mud room

Staycation day 8 Final 10% completed

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My goal this time off was to actually check items off my list. I love the first 90% of a project but that last 10% is always painful! The last 10% of a project can take 25% of your time and by the time it gets to the true detail work I am tired of it and ready to move onto the next project. So what you are going to see are a lot of completions of little things that I have ignored for years!

Last winter I had the outside chicken door freeze open and/or shut. In a bad ice storm it is going to freeze. There is no way to really effectively block that without applying some type of heating system. I just want to stop the water from running down to it and then freezing in the night. To stop that I took an old metal wring from a whiskey barrel and cut and bent tabs then attached it over the door. I caulked it top and underneath to ensure that the water cannot run down the back of the door. This should work 98% of the time, we will see how it does this winter.

I spent a day cleaning the wife’s office. I had not been in there in a few months and I was applying for school last week and noticed that the office needed a good once over. I ended up vacuuming and dusting and removing all spiderwebs. I oiled down the window sills and cleaned the windows. After I did all of that I realized that I had never touched the Murphy bed we bought at auction. I have to repair it but I had not even cleaned and oiled it. So I spent a couple of hours and rubbed orange oil/beeswax combo into the wood. It looked amazing once I was done so I was determined to get it repaired. I ended up finding some furniture barrel nuts and a bronze sleeve bearing. The wood is torn up around the place they had the old screw attachment located. So I decided I could drill an oversized hole, insert and glue in place the bronze sleeve and then use locktite to keep the barrel nut at the right location. I ended up having to drill out the support straps a little to get the barrel bolt through it. I opted to let the super glue dry for a day or two before I did any assembly.

Yesterday, Mr Rainman came out and we really worked on knocking out a lot of little projects. I cut the last piece of oak kickerboard to go under the oven cabinet and we nailed/screwed all three pieces in place. This way the dog’s play toys cannot go to purgatory. I only had to fish out two toys before installing the boards. You can see from the pictures what a difference it made. The picture on the left is before I completed it and the one on the right is after they are all installed.

We have some of the very first cooking stones that Pampered Chef ever made and one of them is a large round pizza stone. It occasionally just rolls out of the open fronted storage area. Annmarie wanted me to install a wooden stop to prevent this potential tragedy. The stone has survived several rolls out onto the tile floor undamaged. I sanded down the front of the cabinet and glued then pin nailed and clamped the little 1/4” stops in place. I will rub a food grade finish on them tomorrow so they will be off the list. The slot on the left holds the stones but I wanted both sides to match and if someone accidentally puts the stone on the wrong side it still will not roll out. The stones are very well seasoned and cookies just slide off of them after all the years we have had them.

The back door trim got reinstalled for the third time. The mud room outside door keeps shifting with the weather. I think I have gotten it figured out this time. I ended up doing some latch work and should have it perfected. If I have to remove it a couple more times I will need to recut a new piece due to all of the nail holes.

We had to bring the table saw around to the front of the old house so that the window trim in the mud room could be finished. I needed to cut a custom width on the inside of the window. Luckily, we were able to find four pieces of scrap that were wide enough to work. I trimmed off the joint sides and kept the middle. I had to shim the window trim quite a bit to get it to fit correctly. The outside trim was just an intact 1×4 that we cut to size and sanded down. I will rub finish into all of this trim tomorrow when I get the trim in the kitchen. The pneumatic nailer and compressor had to be brought over. I am missing my 18g midsize nailer. We have looked everywhere for it but I do not really want to buy a DeWalt trim nailer to replace it, those things are expensive. So we made do with a larger finish nail.

The mud room does have an attic enclosure. I was up there when we first moved into the house as I had to run wire for house power through it. We sealed up the gaps and then installed the old trim back up. Due to adding a wall we ended up having to leave off the back board. I painted it all today after the caulk had time to dry. I am not sure we got the right white paint can correct. When it was wet the paint looked a little off. I won’t know until it dries and if it is really noticeable there is enough leftover paint to repaint the entire ceiling so it will all match.

Friday the last of the oversized roofing screws came in. So on Saturday I got back onto the machine shed roof to finish screwing in the roof ridge. It only took about five minutes to complete but before I could get down I wanted to remove the antenna pole that had been on top of the machine shed. Another thing I should have used the boom truck for along with the ridge line installation. So instead I just crawled up onto the hay room roof ridge and scooted over to the pole. I was able to unscrew five of the six anchors. I had used one off brand type with a weird star shaped pattern. I stayed on the roof and Mr Rainman went to get bits and then put it in a leather glove finger held in place with a rock jammed into the finger. He then tossed it up onto the roof at me. I could not move at all so the throw practically had to hit me for me to catch it. There was much cajoling and when that did not encourage him to throw harder some name calling may have been utilized. He could not find the correct head type so he had to throw me up two 1/2” open end wrenches so I could unbolt the pole from that half of the roof anchor. We ended up having to move the ladder, cut the grounding wire holding it up then move the ladder again and unhook one of the anchors. It came down finally. All the usable parts were removed and salvaged for later potential use and the rest tossed onto the metal scrap heap. That has been up on the machine shed roof since 2017!

After four attempts at welding and a couple of days to spray paint the house number was ready to be installed on our fence. I argued pretty vehemently against its current placement location. After I installed it I was unsure why I thought this location would not work. It turned out pretty nice, the paint covers some of my juvenile welding but it should hold together. I think the wire fed welder would work better for this kind of job than the stick. But I have not yet setup my wire feed side of the welder. I will need to do that next year.

Mr Rainman stayed very busy today. He mowed our entire lawn and tossed it all over the fence for the sheep and chickens. This should help remove some of the foxtails from our yard. The yard is pretty rough and not very easy to mow. He repaired the drip line in the lavender patch and put all the spare repair parts into Annmarie’s shed. Some weed whacking was done on the front hillside to knock down the rest of the thistles.

We don’t have any bees currently but Annmarie wanted us to expand the bee area so that she could easily walk around the hives and set stuff down without it always disappearing into the grass. He installed approximately another 50 blocks and the area is definitely large enough for 2-3 hives now.

Lastly after much discussion it was decided to dig the electrical ditch so I can run a single outlet to the gazebo. This way we can have the pellet grill out there and a string of lights. Unfortunately, where the ground is not getting hosed down by the sprinkler it is incredibly hard. So Mr Rainman started digging and then put water on in a couple of locations to soften the ground for tomorrow. I was able to go in and dig out another ten feet of the ditch and then start it all the way to the Gazebo. I took the hose and made water run down into the ditch from the gazebo side. I did this three times so hopefully in the morning we will not have any trouble getting down far enough for the ditch. I will need to buy conduit on Monday after work so I can wire it all up this next week. Mr Rainman is only going to be able to help three day in the next couple of weeks. So I will be flying solo most of my staycation. I am very happy with the progress we are making on the list.

A lot of little things

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Saturday was a full day for us and farm work was not going to happen. Mr Rainman came out and spent the day catching up a lot of little things. I had purchased 20 bags of sand, 15 stepping stones and 12 bags of pea gravel the day before for the projects. He started by working in 18 bags of sand into our future asparagus/strawberry elevated bed out in the lavender area. Our two year asparagus crowns had just arrived on Wednesday and they needed to be planted. He had two bags left over and I used those when I planted the 24 crowns that evening. We don’t get to do anything but hope they survive this year and maybe next year we will get to harvest some asparagus as it will be three years old by then. The Gingerman is bringing us some strawberry starts next month and we will put those right on top. The Lavender only gets watered twice a week so we are going to put the asparagus on the same circuit as them.

Annmarie has been wanting to be able to feed the cats barefoot but now that we have to walk across eight feet of rough gravel she has been requesting stepping stones. He got a channel dug and then the concrete steps set. Once he got the gravel around everything he watered it really well and then reapplied gravel. The extra gravel went outside the fence on the yard side. We are going to make a small gravel area by the gate so the extra gravel went there. It turned out very nice. The only thing left is to extend the cat rain roof so their food gets better protection when it rains. I need to extend the sides down and put a front on so the snow cannot blow in as easily.

The next project is purely a Mr Rainman idea. We had been talking about various ways to fill in the old flower beds in the mud room. He had suggested filling them up with pea gravel. This was a wonderful idea so I picked up 12 bags. The only real problem is even though it was bagged it was still pretty dirty. So he brought the cement mixer over and washed the pea gravel in it. When it was clean he dumped it out on the ground and scooped it up for the mud room. It looks great! I decided it needed a little help drying before we moved the cabinet and shoes back in place. So I started up a small electric heater and cracked open the window. It’s been 24 hours and I think it will take 3-4 days to get the pea gravel all dried out! Once it is then all of the stuff can be put back in place. Mouse is grumpy because his food area is cluttered and he does not like it.

The last thing he did for the day was gets all of the garden beds cleaned out and an old wooden barrel cleaned out and tossed onto the burn pile. It was too far gone and had a large hole in it. We are still holding off on planting the garden due to the freezing temperatures

The contractor came out and installed two of the three windows but they were not double hung. He had ordered double hung but was not given them. New ones are on order. Our new siding should be delivered May 13, 2024. They will start on the sides away from where the windows need replaced.

Our cows started having calves 2 days ago! We now have two calves on the ground and healthy. There are 7-9 to go, I am unclear on how many cows are pregnant.

Mud room 99% done

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We are now using it officially. There are two little things left to complete the entire job and honestly they are going to wait. I need to trim out the window and I need to add another outlet on the other side of the door. Both of those things are not a rush and the power thing requires me to kill power to the entire house/old house out at the pole in the front yard. So no one can be home when I do that. Mr Rainman got the shelf wood supports installed and the short side shelves installed. We had to wait for the metal brackets to arrive before the shelves over the doors could be placed. Luckily, the brackets came with both long and short screws so I did not have to make a special trip to town to get short black screws that go directly into the shelf. I bought too much cedar closet lining. I was thinking it would go on both walls but after installing it on one side the smell was pretty overpowering so I decided one side was good enough. I am ordering a little UV light bug trap also and will give that a try and see if we cannot keep the bugs under control. We built a custom shelf for the new food dryer from leftover wood scraps. I had to adjust the lumen output on the overhead light from 3400 lumen to 5200. The shelves cut down on the light but using a 1×2’ LED light has made all the difference. The room is not dark. Yesterday, I got all of the metal supports and last two shelves installed.

I spent today finishing emptying out the laundry room and moving all of the raw alpaca fiber bins out to the mud room. There are still a couple of pair of boots but the laundry room is fairly empty now. It is quite nice and now needs a deep clean! I ordered a couple of rubber shoe mats and a foot stool so you can sit down if you need to put your shoes on. Not necessary for rubbers but if we have to break out the snow boots you definitely need a place to sit down to lace them up. I ordered an extension cord today for the dryer also, the cord was too short to get to the outlet.

Mr Rainman had a good idea, he said to buy bagged pea gravel to fill in the old planter spots. It’s washed and we probably only need 6-8 bags. It will be easy to move and easy to install. As soon as the local stores start selling their spring yard stuff I will get some. I also need to get some stepping stones so that Annmarie can get to the cat shelf in her socks. Now you have to cross six feet of sharp gravel to feed the cats. We used to just toss it on the back porch! It is the one downfall to the mud room, you cannot just open the door and feed the outside cats. It is a small price to pay for the mud room. I love it!

Mud room guy finished 90%

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Well, Mr Rainman and I managed to knock out most of the mud room in the last two weekends. We are at the stage that I dread the most, the last ten percent. It will take an entire weekend just to get that last 10% finished. It cost about $45/sqft in materials to get the three walls, insulation, exterior door, one small window, and three types of interior lining basically just over $4k for a mud room that I installed with help. I cannot imagine building a house in this day and age from the ground up. My suggestion would be to find a house with good bones and do the work yourself.

I decided to go with smooth plywood on the short sides of the room and we just used some scrap tongue and groove to finish off the top. The back wall has all blue pine tongue and groove. I really do like the stuff but at $10/ea for a 1×6”x8’ board it doesn’t take long to add up when covering a wall. I went through about 80% of the wood pile to find 29 pieces that were worth the ten bucks. Unfortunately, the store won’t bring out more material until someone buys all the crud. I had to go to another store and ended up with white pine in two different patterns. Of course we did not realize that the pattern had changed until we were 60% done and there was only 90 minutes left of work. I just told Mr Rainman that we would be the only ones that noticed it because we had uses different patterns on all the walls so no one would be able to tell that we did not deliberately do it that way.

He talked me into doing a white wash treatment on the wood to protect it, transmit the light and let the wood grain show through. I have never done this before so I am interested to see how it turns out. I also have 60 sqft of cedar closet lining. So once I get the walls all whitewashed I am going to install cedar lining on the two plywood walls. This should help us cut down on bugs and moths. The room is on hold this week as I will need to get outside and work on pruning our fruit trees. The weather is screwy and it keeps changing, 20F-60F in Jan-Feb, it’s not normal. So I need to get fruit trees because it might be 70F in March.

We found a contractor to tear off our vinyl siding, replace three windows and install Diamond Kote siding. The siding should outlive us and the weather should not affect it as much as our vinyl siding. The siding does not have to be painted. It’s a crazy amount of money to do that, more than we paid for our first ever house 30 years ago, just for siding. The job is just too big for me to do in a summer while I am holding down a full time job and trying to work on the farm. It is not possible to do all things, some things have to be farmed out.

We are going to have to get another 16’ of ice breaker stops installed on the front roof of the house. We had a fairly large chunk of ice fall and smash into our new porch railing. It shattered one side of the TREX railing. So that is on the list to replace this summer. It’s always something, the gutters have made a huge impact across the front of the house. The ice breakers worked amazing on the side of the house this winter. Even the black plastic moisture barrier we installed under the house is making a huge difference. We have used about 50% less propane to heat the house this winter. At this rate paying for insulation to install under the floors, our investment might be realized in just one winter. If we continue to use this little propane then I want to add insulating under the house to the summer projects list along with installing the gazebo and getting the man cave closed in. Just a few things to knock out this summer along with hay and weeds and mowing.

I have to say that anyone can really learn to do most things by watching YouTube! I had a couple of install questions on the door and window with the house wrap and I was able to find the answers fairly easily. Watch one, do one, teach one!

We are going to leave the concrete floor for a while. I would like to tile it eventually but it is a mud room and we need it for that reason so the concrete is appropriate.

Mud room progressing

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Mr Rainman stopped at the lumber store on his way out this morning so we would have enough lumber to finish up the walls. We had to frame in the door opening to the rough dimensions on the door receipt. I kept the receipt as it did have the needed dimensions and so that I could argue with Home Depot in six weeks when my door is not in yet.

We had to finish the door opening and the frame above the door. The door is 34” so that caused some problems framing the door, we got it worked out. The hard part was the corners. Each corner is an old iron pipe with 6” square 1/4” thick ends and then bolted to the concrete and the porch. The real problem is the pipe is welded in different spots on each end and neither pipe is identical. We had to try and frame around the pipes to get the corners stiffened. This was not easy and we kind of had to piece things together where the wood would actually fit.

When we went out to the barn this morning I tagged and banded the last pair in a jug. It was a little boy and he had pasty butt! The new momma was not keeping him cleaned up and it had frozen to his hair. It was a mess, I got it cleaned enough for him to poop. But it needs to get above freezing so I can get it out of his hair. We may have to bring him inside and get it all cleaned up. I will keep an eye on him. I had to do the same thing again this evening.

It did rain off and on throughout the day and we are under an ice advisory. You can see how the snow is turning into one big ice sheet with water on top. I finally had to start locking the dogs into the laundry room. The puppy’s injured foot was getting scraped up on the ice edges when her foot broke though the ice covered snow and she was leaving blood on the ice. She did not like not being outside while I was outside. It’s supposed to warm up so flooding may be a thing before the week is out.

Mr Rainman and I then worked on getting the plywood sheeting up onto the frame. As things started to get closed in I was able to really see how big the room was going to be and start thinking about what needed to happen on the inside. I think another $1k by the time I buy insulation, sealant and 12 more sheets of plywood with one smooth side. That doesn’t include sealing the plywood or building the countertop, bench stool and two open fronted shelving units. I think we will be into it about $4500 by the time we are all done with it.