Gingerman

Bathroom remodel day 26

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Well my vacation is over and the bathroom is not completed. I am sure that I am not the only man in history to utter those words. Wow, this has been a large complicated project. There have been more than a few setbacks but we are still moving forward. I was feeling so good about progress that I bet the wife that by two weeks from today we will be able to use the bathroom. This may have been premature as I figured out two more setbacks today.

Mr Rainman and I have been going at it every day for the last three days. I have been drinking nothing but coffee for days and not very much of that. So much so that last night my legs spent all night cramping up. Today I decided to up my water intake game and drank almost an entire container of V8 juice and spiking the glasses of V8 with liquid IV powder to give it more kick! The V8 hides most of the taste but I would like to sleep tonight so I am sticking with it. The shower walls are still not perfectly square so that has caused us some problems getting the tiles installed. The predone tiles stuck on a 12×12” mesh has caused us some difficulties. The gaps between tiles is sometimes way off and we have to try and move them around. It’s painful as you usually have to cut the mesh.

The All-set we are only mixing in 1/4 bag batches. Mr Rainman has been weighing it out and measuring all of the water. If the batch is too thick we lose working time (bucket time) and then have to waste it after a couple of hours. It has been taking me about three hours to use up a 1/4 of a bag of All-set. I am not the Flash. That is a lot of mixing and cleanup over the last few days.

The goal is to go into work early so I can leave early and get some more bathroom work done. We will see how this process goes.

Today we figured out that our metal tile trim will not work inside the shower. That tile is thinner than the tile we bought the trim for so it is too big. I will need to go over to Hermiston and trade it out for a smaller size. We also had the niches back wall completed when I realized there were no shelves installed. I had to do a search on Google and figure out that I should have cut the tile on the back wall to accommodate the shelf. We were able to tear out the tile, take it outside and wash the All-set off and then scrape the wall of the niches dry. After I get the new metal trim we will by dry fitting the entire niche before we even mix any mud up to ensure everything fits perfectly. To make this easier I got the boss to agree to another design change. We will be using our 2×6” tiles horizontally stacked so we can cut each one individually and make the outer edge of the niche clean and even.

The Gingerman was out over the weekend and he put together our new grain cracker/grinder and managed to mill about 100# of grain in 15-20 minutes. It works very well. So we will work on cracking the whole grain we are getting so it can be stored that way. In the spring, once it warms up we can just put the grain in a five gallon bucket and let it sprout, then toss it to the chickens.

Mr Rainman put up our new salt tasting center for the sheep. We found a place online that sells about 25 different mineral concentrations for goats/sheep. The idea is that the animals will eat what they need and by paying attention to it you will know what they are short on in their diet. He put this up a few days ago and I spotted the sheep in the back barn lot eating their type of salt. In a week or two we will look and see what type they are eating. Annmarie made labels engraved onto metal plates that we attached above the bins. This way we know exactly what is in each bin.

Bathroom Day 19 remodel

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Well the weekend was well spent, the bathroom is almost ready for tile. We just have to install the two membranes in the shower around the nozzle and the handle then seal the Detra membrane seam and Detra to the wall. The shower pan is still pending arrival by this Wednesday. It should not be a holdup for us as we can do the main bathroom floor and then the main bathroom walls first. If the pan is still not here after we get those tiled then we will grout them all next.

I just need to keep making progress every day. It took two days to get all of the holes and seams sealed correctly to provide that waterproofing that Schluter guarantees. I did not realize how long it was going to take. Mr Rainman asked me if I had read the reviews or not on the Schluter products and I said no. I knew it would do what I wanted but did not want to know about the reviews. He said one of the biggest complaints was on how long the system took to install by people not professionals. After getting this far I would say those reviews are spot on!

On Saturday, the Gingerman helped me seal nail protrusions and joints all day and on Sunday Mr Rainman helped me do the same thing. It is not a fast process. The bucket time on mud is around four hours using the All-set version and this is nice as that much time is needed. The only real problem is as it thickens you cannot add water to thin it out. You have to just hit it with the mixer to smooth it out again. This only works for so long before it is too thick to work with. If we were faster this probably would not be a problem.

When we set the Detra membrane on the main floor, I told Mr Rainman it would only take us an hour. Nothing else I have provided a timeline for has turned out to be accurate and it was already 1500. He grumbled and said we would be there till 1700 at a minimum. He mixed up 1/4 bag of All-set and I cut the Detra membrane to size so that it would fit. We got the entire floor covered with two sections. It only took us about 15 minutes once we had the All-set cured and ready to go. It did take the entire bucket of All-set. If we had another 1 square feet of membrane to apply we would not have had enough to cover the floor.

This gave us time to go out and try and catch one of the alpaca, Mad Max as the idiot had a piece of baling twine dangling from his neck and dragging on the ground. Annmarie had noticed it the day before. I figured we could just show up with treats and they would come running up to us, we could grab him and then be done. Nope, they did not want to cooperate. After multiple failed attempts to grab the needed alpaca by the head or hold onto the twine trailing it we ended up having to push Mad Max and Snoop into the orchard and shut them away from everyone else. This now resulted in us chasing two alpaca around, after several failed attempts and one resulting in me getting dragged across the ground as I attempted to hold onto his foot while being dragged, we opted to open up the gate into the back alley way hoping to get them both into a smaller space so we could catch Mad Max. Mr Rainman went to open the gate and I followed them to gate leading out of the field. It was closed but they both knew it was the desired escape route, it just needed to open for them to have what they wanted.

As I was approaching them, Snoop decided to start picking on Mad Max, this unintentionally forced Mad Max into the fence and I went onto the open side of him. Snoop was blocking the other side and Mr Rainman was able to sneak up on Snoop’s side and grab Mad Max by the neck. I just had to slide the twine over his neck and we were all done! Mr Rainman was out the door with everything done by 1620!

Our grain cracker came a week ago but we are going to have to get it set up. The Gingerman is getting grain from truck clean outs and it is a mixture of everything. The chickens don’t like entire pieces of corn, wheat, barley, or peas. So we will need to crack them so they can be eaten. If the bags are a little wet I put them out for the sheep and they do not care in what shape the grain is, they will eat it. We have a lot of storage space available currently but I plan on getting four more metal 50 gallon drums to put in the back of the chicken coop. The drums will hold about 200# of grain/drum. I have enough room in the back of the coop to hold five drums and then there is a the grain storage out in the barn. The barn storage can hold at least 2000# maybe more.

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.