People Come and Make Things
Still not back to a regular posting schedule as we’re still smack in the middle of summer projects. But while that is going on, we…
Author: stega
Fires to the North, Fires to the South
Purgatory is in California, and both ends of the state and the Central Valley are currently burning. The comprehensive map can be found here. It has…
Purgatory got an upgrade
The primary inspection Purgatory had to undergo while in escrow was verifying that we could get decent network connectivity living halfway up a mountain. The previous…
How to safely remove a skunk from your cat trap
Step 1: Get to know your skunk. Sit calmly about five to ten feet away and be sure you are in its field of view.…
More Kitchen Chairs
While rebuilding the Great Wall last year, Agent Smith’s father took some time to refinish the kitchen table and chairs. In September of this year,…
Year in Review
Yesterday I posted a video of which I actually had very little to do with the creation. Photos (the Apple software app) popped up a…
Third Christmas @Purgatory
Today was our third winter holiday at the ranch. Once again it was a quiet day, and after spending yesterday doing some work outside, we…
Knobbly Bits
When we had the linen hallway painted, all the cabinet and drawer pulls had to be removed, and when our painters took things apart they…
Finishing Touches in the North Hallway
Once the north hallway was painted and everything put back in place, I worked with a consultant from Blinds.com to find a solution to screen…
Painted Hallway and Bath
After just a few days the painters were done, and I spent a day putting things back together–books on the bookcases, rocks in the china…
Impromptu Painting
While we waited and waited for the new Studio windows to be manufactured and shipped out, I used the down time to have the same…
Patching and Studio Speaker Removal
While waiting on the new windows to replace the pseudo-windows the Previous Owners jammed into place because they were either too cheap to have the…
Blooms Around Purgatory
It’s been a while since a post with pictures of flowers here at the ranch has gone up:
Tree Removal
In August I started interviewing arborists, as we want to have a certified company come yearly to see to our trees. After meeting with a handful…
Studio Window and Door Kvetching
Who actually needs four separate doors into a building that is basically just two rooms? Well, apparently the POs did. Between building the studio in 1999…
Another Appliance Story
Since moving in, we have had issues on and off with the dishwasher. The POs remodeled the kitchen in late 2014/early 2015 to better their…
Studio With New Flooring
Once the prep work was complete, it was time to put in some tile–lots and lots of tile. Once the tiles were in place, the…
Studio Flooring Prep
Once everything was out of the studio and the materials for the new floors arrived, it was time to get to work. 1. First the…
Studio Prep
We wrote a while back about a flood in the studio building, and this past summer we started work not only repairing the damage, but…
More Administrative Stuff
Back in September, I posted about an unforeseen necessity of blogging so much about what we do here: keeping things organized. The growing catalog of…
Old Walkthroughs Back Up
When we killed off the iCloud photo stream, some content was misplaced, including the original walkthroughs we made back in September of 2015. I took…
The End of Jury Duty
Posting here took a back seat these last few weeks, as we were getting ready for winter and the rains it will bring (i.e., finishing…
Dogs gone a tad crazy? (Weekend Bonus Video)
Yesterday the neighbor’s dogs met our new dinosaur for the first time. For five minutes, two of them barked and carried on outside my office window.…
Something Wonderful Arrived
Over the last two years we’ve discussed finding a few dinosaur statues or sculptures to place at Purgatory. Well, to get to the point, our…
Summer Clean Up, Part 2
While we were busy with the boards, Agent Smith used Bambi to excavate debris buried beneath wood chips and other debris. While the wood chips…
Summer Clean Up, Part 1
We spent a few weekends this summer doing yet more clean up–would you believe there was even more random garbage scattered about by the previous…
Stuff on the walls
I’m dealing with jury duty this week, so while sitting among a few hundred strangers, I searched for some quick and easy things I could…
Second Purgatory Contest: And the Winner is…
Our second Purgatory contest has a winner! With an exact matching guess of 289, AV (who will be tagged when this is posted to Facebook)…
Steeling Ourselves, Part 3 of 3
The new steel ladders turned out better than we anticipated. Here are some more pictures of them. As you can see they go up and over…
Steeling Ourselves, Part 2 of 3
It took the crew from F&F Steel three days to get the ladders installed. They started off by getting the new ladder for the great room…