Deconstructing a swimming pool

We had a busy weekend so far. We are catching up on chores – Susanna and Izzy were sick most of the week. And I’ve been falling behind on the small chores. In addition to small chores, we started helping my uncle take down his pool today – we will move the pool to our yard in the spring. We will have to get a new liner, but we should be able to salvage the rest of the equipment and enough decking to complete the project.

Susanna working on cleaning out water from the old swimming pool prior to taking it down.
Susanna working on cleaning out water from the old swimming pool before taking it down.  Looking good in the boots!

In addition to the swimming pool (which too most of today), I was able to replace the well pressure tank on Friday night. The old tank had a leak in the bladder and required constant refilling of the compressed air in the tank.

With a big yard, it is difficult to get WiFi around the whole property. And with a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old (and two adults that also spend way too much time on the Internet) it was time to update the access point. I ordered an access point that I could install on the exterior of the house and had enough signal strength to cover the entire inside of the house. Getting a good access point (EnGenius ENS1750) makes a huge difference in speed and range.  I got the access point attached and the Ethernet cable run before dinner tonight. I do still need to clean up the wiring in the basement, but that will be for tomorrow.

Tomorrow will involve more yard chores and hopefully some workshop time.

Isabella watching Susanna clean the pool. Clearly very exciting!
Isabella watching Susanna clean the pool. Clearly very exciting!

Photo Challenge (Red)

This weekend’s focus for the boys and me is the color red. We decided to dress up Isabella in a red dress and see what we got. It will be interesting to see what the boys decide to use for their posts today. This is after a little playing around with Adobe Lightroom. I think I could have gotten the reds to look a little better, but time to do chores now.

Red dress.
Red dress.

Playing with the new camera

I decided to upgrade from the iPhone and family point-and-shoot camera. I originally wanted an intro level SLR, but instead decided on a Sony Alpha A5000 mirrorless camera – more compact than a DSLR with nearly the same quality. Ben and I have been playing around a bit with the camera – he posted a picture on his blog earlier this weekend. Here are two pictures that I was playing around with today. As a side note – taking pictures in RAW format and editing them on Lightroom is a significant improvement from editing JPEGs on GIMP. The only downside is that Lightroom doesn’t natively run on Linux and we only have Linux machines running right now.

Will working on sanding the legs for the bed frame he and I are making together. Always happy to be the subject of the camera.
Will working on sanding the legs for the bed frame he and I are making together. Always happy to be the subject of the camera.
Flower from the year (taken in the evening just after the sun set).
Flower from the year (taken in the evening just after the sun set).