Backside of closet door, getting yellow color off.

Bedroom door mid stripping.

Closet door frame

I fully appreciate why I had not stripped the paint off of any wood before now.  I spent another five hours scraping on two doors and two door frames.  That is not a very large surface to attempt to clean paint from.  It is taking forever.  The truly lousy part is I have to wear kitchen gloves to keep the cleaner off of my hands.  Kitchen gloves are no protection from large splinters.  I screamed like a little girl this afternoon when a splinter went into my finger.  Annmarie (who is home sick) ran upstairs because she thought I had amputated something.  In my defense, the splinter went directly under my fingernail!  I spent so much time scraping and washing that I did not get a coat of mud on the walls.  So tomorrow first thing I finish the mudding.  I only need one more coat to be totally done.  Then I can texture and paint the room. I did manage to get the worst side of the closet door completely done and started on the backside.  The backside has some kind of yellow stain or diluted paint.  I am ready to work on the toilet just to get away from the paint stripping.  I have filled a large paper bag 1/4 full of just paint scrapings. 

I was reminded again today why, on a farm, you always close the gates.  When I went out to feed I left the yard gate open and when I returned from walking to the mail box (1 mile round trip) I left the front yard gate open.  The sheep got out.  I went out and opened the pen gate and only about half of them figured out how to get back in.  The rest didn’t return until I rang the cow bell to put them in at night (cow bell means food so they come running).  Still no babies.  Two different ewes are developing filled out udders, but Annmarie tells me that can happen two weeks before the babies.  I wrestled with #3 boy and weighed him on the scale.  He weighs 90#.  This seems to be our slaughter weight.  So I will contact my buyer and let her know that her lamb is ready.  Live weight cost is still around $2/#.  I am only going to charge $125 for this one and then just stabilize the price at $140/animal.  I have lost track of how many boys there are left.  I think six but I will have to consult our records to be sure.  Maybe seven counting the new baby. 

I did install the laundry room window casing today.  I didn’t cut or get any ready for the outside yet.  I needed some dimensions first and that would not happen until the casing was installed.

Laundry room window before trim.

Central trim done, needs external.

Sunrise this morning.  I looked out as I was doing the blog and ran out to capture this view to share.

I am officially on vacation now and have been working on the house nonstop.  My goal is to get the spare bedroom completely done.  It was doable, but as usual I have started to “scope creep” and am expanding the jobs to be completed.  I have to keep refocusing back to the spare bedroom.  As usual the first job is emptying out the room.  Unused spaces in our house tend to accumulate stuff.  We stashed the Christmas boxes from the attic here so I did not have to make two extra attic trips with boxes. 

Spare bedroom start

Spare bedroom start

Spare bedroom start

furnace room in spare bedroom closet.

I put all the Christmas boxes downstairs so we could put away all our decorations.  Sarah undressed the tree last night and I will take it outside today.  We have gone back to a real tree every year.  The smell and look cannot be duplicated in an artificial one.  The rest of the stuff is on the breeze porch or clogging our upstairs hallway.  This has to be a limited duration thing, Annmarie gets a might upset if the construction zone starts to become indefinite.  I try to tell her that it is faster if the tools just lay around and the stuff stays stacked and out of the way, she doesn’t buy it.  I think it is a woman thing. 

Once emptied, I had to go dig through the old house looking for my sheetrocking tools.  Luckily, the organization I did this summer paid off.  They weren’t too hard to find.  I use the bucket method of tool organization when working on a project.  Everything needed just goes into a five gallon bucket and this becomes my tool box for the duration of the job.  I wanted to put a little sheetrock patch around the bedroom window.  I just needed some 3/8 inch thick sheet rock.  Now I had saved some old sheetrock for the patch specifically.  Unfortunately, I had neglected to measure that sheetrock.  It was 1/2 inch thick.  I didn’t want thicker, if anything thinner would be better than thicker.  So off to the hardware store (I needed another piece of cedar anyway).  I didn’t want to drive to Home depot (45 minute one way drive), so I went to the two local stores (15 minutes one way) and big surprise no one had 3/8 inch sheet rock.  Not a common size any more (no big surprise since the room was sheetrocked a long time ago).  The only thing I could buy that was 3/8 inch thick was some fancy sanded on one side plywood.  So that is what I have to fill the gap.  Literally, all I need to do is fill the gap.  The window trim will cover up that area so it doesn’t need to be fancy. 

Empty spare bedroom ready for sheetrock mud. Plus a couple of holes in floor.

Spare bedroom entrance to closet (furnace room).

I have subsequently put on two different layers of mud on the holes in the wall.  I even sanded between them.  I will sometimes just knock down the high points with a knife and put on another coat.  I am making sure to go really wide around the outlets so I get a nice taper all around them.  Yesterday I made an executive decision (scope creep) to strip the doors and trim around said doors.  I have some citrus based paint remover that works very well.  I had six bottles in the old house for just this reason but had not used it yet.  I thought that it might be painful so I was delaying the inevitable.  I pulled down the door going into the furnace room and then slapped stripper on all the trim around that door, then put stripper on the back of the room door and all the trim around that door.  I let it sit for a few hours and went up after dinner last night to scrape.  Ugh, it was hot and sweaty work.  The stripper worked well, but there are THREE coats of paint on all the wood.

First coat of stripper before removal.

Stripper doing its job.

White, yellow and green were the colors discovered.  Only the first two colors wanted to come off easily.  So I had to add a second coat of paint remover.  Unfortunately, the stripper had started to dry on the entrance door so it was harder to remove.  I decided to only second coat the door that I had taken down.  Today I will strip everything else.  This last coat of paint is going to be the hardest to get off.  I want to stain the wood again.  I realize this is a far reaching goal, but I am not a man who loves painted wood.  Wood should be seen not covered up.  I am going to take some hot soapy water and a greenie scratch pad and try and get every little bit of paint off the door this morning.  Trial and error, it is how you learn. 

Before trim (should have done picture at night)

Completed window.  It turned out nice.

I did manage to get our master bedroom closet window trimmed out.  I had to buy “clear” lumber (no knots) and they add almost 800% to the price of this wood.  It is crazy.  The cedar (rest of the closet is cedar) cost $80.  After cutting and sanding the four inside pieces I was ready to go.  It only took me four trips outside to cut the side pieces the right length to match the reveal top and bottom.  I keep telling Annmarie I should have left the radial arm saw on the breeze porch so I would not have to go outside to use the saw.  She still doesn’t buy it.  Three years on the breeze porch was long enough for her.  It sits on the old house porch now with the table saw.  Handier for me, but I would like to have the old house done and set up as a wood shop so I didn’t have to work outside.  Yes, the breeze porch is covered, but the wind still blows and the light is not very good after dark, just a single sixty watt bulb. 

Ceiling tile needing replaced.

 I did manage to get this tile replaced yesterday.  I had found some old ceiling tiles in the attic four years ago and saved them for repairs.  Unfortunately, they were not this exact tile.  I put it in anyway, it was a newer version that was painted a brighter white and the groove was not quite as deep.  It won’t be noticeable after we paint.  What a pain in the butt to install a tile like this in the middle of the room!  That single tile took me almost an hour to install.  I had to pull loose all the surrounding tiles in an effort to get me some fudging room to squeeze the tile in place.  Then I had to staple it up.  Since I had the stapler out, I went through the whole ceiling and stapled all the loose tiles.  The ceiling looked like a kiddie roller coaster before the stapling job.  It looks pretty good now. 

Well, no holiday would be complete at the Hardin house without having a water issue.  Every December holiday since we have been here we have had a water leak.  This year was no different.  The only outside faucet to not have a hydrant style dispenser is in the back yard.  It doesn’t have one because it is 18 inches away from a maple tree.  I did not want to dig down to get to this water connection.  It will mean an axe, shovel and a pickaxe.  Guaranteed to be a miserable time.  The day before Christmas the brass faucet froze and cracked, spraying water every where.  My solution is an entire roll of 2 inch black electrical tape.  The problem with this is as soon as you start wrapping the leak water starts spraying all over the place.  I was drenched before I finally sealed the leak.  One more spring project that was not on the list. 

Animal food containers before

Barn coats

Annmarie was looking at a catalog yesterday that had pet food plastic containers.  We would like to get all three types of food into its own container but still be able to close the closet doors.  She called but the containers were too big.  This led me to the conclusion that I could probably just build our own custom wooden boxes and line them with plastic.  So today I cut up a whole sheet of plywood and some supports and screwed them all together making three wooden boxes.  It took me a few hours but I got it all done.  I even built the boxes 1/4 inch shorter so the doors could shut.  This was not enough.  I had to take the lower door support (3/4 inch thick) off and put on a 1/4 inch piece of plywood so the doors would shut.  After that I was sure the doors would shut, no luck.  I had to sand off about 1/16 inch off the top of the left hand door.  Finally, the doors shut.  I raised the coat hooks and added five more hat hooks.  It actually all works. 

Raised hooks and hat racks

wooden bins lined with heavy duty trash can liners.

New super thin bottom supports.  I will stain in the future.

Well, after we went out and checked on the new baby and reunited it with its mother we learned that it was not well bonded.  The first baby ran out and joined the herd while the mother was still giving birth to the second twin in the lean to.  Unfortunately, I did not know until today that if a baby is not well bonded you can rub the afterbirth on the first baby and the mother will some times bond with the baby.  We considered giving the lamb away but it seems to be keeping up its energy.  Us going out and pinning the ewe up against the feeder three times a day so it can get its fill of milk is helping. 

Catching a ewe by your self is not an easy task.  They are quick little buggers and even at 100# they are hard to stop unless you have some leverage.  The second time I grabbed on to her I was off balance and ended up in the straw.  Eventually I caught her.  Annmarie and I had to add some holes to the halter we had already purchased last year.  It is a little big, causing straps to hang down under her chin.  These straps make it easier to catch her.  I think she is starting to be resigned to her mistreatment.  As far as the little baby is concerned we are the cats meow!  The little lamb starts wagging its tail when we come into the barn because it knows it gets to eat its fill instead of sneaking a drink non stop all day. 

I keep hoping that all the other ewes will have their babies so the little bummer can just go around stealing milk from every one.  I got to use my bill cap light tonight.  I felt like I was in a horror film.  It projects a round light six feet in diameter roughly eight feet in front of your feet.  A monster could be creeping up on you at any time.  It made it very easy to walk around and not trip over any thing.  Good thing there aren’t any monsters.  So the cap light is out for night stalking maneuvers. 

I bought a sheet of plywood today to build some pet food storage bin in our utility room closet.  It was raining when we got home so I had to bring it in and put it on the old house porch.  Unfortunately, the wind was blowing around 20-30 mph.  As soon as I got the piece out of the back of the pickup and upright between my two arms the wind found my sheet of plywood (now known as a very large kite!).  I was blown 10 feet sideways before managing to stop myself.  For every two steps forward I made I slid back another foot.  I was not sure I was going to make it the 200 feet to the porch.  I had to stop 20 feet from my goal and take a breather so I could push through.  I did it and tomorrow I am going to make those bins.