Day 15, actual kitchen tiling has commenced

It took us 2.5 hours to just get to this spot. We screwed down a board to use to keep our alignment down the hall perfect. The tiles kept creeping over toward the board and narrowing the gap. We had to constantly shift them back into place. We broke one tile by the entryway when Mr Experience stepped on it. He had been starring at it from across the room and went over and stepped on it and it broke. He said better now than after it was dry and locked in place. We kept trying to work with it until finally he suggested we just remove it and come back another day when we can walk on the tile and dry fit it until it was perfect then glue it down. It was a great plan and that is what we did.

We had to eat out at the minimart as we cannot cook anything. We did remember to move all the coffee making supplies to the opposite counter! Long Live Coffee!! I would love to say that food sometimes wins over coffee but who is fooling who, I would never say that! Coffee before all else is my motto. On the way back to the house I gave Mr Experience the tour and discovered that someone had ran a disc through the one field I had burned. I need to burn the second field soon so we can disc it and I can keep them sprayed all summer long so we can plant them in the fall. We are going to plant Round up ready alfalfa on about 20 acres. We are hoping to get around 60-100 ton/annually from this acreage. Currently we use around 35 ton for our animals. This will allow us to be more generous with the feed and to sell some to recoup the costs of our equipment.

As we got closer to the late afternoon we realized that we were going to run out of tile. The floor company called to tell me our extra four boxes have arrived but I never went and picked them up or had Annmarie get them. This is going to put a kink in our completion plans. I was breaking open one of tile boxes and found the wrong color tiles! There are 8 tiles to a box and 5 of the tiles where a different shade. We looked around but that was the first time we had noticed it and it is pretty obvious. I told Annmarie about it and tonight as she was going to be d she tells me we installed the wrong color of tile on the floor. I ran into the kitchen in a panic thinking we had missed a tile, but alas i could not see the problem. So I go up onto the stairs and look down at the kitchen floor. The last four rows of tile Mr Experience installed look glossy. Like they are a different kind of tile. I tell her its only a trick of the light. If I turn the kitchen light on you cannot see it. Plus those last four rows went in very easy so they they did not get handled much and are very clean. I will keep telling myself that until I can walk on the tile in the daylight and take a really good close look at it again.

No tile means we are taking Sunday off! I get to spend all day doing laundry. My upstairs laundry basket is overflowing and I only have three pair of underwear and two pair of clean socks left. It is time for laundry.

So far Zeke has stayed in the yard since I strung up the new wire fencing. One of the oddities of it is it is so tight that it now sings when the wind blows. I think it scares him so he is staying away from it. Whatever works to keep him in the yard is okay with me.

Day 14, only 9 days left of vacation

It’s closing in on the end of my vacation. Only 9 days left until I am back at it, I am starting to dream about going back to work just to take a vacation from my vacation! We had to float in the subfloor, the mud filled in all the low spots and valleys. Hopefully this will prevent any tile from breaking by creating a flex point. We pulled out the dishwasher so we could tile under it. Once the tile is in place we will caulk all the wall joints and floor joints. We also ground off the points from the countertop screws. They were sticking down about 1/8 inch. Everything will be smooth to make inserting the dishwasher easier. While we were doing that I decided that we needed to tile the floor of the sink enclosure. So we pulled out all the cleaning supplies and will install tile and seal it off after we get it tiled.

We offset the Hardiboard in an attempt to stiffen the floor. You could see all the separate times that water had leaked all over the floor and damaged the subfloor.

We had to move the safe! This thing weighs over 600# and has steel wheels. We were afraid it would chip the tiles. I went out and cut some wooden coasters for the safe to sit on out of some dry maple wood I had out in the shed. Annmarie had some felt in the craft room that I cut and glued to the bottom of the coasters. We laid down plywood and managed to get it over to its final resting spot. I cut little boards to go between the coasters to allow us to push it onto the coasters. It worked surprisingly well. Now if someone would just open it up and tell us the combination. I am upping the reward to $200! The safe cannot be damaged in any way doing this.

Day 13, I was not much help

I really wanted to help, as completing the kitchen is the new goal, but I was not very good help today. Mr Experience was not coming out till the afternoon so I had plans to fix the front fence in the slim hope that it would contain Zeke and to drag the barn lot and horse area for poop. I was waiting for it to dry out for just a few days to make this task easier.

Last night it started to poor down rain and did not let up today. So I ended up putting on all my water resistant, as there is no true water proof clothing and proceeded to head out and fix that front fence. Annmarie doesn’t want me adding any boards to impede our view so I ended up install some upright eye bolts in some of the posts and got another strand of wire six inches higher than it was. I hope this is high enough to deter the dog. I also installed inline tighteners and made that wire tight! It is so tight when I came by later this afternoon I heard the wire singing in the wind.

Mr Experience got done early so I took a break and went and picked him up. I finished the front fence and drug the horse poop out of the barn lot with the tractor. It is so messy and muddy. After the poop was gone I dumped some more 3/4 minus gravel to keep the water away from their feet. We dig out their hooves nightly.

It was past lunch time so I went inside to eat and as I am zapping leftovers in the microwave I notice the back creek running! Now this is a bad thing as it means I must go out immediately and move the fence off of the creek crossings. We have had so much rain that the ground simply cannot absorb any more. So I sit down to eat lunch and notice the wet spot on the floor in the living room by the freestanding propane heat stove. I was informed there is a leak in the ceiling! I popped ceiling tiles out until we figured it was leaking around the vent pipe. So now I need to get access to the stove pipe without falling off the roof. I still finished my lunch and went up to the master bedroom. The roof vent is reachable from our window I just need to pop the screen out and lean out the window a few feet. I got some 100% clear silicone caulk and a couple of rags and some tools and Mr Experience. After the porch incident I was not hanging out the window without someone to catch me or hold onto my feet. Turns out I didn’t need any help but I made sure he was right there just in case. I am still dressing my left shin every day and the front of my neck feels like someone throat punched me several times. My back and shoulders don’t even bother me any more. We lit the stove to heat up the caulk in an attempt to get it to dry faster. I will keep the stove going all night.

I went outside finally and started lifting panels off the creek bottom. I hang them in the air. At two crossings I had to dig out the pile of tumbleweeds as they cause dams. I picked up some trash along the creek and down near four corners I found a small old shelter that someone built out of a cardboard box and some remants for a cat. Who does this on someone else’s property? Please don’t throw away your unwanted animals, be they cats, dogs, raccoons, possums, or skunks. We don’t want them either and depending on how they interact with the livestock or chickens they may not live long. I will need another teenager to troll the creek banks and do some cleanup this spring and summer.

On the way back to the house I stopped by the machine shed to drop off two large containers when I heard a noise. I thought it was Bob, our adopted cat we started in the shop. Nope, it was the barn owl!! It was up in the rafters above the hay flitting from one end to the other. It didn’t want to go out in the rain. I left it alone after dropping off the buckets, it was too dark for a picture.

I went through three pair of gloves today trying to keep my hands dry. It didn’t work, they kept getting soaked. I am definitely going to have to dig out the irrigation ditch again soon and install both of the culverts. That needs to happen if it doesn’t freeze in the next two weeks.

I felt so guilty about not helping Mr Experience today that I spent an hour tonight scraping up the floor and prepping it for wonderboard tomorrow. It should not take us long before we start laying board. We will need to move the safe out first! That will be a challenge. Annmarie and I emptied the rain gauge tonight and dumped out 1.9 inches of rain out and it is raining again.

Day 10 and rockstars we are!

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

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.