Mr Professional

Office Project continues

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Friday I had to go and buy more 2×4 boards. We ran out and more were needed for the California corners and the rough door frame that needs to be installed for the new outside door. They are running about $1/foot. The price is so high compared to a couple of years ago. I had to go in to town to pickup the three cut and wrapped cows. I delivered 2.5 of them and we got the last half. This took a few hours and finished off the day. Mr Flow and Mr Professional came out for a few hours. Mr Flow worked on the lavender patch weeding and the berry patch. They needed a lot of grass removed and some weeds. Mr Professional and I got started in on the production area wall. I had installed most of the insulation first thing in the morning. We thought we had enough four foot tongue and groove boards to get the walls done. The juniper for the ceiling is in the wood dryer and will hopefully be done this week.

The sheep are looking much better now that we have wormed them. They will need it again in a couple of weeks. We had let it go a little long and the sheep were kinda skinny. We have decided to start worming in the fall and early spring whether we think it is needed or not. The sheep have still not rubbed off all of their loose hair yet. They will look much better when they have their smooth coat. We have been moving the sheep around to let the pastures rest. We are going to let them back up onto the hillside to graze. The grass is very tall there.

The weather is so screwy, we had a thunderstorm roll in on Saturday while Mr Professional and I were working on the production area walls. It rained about 3/4” in under an hour. The rain just poured out of the sky. The back creek doubled in size in under thirty minutes and then three hours later was still muddy but back down to almost pre-storm level.

The hay is looking great! We went up to field 1 and it is six inches above my knee. We are going to need to start haying very soon, probably in under ten days. For the haying venture to be successful we need a few dry days on a regular basis. A couple of the lower fields have a lot of cheat grass and were not in the fields we replanted. We are going to bale them and sell them as weedy seconds for cheap. It will pay for themselves.

Office project discovered Pocket Window!

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Well no one came out this morning. I keep forgetting it’s Mother’s day, but really does that mean the spouse doesn’t have to do any work? This again shot down my plan to finish running all of the wire for power. I need to get this done so I can insulate and close up the walls but it is not really feasible to do alone, someone needs to be in the attic and someone on the ground floor to get the wire where it needs to go.

Instead I went out and started in on the freezer room. Since I had cleared out the leftover wood pieces yesterday I started by installing extra wood in the corners to nail the wall boards up on. this turns out to be three 2×4 for every corner to get the wood out far enough to be able to really use it. After I did the corners I really took a look at the window. I wanted to cover up the window but the longer I played with it and looked at it, I suddenly realized that it was a pocket window! It was designed to be pushed back into the wall to create an opening. It was just missing a couple of stabilizer points. I went and ripped up a 2×4 to get a 1” wide piece and used that to set the track. I predrilled everything so the narrow pieces would not split. I think I need to hit the window area with some clear caulk but I am going to have to be careful to not just splooge it everywhere. The window worked great after I was done and it can still be removed if needed for repairs and touch up paint.

I kept installing more wall dividers and supports and it really firmed up the outer wall. I didn’t realize how flimsy it felt until I was about halfway done and noticed that the outside wall would no longer move. This took a lot more 2x4s than I had counted on, by the time I was done I only had 8 left out of 30 and I still need to reframe the front door (approx 8 boards) and do three more corners, I will need to get at least 12 more 2×4 to get the job done. Once I had all the new wood in place I marked off the outlet spots and installed the boxes. I got all of the holes drilled for the wires to be inserted through. Mr Professional came out for two hours this afternoon and we got all of the wires installed! The only thing left is the 240V service for the heat pump but I need the California corners installed on one corner so I can drill through it to run the wire. While he was up in the attic waiting for me to label and run the wire into boxes he plugged up two more bird size holes in the attic. We are looking to stop the birds and bugs from getting into the attic this year. We pulled all of the extra insulation we had left over from our main house attic. Looking at it spread all around the room I don’t believe we have enough to do all of the walls. I was hoping I would not have to buy any insulation. Time will tell after we start putting it in the walls.

We have gotten 1.36” of rain this month, so for the first week of May. It is a crazy amount for us locally to see in such a short time frame.

Office is finally moving forward

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Today Mr Tex came out and we focused on getting the wiring done. We pulled the wires and I labeled both ends very well so I could install all of the outlets and switches correctly. I will also have to install all of the breakers and label them once I am done. I needed to install one triple switch and one quad switch but it has been years since I did it. I thought I knew but ran into the house and got my cheater book to make sure I did it right!! Luckily, we had 12/2, 14/2 and 14/3 wire so I was able to use what was necessary to get all the switches correct. I even went into the house attic and pulled down the leftover roll of 500” 12/2 hoping it would be enough, but it was not. Mr Tex got a list of stuff to do, fix the old bathroom ceiling and plug the window off and the bathroom hole. While he did that I ran to Pendleton and bought another 500’ of 12/2. I had not wired any of the freezers yet. We got wires ran to two freezer outlets. We needed to get my room cleaned out so we could move all of the remodel equipment out of the freezer room. Three of the walls in the freezer room need to be torn out so we can seal the walls and install more outlet boxes, then insulate the walls.

We got everything pulled that we had time for, I have four more cable runs to pull and we will be done with the entire house. I even remembered to add two porch outlets and a back porch light! I think our holdup is going to be the windows that we ordered. No telling when those will come.

Mr Professional came out for a couple of hours and we worked on emptying the second room. We need to be able to stage all of the purchased supplies and get the new freezer room cleaned out so the walls can be stripped out. I need the walls out so we can install power, seal the walls then install insulation.

I keep changing my mind on what to do with the walls and ceiling. I was going to just paint the ceiling and do the walls in pine. I have some 1×6” and 1×10” boards and I was just going to butt them up to each other. This won’t look amazing but would work. I am not going to do that. I am getting tongue and groove juniper for the ceiling and tongue and groove blue pine for the walls. I want it to look pretty! I am even going to install it on a diagonal. It will hit more boards that way but will look prettier also. I will use the plain stuff to sheath the new freezer room walls. We are going to do that room at this stage but it doesn’t need to be fancy. I am even thinking about leaving the original window in the room. I think I will for now and then this summer decide if I need to install a thermostatically controlled vent fan to make sure the room doesn’t get too hot. I am hoping that if I insulate the room well I can keep some of the extreme heat out.

Today, Monday we have had 0.43” of rain in the last day. The wheat looks amazing. Our upper fields are looking amazing in places, last years grass is skyrocketing. We need some warmer weather to really cause the seed we planted in the fall to shoot up. Its about 4” tall now. Last year’s grass is over 18” tall already. Next week we are going to have to stop and focus on getting the sickle bar mower attached and ready and get the baler repaired and ready to go.

Office work continues

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Well the office is still creeping along. I think it should go faster but something always seems to come up. I went over to Home Depot on Friday and spent 3 hours digging around and finding all of the stuff I needed to finish the wiring. I have to put a 240V 20A outside waterproof box outside for the heat pump. It took me a while to find the boxes and I got 1 of 3 left on the shelf. Pickings for some items were mighty slim. The plan was for Mr Tex, Mr Professional and Mr Flow to come out on Saturday so we could get the underside of the house finished.

They all did come on Saturday but the weather was miserable for working outside. We had a nice hail storm on top of the rain storms, alongside some horizontal lightening. I finally had to let Mouse back into the house as he had crawled up onto the porch and would not leave my side. Mr Professional and Mr Flow worked under the house for four hours and then left, the weather just kept getting worse.

I sent Mr Tex up into the ceiling to clean up all of the dust and stuff. While he did that I finished installing the outlet boxes in the office area. The only real problem was I managed to buy single gang horizontal boxes at Home Depot instead of vertical. I ended up having to remove all of the vertical boxes and use horizontal boxes so I had some horizontal boxes for the single gang switches. So now all of the low switch boxes are horizontal. I think I have 26 outlets in the office in a 13’x16’ room, with a 5’x5’ attached room. I am positive we will not need all 52 outlet plugs, but we have them just in case. I continued cutting holes in the walls in the second room to get ready for power in that room also.

Mr Tex came down to tell me he could not get into the ceiling above the small room. I knew there was a bird’s nest up there so I knew we needed to get it out. This meant that the entire ceiling had to be torn down. The ENTIRE ceiling was full of straw and feathers. We got it all out and then realized that the support boards were in rough shape and not attached to the wall of the house. So once we got that mess all cleaned up we took out some more of the floor and then started to install the overhead beam. We ended up making two beams as I forgot to make a hollow support and just glued and screwed them together with a 1/2” piece of plywood in the middle. Mr Tex went around and drilled holes through all the boards so we could run cable. I had purchased nail stops to go over all of the cable holes so we don’t accidentally staple the wire when installing the wall paneling. I have decided to go with tongue and groove blue pine for the walls installed on a diagonal. The ceiling will be juniper that will be kept unfinished so you can smell it. If I can get all of the wire pulled we can start installing the insulation. The windows have not arrived and we still have the main front door to reframe into a bigger opening. I want to keep the old door to use between the rooms when we do the other room. This will save some money.

We also started installing the overhead light electrical boxes. We are going to have to caulk some of the walls in the attic and install some screen in the roof peak to keep out the hornets. I think letting off a bug bomb every four weeks is going to have to become a habit until we can get a handle on all the little holes everywhere. We did more cleanup as it seems to be an ongoing issue. The old bathroom has a 5” slant over 6’. So I am going to have to find six 2×6” boards to cut on a diagonal so we can get a new level floor installed in that little room.

Since we had to tear out the ceiling in the old bathroom we are going to have to do the same thing in the freezer room. but it also needs three walls torn out and a new level floor installed. We will have to install both doors first as they are being stored in the old kitchen. Once we have them in then we can tear into the old kitchen area and get the rest of the walls out and outside building sealed. It is coming along but there were no great leaps other than getting the new overhead beam in place.

New office progresses

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Friday would have normally been a farm work day for me but things have been crazy at work and I still had manager stuff to do so I had to go in for most of Friday. But never fear Mr Professional came out with Mr Flow and they proceeded to tear off the skirting and started cleaning under the house. There was 120 years worth of dead desiccated animals under there plus a lot of cob webs! All of that stuff got cleaned out and tossed onto the burn pile. It was replaced with a whole lot of gravel. I was hoping that this endeavor would only take two days but after spending all weekend, three days on it I figure they have at least three more days. They still need to put in a couple of upright posts, a beam and skirt the building. We are going to try and keep the animals from crawling under the old house. They even managed to rip out a dead old tree stump that was next to the back porch. The back porch that is falling apart and will need to be replaced sooner than later.

I spent all of Saturday caulking the interior seams of the entire house. The house has shiplap on the outside and we are not going to reside it any time soon. It is on the list to be done but not yet. So I am sealing every seam from the inside and then I started to use spray expanding foam to fill in the large gaps. We are going to insulate the attic and the walls before we close them up.

On Saturday night while discussing the plans for the new office with the wife and how I was going to wire the building it occurred to me that I was going to have to wire the entire house all at once, all five rooms. When I mentioned this to the wife she looked at me like I had just stated the obvious. It was not that obvious when I was making my wiring diagram in my head at Home Depot and counting the number of junction boxes I needed to purchase. I am short 15 single gang boxes. I am going to dig through all of my leftover switches and outlets and count them so when I go back to Home Depot I will be able to just buy the rest of the needed items all at once.

So on Sunday, I burnt one of the two large burn piles and then finished caulking all of the cracks, 20+ tubes and finished using up 8 cans of spray foam for one room! It is starting to really seal up. The sound dampening is the most obvious thing right now. Its a lot different and we don’t even have the batting insulation in yet. I need to run all of the wires for power before we can install any insulation. We are just going to wash, prime then paint the ceiling. It’s all tongue and groove wood. We will vacuum up the dirt and dust from the attic and make it totally clean also.

I started to install all of the electrical boxes. That was when I realized that I was seriously short on boxes. I also realized that I am going to have to put in 1 three way switch and 2 two way switches and it just now dawned on me that I need to put an outside waterproof outlet on the porch. So more stuff to add to my purchase list which I will be getting at Home Depot. I need some heavy duty triangle brackets also to hold the wood shelves up with. I have a plan for getting all of the boxes in place and all of the power wired up to the entire house.

It is raining again today, we already have 0.14” for today, the weather person said 0.25-0.5” over the next two days. The grass and wheat are looking amazing. I am not going to fertilize this year but I may have to do it next year, the areas where the alpaca are pooping are 16-18” tall already. So after we get the hay done the manure spreaders need to become functional. There is always something next on the horizon.