Gingerman

Bathroom day 12

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well it’s been a long three days. Mr Rainman and I have kept after it diligently every day. There have been some setbacks, namely the plumbing. I am not a plumber, I have never been a plumber and I won’t even play a plumber on TV as I am just not a plumber! I managed to burn up the toilet stub and had to cut it short and after a couple of hours and two trips to the store I was able to solder on one end cap. The Gingerman had offered his soldering services but he was going to be gone until Sunday evening.

So I finished installing the new supports to block off the old door. I messed with that for 30 minutes trying to get the three outlet boxes equidistant from each other in a straight line. They are 9.25” apart and will look great when we are done!

The pocket door has been painful. I have never installed one before and the kit does not exactly have the greatest instructions. We installed the door and played with it to see how it works. It took us 30 minutes to figure out how to lock it into place onto the rollers. The door slants to the closed side. The floor slants also so I kept the slant so that the default position on the door will always be closed! This makes perfect sense to me and once we have the handle with indicator you will be able to tell if the bathroom is occupied, besides the fact that the door will not open. I ended up looking at how the contractor installed one in my mother’s house to figure out what would be the next steps for us. We know have a groove in the bottom of the door. This was painful as I always forget how to use a router, go shallow then a little deeper and make multiple passes, do not try and just count one inch out of the wood. I used the circular saw to make rough cuts and cleaned it up with the router making multiple descending swipes to get to the one inch deep goal. We also shimmed the opening bump board so that it now hits the entire door end at the same time. There is only about 1/32” opening in spots along the doorway. We will need to install trim to block the view of peepers.

Finishing the sliding door early is going to have to take precedence. We need to get the door stripped and sealed so it can be reinstalled before we close up the pocket. We are going to reuse the old door and will need to put a plug into the handle end where the old box knob was located. Then I will have to drill a new hole for the new flush locking mechanism. The door will take a few hours to strip and sand then re-stain and seal it.

We started to put up the plywood but realized quickly that without the plumbing being installed or the sink and toilet stubs blocked off we were limited in what we could cover up. The ceiling had some complicated cuts to get it all on a single piece of material. I ended up marking and cutting one sheet wrong. So far we have not been able to utilize my mistake yet. We are using scraps when possible so that we don’t have to go buy more lumber.

The weather has not really been cooperating. First there was a lot of snow. Then there was a lot of ice over the snow. Today it was rain and freezing rain. We had to move the sawhorses out onto the front lawn as Annmarie ended up doing church remotely from her office due to ice on the roads. This meant we had a no noise rule for a couple of hours today. We just moved the makings to over by the front door and carried plywood over to the front door to mark and cut it to fit.

There will be no progress made tomorrow as I have to go in and do the paying job for a day. Mr Rainman is coming out on Tuesday so we can dig back into the project. Annmarie wants to know when we are going to start tiling! I tell her when all of the prep work is completed.

The quail have finally found their block I placed outside the kitchen window. They come every day now to eat seeds from their block. Sometimes it is very hard to see them. They are easy to spot when you are outside as they make a lot of noise! Like a whole lot of noise!

Farm 4, Predators 0

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This is a great start to 2025! So far this year the Gingerman has killed one raccoon from the in-law’s front porch, it was eating her cat food. I have managed to kill two out in the barn and just caught one in the live trap. I thought we had all of the raccoons out of the barn but yesterday when I was chasing the cows out of the barn I noticed a single set of raccoon paw prints leading up the hill from the spring to the underside of the barn. There is one more still living in the barn. They eat the cat food and make an incredible mess. They find a high spot and use it as the bathroom making huge piles of feces. Which I then later discover and often they are in a difficult spot to reach or require a lot of moving stuff out of the way. I have a pile on top of my drying wood in the barn and I believe there is another pile on top of old wood we stacked up in the barn over a pass through in one of the hay bays.

I really need to pull that wood out of the hay bay and look at it. I bet about 90% can be burnt and the rest moved into the granary for later use. I was more of a hoarder early on when it came to barn wood. I realize now that it is only usually good for picture frames. Especially, wood that has been out in the weather for over 120 years.

Yesterday, the Gingerman is leaving the house and spots a coyote out in the wheat stubble field. He calls the progeny and she tells me. It is running towards the old chicken coop and the bottoms so I just need to get out there with a gun. I had not replaced the ammunition on the stock holder and when I grabbed the gun I realized that all the bullets were just empty brass. I only had two bullets. I wanted to go upstairs to get more ammo but after cleaning off the scope (dusty from construction work) the women said I was taking too long. So I went outside with only two shots.

I hoofed it up to the far end of the barn lot (100 yards) and waited. I tried calling the Gingerman on his cell phone but he was in a dead spot and so was I. I kept scanning for movement, no coyote, but there were about seven rooster pheasants flying around at the beginning of field #3 and walking around the bottoms on the snow. I stood out there for 15 minutes and never saw the coyote. It ended up turning for the creek bed around the cliff corner above me and I would never have been able to see it unless I walked another 200 yards in the deep snow.

I will be adding bullets to the stock ammo holder as I usually need more than two shots. Annmarie and I have been talking about how to store weapons at the ready inside the house but have them better secured. We will be doing some more research. Leaving them all stacked by the door is probably not a great long term plan. It definitely is not keeping them clean and free of dust and dirt.

Work room ready

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Mr Rainman came out today so we could finish getting the old house room ready for a workspace. We need to build the custom oak cabinet and we will need to get the paint off the bathroom door and refinish it. There is a ton of space now! I opted to keep the one shelf unit full of screws and connectors in the old house. I am always looking for a nail or screw and this will keep them handy. The Gingerman helped me move the old kitchen cabinet into the workroom and it will hold clamps and DeWalt tools that don’t need to be out in the machine shed. I also need to order some more battery holders so I can keep charged batteries on the wall and any battery found laying around can be assumed to be empty.

The room was vacuumed from ceiling to floor then the leaf blower was turned loose on the room to try and get the last vestiges of dust. Nope, it looked like a sandstorm had been cut loose in the room. We will come back in a week and vacuum all surfaces again. That should be good enough to keep the dust from falling down onto the bathroom projects. We would need to go up in the attic and vacuum the entire area above the room. That is really not necessary for what we are doing.

We are closing on being ready for the bathroom remodel. I have managed to stage the following items:

  • All enclosed single piece elevated toilet (heavy!)
  • Bathroom light
  • Exhaust fan with Bluetooth speaker
  • Magnetic shower head on a wand
  • Sink
  • Sink faucet
  • Sink push button drain
  • 10/4 100’ wire for bathroom heater
  • Overhead 220V heater
  • 30 minute 220V timer switch for heater
  • Solid brass knobs for vanity and custom cabinet
  • Solid brass handles for vanity
  • Solid brass toilet paper holder
  • Zip wall zipper
  • Wall towel rack

The biggest thing left is the Schluter system. I think I am going to do a membrane covered floor to disconnect the tile from the subfloor. I talked to the project manager yesterday and I can use tongue and groove wood on the upper half of the two bathroom walls, zero sheetrock needed! This is a huge selling point for me as I hate working with plaster, I make such a mess.

I did not really feel like sorting out in the old chicken coop so there is a huge pile of stuff out there that still needs to be sorted. It can stay there for now and I will sort it eventually. We even left all of the tiling tools in the old house for staging. I will need to dig around in the box before I go buy Schluter parts so I know if I need to pick anything else up.

Mr Rainman will come out one day this week and vacuum the house attic. We will need to take up some of the attic floor so that I can wire in a second bedroom light. It is too dark in there at night with only a single overhead light. It would probably help if we did not have stained glass lights throughout the entire house.

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.