grouting stairs

How do I grout the tiles on the stairs? There is no room for a float and the wood trim that goes around tile sticks out so using a float is almost impossible anyway. The first stair took forever and I was at a loss. I wanted refillable caulk tubes. Deb found some online and they claimed they were reusable. I bought 2 (large) and they are not reusable not to mention they were not plastic and would degrade with grout and cleaning even if it was possible to get the plunger thing out. The cost of those damn tubes was outrageous:
$6.67 for the tubes
$9.00 for handling
approx $7.00 for shipping
It worked though - problem was I didn't have enough tubes.

I bought 2 packs (4 tubes/pack) of caulk at Menards and threw out the caulk, got the end caps (plunger) out and washed them. These tubes are reusable (plastic). To get the plunger out I had to cut the tip to make a bigger hole than I wanted so I saved one tube just for the tip so that I could slide it over my to big hole in the tube to make a smaller hole. Today I did a test run and it worked perfectly.

The tube






These are the stairs I did with the first tube we bought online

newell posts

I have started the trim on the newell posts. The 'skirts' on the bottom are almost done which is what these pictures are. I made a prototype (forgot to take pics) of the cap but its a work in progress. Not 100% happy with the cap design so I need to play with it more.

kitchen table

A couple of weeks ago I was home for a few days and made our table. Deb and I designed it by the campfire on a Wednesday and it was done except for the finishing less than a week later. Its obviously finished now - just need chairs.

The table is alternating cherry and ash strips while the legs are 2 cherry strips sandwiched between ash strips.

a simple math lesson

square footage of the earth (approx) - 5,490,300,420,633,600.00 sf
daily lightning strikes (approx) - 8,640,000 strikes/day

square foot per lightning strike - 635,451,438

assuming strike area of a Suburu Forester is 225 SF (15 ft by 15 ft)

probability of a lightning strike on any given day assuming that any portion of the earth is as likely to be struck: 1/2,824,229

Deb finally got her Suburu back after its lightning strike on or about July 5th - it only took 5 weeks

Maybe Deb should buy some lottery tickets:)