bathroom remodel

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.

Spring cleaned out finally

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Gingerman and the daughter came home for the weekend. I had plans on not doing anything outside as we needed to get the Christmas decorations finished. Annmarie had her village all set up but the rest of the house had nothing but a bare tree. Saturday morning it only took about an hour to get all of the rest of our Christmas stuff set up. The Gingerman had brought his large chainsaw with big bar and he wanted some directions on which trees to cut. This gave me a great reason to abandon the Christmas setup (we were on the last thing). So I put on a vest and went outside, the weather was amazing, it was almost 50 F. I grabbed a chain and fired up the Kubota and we drove out to field #4b.

Way before we moved back, 18 years ago, someone had felled a bunch of large trees and then they pushed them next to the existing trees instead of removing or burning them. There has not been running water down that part of the field for a long time before we moved back. We have had running water now for almost five years from the spring above. I have been wanting to cut those trees up and burn them forever but they are so massive they won’t come out with the tractor and I tried to burn a few and only got a partial burn.

The Gingerman was able to make a few cuts before his saw heated up and quit working. So this gave me time to move the pieces out and start stacking them up. We opted to just keep the piles on each side so I did not have to try and carry any wood across the spring. I was able to drive the tractor through the ditch and onto the other side without difficulty.

This worked pretty great as the Gingerman kept helping me and the saw kept cooling off. So about the time I had everything on the pile he was able to cut a few more pieces. There were a couple of casualties. I managed to poke out one of the headlights from a branch sticking out of the burn pile. I was trying to get closer to dump off wood on the center of the pile. Near the end I used the tractor forks to break up dead branches from the live trees and managed to bend the backstop on the forks some. It still works just fine, I just twisted a part near the top of the backstop.

I ended up feeding the cows a large bale then dropped off the forks and the weight bucket on the 3 point hitch. The tractor dealer is coming out this week to take it in for some annual maintenance. I have a list of items that need to be repaired also that I will tape to the steering wheel tomorrow.

I am hopeful that Mr Rainman can come out one day this next week and finish cleaning up the small branches near the spring and hopefully we will have a burn day soon. We want to burn both piles.

That only took a couple of hours and I decided to get started on creating our vanity for the bathroom remodel. So I started tearing apart the dresser and removing the bottoms from all of the drawers. Normally, I would not do that but this had been inhabited by a lot of mice. So I sanded the entire cabinet inside and out. I want the vanity to look aged so I half sanded the finish. I will clean it up then stain over it all and then seal it up. It should still look very old. We need to order new handles and drawer pulls. I still have one drawer to tear apart but someone at some point has already tried to repair the dresser. So I have been sanding glue and chipping drawer bottom out of the grooves. Originally, those bottoms would have been held in place by two nails at the back of the drawer. They should have been super easy to remove. Instead they had a lot of glue and extra nails. The last drawer has OSB glued to the bottom! This will be the drawer that I cut part out for the plumbing. I will have to do this to one of the top half size drawers also. They will be super narrow in the front, 6-8” at most.

I will draw out the holes on the top and then drill them out. This way I can just take the vanity to the stone countertop place and have them match the top shape and the holes.

It’s cold outside

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Winter is finally here. It is down in the low 20’s F at night and barely over freezing during the day. So it is not super pleasant to be outside. I have been so busy that I have not done much around the farm. Luckily, Mr Rainman is still cleaning up and working on small things. He was able to get the three posts installed on the corral. The two internal posts required that the old posts get reset and tightened up also. There is not a bit of wiggle in that side of the corral now! You used to be able to grab the rail and move the fence a few inches in each direction. The last thing for the corral is to finish building the rock crib. It just needs some wooden sides and wire mesh inside that to hold all the rocks inside. It will take 4-6 hours to fill the entire space with rocks but by the time it is completed there will be no moving that side of the corral and the new gate will be anchored securely.

The Gingerman spotted that our main gate into the barn lot broke at the base on the hinge side. When the gate was used it was starting to flex apart due to the break. In true farmer fashion, he plugged in the welder, dug around in the scrap pile and dirt to find some old small metal pieces then proceeded to just randomly weld them in place until the crack was repaired. He then tack welded the hinges as the bolts were not holding them rigid. He also raised the gate a few inches and dug out the hinge side so it no longer drags when you open and close it. The gate works better now than it has in 15 years!

Mr Rainman also got all of the holes dug around the bee platform. I had to make a run over to Home Depot last week so I was able to get all of the pressure treated lumber necessary for building an arch over the bee platform. I am going to use the same 1×8”x8’ pieces we used on the inside of the fencing shed to sheet the outside of the arch. I also have some leftover metal roofing from working on the barn that I will use for the roof. The wind just tore up the empty hives we had on the platform. If there had been bees in them I am not sure we could have salvaged them after the storm. The bees are hard enough to keep without us just letting the wind destroy them. We already have a new Nuc ordered for the spring and Annmarie is fairly confident she can split the hive fairly easily now. I would like to see us going into next winter with three hives.

We are still getting ready for the bathroom remodel. I have ordered the tile for the last two walls, which look like linen wallpaper. I am looking at the custom cabinet design for the right side of the vanity that I want, so I can start in on it soon. This has to be wife approved, it will be made out of oak plywood.

I did the cabinet mock up and the wife did not like the single door on the sink side of the cabinet. It will house all the electronics, my electric razor, hearing aids and any other items that need electrical outlets. This will clean off the countertop. So I had to move it to the front. Now I just need to go buy my three full sheets of 3/4” oak plywood. I will have to do the doors last but they can wait for now.