Last day of a working vacation

Last full day of vacation. Lynn and I worked until about 3:30 for Lynn and I put in another hour.

Lynn spent about 4 hours in the lift painstakingly cutting and fitting all the acorn cedar shakes one at a time. I think we are going to run out before we get this one side done. Lynn thought that he would finish that side today but didn’t happen. Ran out of energy before he could finish. I’m sure he will be up there tomorrow while I’m at work.

The last thing we did was remove another post and put the finished one in its place. Oh, it sure is an improvement. Now post #3 is sitting on my back deck waiting for me to take it apart and start working on it.

In the meantime, I have to paint some more cedar shakes. We have 42 cut and ready to paint. I put the primer on the edge then on the top surface. Tomorrow I will add the red which has to be two coats then two coats of the sage green. Looks like I will only have about an hour of work after I get home each day this week. I guess it will be Lynn’s night to cook tomorrow.

I have been taking pictures each step of the way.  Every year I take photos that I have taken during the year and make a calendar to send to the kids.  This year’s calendar will the be “The Year of the Dream Home.”  I am thrilled that we have got done as much as we have.  We waited rather late in the year to get out there and get started.  We had a wet spring, and I thought we were going to hire some work done as Lynn just wasn’t feeling very well.  But in the end, I just made an executive decision.   Oh, Lynn hates those.  Decided that I had waited long enough, and I went and rented the lift.  He thought we should have fixed the “bucket truck.”  Oh that is a whole other story.  I’ll fill you in on that in another reflection post.  Anyway, he thought it would just cost too much.  Well, it did cost a lot, but it has been worth every penny.  For one thing it has forced he and I both to focus on getting as much as we can get done while we have it.  Also, he is doing the work which is always a good thing, because he is a real craftsman and does a wonderful job.

I probably will not be doing too much on my blog until next weekend as I have to go to my real job and earn money so I can pay my bill collectors.  Ho hum.  Now for the photos.

Annie, back to the real world for the working girl

Lynn cutting each shingle one-by-one

Where we stopped today

Another view

42 more shakes to prime and paint

Edges primed

Post #3 awaiting my attention.

Grounded, for the day anyway.

I spent the day working on the post. I have been the “Bondo Queen”. Still not satisfied with the results. Two sides done and two to go. Almost there. Should get it painted tomorrow.

Lynn took over control of the lift today. He actually spent more time in it than I thought he would. He was actually living up to his monicker of ‘ole snap & snarl’. He was one cranky guy this morning. I didn’t even want to be around him. But he eventually came out of it.

He spent about 3 hours working on the right gable. He hopes to finish the trim work tomorrow and then we will start adding the shakes. Maybe have it done by this weekend. One can only hope.  He doesn’t trust me to do it. I think my expertise is in the ‘post area.’ Too many angles on the trim work.  I spend the day cutting pieces and running up and down the stairs handing pieces of trim out the window to ‘Snap.’  Oh, and mind reading.  That was what Lynn expected me to do.  Kinda good at it after 24 years, but not perfect yet!!!

I sure hope Lynn feels up to working on it tomorrow. I have to go to work on Thursday and then will be off for 3 more days.

A fairly productive day.  Now for some proofing and new shows to watch with the hubby.  🙂

Annie, the Bondo Queen

The right side of the gable with some of the trim.

Two more sides to go

More work on the post

Another Monday out of the way.

Put in a full day. Finished putting 2 coats of Cream paint on the shop. Then trimmed the white and put a final coat of white on the garage door. A full day. Not sure what I will start on tomorrow. Need to migrate to the front of the house again, but the weather side of the shop also needs attention. I guess I will wait until tomorrow morning and see what feels right.

I have also been working on the post, will probably do a little more on that in the morning.

Lynn still isn’t feeling up to par, so I am thinking about seeing if he will walk me through the front.  I know that I can do it.  I did put the cedar shakes on the garage, so I think I would be able to handle the front.  We will see.

Too tired to write much tonight, but I did take a couple of pictures.

Going to spend some time proofing the book I have and then some quality time in front of Dancing With the Stars tonight with my hubby.

More photos to come tomorrow.  Maybe.

Annie, novice painter and Master and Controller

The front is done. Yea, can mark that of the to-do list.

Removing the blue tape. The way I use it, I need to by stock in the company.

Nice door, now about the rest of the garage. Just need to turn away, that isn’t happening this year!!

Good days work, dog ass tired.

Up and ready to go by 8:00. Had a bowl of cereal and out the door. On a mission to get lots done on the shop (aka Lynn’s dog house). At least it will be if we ever get moved into the house. Luxury dog house at that.

First thing I did was sand and get the post ready for bondo. Put Bondo on one side so it could be drying while I was painting on the shop. Put another coat of Premium Kilz Primer on all the weathered wood on the shop. I can’t sing the praises of this primer enough. I had put it on the side of the shop last year. That was as high as I would go on the ladder. Then 2 coats of Behr Semi Gloss Exterior Paint. The color is Cream. Which is a creamy yellow. It held up real good through the winter. The siding doesn’t seem to have a problem holding paint. The bare wood is another thing. So two coats of primer on it.

After I put the second coat of primer on the bare wood, I had to caulk all the cracks and joints.  It is very important to put caulking on.  It is better to put it on before the finish coat of paint because, even if you use clear, it gets dirty.  I put on the primer first then the caulking, then two finish coats of paint.  Then it look like a job done by a pro, not a sixty-plus (my son’s name for me) grandma.

While I was up there painting, I decided to get some pictures of the view. God I love this place. It is wonderful working for the American Dream, my Dream. Not afraid to work, just wish I could work faster. I am a picky painter, as I am with most things. Not a perfectionist, just picky.

Put the Cream on a big part of the Shop before I had to stop for the evening.  It was 5:30 and I was pooped.  Went out on the back porch and worked on the post, sanded then put more Bondo on.  Oh, the photo I have included in this blog, is what “not to do” to a post.  At some point, in the past, when trying to squeeze the posts together, I hit it with a hammer that looked like a meat tenderizer.  It was a hammer Steven, my son, sent to Lynn from Japan.  What possessed me to do that I don’t know.  Now I gotta fix it.  No problem, I got Bondo.

For the next 4 days, I will be skipping work, unless it gets to be bad weather.  Only have another 3 weeks to get oodles of work done.  Lynn may be giving me lessons to fix the front of the house.  I have been his apprentice for 24 years now.  I have learned a lot and still learning.  I am amazed at all the things he can do.  The amazing thing is he taught himself as he was raised by a single mom.  All you have to do is not be afraid to work.  That is truly the key.

One of the pictures is of the garage and the kitchen side of the house.  It really looks bad there, but that will be done this year too.   The weeds are really high around the house, that darn gardener has been playing in the lift.  I guess I am going to have to talk to her.

When I am not working on the house/shop then I am proofing my favorite author’s (Shanna Hatefield’s) books, working on a quilt, hand quilting, or playing on my Facebook page.  I have neglected all my flower beds so that is something I am going to need to prepare for winter too.  Well for now, I am just going to end this post and see y’all tomorrow.
Annie, the novice shop and post painter.

Kitchen side of the house

Pot with hammer marks

Primer is on

View of the front pasture and my neighbors across the highway

Mooney the llama & April the paint.

Out of paint in the roller pan, means it time to call the quits for the night.

Done for the night.

Back on the working vacation, wahoo

Think polyester. I think everyone has some polyester clothes that they absolute hate. Well, I have found a good use for my polyester clothes. Use them to paint in. You just don’t care how much paint to get on them. As a matter of fact they look better with paint all over them. So I put on my best poly and set out to make them look great. What a palate for all the different colors. When the house, garage and shop are done, I will celebrate by burning them in the fire pit out back.

Well today started slow as I thought it would.  I went out first thing in the morning at 8:00 and painted the white trim around the garage door which took an hour.  By that time Lynn had his coffee and was ready to go.  So we to Walla Walla for groceries, making several stops and having lunch in the park.

Home around 1:00, the groceries are unloaded and I am back in my best poly.  We have to re-position the lift and I am on my maiden voyage in the lift.  I had Lynn take some photos as proof that I really did go up there.  You know it was a little wobbly, but when I got my sea legs, I was good.  I began to put on the Kilz Primer on the weathered boards and siding.  I used a brush and roller.  It sucked the paint up like a sponge.  As a matter of fact, I will probably have to use two coats of primer on some of the weathered boards.  The photos show where I was at about 3:00, well I went back out and painted for another 2 1/2 hours and got more primed, but still have more primer to do.  Luckily, we didn’t have any wind or thunderstorms which were a possibility.

You are probably asking, why didn’t I rent a sprayer and do it the easy way?  It would have been faster and easier, I am sure.  And, I have tried sprayers before, as a matter of fact we had one in the hardware store that we rented out.  The problem that I always had was they would get plugged up, or wouldn’t spray enough or would spray too much.  I just don’t have the patience to mess with it.  So I do it the old fashion way.

Tomorrow I will be back up there first thing, as Lynn isn’t ready to use the lift again.  His legs have been giving him a lot of pain.  He will be doing other things like mowing and changing the sprinklers, and giving the horse, April, carrots.  On occasion, he will stop and give me some pointers or words of encouragement.  If I get an early start, I may get around to putting on the main coat.  I tend to work slow and deliberate.  Not very speedy.

Now for the pictures.

Annie, the happy little painter 🙂

Annie flying solo

Moving the lift into place

Get familiar with the up and down buttons

Two more hours of daylight, and the hard part is behind me

Annie’s new toy. Photo taken from the front porch of the house.

It’s Back. Gearing up for a busy day tomorrow

Well, we got the lift back about noon today. Just delayed my working vacation for a week. I will be taking  M,T,W & F off next week. Got to go in to work for a potluck on Thursday. You don’t expect me to miss food, I need my strength to keep going. Besides I will be celebrating my friend Mary.

Plans for tomorrow:  Grocery shopping is first on the agenda, then when we get home, Lynn will probably be too tired to work, but I’ll just be catching my second wind.

I plan to finish painting the garage door.  Work on the post, if I can’t get up in the lift.  If the weather allows it, I may try to get some high-up painting done.  We will see how it goes.  Too many things need to be done, but the priority will be on getting the front of the house done to keep the foul winter weather at bay.

I will up date the blog as much as I can in the evening.  Wouldn’t want you to forget about me.  I may even get a picture of me in the lift, I just can’t look down, and the wind has to be calm.

The nasty part of this week is all the wildfires in the State of Washington.  We have smoke, ash and dust so thick that the sun is almost obscured, and not good for breathing.  They are predicting 20% chance of lightning storms this weekend.  What we need is rain.  It would slow down my work, but it would settle some of the dust and smoke in the air, plus assist in fighting the fires.  Well, I will do my happy little rain dance tonight and maybe that will help.

Have a wonderful weekend and I will keep y’all up dated.

Annie, the excited little worker bee.

 

Waiting, at a dead standstill

Well, we are supposed to get the boom-lift back tomorrow. Had to work for a living this week. Hopefully, back to the house on Saturday. I guess if it had to break, this week was the best time. We have hundreds of wildfires in the State of Washington now, and the air is thick with smoke, ash, and dirt. Air advisories are to stay inside unless absolutely necessary. It is really gloomy and still. Wishing for wind,  is a two-edged sword. You want wind to blow this gunk out, but it would just feed the wildfires.

Some progress:  The second turned post is glued together and just waiting for me to work my magic.  That will probably be Saturday afternoon.  This is moving way to slow for me.  Sometimes I have so much that needs to be done, I don’t know what to do next.  So I guess, I will just do some reflecting.

Now where was I, oh yeah, 1998.  That was the year that we built the Garage and started on the Shop.  Lynn did most of the work, but I helped.  I put on the cedar shakes.  That was when I wasn’t scared of getting on the roof.  They still need painting, maybe next year.

We did have the cement floor for the shop poured at the same time as the garage.  Work on the shop I believe began in 1998, also.  We found a plan for a 2 story garage/shop at Lumberman’s in Walla Walla.  It was off the shelf for about $12.00.  It was just what we were looking for.  It simulated a barn-style shop which fit well with our outbuildings.  Those plans were more detailed than the plans for the house.  It detailed where every board went.  Though Lynn didn’t need that much detail, I was amazed.  Of course, we had to tweak it to our liking.  I believe he made it wider and deeper.  I just hope to get it painted this year as it looks like a patch-work quilt now.  That is definitely the plan for the lift in the next 3 weeks.  Note:  There is a barn-style door in the upper-level middle of the shop.  It is framed in (and sheeted over for now), but probably will not be put in until next year.

I plan to take at least part of next week off to work on the house.  Winter is fast approaching and we have a lot to do.

Note:  None of the buildings had ready-made-trusses, Lynn hand-framed all of them.  In hind site he would probably have saved himself a lot of grief if he had ordered them.  He is just old-school, you know, “I can do it myself!”  The stubborn Scotsman.

I will try to find some pictures of the garage and shop to post.  I think we are on our way to 1999.

Annie, the house-bound novice carpenter.

The shop as it stands now. Need to paint the top floor.

 

4-1-98 Shop walls going up. First floor.

Working at my real job

Well the boom lift is at the “lift doctor.” So there wasn’t any work done on the house yesterday or today. Not sure when it will be released, but hopefully in a day or two.

Had to go to my real job, but have permission to take more time off when we get the lift back. In the meantime, Lynn worked a little on the post but will do more tomorrow. He is recovering from last week. I think I may have pushed him a little too hard.

So there isn’t much to report on today so this will be short.

Plans for the future are: Finish the East gable then the West gable, then the center over the front door. In between the times that Lynn will be doing the structural part, I will fancy things up a bit. I plan on painting the upper part of the shop and if time allows we will move to the side and eventually to the back.

We did finish up the back lower deck of the house earlier this summer. There is also a small upper deck that needs some attention. Oh my as I am writing this, even I am becoming overwhelmed. Nothing has been done inside yet.

Plans for the inside: We will have a master bath, two full baths in the upstairs and a half-bath by the back door. Three bedrooms upstairs and a large bonus room. First floor has a formal dining room, a country kitchen, family room, laundry room, master suite, living room and finally the library/office.

Hopefully, it will be ready by the time I retire.  Sooner I hope.  With Lynn already retired and hopefully I will in another 5 years, we could actually lose each other in this house, which may assist us both in surviving retirement.

Oh, I forgot, his shop is every mans dream.  I believe that he owns most of the power tools that Sears has produced.  I should have bought stock in Sears years ago knowing they had customers like him.  He has a compound miter saw that I bought for him about 5 years ago, and it is still in the box!!

If you had noticed from the photos, his shop has a second story.  Well right now that is storage, but the future plan is a model railroad room.  Lynn still has many model trains he had when he was a boy and various model railroad stuff he has acquired through the years.  (He boarders or being a ‘hoarder’).  Hmm that rhymes.

Well, I just got carried away.  I told you this would be short.  So I will post more as the week moves along.

Annie, Practicing patience

Day 7 of the vacation. Moving a little slow.

Well, today was a little short, had to take Lynn to the Dr. to get his blood thinner checked. Of course, we had to stop by my work to weigh-in, as we are both on that diet thing. Visited with my co-workers who I just love, and talked about me taking another week off. Thought it sounded like a good idea, now if the boss approves it I will get to torture Lynn for another week.

While we were in town, we did a little shopping at the Home Depot and loaded up on the list of supplies we needed to keep going.  One new item was a wire brush.  I saw a u-tube video on how to clean out paint brushes.  It was pretty slick.  You need a wire brush and you basically comb the paint brush with the wire brush, under warm or cold water.  Man, what a time saver that is.  I have been buying cheap brushes so I don’t feel so bad about throwing them away.

Okay now for the progress.  Today Lynn went up in the lift and put some trim around the stain glass window.  First he needed to put 1/2″ plywood up and then a piece of the Hardie Board trim.  That places it out far enough that the siding butts up against it and doesn’t stick out.  I did take a photo of just what we got done today.  It went slow as I was not very proficient with the siding tool.  As a matter of fact, I switched to a chop saw because I was wasting too much trim practicing.  I guess that is something I just can’t get the hang off in this short amount of time.  I did some running up and down the stairs handing things out the window to Lynn in the lift.  Oh, and that diet thing with Lynn, what was I thinking??  He was living up to his nick name:  Ole’ Snap & Snarl.  Boy was he cranky.  So at one point I decided he didn’t need me and I went to the far side of the garage (to get away) and decided to paint a door, that he pointed out needed painting.  I managed to get it scrapped, caulked and primed.  He is a real work incentive.

When we got back from town, I went to work on the post we took out yesterday.  I removed all the screws with a power drill.  Oh, I didn’t tell you.  We did something I know Norm Abrams would not approve of.  We tried to bring the splitting posts together with screws, counter sunk of course.  Didn’t work.  Nothing worked, except taking them apart and fixing them right.  At least that is what I say now.  Ask me this time next year and I will let you know how they have fared over the winter.

Back to the post.  Well I removed the screws and then tried to pull the 4 sides apart.  Nothing is easy.  So I used my versatile putty knife to try to force apart the sticking sides.  It worked but in the process I bent my putty knife.  I loved that putty knife.  Papa said he will buy me another one tomorrow.  This is me frowning. 😦    I truly loved that little tool.

Tomorrow is grocery day, so we won’t be working in the morning.  Then by the time we get home, Lynn is too tuckered out to do anything, so that means I get to play on the lift when we get home.  Yipee.  Maybe I can get him to move it to the Shop and I will start painting on it.  I need to get the “up high” work done before we have to take the lift back.

Or I may just call it a rest day, and head into town for the Walla Walla Quilt Show.  Leaving Lynn home to recharge for Sunday.  I think that is what I am going to do.  Making and executive decision, Quilting Show it is.  Save the painting until Sunday.  Now for some photos, that finally downloaded.

Annie, Posting,  Painting, and Chop Saw Operator

Window In

Another one of the window

Sliding Garage Door – Mower entrance

Primed and ready for the final coat.

Post in pieces

My beloved putty knife.

5th Day of Vacation, Moving along at a snails pace. But Moving

It was 35 degrees on the back porch. Oh man, winter’s going to be here before you know it. Though it got in the 80’s this afternoon.  Got a late start on this project, but it is what it is. Hope to at least get the front of the house sided before we have to return the lift. My vacation ends Sunday, but may have to take another week off this month, we will see how things are at work.

Bonus, Lynn is pushing himself and I think getting stronger without him even realizing it. I think he kinda likes riding in the bucket lift. Keeps figuring out how to make it do different things.  Still runs out of steam after a few hours on his feet.  Was going to go back up there this afternoon, but bees were swarming all around so when it gets cooler in the morning he will go up and try to spray some hives while they are cold.  They were pretty angry about the nail gun and the vibration.  Can’t move away from them very fast in a slow moving rig like the lift.

Lynn put up some more soffit (pre-painted) and hopes to get the siding and maybe the window in.  That is what we are shooting for anyway.  I am excited for Sallie to see the windows up.  They are stain glass and are beautiful.  Sallie made them for me and I will talk more about that tomorrow.

I worked on painting the front porch (one more bay done & one to go).  Also working on the porch post.  Thought I would have it finished today to put it up, but the red is going to need one more coat.  I did research on u-tube and think I have it figured out.  While taping the post and painting the red (just one of the colors) I thought Red, White and Blue would have been pretty cool colors to have, but alas I have to go with the color scheme I picked out.  The colors I have selected are:  Cream Yellow, White, Sage Green and little bit of Red here and there.  The Garage has Red Doors but I am thinking I may change that next year.  Won’t get to it this year.

This will be a short update and hopefully tomorrow I will have some more photos.

Annie, Post painter and novice blogger