Month: January 2018

Day 13, I was not much help

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I really wanted to help, as completing the kitchen is the new goal, but I was not very good help today. Mr Experience was not coming out till the afternoon so I had plans to fix the front fence in the slim hope that it would contain Zeke and to drag the barn lot and horse area for poop. I was waiting for it to dry out for just a few days to make this task easier.

Last night it started to poor down rain and did not let up today. So I ended up putting on all my water resistant, as there is no true water proof clothing and proceeded to head out and fix that front fence. Annmarie doesn’t want me adding any boards to impede our view so I ended up install some upright eye bolts in some of the posts and got another strand of wire six inches higher than it was. I hope this is high enough to deter the dog. I also installed inline tighteners and made that wire tight! It is so tight when I came by later this afternoon I heard the wire singing in the wind.

Mr Experience got done early so I took a break and went and picked him up. I finished the front fence and drug the horse poop out of the barn lot with the tractor. It is so messy and muddy. After the poop was gone I dumped some more 3/4 minus gravel to keep the water away from their feet. We dig out their hooves nightly.

It was past lunch time so I went inside to eat and as I am zapping leftovers in the microwave I notice the back creek running! Now this is a bad thing as it means I must go out immediately and move the fence off of the creek crossings. We have had so much rain that the ground simply cannot absorb any more. So I sit down to eat lunch and notice the wet spot on the floor in the living room by the freestanding propane heat stove. I was informed there is a leak in the ceiling! I popped ceiling tiles out until we figured it was leaking around the vent pipe. So now I need to get access to the stove pipe without falling off the roof. I still finished my lunch and went up to the master bedroom. The roof vent is reachable from our window I just need to pop the screen out and lean out the window a few feet. I got some 100% clear silicone caulk and a couple of rags and some tools and Mr Experience. After the porch incident I was not hanging out the window without someone to catch me or hold onto my feet. Turns out I didn’t need any help but I made sure he was right there just in case. I am still dressing my left shin every day and the front of my neck feels like someone throat punched me several times. My back and shoulders don’t even bother me any more. We lit the stove to heat up the caulk in an attempt to get it to dry faster. I will keep the stove going all night.

I went outside finally and started lifting panels off the creek bottom. I hang them in the air. At two crossings I had to dig out the pile of tumbleweeds as they cause dams. I picked up some trash along the creek and down near four corners I found a small old shelter that someone built out of a cardboard box and some remants for a cat. Who does this on someone else’s property? Please don’t throw away your unwanted animals, be they cats, dogs, raccoons, possums, or skunks. We don’t want them either and depending on how they interact with the livestock or chickens they may not live long. I will need another teenager to troll the creek banks and do some cleanup this spring and summer.

On the way back to the house I stopped by the machine shed to drop off two large containers when I heard a noise. I thought it was Bob, our adopted cat we started in the shop. Nope, it was the barn owl!! It was up in the rafters above the hay flitting from one end to the other. It didn’t want to go out in the rain. I left it alone after dropping off the buckets, it was too dark for a picture.

I went through three pair of gloves today trying to keep my hands dry. It didn’t work, they kept getting soaked. I am definitely going to have to dig out the irrigation ditch again soon and install both of the culverts. That needs to happen if it doesn’t freeze in the next two weeks.

I felt so guilty about not helping Mr Experience today that I spent an hour tonight scraping up the floor and prepping it for wonderboard tomorrow. It should not take us long before we start laying board. We will need to move the safe out first! That will be a challenge. Annmarie and I emptied the rain gauge tonight and dumped out 1.9 inches of rain out and it is raining again.

Bonus room, kitchen demo in progress

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We took the plunge today and started tearing up the kitchen floor. It’s do or die time. I have 11 days before I have to be back to work. We need to be complete and still have 72 hours to let the grout cure then clean it up and after that put the kitchen back together. It will be tight. I think only five more days on the kitchen to finish the floor but we only have half a day tomorrow. Like I said it is going to be real close.

There were a few challenges today. The floor is very well attached and we are only ripping up one layer of floor so we will be at the same floor height as the rest of the house. We will most likely have to mix up some mud to float the subfloor in so there is no give to the floor. We have to install kickboards under the new cabinets and the stove top cabinet. Luckily, there is enough room in the dishwasher hole to tile under the dishwasher. This will make it much easier to slide in a new one when this one dies.

I was using my new fancy Makita Multitool to scrape the subfloor and was working next to the wall trying to get some flooring up and suddenly saw a spark and smelled smoke. I was able to reach under the wall with the scraper on the multitool and cut into the wire feeding the outlet. It tripped the breaker so now I will need to replace the wire. I was able to do this because there used to be a doorway in the wall where I was working. One more thing to fix. I have a light socket not functioning in one of my fancy stained glass lights in the living room also. I am hoping it just came unwired and will be an easy fix.

You cannot tell but I spent an hour vacuuming and cleaning up the floor. Its still not safe to walk on without a hard soled shoe. There are screws sticking up everywhere. Mr. Experience had to leave just after lunch so I vacuumed the whole house and cleaned up our mess. We are currently working around the safe. I am still offering $100 crisp new bill to anyone that can open the safe and tell us the combination they used. We are pretty sure its empty but we would like to use the safe and these old safes can be very pretty inside.

It was time to feed the cows today. Now that we have two feeders I only need to give them food every two weeks. This is actually very nice. I am not sure it is $500 nice for the feeder but now that we have it I like it.

I went out and drug the driveway with the box blade. I am attempting to fill in the pot holes and break down the washboard effect occurring in our driveway. I also had to throw down more straw in the barn as the rain all day yesterday caused the barn to be fairly wet from all the sheep traffic in and out. The babies are getting big and cute. We will be tagging and banding the last of the group this weekend. Annmarie and I think that our old #1 ewe is still pregnant. I think she has 2-4 weeks to go before she has any babies. She must not have liked the old ram. She is our oldest ewe in the entire herd. Super friendly, but no longer the boss, that belongs to the dark brown ewe now.

Day 11 and I did not die

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Since finishing the floor 24 hours ago the ventilation return has become an even worse eyesore than normal. It just stands out and draws your eye right to it. We had been talking about creating a wooden box, then a cabinet then shelves and I had finally settled back on the box idea. We worked on the furniture this morning after trying to clean the floor with our Kirby. It did good on the grout older than 72 hours but the living room was only 48 hours and it started to lift the epoxy grout so we stopped. Mr. Experience spent some time cleaning up the edges of the room. We decided to get the furniture fixed and back into the living room.

Gizmo and Mouse had chewed off the fabric on the bottom of the couches. So we decided to install 3/16 plywood on the bottom and then put some kind of frame on the bottom to keep the dog toys from getting trapped under the couches. There must have been 30 toys stuck under the couches when we moved them. I was just going to build a square frame and lay it on the floor. This idea was vetoed by both involved parties and it was decided we would attach them to the furniture. This took a while to cut them to size and install screw plates inside the bottom of the furniture. We also had to reattach the middle front leg of the couch as it had come unstapled. You do not want to look inside your $1000+ couch and see how much OSB and air is inside your furniture and how little real wood is used.

While Mr Experience was finishing putting the last few screws in the furniture I decided to go out side and get started on the box enclosure for the air intake. I just needed a sheet of Oak plywood from the old house porch. The only problem with this is we have been storing all the plywood and hardiboard for our current project in front of the sheets of plywood I wanted. Also, the sheet I wanted is a full sheet of 3/4 inch oak plywood and it is very heavy. There were over 20 sheets of hardiboard plus multiple sheets of plywood in my way. I knew I just needed to lean them out and then slip out the very heavy sheet I needed. I contemplated getting help from Mr. Experience but shook it off. I attempted to lean out the boards but was unsuccessful due to their weight. I gave it one more try knowing that if they came too far over I would be in trouble. Well I gave a little too much effort and the pile started to come over onto me. I pushed away and leaped backwards. The bad part was I was 3 feet up on a porch and leaped backwards. I landed on the grass head first smashing the back of my head first then shoulders and back. The pile caught my left shin on the way out. I have a large hematoma and scrape. I had a large mass of tissue balled up at the end of the scrape under the skin. I reached up and massaged all the tissue flat and spread out. It did not feel good, but nothing did. I didn’t black out and managed to roll around on the ground and swear for about five minutes before I managed to get up and head into the house. Mr Experience had heard the commotion but just thought it was me yelling at the dogs and convinced himself there was no need to check on me. He went out and straightened out the pile and pulled out the necessary wood. Gizmo had not been able to get to the stove for 3 days and decided that this location was vital to his wellbeing and I would be fine.

We got the box built, screwed and glued together. I will be covering the screws with 3/8 inch dowels. We counter drilled the holes so I could come back and fill them in. Mr Experience told us that we could order a decorative intake. So today we ordered a wooden oak grate cover. It will be here in several weeks and I will stain everything the same color as the stairs. In the mean time I will need to sand down the entire box and fill the holes.

I think I will live but I am very glad I did not get my leg trapped under the pile of wood or I am sure it would have turned out much differently. For now I am able to walk and only have a small limp.

Day 10 and rockstars we are!

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It is an amazing accomplishment, we are done with the planned tiling that had an allotted 24 days to complete on day 10. I never could have done this without Mr Experience. He has been invaluable and I have learned more about laying tile. We will probably be the only ones that notice the errors. We do have several of them. The grouting is done and now we are going to give the grout its 72 hours to cure.

We are taking tomorrow off from house remodeling. I will be doing some outside work if it doesn’t rain. The tile looks great. Now I am going to have to get the box built around the air intake. It stands out like a crappy metal box amidst that beautiful floor. That will be a priority, I have already started to plan it in my head. I need to build it about 50 times in my head in a variety of ways before I find one I like.

All I wanted last night was to go to bed and be asleep by 2100. I was exhausted! No one else was onboard with this plan. The big dogs had to sleep in the laundry room as they could not walk up to their kennels. The outsides cats started to throw a hissy fit then they started to fight then they started to scream. I finally got up around 2135 and ran outside with my Walther P-22 and found nothing. I could hear something so I turned the dogs loose in the yard. They tore around the yard and didn’t find anything but their mere presence quieted the night. I went back to bed and fell asleep until Annmarie called me slightly tipsy and wanting to talk. She had gone to dinner with school friends at the end of her week long intensive. I finally got to sleep around 2300. When my alarm went off at 0500 I could not remember why I had it set so early and fell back asleep. At 0600 when I did get up I remembered that I needed to brown the mutton (ram meat) for the slow cooker so we could eat it for lunch. I did this and at lunch we ate the ram in tacos. It was amazing! He tasted very good.

Day 9, grouting is gonna take a few days

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Well we are well underway and it will not all be done by tomorrow. We needed to take it slow and steady to make sure it is done right. I figure two more days to complete the entire living room/dining room area. The picture below has the first three boards all the way across the wall grouted and complete. We will move the couch and dining room table out of the kitchen tomorrow. This will make cooking and moving around in the kitchen much easier. After finding the 50 dog toys trapped under the couch and loveseat we are making a 2×4 frame to sit under the furniture that stops the toys from rolling or being pushed under the couch. I am using waterproof deck stain on the boards and will cut them to form a square under the furniture so you won’t really see them. I stained them today so we could make them tomorrow. We are also installing 1/4 inch plywood onto the bottom of our couch and loveseat to cover the torn cloth and again prevent any further damage to the furnishings. The couch is made out of OSB and stapled together! We have to reattach a support leg in the middle of the couch also. It is cheaply made but not cheap to purchase, go figure.

I was able to get the lip completed on Annmarie’s cutting board so she will now be able to use it as a bread board also. It works great with just a 1/4 inch board on the underside to prevent the board from slipping when placed on the edge of the countertop. I glued it and placed the five 1/4 inch walnut pegs yesterday. Today I cut them flush, sanded it down and wiped the whole board down again with olive oil. I really need to get my wood shop up and going.

Zeke got out of the yard again and ran down to mother-in-law’s house to dig through her trash. I went down to get him after she stopped by and he snuck up to the house through the dry creek bed. She had the trash picked up by the time I got there to do it. He stayed on the run all day. I really need to get the front fence fixed but I want the floor done first! We are taking Sunday off and I will probably go out and fix the fence and drag the driveway with the tractor if it is above freezing. Our driveway is starting to fill up with lots of water filled potholes.

There is snow up in the mountains but none down at our house. I thought I saw snowflakes hitting the windshield last night but it never did anything or showed up on the ground.