Plodding Along

The last week has been one of painting windows, doors, their frames, and the pine boards above the windows for the curtain rails.  They all require sanding, one coat of primer, and two coats of enamel.  It is slow work because there is a lot of "cutting", which is the freehand painting along edges.  I should be through this phase in a few days then will resume painting of the office, hall, and sitting room walls, which I will find more satisfying because the bigger results.

Bumper Removed

Before Installation

Ready to Begin

Installation Complete

I should be in position to begin working on the floors by 1 May, which will give me a good chance to be able to move into the house by 1 June. 

In the meantime I was able to install a nudge bar on the X-Trail with the indispensable help of Stephen.  Nissan wanted $1200 for a new nudge bar and Stephen located one at the web site of Tony's Auto Wreckers at Midvale, between Darlington and Midland for only $275. 

Stephen and I did some investigation on the Net and were able to download installation instructions with the comforting statement that the task would be moderate to easy, and require 2-3 hours.  It took us 10 hours of slow and methodical work to do the job.  We had to drill 4 holes through metal uprights and two more through the plastic bumper without the aid of the templates that accompany a new bar, so we had to be very careful.

The result was very good, as the photo shows.

At this point I have added the "extras" that I wanted for my $9000 car: a dash mat ($65), a full set of seat covers for the leather seats ($200), a cargo blind at $475, and the nudge bar. 

I then spent 3 days on the annual olive picking.  This year's suburban olive crop is not as good as last year's, more people are picking olives, and we were frustrated by finding that others had beat us to good trees that we had earmarked; but we managed to pick our target of 700 kg in only 3 days instead of the planned 4 days.  The team included Coral, her son David and his wife Daria, Jodi, a family friend, Gina from across the street, and Brenda, Stephen, and myself.

Coral and Son David

More Olives, and Containers for Oil

Olives Nicely Lashed Down

Unloading at the Olive Press

For David, Daria, and Jodi this was their first experience at picking olives but they learned fast.  On the second day David, a rigger by trade, was working much higher than the rest of us dared, and Jodi was standing at the top platform of her ladder, with no balancing help from the ladder, picking away.

The picking, by the way, is done with small plastic rakes which we pull down along the branches to loosen the olives, which drop onto tarps that we have put all around the base of the tree.  When the picking is finished we use the tarps to pour the olives into large buckets.

My third day of participation was Thursday, when my task was to drive Coral's station wagon to pull neighbour Horrie's trailer full of olives for crushing at Jumanga Olives (http://www.jumangaolives.com.au/about-us/) near Yanchep, about 30 miles to the north.  We also had more olives in crates inside the station wagon.

Coral had booked the crushing for 700 kg of olives and we in fact delivered 680 kg.  Out of that we got 15% oil, yielding 106 liters of fresh top quality olive oil that cannot be purchased in the store.  The crushing cost, by the way, was $0.44 per kg of olives.