Exciting News!!

Yesterday when we were tearing off the walls of the mudroom we ended up tearing some of the T-111 off from the main part of the house . . .

Kelly noticed that it was the desired ship-lap that we were hoping was under there!!  And, it looked like it was in pretty good shape.

We were hoping there was ship-lap because when we tore off the drywall in the office several months ago, we found this ~

And this wall was part of the original house build in 1949 way before the addition was built.  Which made us think the entire original house would be ship-lap.

So, this afternoon, I went to the front corner of the house to see if the ship-lap extended all the way around the original house.

And it looks like it does!!  Plus, it is in excellent condition!!  We are thrilled.

Now, we are going to wait until Kelly's new Christmas present arrives . . .

I originally got him a bandsaw, but I got the wrong thing so after finding out there is ship-lap under the T-111, we decided that a router and a router table would be the best tool for his new workshop so we can cut our own new exterior ship-lap where it is bad in some places . . .

It looks like there may have been a door here before they put in the window, so this will be one place (and I am sure there will be others) that will need the new ship-lap we will make.

Fun, fun, fun!!

And this is what Kelly got accomplished today!!  New storage unit all primed and ready for paint on the next sunny day!!

It's a Glorious, Sunny Day on the Oregon Coast!!

And so, Kelly and I used the opportunity to do some outside work on the house.

Right now Kelly is not working much but might, just might, get a full-time job the end of February.  So we have decided that we are going to do some work every day on the house and hopefully have a full working bathroom, hot water, a working mud room and a new farm sink in the kitchen before he goes to work full-time!!

Pretty ambitious but here's what we got done today!!

This is the north wall of the mudroom.  We are tearing all the old rotting T-111 off the whole house and we were hoping there was old ship-lap underneath, but our hopes were dashed!!

This is how far we got on the north wall and now the nasty siding is off far enough for us to put in the  glass block window we bought for this hole.  Off to You-tube to find out how to install a glass block window!!  Oh, my, what did we ever do before Youtube?

Here's where we started today on the west wall of the mudroom.  Pollie is out here supervising!!

These rotted sill plates are the reason we have to remove the entire wall.  So we can replace the sill plates with pressure-treated wood this time around.

More rotted sill plate on the other side of the door opening and more wall removal!!

Here's where we ended the day!!  Ya, know, these two old farts just can't put in as many hours of hard work a day like we used to when we were younger!!

Kelly is now out in the sun tending a fire to get rid of all the nasty old wood we have been accumulating during the No Burn season.  And I am inside working on the binding of a quilt - one of my very most favorite things to do!!

Until next time . . .

This is What Kelly has Been working on . . .

between raindrops!!

This is the shed that came with the house.  It is big enough for Kelly to use as a small workshop.

But this is what it looks like inside right now!!

All the stuff we have been accumulating to work on the house.

There is Kelly's workbench on the far right but he can't even get to it, let alone use it.

So, we decided he needed a storage shed right next to the workshop so he can store all the "stuff" in the storage shed.  Kelly built this little building all by himself and he just got the roof shingled today!!  A full day with some sunshine, blue skies and no rain!!  YAY!!

Here is the new shingling on the roof!!

In the door on the far left is where the lawnmower and all the garden tools will be housed.

This middle door has enough space inside to put everything else that needs to leave the Workshop.

And the door in the front is where we will be able to store up to a ton of pellets for our pellet stove!!

Work area!!

And left over shingles!!  Yup, it's time to mow the lawn again!!

Good job, Kelly!!  Well done little Bro!!

On this Thanksgiving Day . . .

I am grateful for heat!!

Wishing you all a grateful and happy Thanksgiving!!

A Little Bit Here, A Little Bit There . . .

between quilt shows, I have started my part on working on the Retreat.

The floor is plywood so it needs to be primed before laying down the peel and stick tile that we are going to use.

I chose a quieter looking tile for the floor ~

And I got excited and got Fredricka, my mid arm quilting machine and my new sewing machine table in and up.

The fabricator, Mike, down the street cut the legs on the long table so it would be even with Fredricka.  That way I can use the long table to hold a quilt while working on it and it will prevent drag on the quilt.

This 3-day weekend is the Cranberry Festival here in Bandon and we have a cute little quilt show and Boutique for the three days.  I am the token Vendor.  Tomorrow is the last day of the quilt show.

On Monday we are going to run the electrical wires here in the Retreat and I am going up to Coos Bay to get our electrical permit and call for an inspection to help determine where the fired electrician ended his work and where we need to go inside the house at this point.

Over the Past Month or So . . .

this nice young man, Gordy has been building us a new building right behind my office.  It is going to be called the Retreat as it is where the sewing will go on now that Martha, my longarm, has taken over the entire Cottage.

Here is what they have been up to ~

Monday Seems to Be Kelly's Day Off . . .

so we decided that even though things are going so much slower now that he is working, we would try to get a lot done each Monday.

Last Monday we got the wires from the house electrical box almost out to the Cottage electrical box but ended up about 5 feet short.  We had to crawl up in the yucky attic to run conduit

Image from the Internet

all the way across the attic (about 75 feet) and get the electrical wires through the conduit.  No pictures because the attic was too dark and dirty for pictures.  And so were Kelly and I after getting that done last Monday.

So, here is what we got done today ~

First, we got the rest of the electrical into the Cottage electrical box and then into the house.

We were about 5 feet short last week and so we had to change things up so that we could splice the wires inside the house and not in the box underground which caused us to add an additional 30 feet over the original 100 feet we placed last week.

We are going to leave all the junctions open until we get the electrical inspector out here to make sure we have done everything to code.

Then, if you were to go back to a little over a year ago and look at what this place looked like, you would see that the window in my bedroom looked like this ~

And once I pulled that nasty sheet off the window and saw that it was broken in several places because of bullet holes, I fixed the worst hole with a hippie flower.

Well, today we took out that old hippie flowered window ~

And started work on getting a beautiful new window in ~

Oh, yeah, now I can crack the window a bit at night without worrying about critters coming in!!

Ok, Who Stole the Entire Summer??

So much has been going on in so many of my lives that by the end of the day, I just want to sit down and watch baseball!!  So I decided to write a quick post this morning because so many friends have asked what is going on.

So, as you know the electrical has been a nightmare but Kelly and I are finally getting the hardest part completed - getting the ditch re-dug out and the conduit with the wiring in it.

Because the fired electrician did not get the wiring into the ditch until 6 weeks after Kelly dug the ditch, dirt fell back in and the grass started growing over the ditch.

Kelly got down on his hands and knees and sometimes his belly and dug out about 60 feet of the ditch.  I pulled the grass away so he could see what he was doing.

Ta!Da!  A cleaned-out ditch!!

Once the ditch was cleaned out, I ran wire through the conduit that is used to keep the wires safe and dry.  The fired electric was going to lay the wire without putting it in the conduit!!  Certainly a code violation!!

After I glued 60 feet of conduit together and ran the wire through, I laid the conduit in the ditch and started to cover it up!!

I washed the dirt back into the hole with a sweeper head on the hose.  I thought I was doing it the lazy way, but one guy told me that was a great idea because it would compact the dirt easier!!

Next, I had to add some conduit filled with wire for the lamp post that is going out front.  See those clots of dirt?  That is what has to be broken up to put back in the ditch and man, they were like big balls of kryptonite!!

Then on the next day of Kelly's day off from the golf course, we continued to clean out more ditch and put in more conduit.

Then we got the conduit attached to the sweep at the Cottage and added the connector box that we had to cut out our own holes for the conduit to fit into it.

More conduit for the 60 feet back to the well!!

This picture is the 10 foot ground post that has to be slammed into the ground 8 feet.  All was good until we hit pure clay and now we are getting it pounded in with a friend's pounder inch by inch over many day's time.  It's a bugger!!

Slow but sure!!  We have given ourselves until the end of September to have everything done for the rough-in inspection.  Once that inspection is complete we can start putting in insulation and getting walls up!!