fire extinguished the first time, one can see how I thought it was out.

A little blurry, but you can get the flame idea.

Annmarie went out and took some pictures of the fire damage.  I thought I would post them for future reference.  Again, I was sick and I usually don’t burn up more than one or two posts…

This is just a stay, and I think it is just black, should be fine, I needed to burn out the weeds from the metal implements.

My nemesis!  These are the two posts that kept reigniting.  looks like they may still be burning…

Cracks and splits were the reason the fire got inside the posts so easily.

Barn lot, not a big deal, the grass was all dead.

Barn lot, fence line looks pretty good!

Backside of the barn lot, no weeds in the fence.

An occasional weed lodged in the fence escaped a fiery death.

I just didn’t get here with the cleansing fire, yet…

I would like to start this entry by saying that I have been very ill recently.  Annmarie brought the plague home and despite my germ precautions (no kissing or swapping of spit allowed during ill periods) I still managed to catch it.  After the first two days in bed I was feeling like a slug but realized I was still too sick to do anything super constructive.  I decided that I needed to burn some weeds.  So on Thursday I drug myself outside, loaded the large propane tank into the back of the pickup and went to town and got it filled.  Day completed.
On Friday, early afternoon, I went out and got the burn nozzle attached to the tank, took the puppy and we went out to the cattle guard.  I had a hard time lighting the torch and it didn’t want to stay lit.  The puppy took one look at the large column of flame shooting out the torch and ran away 40 feet to watch.  He watched for about five minutes and then ran home to hang out on the porch.  I ended up just following a fire along the fence line, but it was really slow going, the torch just would not light.  So, I drove to the machine shop to look for something to clean out the nozzle.  I bumped into the barn owl, but by the time I walked to the house and got the camera, the owl was gone.  I cleaned out a ton of carbon from the nozzle and after reassembly it worked great.  The burning was going on!!  I got half of our fence line burned.  There was some encroaching into the barn lot by the flames.  Not a big deal since the barn lot is just full of dead grass.

Unfortunately, I had one railroad tie on the back corner catch on fire.  I dumped 12 oz of gatorade on it, but that didn’t put it out.  I peed on the post, but still needed more water.  I walked over to the spring and filled it with 16 oz of water and doused the flames.  I am happy.  I put out the fire in the barn lot.  About this time Annmarie comes home and lets me know that the sheep shit pile next to the fence line is burning in a few places.  I tell her it will be just fine.  No go.  I end up going to the front creek with 3 gallon buckets multiple times to put out the few hot spots.  Annmarie fed everyone while I was dousing the smoking spots.  We go inside reeking of smoke.  Of course, the puppy, Zeke smells like smoke as he has been running around helping Annmarie feed.  I am told he needs a bath when we go inside the house.  So I wait until Annmarie has had her shower and get into the shower, naked with the puppy in my arms.  Yes, I do work in an emergency room, I realize that real accidents happen when  people don’t fully think their decisions through.  The shower was already going and the puppy kinda freaked out when the water hit him in the face.  He tried to scrabble away.  Unfortunately, he has grown significantly and needed his toenails trimmed desperately.  I sustained a near fatal injury to my nether regions.  It required some bacitracin, a bandaid, and some coitus rest.  Not exactly a thinking moment.  I still cleaned the dog and finished the double shower (had to get the smoke smell out of my pores).  I am exhausted.  Too much activity and trauma for the day on top of the illness.

Annmarie looks out our front window and there is a six foot tall column of flames out in the barn lot.  It looks like our old chicken coop is on fire.  I cannot figure out how that could be as I was not within fourty feet of that building with any flame.  So I jump into a pair of slippers, grab a single five gallon bucket and leap into the pickup.  We are at least a 20 minute response time for the fire department on a good day.  I get out there and two of my railroad ties that are connected are on fire.  I have to make multiple trips to the spring, getting my slippers stuck in the mud to get the fire out.  I run water over the top of the posts until there is no more hissing sound.  Annmarie had walked out to “help” (supervise), and she noticed another corner post on fire.  Gatorade and urine had not put the fire out.  So I had to dump a few bucketfuls on my initial railroad tie.  It is freezing cold and I don’t have a jacket on.  We go back into the house.  I change clothes again and just sit.  My whole body aches.  We eat dinner.

Annmarie looks out and the stupid double post is on fire again!  I tell her it is because the posts are connected and the heat is trapped between the two.  So I had to go get some fencing pliers and cut apart the posts and dump 15 gallons of water on them, I also grabbed two more five gallon buckets and filled them at the creek and placed them in the pickup and drove right to the posts.  Annmarie had gone down to her mother’s house for something.  I go back in the house and change clothes again.  At this point I just want to collapse, but paranoia has set in.  It might be relevant to know that just before Annmarie left for work Friday morning she told me not to burn.  Hey, I thought it would be quick and the results are incredibly obvious and gratifying.

I am watching some TV when Annmarie comes home to tell me that the whole fence line where the sheep shit pile (from the barn) is touching the fence is smoking and on fire.  I am damn tired of lugging water now.  So I go out to the wood shed and grab 250 feet of garden hose.  We drag it out to the fire, attach all the hoses and I turn it on, NO WATER.  At this point it just becomes painful, Annmarie asks me if the hoses got drained before we hung them up.  Because if they are full of ice we cannot use them in the winter.  They did not get drained.  I had to pack another 30 gallons of water up from the front creek until all areas quit sizzling.   We did not get to bed until almost 2300.  At some point, I should start listening to my wife.

The next morning she informs me that I will have to replace at least four separate railroad ties that have been burned out.  The new rule at our house is no burning unless it is raining or there is snow on the ground.  I will no longer be using any railroad ties for fencing.  The extra expense to buy treated round wood posts (fairly impervious to flame) is worth every penny.  I still need to go out and roll the hoses back up.  I ended up taking most of Saturday just laying around and folding laundry (the question was asked why I didn’t do that on Friday) and resting.    Nothing is ever easy…

Crawl space above laundry room.

 I worked exclusively on the Laundry room today.  I had to fish out some old trim that I had stashed in the ceiling.  Of course, it all still had nails in it.  I dug around and found enough old trim to trim out the crawl space and the back door.  I did manage to get all the nails out without too much difficulty.  I was cutting out spacing material from the 3/8 plywood so I just cut a panel while I was at it.  When I get the laundry room a little more completed I will touch everything up again with linseed oil. 

Some of the wood trim was kinda beat up, but it definitely adds flavor and fits in with the rest of the house.  I only had to make a few extra trips out to the saw to trim boards.  I couldn’t find anything long enough to go around the back door, so I had to improvise. 

Thursday is plumbing day.  I will have to start early so I can make at least two trips to the hardware store. 

Back door before trim

Stair step trim to make it all fit.

Back door all trimmed out

Laundry room window trim completed

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.