it myself, as my beer usually goes directly from fridge to glass to mouth. Cheers 🍻
When I installed the rain gutter, it did not come with enough kit to prevent it from leaking a little at the seams. So as it’s nice weather, I decided to setup the scaffolding and fill the gaps from the inside of the gutter with some silicone kit.
It’s much easier to do this with the scaffolding.
The old Huntington grill that Mart gave me when he visited back in 2017 has finally given up. After replacing the burner, ignition and hose in March, it just wouldn’t burn anymore now. So it was time for an upgrade.
Kept it very modest, but this one does have three burners instead of two. And a temperature gauge and a tray to keep things warm.
But it’s stainless steel only for the front plates and the tray, so we will see if this one holds up 7 years too. First test will be tonight, Christmas Eve with a nice big steak. 🥩
Update: it’s officially approved. 🤠
The floating toilet upstairs somehow got its support frame inside the wall bent. I suspect someone with more weight than is healthy managed to do so. In order to prevent it from bending even further, I gave the toilet trunk support;
I used the part I cut out of the wall to put the pellet stove outlet, as that has about the same curve as the toilet bowl. Although it’s no longer floating, it will support even the heaviest people.
About 5 years back, there was a period with frost and the deck boards on the east side were snow/ice covered for a while. As the sun doesn’t reach there, these boards suffered more than on the other 2 decks. I replaced the boards worst damaged and gave them a Federal Blue stain coat.
The lighter ones have been replaced.
As you can see from the picture below, some really weren’t very solid anymore;
The siding boards were cut by the cabin builder Neil Buie, and some of those cedar boards weren’t top quality. So one decided to split in half. So today I replaced it with a new board.
It stands out now because it’s not stained, but as I’m out of stain that will be done next time I’m over, when I will probably give the logs a fresh coat of stain too
With the speakers being where they are, it was time for a home theater upgrade. The old 32 inch Samsung TV is now in the master bedroom. The new TV is 55″, which I felt was the best size considering the short viewing distance.
The TV can be rotated horizontally so that it’s good to watch from the couch and the chair.
The speakers received their first couple of coatings of paint;
It’s a satin gloss onyx color, which I chose to keep it in line with the pellet stove and TV colors. They will need a couple of more coatings to become evenly colored.
The speaker kit came with grill frames have rounded corners. There’s a groove routed into them and the speaker cloth is held in place with a string that is pushed into the groove. Six magnets in both the grill and cabinet (invisible as inserted from the inside of the cabinet) hold the grill in place
As I like the rounded corners, and don’t think a log home needs more “wood look” I will not veneer the cabinets, but chose to do some routing;
It gives the speakers a little “softer” look, and solves an issue I had with the corner of 2 panels being slightly damaged during transport of the kit to Ozuye.
After routing and sanding, it is now time for priming;|
Although the white makes a nice contrast with the black speakers and grill, the speakers stand out a lot like this and the white makes them look even bigger than they already are 
So the final color will be Onyx black. The first coating will go on later today, after sanding.