Farm house

Painting again

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Saturday was paint day again. I am now frantically trying to get the downstairs repainted so that we can install all the downstairs trim when it arrives. This sounds like a good plan but every evening after work I am usually too tired to work for a few more hours.

Our new wooden louvers for the air return vent came on Friday so I had to install it. This took priority over painting as I had been waiting for weeks to see if it would really make a difference. Of course it was slightly larger than our metal white one so I had to cut out the wooden cover and trim the metal opening. I managed to get everything lined up and fitted without too much trouble. It looks great! I need to install the oak trim on the edges of the plywood before I attach this to the wall. I need to be able to use a clamp to hold it in place. Once the trim is on I can screw it in place to permanently attach it to the wall. I am going to stain it the same color as the stairs. I painted the kitchen and one wall in the living room but it was still wet and then it got dark outside. We decided that it needed to be light so we could decide if a second coat was essential. I did not want to take down the blue tape too early. It takes longer to put up the tape than it does to paint the walls.

Today it was decided that yes indeed I do need to do a second coat of paint. I grumbled but Annmarie said it was a small price to pay for only having to paint once every ten years.

Last little bit of help

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We took a few days off of the farm house to go work in town for my mother. This week we finished up the last few things that I needed some help with. The entire back porch is clean now and no longer a tile work area. This makes a huge difference in appearance. We also put the door display back together. They are two doors from this house that had been removed years ago and were out in one of the outbuildings. The shelves are made from the kickboard I removed from the upstairs floor. There was no kickboard downstairs. We had to trim off 1/2″ from the bottoms to accommodate the new floor height. I had cutouts in the door for the light switch and outlet that had to line back up. The new white color of paint we used is great! It actually makes the yellow cupboards look good. So we are going to paint the whole kitchen white and ignore the cupboards for a few more years. We thinned out the shelves by almost 50% on the cookbooks and the flower vases. Hard to believe Annmarie got rid of two full paper grocery bags of cookbooks and I got rid of 9 flower vases!

Mr. Experience and I moved the sideboard, piano, table, and TV stand back into the living area. We left them out away from the walls so that I can paint the entire downstairs. I also call and start badgering the trim place next week to get ours started and stained. They will deliver it all stained and finished. We just have to cut it to size and install it.

We cut the oak kickboards for in the kitchen. I was short on oak so need to buy another 2′. The last ten years we have hung our kitchen towel over one of the under sink doors draped over the door so it cannot close. Annmarie suggested we stick a hook on the side of the stovetop near the sink where we cannot bump it so we can actually close the sink door. It works very nice, now to just get in the habit of using it. We also leveled the fridge and switched the door opening to the left side. So now when you go to fridge from stove you can just open the door and don’t have to step around an open door to reach stuff. It makes the kitchen feel bigger.

I will be drawing up plans for out new kitchen island soon. We are going to have the frame made of metal. I will build custom wood shelves for it and top it with a solid piece of granite so that Annmarie can use it to roll out dough and cookies on. We will also design it to have a two seat kitchen nook so that we can eat our meals in the kitchen. The dining room table is for guests not mail and a horizontal storage area I am told. The problem with this is the front door is narrower than the island so it will have to be made in two pieces and bolted together in place.

We are still waiting on our wooden intake grate for the heating return box I made. They said 3+ weeks and they were not padding the timing schedule to look good.

Mr. Experience hooked me up with a source for food grade 50 gallon metal barrels with locking removable lids. I have two in the chicken coop now and have two more coming. Between these four and the two metal trash cans I can start stockpiling chicken food again. I really like to buy in bulk during the sales but now when the mice destroy it. Now I can just put the entire bag into the 50 gallon drum and pull out each bag individually. This lets me track my monthly expenses better. When I open the bags and dump them into the trash cans I charge them out for that month even if it takes me two months to empty the trash cans. So one month has a feed charge and the other does not. Its not as accurate.

Sheep caught up for now

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It was time to get back to the house but I had gotten behind on all my other duties. Mr. Experience wanted to see the barn so I decided we might as well tag and band all the babies. We had a whole last batch that needed to be marked. I warned him that these are not normal sheep and behave like jumping beans when they get cornered. I got to try out my new tag/band tray and it worked great! I have the fancy new plastic tote loaded with everything I need and ready to go. I had to run back inside to get rubber bands as they have to live in a temperature controlled environment. We fed everyone first in an attempt to distract them so that Mr Experience could sneak up on the lambs. This did not go so well the first few times. He was surprised when the lambs started flying by his head! They can really jump and is can be very disconcerting if you have never experienced it before. We are on numbers 190 for both the males and females, so we have had over 380 sheep through our property in the last seven years. The last three years have been the big years. We are shooting for 150 lambs a year through the place. We need to have 75 ewes for that to happen. We are almost there.

We tagged and banded the little boy lamb that looks like a wooly sheep. He is weird all around, if you did not know any better you would think that faries replaced him with a poor substitute and the only part they got right was he is a sheep. Genetics are an odd thing, just saying.

We started scrubbing the tile floor in the kitchen with scratchy pads but that coating is on there good. I broke out the Kirby floor cleaner and it was better than doing it by hand but it is not getting everything. Tomorrow we are going to try the carpet brush as it has more friction and hope it can eat through that coating. I primed the dishwasher area and we caulked all the joints and installed the dishwasher! It fit perfectly and no longer moves around in its spot. We also moved the refrigerator back into the kitchen. No more living room late night snacks. We decided that before we could put the door shelves back in place we needed to fix the outlet wire I cut. I crawled under the house and Mr Experience stayed in the kitchen. We attempted to tie the wire strands together so I could pull it down under the house. Nope. Then I broke the wire tape. Ultimately, Mr Experience had to cut the Sheetrock to get the outlet box off the wall to reach down and assist the wire to go to the correct location. This took longer than expected but it does work. Tomorrow we will try out the new cleaning method and clean up outside, we left our mess from last week. We also need to cut some kickboards. I love the new color of white paint we are using. It’s a great lightener and it makes our yellow kitchen cabinets look better.

Day 17 and into home stretch

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It is done! No applause yet as there is still cleanup and put back together left to do. Mr Experience finished the grout today and I laid the last of the tile under the sink today. We wanted to make it neat and clean and there were some old holes in the floor that I had stuffed with steel wool and plastic bags to keep the mice out and the heat in. Sealing up the floor of this compartment fixes all those problems and makes it look better and easier to clean. A total win all around. We put most of the tools away and went to go work on one of my mom’s rentals. This is good as the grout now needs to rest for 72 hours before we can do the final cleanup on it.

I will need to wash the kitchen walls behind the fridge and the built in shelves made out of old doors. We will have to trim the doors to get them to fit. I had holes cut in them for the light switch and the outlet and now that we have changed the floor height they will need to be trimmed, that will happen on Friday or Saturday. The border collies will have to sleep in the laundry room tonight as the hallway grout got touched up again today and it needs to dry.

We want to save up for the wooden trim and do the whole house at once. We talked about this today and depending on our sheep buyer we may have the money much sooner than the end of the year. Annmarie will know in a few weeks.

We are incredibly happy with how the floors have turned out. It totally changes the appearance of our entire downstairs. Now we are picking new paint colors for downstairs. Hopefully we can have the entire downstairs painted in the next six weeks also. If only I could come up with the trim money in the next six weeks, Annmarie?

Day 16 and the end is almost here

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Well it is nearing the end finally, there will be just enough time to finish everything. I went over to Hermiston to pickup the needed tile to finish the job. They gave me credit for the 5 miscolored tiles. While I did this Mr Experience was grouting the portion of the kitchen we had done yesterday. I took Gizmo with me for the road trip. He is starting to settle down much faster but still won’t take a dog treat from the coffee place. He just does not eat it. I tossed it to Zeke when we got home, he wolfed it down asap. We had two different packages dropped off and Mr Experience said both delivery drivers were scared to open the gate. They kept looking at it like they were going to get shocked. The tightened wire sings like there is electricity in it and they think they will get shocked! So far it is working to keep Zeke in also and that is the important part.

We opened the new tile to verify the color match, it is a match and noticed that the new tile has rounded edges. Who does that? Who changes their manufacturing process on the same style of tile? So we did the math and realized that we could use a handful of new tiles and use up all the old tiles we had and the pieces. We only used up five new tiles to finish the floor. So in other words if they had not screwed up our five tiles and given us the wrong color we would have made it. In the end I had to cut of 3/4 inch from a full tile to get it to match the existing tile in the dining room. I was hoping the house was perfectly square but after 109 years I had my doubts. Not too shabby, only 3/4 inch and it was even across the opening.

We started tiling around 1330 and didn’t finish until 1830. Its amazing how long the cuts and odd pieces take. Mr Experience laid the last of the floor, I cut. I only miscut one piece and I cut some fancy pieces without breaking any. He had to float out two low spots and a high spot. I can do it but it just takes me longer. Sometimes, experience just wins for obvious reasons.

So tomorrow we will finish grouting, start cleaning up and then we have to wait 72 hours before we can do the final cleaning on the grout. After that cleaning then we can put stuff back. Annmarie and I have decided to thin out everything hard as we put it back so that the house is not as cluttered. The new wooden louvered vent cover has not arrived. It should be here in a couple of weeks per the website.

We had been trying to treat an eye infection in the barn kitty. It just keeps getting worse. Normally this is a live or die situation for the barn cats as they are feral. The kitten tamed down and comes over and wants attention every time we go out to the barn. I had Sarah (aka Meat head) take the cat to the vet. yep, it had worms, ear mites, an upper respiratory infection and an eye infection. So now we have to give it antibiotics and eye medicine twice a day and it needs worming medicine in two days. It is in a crate in the barn now. It didn’t like me washing its eye and had started to avoid me. So now its in hospital jail until its better. Of course the vet wanted to see it again next week. I told Sarah to make the vet call it “Barn Kitty #1” which she did. When Annmarie came home she reminded me the kitty’s name is “Soot” now I did not know that but now everyone else knows why the barn kitty#1 went to the vet!