09:28 – 9/11, a date that will live in infamy.
It was 51.7F (11C) when I took Colin out at 0700, overcast and breezy. Our forecast for this afternoon through tomorrow remains the same, heavy rains and strong winds, although from the weather radar it appears that former Hurricane Irma has become disorganized, crossed the Florida peninsula to the east coast, and is running up the Atlantic coast. Odd that the forecast track remains the same as it was.
Frances and Al came up Saturday morning and left to head back to Winston after dinner yesterday. Barbara and Al worked outside Saturday, getting the garden tilled and several rows of turnips planted. Sunday, Barbara and Frances got Barbara’s autumn decorations unpacked and put out, while Al and I installed more shelves in the downstairs food area.
We installed Spur slotted shelving tracks and snap-in shelf supports that we’d brought up from the house in Winston. After we got the tracks installed, we put in shelf supports spaced to allow two #10 cans vertically on each shelf. What was odd was that all of the shelves but one indeed had plenty of vertical clearance for two #10 cans, but that one shelf was a slip-fit for two #10 cans. I’m not sure how that happened, since the vertical tracks have double sets of slots to hold the shelf brackets so there couldn’t have been any error in spacing.
The number and length of the 1X10’s we had on hand limited us to installing four 6-foot shelves, but even that gives us shelf space for another several dozen #10 cans. We ended up with six shelf brackets and four 6-foot vertical tracks unused. I may use those later to extend the shelves to 10 feet, although that’s not a priority. I may also replace the 1X10’s with 1X12’s, which are wide enough to allow #10 cans two-deep without staggering.
We’d originally bought the Spur tracks and brackets at Lowe’s or Home Depot, probably 15 years ago. When I searched their sites, I found that, although Spur is still in business in the UK, they apparently no longer have any vendors/distributors in the US. Fortunately, a US company called Knape and Vogt makes shelf brackets and other components that are supposedly compatible with the Spur products.
Oh, and once again I learned the danger of assuming. Among the stuff I intended to transfer to the new shelving was a case of Costco coffee, which I assumed were #10 cans. Not so. They LOOK like #10 cans, but they’re slightly taller (#11?). So they won’t stack two-high with the current shelf spacing. When I mentioned it to Barbara, she said she’d known they weren’t #10 cans, just by looking at them.
13:56 – We just started seeing the first effects of Irma: a torrential sprinkle and hideous winds gusting up to maybe 5 MPH. I’m not sure we’ll be able to hold out.