I told Annmarie I was going to clean the old house on Friday. This usually entails picking up all of my tools that are scattered on all horizontal surfaces and digging out the floor so you can actually see it. I like to put tools in a bucket for each job then I put the bucket in the old house. But I still had tools in boxes from the tile job this winter. I could not find a cordless drill, it was time. I was down to only one crescent wrench and it was a humongous one. My truest indicator of time to clean is when I run out of tape measures, crescent wrenches or a cordless tool I need is missing.
I decided that it was time to make forward momentum on the old house. I would like to set up the wood working area but I need the middle two rooms cleaned out so I can finish wiring the house. I need three 220V outlets, one for planer, one for joiner and one for a table saw. I will use my current 110V table saw for a while but eventually I would like to have a 220V. They don’t draw near as many amps as a 110V. I had some help lined up Thing 2 was coming as his brother was busy. Bubba is done for the summer, early retirement. So we started tearing into the back room of the old house. This is the room directly over the root cellar and was most likely the main living area. It has a hole for a chimney directly in the middle of the room, no cold spots in that room. We needed to empty it out first and it still had boxes from when we moved here 10 years ago. If we haven’t used it in that time we can probably get rid of it, was my mantra as we started emptying boxes. We laid out a large tarp on the lawn and started unwrapping all the stuff packed in the boxes. We ended up keeping two large moving boxes and one medium one. They had dishes and display items for our curio cabinets. We found the glass shelves for our large curio cabinet that has been living in the upstairs unfinished bathroom. A great score, now I just need to fix the one leg that broke off in the move. We found the naked ladies pictures! Another great find, we bought four prints of the four seasons, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall at an auction house when we were first married. They are a little scantily clad but wonderful pictures and usually reside in our guest bedroom but we have not been able to find them. I have dug through boxes twice over the years looking for them and never succeeded. I will be mounting them on the wall over the bed in the spare room this week.
We scored a lost grinder for the kitchen aid. We had replaced this already but will hold onto the spare as we may need it when grinding up our own meat. We scored a nice wedding picture I didn’t know we had. We lost most of our pictures to a water leak in one of our houses so it was a nice score. I found a couple of gifts to be for some difficult gift recipients.
Annmarie talked me into getting rid of the old 36″ screen door that has lived out there for eternity. I also found another 36″ white screen door that is brand new in the original box but cut open. We moved it from Moscow with us. We don’t have a single door it will work on, it went out to the tarp.
I had Thing 1 start in on the bathroom. It is the picture below. The story is that grandma lived out in this house after the main house was built. Grandpa lived upstairs in the main house. As she got older a bathroom and kitchen were added to the old house so she didn’t have to go outside and use the outhouse. It is piled full of old parts and boxes and boxes of old nails, at least 100-200# worth.
The old kitchen, above, is full of tires and I know there is at least one milk separator in there somewhere. The old sewing machine that I took apart fifteen years ago without marking anything is out there in a box also. I am going to get to that eventually.
As Thing 1 restocked all the wood I noticed the back of one of the door jambs was stamped with “Pilot Rock Lumber, Pilot Rock Oregon” stamp. This board is around 120 years old. It is amazing what you can find if you pay attention. I have been saving all the old door jambs so I can reuse the wood. It is amazingly straight grained and wonderful. I will just have to get the paint off of it first.
Our first day after 8 hours didn’t seem to net us much progress. I used some old metal hanging shelves left over from Sarah’s closet reminded 10 years ago to mount a shelf for the free shop lights I managed to get about five years ago. We also ripped down all the cloth wallpaper on two walls. I figured if we were doing it we might as well go all in and get it ready.
My big take away was that I am going to have to buy a bigger circuit breaker box to fit in the new shop lights and to do the 220V breakers. So that will be my next purchase when I am at Home Depot. I will even recess this next one into the wall. I am not sure why I did not do that other than this was easier. 
We sold 35 sheep on Monday! They will come get the other 15 sheep in a few weeks. This has been a true blessing as my add on Craigslist was not going any where. I was getting ready to advertise in multiple areas. We put all the small 15 sheep in the orchard and have been watering the grass and tossing them a bale of alfalfa in an attempt to fatten them up. We are saving that money and our cow money to pay for the alfalfa seed that will be planted this fall.
The Professional came out and we have a plan in place. I have been walking the property every evening and have discovered that we have several things in plenty, pheasants, doves, pigeons and deer, lots of deer. There are around 50 deer making the place home and I saw at least 4 sets of twins and at least another 10 fawns and all of them still spotted. I have yet to draw a single doe tag in the last 10 years. I am hoping they don’t decimate our alfalfa crop.
Stewart Creek Somethings 