Letterboxing!!

We are TOTALLY stoked about this new hobby we just discovered!!

I was chatting with my pastor the other day and he told me that his family does this thing called Letterboxing. He told me to Google it to learn more. (since his wife, who is really the one who knows all about it, wasn't there to teach me!) I went and looked it up and found two sites for it:

Letterboxing North America (which covers all of the North American Continent, not just the USA)

and

Atlas Quest (which covers the whole world!)

So what is Letterboxing you ask? Well, I'm glad you're interested! Let me enlighten you on this totally awesome family hobby! (It's totally free too!!)

A letterbox is any kind of waterproof container that contains a rubber stamp and a logbook. Here are a couple examples of the ones we have found:

This one was in a heavy ziploc type bag.

This was just in a Tupperware container.

The stamp is the most important part of the letterbox. Most of them are hand carved and have some significance to the location or follow some sort of theme. The detail in some of them is absolutely amazing, there are some really talented artists out there! Check this one out:

When you find a Letterbox, you put the stamp in your logbook. We just used a three ring binder and blank paper for ours. Tammy had some page protectors for scrap-booking so we put the completed pages in those:

You also use your own stamp to stamp the logbook in the Letterbox and put whatever information you like in there. We put our names, the date, and where we are from.

Making a stamp was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I just carved it out of a big pink eraser with an X-acto knife and glued it to a small block of wood. There is a nice tutorial on how to do it on the Letterboxing North America website. Ours is pretty simple:

That's our trail name, the Schafer Snoopers!

I might try to make a nicer one sometime but for now we like this one! :)

Now, you're probably wondering how one goes about finding these Letterboxes. Never fear, I have been saving the best for last!

These things are hidden by people all over the world! People who have discovered Letterboxing make their own and hide them. They then post clues on the websites so people can go find them. Once you find it and do your stamping, you put it back where you found it for the next person to find. There are literally hundreds of thousands of them hidden around the world! They can be hidden in any publicly accessible location. In our first day of searching we visited a public library and found one hiding inside:

We went to several cemeteries to find them hidden in various locations. Some of them were placed in honor of a loved one even.

We also spent several hours hiking through the woods in a huge park to find some:

One of them was really hard to find but we managed to locate it tucked behind some loose bark on an ancient tree:

That's it peaking out right in the center of the picture!

Anyway, we spent an incredible day as a family, discovering new places and having tons of fun! It didn't cost us a dime (except for gas money and our lunch) but we loved it! We did it to celebrate Tammy's birthday and she said it was a wonderful way to celebrate!

This is an absolutely awesome hobby that anyone could enjoy, especially as a family! We intend to keep it up for a long time to come. We'll be hunting letterboxes when we go on vacation and any time we have an afternoon to spend together! You just can't beat it! At least that's my opinion! :)

So have any of you heard of this?

Roof - Phase Two

So, now it's time to get rid of the unsightly flat roof over my garage!

I don't like flat roofs because they are the most likely type of roof to leak and they just don't look right on a house! So, when I decided to re-roof the house I figured I might as well frame in the garage roof so it matched the rest of the house.

I started out by building trusses to match the existing roof. I could have bought pre-made trusses but it would have cost about three times as much and been really hard to get a perfect match so I decided to build them myself.

Then it was just a matter of putting the plywood on and closing up the end and presto! a new look for my garage!

This was the most fun of the whole roofing process and was also the least exhausting! I have always enjoyed framing but I hate roofing with a passion! :)

Now, you guessed it, I have a time lapse video of this process. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera went dead and I managed to miss a couple of pretty good chunks but it is still fun to watch! :)

So now all that's left is getting the rest of the shingles done!

Roof - Surprise

Well, I know I'm way behind on posting the progress on my roof but I'm getting there!

If you read my Phase One post you saw that I was presented with a little surprise when I was working on the back section of that end of the house!

This was supposed to be the easiest section of roof. The plan was that Tammy and I would work together pulling the shingles off and then she would work on pulling the nails out and getting it cleaned up and ready for the new shingles.

In the mean time, I was going to tear off this little ugly awning that had become quite an eyesore as well as a trap for cobwebs and stray leaves.

Everything was going great until I got the awning torn off. I discovered that the original flashings were installed wrong and had been allowing water to work its way down under the shingles and behind the siding.and into the wall over top of this sliding door! I literally could poke my finger through the plywood on the outside of the wall it was so rotted! I had to tear the entire top of the wall apart so I could rebuild it! Fortunately it was only rotted above the door so I didn't have to go down the sides at all which would have been really hard to do!

That wood you see behind that plastic sheeting is the back of the paneling inside the house! For once I was thankful to not have drywall in there or it would have been a much bigger mess to repair. I was able to rebuild the wall and nail the paneling back in place and be done! I still need to do a little more repair work on the outside and get the siding back up but the wood is solid now so I'm pretty happy!

Thankfully, this was the last surprise I was faced with while doing this roofing project! I'd love to get a hold of the roofers who re-roofed this house about 12 years ago and strangle them for not fixing the flashing the way it should have been instead of leaving it there even though it was wrong! Of course, based on the quality of the workmanship I saw everywhere else, I'm not surprised that they didn't care!

So the next step is framing in the garage roof to eliminate the flat roof and make it peaked to match the rest of the house!!

Roof - Phase One

Well, I figured it was time to explain why I haven't been around the blog-sphere very much lately. I have been spending most of my free time getting a tan on my roof! :)

Seriously, I have a darker tan than I've had in years!! :)

Well anyway, If you have read these two posts you know that I had to rebuild my porch because of water damage. That damage was due to the roof leaking so the real project was to re-roof the house to stop that from happening again to my pretty new porch!

So, this was how I spent my holiday on July 4th! I woke up and got an early start, intending to make short work of this front section of roof: (Short was the desire but not the reality!)

First, the shingles came off and I pulled the thousand or so nails that remained sticking out of the roof:

Then the bottom row of plywood had to be removed because that was where the leaking had been and it was rotted out:

Then I had to repair the rotted rafters:

Then after getting some new plywood in place I was finally able to start putting down the new shingles:

And finally, the finished product:

Now I say "finished" but this is just the first section.

If you notice, we changed the color of the roof from red to this nice gray-blue. It just makes sense since the trim, the posts, and the doors are blue, right? Well, the truth is, we changed that stuff from red to blue a few years ago so it is nice to get the roof to match once again!

Now for the fun part! I set up my timelapse video camera to catch the whole process! I wanted a good vantage point, so despite Tammy's fears of me getting myself killed, I mounted it way up on a telephone pole!

The second half of this video is a bit boring because it is of a different day when we were doing a small section on the back and you can't really see it very much. Not to mention that while I was working on that section I found another place where there had been a leak and I ended up spending most of the day tearing out and rebuilding a rotted out section of wall! But that's a story for my next post.

You'll notice that Tammy came up and started helping me when I was about half-way done with the shingles on the front. She did this because I was so exhausted by the time I got that far that she faced her fear of heights and helped me finish! She has continued to be a huge help as this project continues and I am very thankful for her!

Enjoy the video:

So there you have it! Isn't it crazy the lengths to which people will go to get a tan?

Tying Up Loose Ends

Well if you read my post on Leaving Things Hanging, you saw that my front porch was in need of some help, like this:

Well, I had to rebuild the beam to give the poles something to do so Tammy helped me get it put back together:

The poles were really happy to be holding something up again. But the ceiling was needing some attention as well:

I had to add 2x4s crosswise to support more 2x4s running lengthwise to support the vinyl soffit. Finally I got aluminum bent to cover the beam, put the gutter back up and installed the soffit back in place. It looks a lot better now:

It's a happy porch now!

And now just one more picture of Tammy helping me so very much!

She really is a LOT of help, even if she sometimes just stands there looking beautiful! :)


Now for the roof itself.......

Leaving Things Hanging

It's never a good idea to leave things hanging is it?

Well, I've really left things hanging here!

I am getting ready to re-roof the house but before I could start I had to repair some water damage that had happened over the porch. It should have been quick and easy but as with everything, it blossomed into a much bigger job than I anticipated!

I'm going tomorrow to get the lumber to build a new beam but until then, I guess I'm letting it all hang out there! :)

Hopefully by the end of the weekend this section will be all done and re-roofed! But then I'll have the rest of the roof to do!

To Be Continued.....

I'm officially a published author!!

OK, I confess I cheated a little bit.

I used Kindle Direct Publishing.

But it's still publishing! So I'm counting it! :)

*   *   *   *   *

So here it is! It's just a short story but it's a start!

If you want to check it out, here it is in the US Kindle store, here is the UK store, and here is the DE store.

You don't have to have a Kindle to read it, you can download the Kindle for PC software for free!

So anyway, I was excited so I thought I'd share my excitement with the people I knew would be most likely to share it! :)

I am working on doing a re-write on Just A Piece Of Trash and then I'll have to get the formatting done so I can submit it as well. Who knows where I'll go from there! I have all kinds of ideas floating around in my head, so I'll just have to grab one and go for it!


 I would also like to say thank you to all of you who have encouraged me so much in my writing and gave me the incentive to keep at it and give this a try!

You Guys Are GREAT!!!

The King Size Sandbox

I built a sandbox for my kids a few years ago.

A BIG SANDBOX!!!

When I was a kid we had a nice size sandbox and all of the neighborhood kids loved playing in it with us! My dad built it for us out of sandstone and it even had a little roof over it and everything. We spent many very happy hours playing in it.

So I wanted my kids to have that as well. But as in everything it seems, I had to make it BIG!! :)

Yep, I said big. 10' long, 5' wide and 16" deep.
Oh yeah, it holds 2 tons of sand!

So anyway, I built it several years back and got it filled up with sand but guess what? When kids play in a sandbox the sand seems to slowly disappear! So this year it needed a fresh filling, so Tammy and the kids shoveled what was left of the old sand out and got it cleaned up and ready for the first load.

It's hard to see but there is a little bank that makes
it interesting to get the truck up to the end this way!

Oh yeah, I have a really cool gadget called a LoadHandler! :)

So the first load is unloaded it's off to the gravel yard for load #2!

So while I'm off getting the second load, let me tell you about my back yard. From the back of the house there is about 40' and then a drop off into some woods. (That's the trees you see in the left hand side of the pictures. The small bank in these first pictures cuts across from the back corner of my garage back to the woods. At the other end of the house is another bank that does the same thing but is about 8' high and quite steep. (It's a bear to mow!)

Being the perfectionist that I am, (despite there being no room to move in the back yard on a bicycle let alone in a full size pickup) I had to attempt to get the second load of sand into the empty end of the sandbox so this is what I ended up doing to achieve that:

It took about 20 minutes of maneuvering to do this during which time,
Tammy was cringing every time I came within 3" of hitting the house!
(Which was quite often!)

Well, we got all the sand in the box where it belonged, got the truck out of the back yard and with the exception of a few tire tracks in the grass, there was no harm done!

And now we have a very happy little boy!

OK, make that two happy little boys!

I love tunnels! :)

So there you have it! One big sandbox, 2 tons of sand, some beat up trucks, cars, and other toys, and a whole summer of fun!! What could be better? Well, maybe the GIANT slip-n-slide I'm going to put up but I'll save that for another post! :)