Moving dirt

Came back from the lake and saw that our driveway was started. Have to dig down and slope the water away from the buildings.

Nice gentle curve from the garage drive along the back of the West Wing to the front drive. It needs to be wider on the curve so that it goes in front of the dumpster. All the dirt in the front of the well house (shed) will be made into parking using the same rock as the driveway rock.

 Of course what would dirt work be without a cut line. Th phone line was marked. Our dirt guy never thought it would only be 3 inches below level. So no land line, no internet and no cell phones at the house until we get AT&T out to repair the line. Since we have to use a cell booster for our cell phones and it goes through the phone line we are really unconnected at home. Maybe by Friday they say we will have new lines.

Here is Bill's great retaining wall with dirt put into the space between it and the drive. Now we get to move it where it needs to go and get it ready for the river rock that will go here. Last night in an hour we moved about 4 tons of dirt. Too much was put in so we had to shovel it into a wheelbarrow and take it to the east side that needs dirt built up. Buried a flat rock under the dirt where the driveway runoff goes so we shouldn't have a hole develop.

One Small Step

One small step toward maybe something happening

With winter weather coming in again next week we needed to get the house wrap on exposed wood. Can't put the siding or trim up around the door since the manufacturer is replacing the door sometime in the next two weeks. The outside of this should be finished by now but we have to wait for this to happen. We are in a constant waiting game. 

Rental Repos

 Building has come to a screeching halt; but we are still doing what we can. We own rent houses and when a tenant moves out and leaves belongings behind we call them Rental Repos. We love our Rental Repos. This chair was left behind about 6 years ago and it became my sewing machine chair. The chair I had before was okay but it wasn't hefty enough for the Hooligans aka Grandchildren to sit on my lap and sew with me. This chair works perfect.

It was a boring medium oak stained chair so I painted it a gorgeous color. I don't know if it will stay my sewing chair and be in a turquoise laundry room or if I will move it to the kitchen office. No matter where it ends up it will look beautiful! So excited to have the first of my decorating done. It may be years before it has a permanent home. Right now it sits outside our front door which is at the back of the garage. Makes us smile when we come home and see it.

New Techniques

We are needing to learn new ways to do things in our house building. Instead of the old straight edges for corners, the fashion right now are rounded corners. We have never done that before. So out to building lots to see how to do this. Talk to the professionals we know to get their tips.  We know we don't want to do the corners like they are in the apartment because you can tell there is no mud behind the plastic and we are concerned there could be problems. Sure enough the pros tell us you can do it either way but the preferred way is to put an inch of mud in the rounded edge for stability.

Okay time to try our hand at this.

Look at that pretty soft rounded edge. As if Bill has been doing this forever. You notice I say we but most of this is Bill.

The other thing we needed to figure out are arches. We want all of our openings to be arched. So back out to the building sites and learn from them.

 

Now all that needs to be done ate the rounded edges and mud. So glad we are doing this hallway first.It is a small area and not looking at the whole house to do while learning.

Gotta Be Pretty

I am such a girl when it comes to looking nice. I never leave the house without full makeup and jewelry. When we started the rock yard I wore low heels and skirts to work. Quickly found that that didn't work and had to buy my first pair of jeans. Still hate wearing them but as life changes so must you.

When I am working with Bill on the building I have my make up done, my hair fixed, and my jewelry on. I respect him too much for him to have to work with me sans make up; it is a scary picture. Maybe if I had color in my eyebrows and eyelashes it would be different but they are clear without a little help.

My work gloves were worn out so I needed a new pair. No splinters wanted! Bill was with me when I was finding my new pair and was laughing at me. Had to try every pair on to see which ones were the prettiest and could stand up to 2x4's.

I think I got the perfect pair.

Can't Wait

There may be snow on the ground but we want to see progress. We are too anxious to wait for this weeks warmer weather to take down the garage door and put up the exterior wall and french door for the Trophy Room. So onto working in the cold.

This is what the West Wing looked like with the garage door. We are selling the door if anyone knows someone who needs one.

Door is rolled up and new wall has been raised. We built it on the floor and then had a wall raising to put it up. Didn't build it all the way to the top so it would be easy for the two of us to lift.

It's cold outside when you have to put a blanket down for your knees to rest on.

Love the nifty little tool with the .22 to puts the nails into the concrete. So much easier than drilling a hole and hammering.

Time for the upper part of the wall,

This is why we bought ourselves a scissorlift. No climbing up and down ladders. Everything you need is on the lift with you. You just drive it back and forth to where you need to be working.

Time for the door!!!

It's wonderful, except it has to be replaced. The paint is peeling off the trim. When we put the handle on; the paint scratched off. It doesn't appear the factory primed the door and trim. We bought a never needs to be painted door and it isn't working that way.Oh, well at least we know we like the way it looks.

Thinking Way in the Future

This is a decision we are way off from needing to make, but I am already thinking on it.

 I thought I wanted to go with the dark wood floors everyone is doing right now. We had light wood floors for almost 20 years so a change would be nice.

 I got my wood floors in a barter with Bill. He wanted to hunt a Zebra and I said no, it's just a pretty striped horse. Then I came up with the idea that if the Zebra was hurt so bad that it would be a Lions dinner soon and if he would let me put in hardwood floors throughout the main floor of the house he could go after a Zebra. Our PH (Professional Hunter) had never had something like that happen before on one of his hunts. Oh, and I said I had to have proof that the Zebra was actually injured they couldn't just say it. He got his Zebra and I got my hardwood floors.

As you can see dark floors will not work for us. We live in the country and even with us walking on a carpet before coming into the house way too much is tracked in for dark floors. Guess I will have to look for other options. Thought maybe a distressed wood; it wouldn't show the dirt as much; no the indentations that make it so pretty will trap the dirt. May have to go with tile that looks like distressed wood but doesn't  have the indentations

First Decorating Decision

With walls of the Trophy Room and hallway being almost completed it's color choice time. Ashley, our decorator, gave some suggestions for colors. We want to be able to show the animals off at their best.  A lot of them are dark so we thought light walls, then maybe a contrast wall in a dark color to show off the light colored ones.

Here are swatches of the possible colors. On the right is the light color, too girly Bill wants a masculine room. Then the two browns on the left are really nice and the dark animals look pretty good against both of them. Once we get the french doors up we will put those colors against the color of the doors and see which way to go. This is very difficult for me because Bill wants to have complete control over the decorating of "his" room and I have a vision of what I think it should look like. We'll see what he comes up with, it will be beautiful I'm sure he was the girls choice to go shopping with because he has a good eye and he would spend more on them than I would.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Oh my goodness, it is bitter cold right now. But we still want to take baby steps in getting this house built. Bill figured out that we can put the wall and french doors in the Trophy Room with out taking down the 18 foot high garage door. It will fit in the exterior wall and the garage door can then be taken down after we are winter proofed. He is such a smart and out of the box thinker. The benefit of of retrofitting a metal building the exterior walls are thicker than stick frame.

Here is the wall being built. Everything has to be measured twice because once we lift it into place we need to be able to nail the wall in quick before frostbite sets in. We do need the garage door up and out of the way for this step of the process. He has the screws started and part of the OSB boards on. We think Sunday it will warm enough for us to get it up. Woo Hoo! I have told him if this works then the nest project needs to be putting the french doors into the living space. He just looked at me. He usually gives me anything I want so we'll see. He is pretty excited to keep working on the Trophy Room though.

Not a Good Sign

You know guys and instruction manuals it's never a good sign when you see them sit down and start reading them.

 The new (to us) scissor lift quit working. No power, everything seems alright but the system failure light has come on. Bill read the manual and still no idea what might be wrong. If he can't figure it out then it is something big.

Had to call the mechanic out to look at it. Over the phone they were thinking control box replacement, just $800, peanuts. The mechanic was perplexed all systems showed to be okay but no power. Voltage read correct which had him scratching his head. Then a light bulb went off and he checked the batteries. There was no water in the batteries at all! The business we bought the scissor lift from said they did a maintenance check on it before shipping it out but they obviously forgot to check one of the vital components. Filled the four batteries with water and it works just fine now.

Mud Mud Beautiful Mud

The garage may still be a holdup for us but we are continuing on with what we can do. Finished putting up the OSB board in the Trophy Room. We aren't using sheet rock so that when we start hanging Bill's trophies we don't need to worry about finding studs for his big animals. Water Buffaloes and even Elk need to be firmly attached to the wall.

 To make the texture look right on the boards we are thin coating all the wood so it will be smooth as drywall to start with. If we didn't do this; the joints that are taped and mudded would be smooth and the rest of the wall bumpy. So the texturing wouldn't be consistent over the walls. An extra step but a small price to pay for a great finished look.

 Here are our tools lined up and ready to go. A picture of me on the scissorlift; mudding was suppose to go here but Bill couldn't figure out our point and click camera. He tried but when it said batteries exhausted it was too much for him. Good thing he is really good at everything else

Making a nice sharp corner between the wall and the ceiling takes just  the right amount of mud and the right tool. Can't wait for this to be textured so we can paint the hallway and get the light fixtures hung. With the snow and ice that is coming in this week we probably won't be going in to work so maybe by the weekend we can have some color. We are so doing this building backasswards.

$$$$$

We have waited for over two months for the metal company to figure out how to do the garage roof so we can get moving on our building.. Our only direction to them was, we don't care what it looks like, it needs to shed water, and be affordable. Well, they got the first two right, the third they are nowhere near being affordable. We are talking almost our entire building budget just for the metal for the roof not even including the labor to put it up. We don't understand this, we were given estimates before we started on what this should cost. Oh well on to the next company. Kubota is putting up a metal building just down the road from us and we spoke with the owner of their construction company and he told us he had no idea why we were being quoted such a large figure. Whew! He even understood what we are looking for in the roof line and says there should be no problem. Of course we haven't received his quote yet. Last week we thought building would start this week and now we are back in the waiting game.