Can You Here Me Now?

Our house is a metal building. The metal is two skins around insulation, the beams are metal, everything is metal. Radio waves have a difficult time going through metal. Because of this our cell phones have been useless to us at home. 

So AT&T to the rescue and they said we need to get a 3G Microcell and that will boost the signal. Great, oh we forgot to tell you that you have to have internet at the house. We don't have a computer at home so we didn't have internet. Call and ordered internet, router came and nothing, 2 hour and a half calls with them and still no internet. So the router must be bad, sent us a new one. Hooked it up, no internet. 2 hour and a half phone calls later, fine just send a tech out and I will pay the service call. He came out couldn't figure it out, everything seemed to be fine, Oh AT&T had never registered our router with our phone number.

We have phones that work!!!!  If you come to visit us and want to use your phone I will need to register your phone with my own personal cell tower.

It's Happening

The floor of the garage is taking shape. Oh boy it still looks huge.

 We tend to overthink things and plan for every possible scenario. How many times have you wanted to run a line of some type under your driveway? Not many people have but just in case we ever want to we will have conduit under the garage drive for just such an instance. At our last house 6 months after we had built we did run invisible fencing under the drive through the conduit we had put in. The only problem was we had marked the drive with little arrows drawn in the concrete and they weren't big enough for us to find easily when we needed to so this time we actually have the conduit coming up out of the ground with a cap on it at both ends. It will be hidden from view by the buildings so we are the only ones who will know it's there.

 

Got to tamp the dickens out of that sand so there are no cavities that would crack the floor.

Laying the forms around the outer edge of the drive against Bill's incredible retaining wall.

 Lots and lots of rebar, you can never have too much metal in your floor with Oklahoma's freeze thaw causing ground shifts. And especially now that we are in the middle of earthquake country.

 These little guys help make the slope of the floor so all liquid runs out the door and no anywhere else.

Every 18 inches we drilled rebar into the existing foundation of the two building to tie the garage floor in with the house and the West Wing.  Concrete being poured in the morning.

Christmas Came Early

For years we have talked about getting air nailers but couldn't bring ourselves to spend the money. We have the air compressors to run them but thought they would be very expensive. Went to pawnshops and shopped for some and then discovered that we could get new ones for just $20 more and they came with a warranty and weren't beat up and were extremely affordable..

Bill got a framing nailer and a finishing nailer. Thinking back on all of our rent house projects we should have spent the money 20 years ago. They are so much fun to use.

We have discovered that our favorite action movies have been lying to us. All those scenes were the good guys kill off the bad guys by shooting nails at them are an impossibility, way too many safety features on these things. Still can't figure out how the guys you see on the internet shoot themselves in the head with these.

Strong Man

In the West Wing the previous had several pieces of equipment bolted to the floor. These bolts stuck 2 1/2 inches up and were always tripping us up. We knew they were there and we would be high stepping with boxes and still find them with our toes.

Two of the bolts are in the right place for Bill's table saw and there is electricity hanging down to hard wire it. But how to get rid of these stupid, toe stubbing, foot tripping bolts.

First idea; use a grinder and grind them off at floor level and knock them out with a hammer. Took forever with sparks flying and safety glasses needed.

Aha-a-a! a sledge hammer.

With a mighty swing; actually four mighty swings per bolt and those babies are pushed down into the floor, out of the way and Bill feels like Hercules.

Free!!!

We have left over smaller rock from our retaining wall; they would still be considered large rock for any other project, they weigh several hundred pounds each.. We keep finding all kinds of places to put it. This wall around the well house helps level out the driveway and turn around for the garbage and propane trucks coming in and getting out. After making the wall we back filled with left over dirt from what was cut out for the retaining wall. So we have a great wall and cost us nothing. zilch, nada, love those kind of projects.

Jumping the Gun

Bill has been so hard at work organizing the West Wing so we can start building the rooms that Sunday he decided that he needed a pat on the back. I came home from visiting Mom and Dad and found some animals on the wall. There was the American Bison, Eddy the Elk from his first big game hunt in Alberta and one of his African animals that I can't remember the name of. It's a good thing he has organized as much as he has because these guys take up a lot of room. The Bison sticks out almost 3 feet.This wall will be part of his trophy room. The room is no where near ready for things to be hung but this was very important to him that we will work around these guys

The garage door will be taken out, the walls will be plywood with texture so we don't have to hunt for studs to hang the trophies. If anyone has a trick to make drywall texture stick to the plywood we would love to know it.

Unfortunately, when he started working with the animals it was discovered that the extreme heat and cold of three years in a storage unit dried a lot of the glue and the skin split. Once everything is in conditioned air hopefully we can do some repair work. Of course his plan for fixing the problem is for us to go back on safaris and just replace the trophies that are damaged. Sorry Bill we are getting too old to be climbing and  hiking the Southern Alps in New Zealand, we've seen the African countries and there are  many more places to explore. I think we can just fix the problems and those that can't be fixed can be hung high out of close inspections.

Disappointment Into Elation

Bill and I were disappointed that  more work hadn't happened on our garage The concrete isn't being poured until next Tuesday but we want to see progress every day.

Then the grand kids came and they were super excited over Pa's wall they get to climb on and the pile of fill sand just waiting for them to jump into.

Sutton is our dare devil and was the first to make the leap.

Didn't take Wyatt long to follow 

Even Mallory got into the fun