New office

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.

Office Progress

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Of course it was dumping snow out of the sky this morning and we had a couple of inches on the ground by the time I got out to start in on the new office. It was way too cold to be outside in the snow. Mr Tex came out shortly thereafter and we worked on the office. He finished ripping out the rest of the old bathroom walls. We found one whole side filled with birds nests and the opposite side had a nice mouse nest at the bottom of the wall.

I spent most of the morning figuring out how to get the new electrical box to line up with the electrical conduit outside the house. I will wire the entire box, all the outlets and switches and then in a couple of hours I will kill main power and then just move power supply over to the new box and then turn it on! I don’t want the freezers to be without power for very long. I realize a few hours is not a big deal but I think I can get the entire thing done in under two hours once I have it all prepped. We finally got the box in place and I got the entire thing framed out. I will cut out the plywood for the back next then I will start wiring the office room and the freezer room.

Once I had the electrical box in and Mr Tex had the old bathroom torn apart we started working on getting the walls sealed up from the floor and the attic. Some of the spaces we will be able to caulk as they are not very big but the big ones will need some spray in foam. The newer 2×4 lumber is not as wide as the stuff they used to use. This causes some gaps that we will just need to fill in. Unfortunately, it was so cold today that we could not use any liquid anything as it would not have set up. We had decided to put in fire brakes to help stiffen the walls. Once we had all of the shiplap off of the walls the room did not feel as sturdy. The supports are helping it to stiffen back up. We will have to drill holes in them to run the wiring but that can wait until we have everything in. I would like to paint the acrylic roofing onto the walls before we wire but the weather is going to determine the order on that choice. We need to be able to caulk first then paint. The ceiling is going to stay the same, we will just have to scrub it clean, prime it and paint it. The nice part is the ceiling will be the only part of the room that has to be painted. I have been contemplating a white wood stain for a couple of the walls and maybe another color, red for the work closet? Annmarie is going to have to help with that choice. The floor we are just going to hand sand and stain like I did our upstairs. I did notice today that they used to have linoleum in the room and there is still some glue in places. This stuff is hard to sand out as it gums up the sandpaper pretty fast but it’s not the entire room.

I went to Home Depot on Friday and bought two doors, a 32” and 36”. We will have to reframe the entire door into the room from the porch. It is just kind of hanging in the opening and there is no support or header for the door. It needs to be completely rebuilt. I hate hanging doors as it is very tedious and precise work. Luckily, we found a case of shims while we were cleaning out the old house so we are ready for doors and windows. One of the windows will be pulled out and covered up and the second one needs to be totally reframed for the same reason as the front door. I also ordered the two new windows. We will wait on tearing out and replacing the windows until we have the new ones. I got all of the lights and boxes to wire the room. I cannot believe the price of wiring! Twenty five feet of 10/2 with ground is $100. I need it to wire the 240V for the heat pump. I also emailed and texted the heat pump company to get an updated bid and I will pay for it now. We are now officially committed as I have spent $3k in supplies already. That will double once the heat pump goes in. I think I can get the entire thing done for about $8k.

New office started

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Today we decided to tackle the new office remodel in the old house. It is too cold to be outside! We are predicted to get snow in the next two days but the wind off of the snow covered mountains is brutal. This is perfect weather for ripping out the interior walls. You could even take your coat off and keep the long sleeve wear on as long as you kept working. If you stopped it got cold again, this is good incentive to stay busy. Mr Professional offered the suggestion to tear out the walls in what used to be the old bathroom. I liked the idea and since we needed to tear down the inside walls anyways we did it. It is pretty easy to reverse and hard to see without actually doing it. I liked it. I went inside and had Annmarie come out and give her blessing. She wants to use the little room for the 3D printer and the laser engraver. This will actually work well and let the main room be used for an office and sitting area. She wants to put in a couple of chairs/loveseat with a coffee table so she can use it when privacy is needed. It will work out very nice. We took measurements for two new windows and we are going to remove the window in the equipment nook to maximize storage space.

Mr Professional and I had a long discussion about what to do about the knot holes and leaking joints on the outside of the house. We are not going to re-side the outside for at least 3 years so it needs to last for a while. We found some nontoxic plastic paint/roofing material we can paint onto the inside walls to keep the moisture away. We looked at spray in foam insulation but that was going to cost $1300 for 900 sq feet of spray. I can get a five gallon container of plastic elastic paint for $240. So we are going to go with the paint on ourself option. It is looking like a couple of windows and two doors are going to cost over $2k. The real expense is going to be if I have to buy more wire to wire the building. I have about 2/3 of a large roll of 12/2 with ground and I am going to use every leftover outlet and switch from every job I have ever done, so I believe there is some gray, brown, taupe, and white colored accessories. The heating/cooling system is going to be around $4k. I am hoping to get the entire thing done for around $12k. We spent a combined 13 hours working on it today. I am going to try and keep track of all the time we spend on it. We also figured out how to move the power box into the attic so it is not visible on the room side and it still meets code by having the front cleared space! Huge win for everyone.

Mouse is totally got the nighttime chores down. I just let him out and walk down to the end of the ram pasture and he is already out and circling the sheep in field #4 and pushing them back into the barn lot. He is liking working the sheep. One of the cows we pushed into the corral on Friday caught him on the left side of his face with their rear foot and scalped a streak of hair off the middle of his head. So he was a reverse mohawk. I took pity on him and cleaned the mud/poop hoof shape off of his face. He is a trooper and is not letting it slow him down.

Staycation 88% completed

Steve Hardin1 Comment

This week the weather has improved dramatically so the priorities have had to change a little. I wanted to get projects done that set up Mr Professional so he can come out and work alone when I am back to work. So lots of organizing, sorting and cleaning up has been happening. On Wednesday morning we sorted the sheep and pulled off the rest of the lambs. Not sure why I didn’t think of that the first time, but problem solved. We moved all the lambs but three over into the orchard pasture to hang out. I thought we only had three in with the ewes, we spotted a fourth one that evening when we were feeding, a little boy snuck past, he must have been hidden in a mass of ewes. The grass in that pasture is over eight inches tall and needs something to start eating it down so I don’t have to mow it. We want the babies close as they have a tendency to disappear due to predators. We let Zeke, our old border collie push the lambs through the yard into the orchard, he was very happy. All he did was walk up to them and lay down. He has been laying around a lot lately and has started not eating all of his meals. We are going to switch him to soft food to attempt to encourage him to eat. He is probably not going to make it through this year.

We went out to the machine shed and sorted through the piles of scrap wood we got a couple of years ago. It was leftovers we got for a steal and had it delivered right to the house which made it even a better deal. We are now starting to dig through and use the material for various projects around the house. But it was taking up space in the machine shed and we are going to make the old chicken coop the storage area. So we sorted out the junk. Sorted out the stuff we would use once for concrete forms, which are now stored outside the chicken coop and tarped, under the eaves, so we can have easy access to it when needed. We even kept the subflooring sheets and oak plywood sheets separately in the chicken coop so we can use them for the old house. The old bathroom is going to be Annmarie’s office storage room and it will get oak plywood flooring. The floors are slanted and will need to be leveled. The old kitchen, soon to be freezer room, will need to get leveled also but it will just be 3/4” subflooring and 1/2” plywood sheeting on it. We will just be sanding down the original floor like we did in our upstairs rooms in the house.

I took the time to brush the horse. She is shedding something fierce and without another horse buddy to help her groom she needs some assistance. I have brushed her twice this vacation and Sarah brushed out the dogs when she was home so everyone looks pretty good. We came into the house and took out the old TV stand. It is very heavy but Annmarie reminded us we have the shoulder furniture movers so we found those and it made moving the stand an easy thing. I moved the new chest into its spot after cleaning the floor and doing some cord management stuff to organize the electrical mess. Annmarie wants us to use a piece of plastic channel to contain all of the TV cords to make it neater. When that comes we will install it, it does look a lot nicer with the cords contained.

Mr Professional got the side by side up and running in under five minutes. This is without the battery being plugged in. Adding that large deep cycle battery under the driver’s seat was just what we needed to keep the thing going. A dead battery all the time is highly annoying.

The small stuff I ordered for the tractor came this week. The speed handle is installed! This should just come standard on every tractor, I am unsure why they don’t. There are a couple of tool racks that will hold a chain between them now mounted behind the seat on the roll bar. The chain is actually in one spot now not tied down to some random piece of the tractor. The quick hitch is now installed and I have filled the ballast box with horseshoes. So now the Kubota has pallet forks on the front and a ballast box on the back with several hundred pounds of steel in it. It feels a lot better when you are carrying something heavy on the front.

We let the new alpaca out of the orchard thinking that everyone seemed to be getting along. The old adage that fences make great neighbors is still true. By that afternoon Mad Max had the young brown one pinned to the ground and was screaming in his ear. I tried to holler at them to get them to stop but no go. I went over and encouraged him to get off of the baby and strained my right knee. He did not initially take the hint. The alpaca can be very stubborn or determined, depending on how you look at it. We watched them for a while and all seemed to be copacetic. The next morning when I went outside there was more fighting. I went out and chased away the offenders but I could only find the two new young white alpaca and only counted ten. Which meant that the young brown one was missing, but Mad Max was present but one of our other old brown alpaca was missing. I had to walk all the way down to the end of the driveway and found the poor little alpaca pinned to the ground and the older one on top grinding into him. I had to chase him off with my coffee cup as a tool, my knee still hurts so no kicking. When I got back to the now 12 alpaca I wanted to put the three babies back into the orchard with the lambs. But they kept walking away from me. So instead when I opened the gate the seven older ones bum rushed the open gate and went into the orchard. So now the new animals are outside the fence and the old grumpy men are stuck in the orchard. Mad Max is now with the young ones but he has not been any trouble since the split. So now Annmarie asked me if I verified the gender on all three new alpaca. I did not do that. So now we need to verify that we did not end up with a female as we really do not want any cria.

On Thursday we got the side by side ready to spray. I put the first 30 gallons of round up through just spraying our road and driveway down. The only bad part about roundup is it takes at least a week before you can tell something was sprayed and two weeks for it to totally die. We cleaned out the tank and Mr Professional sprayed field #5 & 5A with 2-4-D & Milestone to kill the broadleafs, the thistles are already starting to spread. Unfortunately, the flood from two years ago changed the direction of the creek and one of the tall banks is seriously undercut. We have probably already lost eight feet of hillside and may lose another eight feet. If we lose that total 16’ I will have to move the fence. There is a very large curve in the creek now. We finished cleaning up and tossing everything onto the burn pile. I will need to get that burned again in the next month.

The big push now will be to get the spray onto all of the hay fields. We need to do this as soon as possible and then once that is done we can start fixing the fence down by four corners. As soon as that fence is done then it will be repairs on the hay baler and getting all the tractors tuned up and oil changed so everything is ready for haying season. We will be getting the barns cleaned out also so we have a place to put the new good hay.

Staycation 76% completed

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We spent most of Monday getting the black walnut tree cut up into boards and a mantle. I am not yet sure what to do with the mantle but if you know someone who needs a 9 foot long, 12×20” piece of black walnut with one live edge still attached let me know. I have it stashed in the machine shed under a tarp to keep it clean. The rest of the lumber we took out to the now clean old chicken coop, stacked and stickered it, then banded it all together to help keep it flat while it dries out the last little bit. The tree had been dead for a few years already so it should not take several years. The wife and I discussed the barn lot crossing and the cost of a new culvert. It was going to be $1800-2000 for a new 3 or 4 foot diameter culvert. Annmarie pointed out that I could just make a buttresses on each side and deck the gap with railroad ties and anything would be able to drive over it. So the new plan is to make two concrete U shaped ends and then bridge the gap with railroad ties. This will be easier than trying to purchase new culvert and will have the added benefit of creating a lot of space for water should it try and flood again in our lifetime.

Mr Professional and I put up clear plastic on one of the wall openings in the back of the old chicken coop. We did this so the light could still come in. The front part of the coop is about 33 feet long so we sheeted it in plastic and then put up OSB board to sandwich the plastic between the board and the chicken wire already stretched across the windows. We sealed up two different animal access points and now nothing can get into the old chicken coop but mice. I will need to put out a lot of poison now to prevent the mice from taking up residence. One of the cats had been keeping the room clear of mice, we knew this because there was some untouched grass seed in the building. After we got the windows covered we cleaned up and were ready to move the stuff from the old house out to the chicken coop for storage purposes.

Today, before Mr Professional came out I went upstairs and stained the second side of the bathroom door. I will seal it tomorrow and then it will be ready to install. Mr Professional had told me that one of the lambs was limping last night when we fed. So this morning I went out and cut a short length of PVC pipe, I then split it in half lengthwise. Once I had it split I filed down all of the edges to make them rounded and took a roll of coban and the splint out to the barn with me when I went to let everyone out. I managed to find a boy lamb who was limping, caught him and after everyone left the barn I was able to set him on his butt and wrap up this leg and splint it with the coban and PVC. It worked well, the only real problem was it took the lamb some time to get used to it and I found another boy lamb that was limping and had a floppy front leg. So now I will need to make another splint in the morning and splint the second lamb’s leg. I have no idea where the idiots are injuring themselves.

So Mr Professional and I sat down to discuss the new plan, we calculated how much rebar we would need and we picked it up today from the scrap yard. This is the new engineer approved plan. I am going to borrow a dump trailer and pickup the 3/4minus and concrete sand myself and take it right to the job site and dump it all within arms reach of where we need it. We can get power to the bridge with three extension cords and will mix it all right there. I just need to get the Portland Cement and lime now. It needs to warm up quite a bit so the water level will drop some before we get started.

We started cleaning out the old house to get ready for the office build. This is a perfect project to work on due to the frequent rain. It took two full 16’ flat bed trips to empty the two rooms out! There was quite a bit of unused wood stored in the old house. I am thinking about moving all of the unused wood from the machine shed into the old chicken coop so that all of the wood is in one spot. We are going to tear out the entire inner wall so I can run all new electrical wire quickly and easily using the least amount of wire. Luckily, I have quite a bit of 12 g wire leftover from wiring our house so I think I already have what I need. I also have a variety of switches and outlets, all different colors and types but I am determined to use up what I have on hand before I get any new supplies.

We used the tractor to move the trailer and it is a lot easier to maneuver the trailer. We got the first load into the old chicken coop but by yesterday evening we did not want to unload the trailer so we just tossed a tarp over it and started to work on covering up the access hole in the side of the building. This hole has been uncovered since we moved here and Annmarie has wanted it covered forever. We also slapped a couple of pieces of wood at the peak and even added an extra piece as a woodpecker has decided to put a hole in the building so it can nest in the attic. The freezer room is just going to get the floor leveled and power installed for now. It is outside the office area we are building for Annmarie and is in my section of the building. The second section will be done at a later date, most likely after we get the inside bathroom remodeled. Once the walls are stripped I will get two doors ordered and three windows. But the wiring can be done while that stuff is getting ordered and shipped.