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| Plumbing the propane |
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| Rose splitting wood |
We started the month with our new companion, Dinga. The portable pen we had for the greyhounds works perfectly for her. She needs to stay as quiet as possible for about a week so she can recuperate from being spayed. She is just so cute and lovable. It has been years since we had a puppy.
A "Handyman" who was licensed for installing propane pipes and fixtures had been recommended to us and was available, so we hired him for that and installing the air pipe for the bathroom plumbing. As late as it is getting, I doubt we will have inbound water this winter. But we will have outbound, connected to the septic tank. Don't know if we will have the hot water heater connected either. But the septic tank is delivered, filled and connected to the house by the end of the month.
JB and RJ finish framing the inside, all except for the loft which JB and I can do. We had to buy a really long ladder for them to use on the 14 foot walls and 20 ft east end. RJ is starting to work on the outbound water pipes. I certainly wouldn't want to climb into our crawl space and do that!
Sleeping on the air mattress is getting old, so we make a trip to storage for our bed, linens and a few other things. Since we've been married, we have always had a king size bed. When we were in Illinois, we bought a queen size bed to match our other furniture and put it in the guest room. When we sold our house there, we also sold our king size bedroom set - downsizing. I thought the queen size would take some getting used to, but after the air mattress, it was so comfortable that I really didn't care how small it was!
We are living in a construction zone, but I keep telling myself that it will only be for couple months. We brought up our wardrobe boxes from storage and are using them as closets. The nights are getting cold and we are going to have to get that wood stove and hearth up here soon. I called a few local delivery companies and found one that has a small flatbed with a special forklift with which they can do this job. So I meet the driver at our storage unit and watch as he effortlessly lifts it all onto the bed of the truck. Then he asks where we are going with it and I think, "Oh Oh!" The dispatcher probably did not give him the details of this job. I tell him a four mile dirt road and to just follow me. I'll go slow. And slow is what we went. When we finally got up to the house and he got out of the truck, well, lets just say that I wouldn't want to be that dispatcher when the driver gets back to the barn. Then in the face of driving the forklift on the dirt and trying to get the stove and mantle as far on the porch as possible, his composure completely dissolved. I really felt sorry for the poor guy, but I was more concerned about our stove. It is going to take four men and a boy to get the stove and mantle in place. Actually it took JB, RJ and Larry to do it. Very slowly, and with a pry bar.
Then came the refrigerator. I brought that up in the trailer, but it took those three guys to get it in the house and out of the box. The kitchen stove was easy compared to that.
While the men are working on the house, I am splitting wood and stacking it in the grove between trees. Stacking it is a learning experience in itself. Seemed like it would be such an easy thing to do. (See my page "Things I have learned building and living off the grid.")
Now: June 20, 2011
There just isn't much "City" left in this ol' girl after yesterday. It was a beautiful day, but I didn't see much of it as I was in our crawl space (the one I mentioned above, where I did not want to be). It was a lot more muddy down there than I had anticipated. In fact we had standing water on the plastic. There were also two puddles, one shallow one around one of the posts and one quite deep one where the pipe comes in from the cistern. I pulled all the sheeting out in nine pieces; put each piece in a big yard bag as I pulled it to the trap door; and JB threw the bags out the bedroom window. By the time I got all the sheeting out, I was sweating, muddy and cranky. After lunch, I went back down with the small shop vac and made about five crawling trips to get all the water out. The water pipe comes in under the dining area at the front of the house and the trap door is in our bedroom at the back of the house. I checked the water pipes and none of them were leaking, so we figured the worst of it came when we had a 24-hour down pour in mid-May. That French drain is definitely going in this summer. Where is that dry climate we moved to?!
It is supposed to be nice again today, but I'm not even going to guess what all we will get done. .
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