Author: Steve Hardin

Making space so bathroom cabinet can be made

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It was time to get the last room in the old house cleaned out. I need to make the custom cabinet for the bathroom but I need a spot to assemble it and to finish it. The best spot for this is the old house. We have already started to stockpile bathroom remodel items in my eventual office space. I had to make a list of items we currently have as I was unsure where everything was located. It was a good thing I did as I could not find the 100’ 10/4 wire I need for installing the overhead bathroom heater. I searched everywhere and could not find it. Amazon said it had been delivered but I was unsure of that alleged fact. I finally remembered that I had taken two boxes out to the barn. I thought both boxes were for the fancy salt we got for the sheep. I checked last night when I went out to feed and lo and behold one of the boxes was the “alleged” 100’ of wire. It is now staged in the old house. The big ticket item left is the tin ceiling and our tile for the two short walls. I called on the wall tile and it was supposed to be here this week but I did not get a call. I won’t need it until about Feb 8 so I am not panicking yet. With the tin ceiling that only leaves two short walls to paint. I am thinking I may have enough tongue and groove boards to cover both walls but I have not talked with the project lead for approval. If I can do that then I will not have to do any Sheetrock work!

Today we worked on getting the old house emptied. I did take some time to help cleanup Annmarie’s laser wood pile. I cut off all of the unusable scraps and left her with a bunch of 4-8”x12” pieces. She will have to sort them all out but her burn pile and scrap pile is much smaller now.

Mr Rainman kept unloading shelves and piling it up in the old chicken coop. Once I was done with the honey do item we took another shelving unit out to the coop and then started to sort everything. There were piles every where but we managed to get it all sorted and put away. I even labeled the big black bins so we knew what was in them. We did find a bunch of heavy duty deck anchors and a bunch of electric fence supplies so those all got moved out to the fencing shed. I will not need to buy anchors for quite a while. We have one corner of the old chicken coop to clean out tomorrow. We are only going to take one more shelf unit out of the old house.

I installed two new over the window shelves in the old house and looked at how to arrange the room once we get it empty. I think we need to raise the wooden cabinet another six inches then I can slide one of the tool boxes under it. That will let me store all of the tools in one corner of the room. I am even thinking about moving the shelving unit in my office into this room. A lot of DeWalt tools are kept in that cupboard.

The baby chickens are getting big. I now have to fill their water dish every two days. It is almost time to hang the waterer with the peckers on it. It is a five gallon bucket with drink spouts on the bottom. It will last a week at a time so I don’t have to fill water so often. The chicks will stay in their area until they are fully feathered and run out of room. Once those conditions are met I will just latch the door open and let them wander in and out. That way they get to choose whether they want to interact with the other chickens or not.

Prepping for bathroom supplies and trying to finish old items

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I had Mr Rainman come out this week to try and finish up some projects we had already started. He was able to shove both burn piles back together so they are ready for a second burn. After that he worked on cleaning out the spring channel. We still had a lot of flood related branches and brambles clogging up the waterway even though it has been a few years. We have not been able to really find the time to do this cleanup but since we are burning we decided that adding to the burn pile was a necessity. There is still some cleanup to be done but it is a ton better than it was.

That same flood caused a tunnel to form under one of the culverts. It’s the only culvert we have over the spring. Mr Rainman is convinced that the ground around it is going to cave in any second. He brought in two loads of rocks and put them in the holes appearing around the culvert. He had to do it again the next day. I figure if he does it one or two times more he will have filled in the tunnel next to the culvert and we should be good. He is saving his “I told you so” for when the tractor falls in the hole. We have agreed to disagree and he has the “I told you so” ready.

He was able to finish moving the last of the black walnut from the old chicken coop to the grain bin. Once he did that he proceeded to clean up the old chicken coop. I was pretty surprised by how much dirt and debris he was able to get out of the coop. I cleaned it up a decade ago. The plan was to create space so we can move the tools and bins from the old house out to the old chicken coop.

He also ended up moving things around so we had a clear side. This will work great for the move out of the old house. We will tackle the move this weekend when there are two of us. Some of the cabinets are very heavy and I needed to go through all of the items.

Honey do list and bathroom prep

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It has been a long week as I continue to prep for the bathroom remodel. We made an executive decision and are going to put a tin ceiling in the bathroom. It will be white not two tone like the upstairs bathroom but it will tie in with the upstairs bathroom and our downstairs ceiling. Plus, I will not have to sheetrock and texture the ceiling. I hate sheet rocking. We ordered the bathroom lights and a recessed mirror cabinet for over the vanity. I called on our bathroom tile for the two short walls and it is on back order, it is supposed to be here by the 15th. I told her as long as it made it by February 3 I was fine with any delays. I am not going to buy any Schluter products until we tear down the bathroom to studs and then see if we need to fir out the studs to make the walls level. Not sure exactly what we are going to find, that is not super heartening but whatever it is we will fix it and make it work.

After that nasty wind storm blew down the little decorative windmill it has been working on destroying it. It no longer spins and the wind has literally been tearing the blades off. As of today it has no tail and no blades left, it is just a piece of metal sticking up on the pole. I need to do more research and get one with bearings and then need to somehow attach it better to the post. This will be one of my 2025 goals, I really like having a decorative one on the farm.

My Kubota tractor came home! I had them come pick it up for 1000 hour service and to make some needed repairs. It took three weeks but the thing hums now. It is running great! I was able to actually pick up the big bales and drive them around to feed the cows. Much easier than pushing them along on the ground in the mud. I was able to actually get both bales in the round feeders.

I did the wife’s new cutting table first thing this weekend. She wanted me to make something that was recessed and framed so her cutting mat could just drop in and it would not slide around. It had to be smooth so that it would not snag her fabric that was being worked on. I was able to cut grooves in some three 2x4s and then sand them all smooth. I then cut four pieces with angles and used my fancy tool to drill in recessed pilot holes in the corners so I was able to screw the corners together and then screw down the plywood. It is going nowhere. Once I had it all together I hit the corners again with a sander to smooth everything out. She was happy.

I was able to put the finish on the bathroom vanity. I love “Tried and True” as a finish, beeswax and linseed oil. I coated the entire vanity and it is now ready to go to the Tricities and get a granite top cut. I am planning on doing that this week.

I am hoping to have Mr Rainman come out this week and clean up the old chicken coop and start moving stuff out of the old house. I want to put all the tools out in the old chicken coop. I am keeping the theme plastic boxes, one box for each type of job. This helps keep the specialized tools together and makes finding them so much easier. I have one for tiling, painting, Sheetrock, finish nailers, electrical parts, and wiring. I have a cabinet with drawers for connectors and pvc fittings. Two cabinets for screws and nails of all kinds. None of that stuff needs a heated building.

Headed into 2025 with a shuffle

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The last of 2024 was painful. Our progeny brought home Covid for the holidays when the entire county is drowning in Influenza. I think I would have rather had the flu. We did manage to get Christmas dinner on the table with a lot of help and we did get to eat said dinner. Otherwise, we slept a lot and took a lot of over the counter medications for symptom control. The Gingerman was the healthiest of us all so he kept the animals fed and even managed to get both large burn piles lit over the course of a week, despite the downpour of intermittent rain we continue to receive.

I have been able to do a few small things around the house. I was able to get the entire driveway torn up and leveled this weekend. An inch of rain really helps soften up the road so I can tear up the top few inches and then drag it smooth. Ideally, it would dry out for a week or so and let the newly moved dirt settle but it just keeps raining. We have already gotten 1.2” of rain in 2025 and it is not even the first week of the year. Our snowpack is at record highs, over 150% so I sure hope that it does not warm up fast this spring or things will be messy. The back creek bed is over twice as wide as it used to be due to the last two floods we had. I am hoping this is enough to keep it contained. We have implemented a couple of other flood control and diversion ditches but none have been tried yet and honestly, I would like to just think that they will work as designed and not have them utilized. Sometimes, it is the thought that counts!

Our sheep are doing great! That fattening up they had in Nov & Dec is holding them over well. We are feeding 6-7 bales every night and they are maintaining weight. I have been feeding for over a month and this last Friday I spotted two raccoons in the barn. They were in the front hay room hiding in the walnut boards that are air drying. There is no way out so they had to stay there the entire time I was feeding. I of course did not have a gun as I have not been taking one out when I feed. It did occur to me to go back to the house and get one but every time I was away from the room for 30 seconds they kept trying to sneak out and I knew they would be gone by the time I got back. It never occurred to me to just call the wife and have her walk the pistol out to me, it was muddy, dark, raining and miserable outside. So now I carry my predator pistol and two clips out to the barn at night for feeding and of course have not seen a single raccoon. I thought we only had one out in the barn, they avoid all traps so shooting them seems to be the only way to get rid of them.

We are taking the last of the animals to slaughter this week. We are taking in eleven lambs for meat for new homes. I have one customer who is opting to do their own cut and wrap. This will be the last of the animals for sale until the lambs from this summer are ready around July 2025.

We have been ordering stuff and getting it ready for the bathroom remodel. We have decided to put in an overhead electric heater, so I am going to have to wire in a 220V service with a timer switch. A 220V timer switch is fairly industrial. So now the wife wants me to hide it in the custom built cabinet. She also wants me to wire in an outlet into the cabinet so that I can hide all of the electronics on one shelf in the cabinet. Both of these things are possible since I am building everything from scratch but it does tend to complicate things. This does not seem to be a consideration when detailing changes. It doesn’t help that I agree with her, having all of the electronics hidden will make for a cleaner, more organized bathroom with more countertop space. I need a 220V breaker, a tile drill bit and a new tile saw blade. I always start a new tile job with a new blade. I am sure I will need more stuff as I know the house is plumbed with Pex but I won’t know if its Pex A or B until I tear into the wall and can look at the connectors. I think it’s Pex B but not positive until I inspect the connectors. There is always something to throws things off. I am going to block off the hallway and set up the tile saw in the hallway after setting up plastic walls outside the bathroom. I will have to bring all of the tile inside and let it warm up to room temperatures before it can be installed. I already told Annmarie that our house is just going to be a construction zone for one month and there is nothing I can do about it.

Bathroom remodel prep work

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Winter can be seen from our house, the foothills of the Blue Mountains are covered in snow and on top the local snowpack is 175% of normal. It’s 44 F today at our house and the most we get is rain on a fairly regular basis now. It is supposed to rain almost every day this week. Of course I never bother to look at the weather person predictions unless we are spraying or cutting hay so I thought it would be a great idea to move some dry wood around on the farm.

Mr Rainman had emptied out one of the old grain bins and the plan is to get all of the rough cut black walnut and maple out there and store it until it is needed for some project. All of the trees were obtained from family or friends for the labor of removing them from the property. I had them custom cut into slabs at our local mini mill. The hardest part is having the space to sticker them and let them dry out. We have had the maple for over 15 years and some of the black walnut for eight years. I have one massive piece of 10 foot black walnut that is 20” wide with one raw edge and 18’ thick, ten feet long. It has split in two almost dead center so that there are now two pieces with a live edge. It has another 5 years to dry out, you only get 1” per year when air drying. The large crack will help it dry out faster as it is almost 1/2” in width. I wanted to get it all in one spot where we do not go, it won’t get damaged so we can use our other spaces. I have about 1/3 of the old chicken coop full of rough cut wood. I would like to get that wood all moved out, do some slight rearranging in the chicken coop and then I can move out most of the tools and storage from the old house. This will give me an open room for projects near the house. A lot of what is in the old house is in bins for various types of activity. There is a bin for working sheet rock, bin for installing ceramic tile, bin for painting, shelf of finishing nailers and supplies, several bins for wiring a house, various organizers for parts, nails, screws and a shelf for ice fishing. I have not been in 20 years, but there are a lot of mini rods!

Gingerman and I went out yesterday and started to load the flatbed with black walnut boards, 1” thick, then 2” then we got to the 3” slabs that are ten feet long and those are heavy! We got the first load all onto the trailer and had a plan to come back for the maple. The rest of the black walnut is in the main barn off of one of the hay rooms and is not currently in the way. We drove to the grain bin over the sketchy culvert I have in the barn lot. It really needs to be dug out and reset as the water is going through, under, and alongside it. This is causing the dirt to collapse so I keep jamming large boulders alongside the culvert to prevent anything from falling into the gap. I have a couple more years before total failure hits. We ended up needing to take out the door metal supports on the grain bin, these add structural strength to the door so it does not blow out when grain is in the bin. I swept up and as we were finishing cleaning it started to rain. So now our dry wood is getting wet and I did not bring enough stickers to put between the slabs. We hustled and got all the wood in and set some leaning on the perimeter to be stacked next time we try and move wood.

I really want to get this done in the next week so I can build the bathroom cabinet in the current storage room. It would help immensely.

Since it was raining I decided to back to working on the new bathroom vanity. Gingerman helped me and we got the holes for the sink and faucet placed on the dresser top. I had found some boards out in the old chicken coop to use on the dresser transformation to vanity. The dresser is made out of oak but I am not adding oak pieces for the transformation. I will stick with some Douglas fir and stain it. I was able to get the large drawer put together with nails and glue, it needs to spend the night in the office to dry. I will be able to cut the back out of it once dry and it will still work as a partial drawer, over one half was able to be saved. I have a small drawer on the top that will only be about 3-4” deep. I may put a couple of 2” long spots on the side, I have not decided yet as to whether they would actually be usable.

We were fortunate enough to get more baby chicks on Friday from Mr Horse Tamer. He has an incubator and started 30 eggs, we got 29 straight run chicks. I spent Friday evening putting down new bedding, food and water in the baby chicks area for them. One had splayed legs and he told me to tape the legs together for 24 hours and it sometimes gives the hip muscles time to firm up and the chicks will do well. Gingerman and I took the tape off the next day and the chick is moving around and doing great. We had one yellow chick just die but everyone else is doing great. They have a heat lamp and a heat shelter so even though they are in an unheated coop they are staying nice and warm. I decided to use the heat lamp in conjunction with the shelter as it will also keep the water from freezing solid if it gets that cold.

The check came from the auction and we were gloriously surprised! Those 18 whethers weighed on average 98# and sold for $160/each! They killed it, the auction website said the average price for lambs was $55-150. We scored, those sheep looked amazing, the timing and quantity all rolled up to form the perfect circumstances.