Farm

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.

Day 8, grouting in progress

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Good Morning! It’s really day 9 now but since this is about yesterday and the sun is not out yet I think it will be okay. I finished up early, 1630, yesterday then went out to dinner and at dinner was reminded that there was a volunteer fire department meeting I needed to go to. I ran home, did the chores and went to the meeting. Which worked out for them as we ended up doing case reviews. By the time I got home I called and talked to Annmarie and then it was time for a shower and bed. I thought I would check my email just before falling asleep and had a reply from a friend who is in China so I wrote her back. I should have just gone to bed. If Annmarie were home I would have. Oh well, I will sleep good tonight.

We cleaned up the tile, vacuumed, cleaned out the grout gaps with a cool diamond cleaner we picked up and then cleaned some more. Mr Experience had told me about the pastry approach to grout application. I had ordered two bags from Amazon but on Wednesday at Home Depot I bought another for $5. He inquired and I said never trust the shipping time, when you want and need it you get burned. Luckily, we had one as our other ones had not arrived yet. It is literally a literally just a pastry bag for grout. It totally saves on cleanup. It is a learned technique as you cannot clean it up until it has hardened but if you wait too long then its hard to work. It is much faster and much neater and uses way less grout. I purchased the recommended amount and I bet we will only use 50% of it. Ugh. It was a custom order. I will know now and we may just pick a tile color for the upstairs that allows us to use the same grout color and call it continuity!

The entire entry way is done. The dogs are tired of getting moved around. This work has totally disturbed their schedule and sleep location. The big dogs have slept in the laundry room twice this week to keep them off the tiles. All dogs were kenneled during the day once and Gizmo had to spend several hours outside yesterday and came in shivering, he thought he had turned into a popsicle.

I wanted to fix the front yard fence yesterday but I got distracted. This is my single biggest weakness. I have so many things I want to do that I occasionally get distracted. Annmarie might say more than occasionally but we know that is a biased opinion. I think all wives would think that. So I got “side tracked” into finishing her cutting board revamp. I had a custom cutting board made for the kitchen to go into the premise slot. I measured it, sent pictures of it to a friend who does custom woodworking. He was swamped so he farmed me out to another guy. This guy did a great job except I wanted the pull part to turn down so that Annmarie had a stop to prevent the board from moving on the countertop when she pulls it out to make bread. Now if I would get our new custom island built I want to put a whole intact slab of granite on it so she can do her cooking counter work on it. Anyways, I needed to add a lip. Since I had measured the opening incorrectly (yes, I know I only had one job to measure it!) I had two 1/2 inch pieces from each edge. I sanded down one side glued and then drilled out five holes and glued in oak pegs. I will just need to cut them flush today, sand down and oil them and it will be done. It works perfectly with only a 1/4 inch lip, I tried it out.

I am unsure if we can get it all done today. Mr Experience says yes, we will see. No side jobs today, I am going to stay focused. I really want to be able to set the house back up by 1600 on Saturday when Annmarie comes back from her trip but it is going to be a close thing. We might not make it.

When I was out feeding in the barn yesterday morning I spotted a tuft of fur on the ground. I thought it was someone’s ear! The sheep catch their head on stuff all the time and rip out their ear tags. I bent over to pick it up and it was not an ear, it was a scrotum! The rubber bands were both still in place and intact but some little boy was now a whether instead of a ram, a job well done. I did stop and watch the lambs jump and play. I even snagged one and got some lamby time. They are super curious at this stage and are easy to grab.