Celebrating Independence My Way

My hat's off to Matay for his Projects


This is the lamest July 4th Weekend ever. I used to party and stuff.
Yesterday, between the kids and I, we filled 3 trash-bags of clothes for the Salvation Army and then I put a huge dent in the ole basement project. Rock on.

Today started out slow and developed into productive.
First, The Wife suggested we put Cajun out in the sunshine, it’s good for his shell and skin. Cajun's the turtle I accidently dug up at Barksdale AFB during a water main project. (When red earred slider turtles are still in the egg in the fall, they stay in the egg, hibernate, then hatch and dig their way out in the spring. We accidently dug his ass up in late November, so I kept him and brought him to Montana to live with us.)

I had some scrap plywood in the garage, so I built a little box to stop Cajun from venturing too far. By the time I had it done, there was a good amount of my tools in the backyard, so I decided to bring all my tools from the basement and garage to one area to consolidate, streamline, and organize. This required cleaning off the garage work bench...

While separating tools from non-tools, I got a couple of garbage bags going. Wow, some bare workbench. Sweet. Why stop here...

All my tools were in one place for the first time since we moved here. Embarrassing. Anyway, with this almost clean work bench, I figured, why not clear this whole work bench and tear this mother down? The work bench needed to come out when we moved on my mid-tour and I had to store the pedal boat in the garage for the winter, so take it out now...

After building the Small Wall of China for Cajun, tearing down two 4’ x 4’ peg-boards and getting my huge L-Shaped workbench 99% disassembled the battery in my Hilti Drill finally died. It wasn’t fully charged at the start. In to the charger, I planned on where the pedal boat would go, and then where the peg boards would go back up.

With the battery charged up, I took the last few screws out to complete the workbench removal, stowed the plywood and 2x4 sections neatly, and re-hung the peg boards. It’s funny that by removing a workbench I can gain extra space for pedal boat storage. This bench was huge. Bad part of a huge workbench is the ability to accumulate crap on it. A lesson learned, a productive day.

So I am celebrating my Independence from "Clutter."
Tomorrow is started by 2 or 3 trips to the dumpster. I’ll snap a few photos of my work and sneak them inside this post, so check back if you have nothing better to do.