bathroom remodel

Alpaca self thinned

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I had to go out again this morning and run the tractor over the driveway. The snow just keeps coming down, there is over 18” on the ground. I even went down to the pregnant cows and drug a path through the snow to the water and flattened a spot under a tree. They had already knocked down the snow all around the feeder. I went up to check on the upper feeder cows and had to drag a path out to them. They had about 1/3 of a bale so I went out and broke up a bale and scooped it up a few large flakes at a time. I then drove those out to them and tossed them over the fence. When I was cutting open the large bale I discovered that one of the white alpaca had died last night. It was not even frozen or stiff yet, it was curled up sheltered between two large bales. The alpaca are old and we are going to have to look for a few more this summer. So if you know of someone within 120 miles that wants to get rid of their male alpaca we are willing to pick them up and give them a forever home. Unfortunately, we can only take males as we do not want any cria, no baby alpaca! The snow is so deep I was unable to move the body up to the boneyard. I could not even get it out of the field, the snow was just too deep. So I blocked the gate with the body so I will be able to find it when the snow goes away.

I spent the rest of the day trying to get the bathroom wired with our final choices. I installed all of the push button switches and started in on the outlets. I got the lights in but initially had the sconces turned upward. Annmarie came up and looked at it and stated that we had talked about it before and wanted the scones turned downward. So I went back and fixed them and turned them all downwards. They look better turned downwards! I still have three outlets to wire up before I am done in the bathroom. I do need to install a closet light still.

We have had three more lambs born this week. I will have to update the data soon. We tagged the twins, both girls, and turned them loose into the main herd tonight. Annmarie had told me on Friday that I needed to bring the gloves and come to the barn. The Gloves are shoulder length OB vinyl gloves used to be able to reach up inside the sheep and pull out babies. This is never a good sign. Luckily the mother was not in distress so I did not have to intervene. I dread having to use my nursing skills on the sheep.

Montana snow kit arrived

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It is here! Our Montana snow kit has arrived and it is almost the end of Winter. We have had nonstop snow for the last two days and have over 18” of snow on the ground now. Our friend from Montana, Doom, promised to over deliver and under promise when it came to his custom Montana snow kits and he managed to out do himself this year. We are shoveling snow twice a day for the walkway and today I had to break out the tractor and spend two hours clearing the driveway. The snow is getting too deep for Annmarie’s all wheel drive Subaru so I needed to clear a path so we could at least get to the road. They finally plowed our county road today. It is supposed to snow for another 3-5 days then rain for another 3-5 days. It’s going to be a mess and we will probably get flooded again, ugh. Luckily, I expect the new fences I put in to break away instead of bend over like they did last year. I was unable to get the backhoe up to the upper field and redo the ditches that are up there and got washed out last year. This is going to have to happen this year after everything dries out.

When I was out with the tractor I managed to accidentally ran off of the road, tractor slid sideways down a five foot hill. I managed to not roll the tractor and got it to slide down the hill sideways the rest of the way. While I was trying to not roll the tractor I spotted another water leak! I knew there was one as our water pressure had dropped slightly. I am honestly unsure how to solve some of the water leak problems. The last plumbing repair put in a rubber joint to hopefully absorb some of the stress of the pump cycling on and off at the pump outlet. So when the weather warms up I will need to dig the ditch out again and call the plumber. It’s not worth paying the plumber to dig the ditch.

The alpaca just do not care about the weather, Snoop dog has been hanging with the cows and looked miserable with his entire face covered in ice. Annmarie called him over to the gate and I let him through. He rambled up to the machine shed and hid under the overhang to get out of the weather. Within 15 minutes she decided to let the brown alpaca through the gate also so he could get to some food. Before she could get the brown one out of the orchard, Snoop dog ran into the orchard! So he was right back to where he started just back through another gate. The others just wanted to make sure they were near food, the snow and ice just does not bother them.

I got the overhead railing for the bathroom closet door installed and our grate cover for the oven vent outlet hole came. I got them both installed. The snow shoveling has been taking a lot out of me and I have been taking naps, which slows down the process on finishing the bathroom. I did manage to get the final lights brought in from the old house and killed the power to the room so I can get it all wired tomorrow hopefully.

Luckily, we had finished feeding all the cows yesterday before the snow got super deep. My hope is the snow will melt off before I need to feed again.

Finishing touches started!

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Well it’s the downhill side of the project now! We managed to put up all but one piece of crown molding today. I had to cut all of the angles after paying for angle cutting, the cuts went the wrong direction. We have enough left over to put crown molding inside the closet also! Mr. Professional helped me get it installed. It just takes time, all of these finishing steps just take time, the last 15% of every project takes almost as much time as the first 85%.

The closet door is glued together and just needs to dry overnight. I will glue the shelves together every couple of nights this week so we can get those installed. I ordered metal shelf brackets today but I am not sure if they are going to be here on time to get the shelves in next weekend. Nope, I just looked the shelve brackets do not arrive until Tuesday, nine days from now. They are only one inch wide so we may just be able to leave room to install them when they arrive and still hang the shelves as long as we don’t put any weight on the shelves. The paint stripper is coming by Friday so we can get the grey paint off of the one side of the bathroom door. Annmarie tells me I am not allowed to use the bathroom until the door works! Currently that is not an issue as the plumber has not been here yet. I am hopeful the plumber will come in the next two weeks.

I am loving the new clean breeze porch. I was able to transplant 10 jade plant starts today from their watery containers into actual soil pots. I only started one more jade cutting today, I am trying to shape my big plant and it keeps wanting to send off random shoots. I keep cutting them back and it is finally starting to fill in.

Annmarie just informed me that I am not allowed to build any new fence this year! I had two new sections of fence planned for this summer. I have to complete the culvert in the barn lot that got torn out last year due to flooding and then I need to put a new front porch deck on. I know that the front decking job will be a nightmare because as soon as I tear off the decking I will see the support framework and it will probably need a lot of help. The front deck job has been on the calendar for the last three years. My new fencing project has been on the calendar for six months. I love new projects!!

I am also going to start looking into plans for a craft building. I have found a location am just trying to finalize the shape. I won’t start on that for a couple of years. I really like the idea and think if I do the floor in tongue and groove wood, and the outside in rough lumber I can do the inside in plywood. This would let us build custom shelves and long work benches that are counter height, maybe even an island in the middle of the room to just use as a flat space for assembly and whatever. New projects are the bomb! They let my brain spin, plan, assemble, tear apart and redo without ever lifting any tools.

I have one chicken that cannot figure out it needs to lay eggs in the chicken coop, not the barn! I found a green egg in the barn straw this morning when I went out and let the sheep outside. When Annmarie went out to feed the sheep this evening she found the culprit in the middle of a feeder hunkered down but she did not have any eggs. The chickens are not very smart but boy the home grown free range eggs are amazing and now we have one chicken that is laying double yolk eggs consistently.

Must finish bathroom

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Now that I am on a path to fitness and drinking more than brown life giving and sustaining water (coffee) all day I need that upstairs bathroom. Who thinks that drinking a gallon of water on top of a gallon of coffee is good for your bladder? I will admit that I tend not to twitch or flop around as much at night when I drink lots of water but its a hard habit to get into after living on coffee for 30 years. I need the bathroom to be a short walk from the bedroom to maximize my sleep time.

I was able to rub on the wall finish Friday but ran out. I need to do the lower section on one wall. The crown molding needs to go up but I needed to rub the finish onto the wall first. So I started working at the top of the wall and working down so we could install the molding, knowing I was going to run out. I used an old cotton T-shirt and it worked great, no little cloth pills left on the wall.

One of the complications of doing the bathroom in the winter is that I need a place to glue my shelves together. Obviously with the cold it cannot be done outside, unfortunately over the last couple of years the breeze porch has become a catch all location for everything. I do mean everything! So it has taken almost three full days to just remove all of the stuff that was out there, clean up and throw away a ton of stuff. We even got some new plastic bins so we could move all of the reloading supplies into the attic. Next winter I am shooting for building a custom reloading bench on the breeze porch. The bathroom has to come first so I can head outside in the spring.

Yesterday we concentrated on the breeze porch trying to get it cleared so we could use the space to glue shelves together. Once we have those parts glued together we can start installing the shelves. We need to construct the barn door to cover the closet opening also. I even managed to transplant three different plants that were horribly root bound and had not been touched for several years. I expect those plants to take off and be happy. I have about eight more plants that need some more attention. I may even have to start giving away some jade plants as I started about six plants from cuttings and they are taking off. I do toss cuttings in the trash as I cannot start every small piece that comes off a plant! I let my African Violets take a beating and have managed to start two new plants. I need to do cuttings and start 4-8 more plants. I had let them fend for themselves and ended up killing off three. The rest are so healthy they need to be trimmed back as they are starting to try and tip my planters over. The African Violets are from Annmarie’s grandmother so I keep them going. I have three cactus that have fallen over and need to be replanted. I always hate dealing with them once they get a certain size! I do use folded newspaper to wrap them up as I replant them but I always manage to get poked regardless. There is now a nice wide open spot to work and once we get some more tools put away there will be plenty of space to glue boards together.

The Covid symptoms persist, I have learned to just keep pushing. I hate that I cannot do what I used to before catching it. I want to be the person pushing the grocery cart so I can lean on the cart as I walk through the grocery store. I can now get across the hospital at work three times in a single day. I used to walk constantly for hours in a day and now I do it about 15 minutes a day. I still get very short of breath with exertion and if the shortness of breath persists then I start getting chest pain. I have things I want to do this spring. I am unsure of how much I will be able to physically do when the weather improves. It is very frustrating.

Bathroom ready for plumber

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Friday I spent rubbing finish onto the bathroom walls. I had vowed to not be too active but I had called the plumber on Monday and wanted the walls finished before the plumber came. At least the walls where the plumber was going to install something that would block our access to finish them. I am super happy with the finish, it is “Tried and True” wood finish, its just linseed oil and beeswax. Rub it on leaving thin coat, leave for 60 minutes and wipe off any excess very simple and it looks amazing! It really pulled the blue color out of the blue pine. We tried to get the colors to go from dark to light from the entrance to the far end and this really does show that we succeeded. It took me about three hours and I took my time but it was probably too much effort. I managed to do only half the bathroom but it is fairly obvious where I left off at in the pictures. Then I insisted in helping with feeding the cows and sheep. Since the tractor is still broken we had to load up small round bales and put them in the bed of the pickup. Mr Professional came out to help me. I finally had to let him do all of the unloading after we fed the bull, the eaters and the sheep. He fed the female cows alone. I drove the truck. Annmarie said I should not have done so much. I ended up going to bed early and sleeping hard.

The big project was in removing the kitchen wall oven. Our new one is at the store and ready for pickup. So we took out the old one and then drilled 6 holes into the back wall space. That space is fairly deep, around 12-16” deep as there is an old chimney behind the wall. I told Mr Professional to just guess where the studs were and miss them when he drilled the holes! He missed every stud! You could touch one stud with your finger if you reached into the holes, but no stud was drilled! We even cut a 10×10” hole in the floor of the oven area. I ordered a steel heating register to be mounted under the cabinet to make a pretty hole for the heat to dissipate out. The six holes created a draft without the oven in place so we are pretty confident we have enough ventilation now. I suspect we still won’t use the self clean oven function but I should not burn up the oven with a prime rib accident again. The grate should be here this week.

On Saturday, I did not feel very well, the constant chest pain is back and my shortness of breath is worse. It has been almost 8 weeks since I caught Covid and I still cannot do what I want. I have plans to hit it hard in 8-12 weeks and am unsure if my body will physically let me do it! I am not super excited about having long term effects of a virus still bothering me. Mr Professional spent a good part of the day cleaning up and putting tools away. The breeze porch has become a huge dumping ground and we want to get the kennels set back up. Our two new dog destructible proof kennels arrived for the border collies and Gizmo needs his day location revamped. We even worked on adding the metal roofing panels to the interior of the closet. Probably overkill, but we used two scrap pieces to get it done and they would have gone in the garbage anyways. Annmarie cut me a few pieces to be laced in to augment the panels. We want to create an elevated bed so he can sit up in the window and lord over the entire farm from his vantage point. He will love it.