[whulsey]

I posted some photos of the house I bought last spring in the Cats thread showing what I hoped to build for them there. Kevin WS asked to see more and since I was going to post about it here goes. Almost thought about putting it in the Other Things We Do section since this is about all I've been doing for the last 5 months. Almost no modeling and why I haven't been here much. 1st shoot is looking down driveway to garage-laundry-workshop. 2nd looking down street to north. The stacks are the Freeport-McMoRan copper smelter on the hill on the north side of Hwy 60. My street deadends into 60 across from the entrance to it. 3rd looking south to the last 3 houses on the street. See the cactus patch on the left side. A few nights ago when I was there walked out to make a call (my cell doesn't work in the house). Was pacing around when I heard a buzzing and immediately started looking around. Luckily I was already moving away for it since it was the biggest rattlesnake I ever seen out in the wild. Probably 5 inches around and at least 4 ft long. I preceded to move on and let him have the patch. My neighbor to the south said last year she saw 3 in her back yard that had come down off the hill side. The 4th shot is from the hill side looking east, but still in the 'civilized' part. Will wait for cold weather to explore that area on up.

The 1st thing was there was no shut off valve for the water from the street meter, common on old houses here. So digging up to have one put in discovered that it was the old black iron pipe that had just about rusted apart. Already knew there was one leak under the house, so decided to bite the bullet and have it replumbed up to the under sink level with copper. To save some money I did all the digging and filling. That's when I discovered an old open top cesspit that had been covered over and disconnected, so decided to fill it as part of the project. The place had been a rental for several years so imagine somewhere along the line, the state nailed the owner since these are illegal now.

More later so I'm not boring everybody to sleep with this 'adventure in renovation'.