The Barn Project

Bathtub!

2012-02-16T20:01:00.003-05:00

The tiles go up.

The the grout.

Then trim.

Table for 23 (temporary)

2011-11-25T10:06:00.000-05:00

Entryway and door trim

2011-11-25T10:01:00.002-05:00

Maine Slate from Monson (http://www.monsonslate.com/) for our entryway.

A door with trim!

My new desk!

2011-09-09T21:29:00.001-04:00

Getting closer

2011-08-10T06:43:00.001-04:00

Screened in Porch, coming along

2011-08-02T05:48:00.003-04:00

New driveway and hopefully some grass soon (but not too much)

2011-08-02T05:47:00.002-04:00

New mobile chicken house

2011-05-15T21:23:00.000-04:00

Chaos in the Coop

2011-04-01T07:51:00.003-04:00

We've been pretty lucky until now with our laying hens. Twice over the last year we've been home when a hawk has swooped down and pinned a hen to the ground. Chloe saved the first one and I the second from certain death. But our luck ran out last week when a raccoon took one hen when we carelessly left the little chicken door open one night. The truth is, though, that the little chicken door wouldn't have kept a raccoon out anyway; they're incredibly resourceful when they're hungry. After a second killing I made a serious effort to keep the raccoon out of the barn. I still don't know how it got in early last Sunday morning. I found it in the coop in the process of devouring another hen while the rest of the hens were making quite a racket.
This raccoon was a special case. During our first meeting I noticed that one of its hind legs was bloody and hanging in a unusual way. Maybe it had been hit by a car. We stared at each other for a while as it clung to the inside of the chicken wire of the coop, and then at my prompting it exited the way it had come in. I watched it slowly make its way across the garden thinking that it wasn't going to live much longer given its condition. I was wrong about that. I would imagine that killing our chickens was the easiest way for it to eat; it certainly wasn't fast enough to catch anything else. So last Sunday morning I forced it out of the coop, and, strangely, it wandered out and directly into the greenhouse. I followed it with a shovel and that was it for the raccoon. It didn't even bother to try to escape.

Office, Blackboard, Shelves

2011-02-11T22:05:00.002-05:00

Almost done. Birch plywood is wonderful stuff. Note the chalk tray mounted on the blackboard. Nice touch.

Step Into My Office

2011-02-05T20:12:00.002-05:00

Here are some shelves for all the stuff that seems to pile up on every available surface in our kitchen. It's all part of what I'm going to call my office. A little desk with Michelle's old laptop, shelves, a filing cabinet. The black panel to the right of the shelves is a black board surface for the endless lists of groceries and things to do that in the past have been scribbled on scraps of paper and, more often than not, lost.

Unpacking

2011-01-30T08:40:00.004-05:00

Three years ago we packed up our books and stacked up the boxes into the deepest recesses of our storage space, a 39 foot long room in the eaves on the north side of the house. Cold in the winter, hot in the summer, this space is filled with all the detritus from our lives and, oddly, my sister's life as well. It seems as though Elizabeth has contracted UPS to make monthly deliveries of her kid's unused stuff. There's a large box up there labeled Barbie Stuff. Others with nothing but lonely board games, barely, if at all, used. And boxes upon boxes of clothes. But as of yesterday, there's a little more space; we unpacked enough books to fill a new 64 sq ft book case.

The inspiration to build the bookcase came from a job I've got starting this spring. I'll be building a writer's studio, the interior of which will be floor to ceiling bookcases. The structure of the building itself will serve as the framework of the bookcases. I'll be framing the space with douglas fir 2x12's and notching the shelves, also douglas fir, into the frame. After sheathing with pine boards, I'll insulate to the outside leaving the interior with 11 inch deep framing to receive the shelves. Before I could be confident that I wouldn't be digging my own grave with this technique, I decided to try it for myself. As it turns out, I won't be building the bookcases exactly like I built my own shelves. Chris Doyle, who's working on the design, thought it would look nicer having both the shelves and frame douglas fir and came up with a simpler way to marry the shelves to the framing. It will end up making my job a little easier; the joinery won't be so fancy. I struggled to get my joinery to be tight because it's more or less impossible to correct a 2x12 that's cupped. It would have been time consuming to frame the studio space that way, possible, but difficult. I'm pleased with our bookcases, though. There's another 7' of wall space for more shelves; the plan from the start was to have an entire 15' length of floor to ceiling bookcases. But I don't know when I'll get to it.

It's been a snowy winter thus far with surprisingly little sun. We seem to be relying on our wood stove much more often than last winter. Still, though, we rarely heat our house overnight, relying on a fire first thing in the morning to give us a boost in temperature. We've burned maybe a half cord of fire wood so far this year, and might end up burning a little more than a cord in total. The nice thing about a passive solar house is that from December 21st on we get a little more solar heat every day. By March the wood stove is cold more often than not.

Bookcases!

2011-01-29T15:25:00.003-05:00

Harvesting Chickens

2010-10-16T20:39:00.004-04:00

I remember the first time I read the words harvesting and chickens together in Barbara Kingsolver's book about local and home-grown food. Harvesting chickens; sounds nice, clean and simple as though the act of killing a chicken is nothing more complicated than pulling a turnip. Harvesting is a useful word for blotting out the gore and, perhaps, the guilt of killing a living, breathing warm-blooded animal; the verb slaughter hides nothing. I slaughtered 34 chickens today, and, I must admit, it wasn't at all like harvesting a vegetable. Nothing terrible happened. There were no glitches. Everything went as smoothly as possible. But I can't say I enjoyed myself. Starting at about 9am I started taking them in pairs, stuffing them head down into upside-down traffic cones, cutting the veins on either side of the throat, waiting for them to bleed and die before decapitating, dunking each in a pot of 140F water for approximately 50 seconds, tossing them into an auto plucker to remove the feathers and then into a ice water bath to await evisceration. I finished just after noon. Michelle suggested I wash the splatter of chicken blood off my face and neck before I go buy ice at the store down the road. I harvest potatoes and carrots; I slaughter chickens. There is a difference if you haven't tried it.
In the afternoon, our friend WendiLou came to help us process the chickens. The three of us, WendiLou the seasoned professional, Michelle and I the bumbling novices, finished in a couple hours. The chickens are sitting in a bath of ice water for the night. Then we'll bag and freeze them. The three pigs are off to the slaughter house tomorrow morning. It's going to be real quiet around here.

The end of decks and the roasters

2010-08-22T21:34:00.002-04:00

Finished deck and friends (open area on left just waiting for drain grill to be finished)

Meat birds

Farmers and one imposter

Siding the entryway

New bench made from cherry felled way back when in Brooklin. It was growing up in the foundation of an old house on our old land. We had much trouble getting it milled, but then finally did. Then we did nothing with it for 10 years and now it is a lovely bench. More photos to come.

The beginning of decks

2010-08-22T21:14:00.004-04:00

Deck off the doorway

Front deck, framed

I think Michael forgot to mention that he was pretty sick while doing this.

Girls on deck

Girls with monster zucchinis on deck

Almost done

Sheepish

2010-08-07T05:42:00.003-04:00

Not long after the escaped piglet nightmare,we took delivery of two Fresian lambs. As with the piglets I was surprised by the size of them. Hazel and I went to pick them up in the Volvo, and there was no way they'd fit. I'd imagined something the size of smallish dog, and the one's selected for me probably weighed about 60lbs a piece at four months old. The guy delivered them. And today I'm going to pick them up. From the butcher.
The sheep were something of an experiment. These rams were Fresians, a milking breed, and I had in in my head that it would be nice to have a couple dairy sheep. As most people know, ewes have to lamb each spring to start milking again, and I figured that a couple ewes would yield three or four lambs every spring. I was interested to know if I could complete the cycle and slaughter them myself. The second part of the experiment was just to see what it was like to have sheep on our land, and it was the second part that made the first part, the slaughtering at home, unnecessary. We just don't have the real estate for what would amount to five or six sheep maintained on pasture. The neighbors have the space, but the pasture isn't up to speed (and wouldn't be without serious work) and our space is totally inadequate. For their enclosure I'd bought 164' of electric netting and a solar charger to power it. What I didn't fully understand at the beginning was that the ground along the path of the fence has to be perfectly cropped to keep it from shorting and running down the battery. Even under best conditions I had to supplement the solar charger with one that runs off an extension cord. Which meant that, unless I changed the way I powered the fence, I was confined to the space reasonably accessible by an extension cord. After two and a half months of moving them once a week, I decided it was time. And though I was getting professional help to do the job, slaughtering them at home wasn't something I was looking forward to; there was some element of chickening out in the decision to send them away. So now we have lamb chops in the freezer.
The pigs are flourishing on forage, commercial pig food, and food waste from a local Mexican restaurant. After feasting on left-over rice and beans and tortillas, the pigs turn up their snouts at regular old pig food, but they'll eat it if they're hungry. The largest piglet, the one the kids named Boss, is now far and away the largest pig, using it's clout to devour more of the tastiest food, but the runt, Blaze, is catching up to Nibble and will probably be her equal in size come November. Naming edible farm animals is not a good idea; Chloe and Hazel took it upon themselves to come up with Boss, Nibble (because she'll bite your hand given the opportunity), and Blaze (he's got white stripe in the middle of his forehead). And I've already heard pleas for clemency: "Can't we send some other pigs to the butcher and save these?" It is true that these pigs are charming. Starting at the beginning of the summer, we received a series of note cards with photos of adorable piglets nestled in baskets filled with straw. (And I couldn't help wondering if the photographers had to drug the piglets to get them to stay still enough to snap a picture.) The note inside was written by the piglets themselves, proving, apparently, that pigs are intelligent. The piglets just wanted to express their gratitude for having been provided such a wonderful home. The post script, however, was a request to be spared the bullet and the knife. Though we had no way of knowing for sure who had been sending the cards, we had it narrowed down to two couples with histories of vegetarianism. The sting operation took place last week. Michelle and I were to be with both sets of suspects at the same time. (We were only interested in the men; the writing was distinctly male.) Somehow we wanted to get writing samples to compare to the notes. It turned out to be relatively easy thanks to some quick-on-her-feet thinking by Michelle. The Cassidy family will be off soon on another long sailing adventure and Michelle deftly handed Jimmy a note pad and asked for contact information. (Though we already have it.) Jimmy was more than happy to apply his scrawl to paper, and with one glance we knew we had our man. He was thoroughly embarrassed.
Though the note card propaganda campaign was not effective, I have come to a finer appreciation of pigs as animals simply by daily interaction. I've heard the argument that pigs are smarter than dogs. I read the story in the Times about how pigs can use mirrors to discover the placement of a cache of food. It's their capacity for fun, though, that strikes me as significant when I ask the question: Should we raise them for food? The ability to have fun is clearly tied to intelligence. (Though there's no shortage of miserable intelligent people.) My pigs enjoy themselves and each other. It's certainly easier for them to have fun when they've got a half acre of oak forest as opposed to an over-crowded industrial pig farm with a cement floor. I've given them a place where they're free to do what pigs do. As a result I don't think I can raise pigs any more. Whether my appreciation of pigs is stronger than my appreciation of bacon remains to be seen.
Though I hadn't done much to the house for some time, a short burst of activity has yielded two decks, one (8x24) on the south side of the house and another small one at the entry door. Pictures will follow.

Piglet Mania!

2010-05-23T19:28:00.004-04:00

Chloe and I picked up three piglets in Ellsworth this afternoon. The ride was fine; nothing like the pig stench of last year when the so-called piglets we got were really pigs and not well suited to transport in the back of the Volvo. I knew these were real piglets, and like last year they came is sizes small, medium and large, the largest being no more than twenty pounds and the smallest no more than 12. I hadn't really thought about the implications of size. I should have. Last year after I hauled the pigs out of the back of the Volvo, they roamed around a bit and then slept for a couple days. These were pigs who'd lived a hard few months. When I dropped them into my pig oasis, they seemed to realize right off that they were in a good place. Today's piglets were another sort. They'd lived a pleasant life in a barn out back of Frank's house. They're mom and dad were there. So when I reached into the back of the Volvo and grabbed Medium and Small and dropped them inside the fence they immediately were looking for a way out. Large didn't wait and bolted right out the back and off into the woods. Catching Large wasn't easy, but we got her when she got cornered between the car and the fence. In the mean time, Chloe and Nadya were inside the enclosure trying to make friends with the other two piglets who wanted nothing to do with them. That's when we learned the real and tragic limitations of our fence; the holes in the fence were just a bit larger than the piglets. They didn't go under or over but through. I followed them through the woods trying to herd them back home, but it was no use. The terrain north of the pig pen toward Camp Stream is thickly wooded with dense underbrush. I did my best to track them, but at some point they got separated and I started to follow one of them. This one, the smallest, made its way back to our house and down our driveway to the neighbor's house. Imagine their surprise when a very small piglet, smaller than Ox (our cat), trotted through their yard. At least I was able to enlist their help. We got the small one, (I can't remember how; it's all a blur.) and then turned our attention to catching the third who could have been anywhere at this point. I thought he was gone, a feral pig loose on Sis Porter Rd. We had one thing going for us: These piglets did not like being separated. The large piglet was in the pig pen, and the last fugitive eventually made it's way back to the fence looking for a way to join his sister. After a ridiculous hour of frantic effort, we had all three. Against the odds, really. Piglets are fast. At one point, tired of dodging this way and that for a little animal who could clearly out maneuver me, I had one of them on a straightaway. Running as fast as I could I couldn't catch her. (Sure, I'll admit I've never been much of a sprinter, but I was running pretty fast.) We put all three of them in a small hastily made section of the chicken coop and barricaded the door with heavy digging implements. I gave them food and water and said good night....
The next day I knew I had to address the piglet problem. They were fine where they were for the morning so I went off with the girls for Chloe's soccer clinic and returned shortly before noon to make a piglet-proof enclosure. I strapped on my tool belt, grabbed my cordless drill and headed outside. Only to see the curly tailed rear ends of three piglets head south down our driveway!!?? I'm not going to write what came out of my mouth; this is a family blog. Fortunately, the neighbors were home and outside. Otherwise, they'd have been gone for good. We fanned out to divide and conquer. The smallest piglet was the first to peel off and get separated from his siblings. I followed him and got lucky when he got mired in grass so tall that I easily caught him. (Plucked him off the ground by his hind legs; that's the only way to carry a fugitive piglet.) Again, the details of catching the other two are blurry, but it wasn't nearly as strenuous as it was the day before. So, how did they escape? Up against the chicken coop door I had piled up a post hole digger, a soil tamper and a heavy digging bar. They had pushed their way out. These piglets have spunk! This time I fastened the door shut with screws. I had been thinking that I should make an enclosure within the pig pen. Something to hold them until they were big enough and relaxed enough about their new environment. But I decided to make them a stall inside the barn. It will be their place for the next few weeks. When we return from our trip to Cape Breton, maybe they'll be ready for the pig pen.
More than once over the last 24 hours I have thought: Is this worth it? I don't think so. They just drove up the price of bacon.

Screen Porch in progress

2010-05-14T20:25:00.002-04:00

Update

2010-05-08T09:18:00.003-04:00

In case there's still anyone out there checking to see if I'm still posting, here's an update. The greenhouse in the pictures below is still awaiting plastic. We have been eating a little asparagus out of the garden this past week, but everything else is plodding along waiting for warmth. Hazel and I made a pilgrimage to Fedco to pick up the trees and potatoes we'd ordered. Only one item was not available, a cider apple tree of French origin called Medaille d'Or. There was a tree I couldn't remember ordering called Evans. (But there it was on the order form in my own hand writing.) Back at home I looked through the catalog and couldn't find an apple tree by the name of Evans. Then I remembered; Michelle had convinced me to order a cherry tree. Our little orchard is now comprised of six apple trees, two peach and one cherry.

Chickens. We had been plagued by the difficult-to-eradicate problem of egg eating. My guess was that the practice may have started when there were too many chickens for the space and the nesting boxes were inadequate. Also, we could have been feeding them too much scratch (a mixture of oats and cracked corn) and they were driven to supplement their protein intake. It might have been all of the above. Once chickens discover that they can eat their own eggs it's a hard habit to break. There could have been just a few offenders; hard to tell. I suspected that the nesting boxes were the greatest contributor. In a swift and decisive move, I built and installed new nesting boxes and boarded up the old ones in the matter of an hour. The old boxes were too shallow so the nesting straw would quickly get displaced leaving nothing but bare wood. The eggs would drop with a thud and frequently have cracks. Perhaps this is how the egg eating started in the first place. An egg dropped and broke and the chicken looked down and thought, "Oh, what have we here?" The new boxes are 12 inches deep and filled with straw. Since the change, the cracked egg problem has disappeared and there has been no sign of egg eating. Ta!Da! The only other issue is that of the escapee. More or less every day a chicken gets out. We suspected that it was a repeat offender. Flying the coop happens, apparently. I had a lot of practice catching this chicken. The easiest way was working as a team with Hazel. I'd herd the chicken around the perimeter of the fence and just as it approached the door to the coop Hazel would open it and the chicken would hop back in. One day, after days of frustrating chicken chasing, I caught it and brought it in the house and called for Michelle who wrote a bold E on one the the chicken's legs with a black marker. E for Escapee. As we suspected it was the same chicken every time. Eighteen well behaved hens and one trouble maker. I just need to improve my fence to fix this problem. Sooner or later we'll have to address all the fencing issues. Deer protection for the whole place. Chickens out of the garden.

Four of the 12 panels of the screened porch are in place. I underestimated the amount of time and space needed to prime and paint twelve wood doors and their screens. I've settled on a system of addressing three doors at a time and installing them just to get them out of my way. I've been having issues with the paint and primer as well. The primer is a Benjamin Moore oil based and the top coat is water based. The primer was taking forever to dry and it was difficult to apply evenly. I would allow days of drying and it would still feel not 100% dry. The problem is when the latex is applied and dried and then heats up as when the door is exposed to the sun the latex was blistering up in spots. A call to Benjamin Moore was not entirely satisfying. The primer hadn't adequately cured before I applied the latex. The guy on the phone thought that the blisters would suck back down and everything would be ok. I have my doubts. My solution is to give the primer an absurdly long curing time.

New greenhouse in the works

2010-04-15T12:37:00.002-04:00

Call Cindy

2010-04-05T19:46:00.004-04:00

Shortly before lunch today I knocked on our bedroom window to get Michelle's attention. I was outside standing on the roof of the porch and could see her sitting in her office. When she turned around, I said through the window, "Call Cindy." I had to repeat myself. Then she understood. Cindy of Amica Insurance has been calling us every few months since last summer to see if we'd finished the exterior of the house. I had just fastened the last board when I knocked on the window. Finishing the outside took longer than I had expected. Finally, Cindy will be satisfied.

Time to move on to the next project. An hour or so after I had given instructions to call Cindy, the Viking Lumber truck arrived with thirteen wood combination doors. The next project had arrived. The doors will fit into the openings of the screen/glass porch. For the last six months the porch has been my workshop. I spent the next few hours cleaning up and setting up shop around the corner next to the firewood. The screened porch is going to be one of the nicer spots in the house. Michelle has been pining for a porch since we first thought of house building ten years ago. The MQP is finally on its way! (MQP is the acronym we used on house plans to designate the porch. It stands for Michelle's Quest for Porch.) (And it's not a moment too soon because the phoebes have returned looking to nest on our porch!)

The Peak

2010-03-22T20:06:00.003-04:00

Under the threat of rain, I managed to put up siding all the way to the peak on the west side. Last week I bought three clamps from an outfit in Vermont that sells snow guards and fastened them to the seams of the metal roof. Then I bolted a 2x6 across the clamps and used that as a base for a 16' ladder. It may look sketchy, but it's really quite safe. I've got what looks to be three more days on the siding. At the end of the day today, I started to assemble the base of the green house. It should be up and running by the end of April.

Spring

2010-03-19T19:35:00.002-04:00

After a less than memorable winter, it seems as we've been enjoying spring for a few weeks now. I set up the old cold frame with spinach and mizuna, and I've already moved the bunching onions I grew from seed into a row in the garden and covered it with cloth. Of course, a spring snow storm could prove a challenge, but when the weather is this ridiculously nice it's hard to hold back. In our old garden in Brooklin, we usually started sowing the real cold hardy stuff in the middle of April. As soon as the ground can be worked. By that rule we could have been out there sowing peas a few weeks ago. Once the greenhouse is up and running, all the usual dates will change and we'll be cheating mother nature on both sides of the growing season.

Mark showed up today to tie up the last of the plumbing. The outdoor faucet, the outdoor shower mixing valve, and a filter. We discovered the need for a filter after our washing machine repeatedly failed to perform. The screens on the water line going into the machine kept clogging with sediment.

I have a long list of things to do from now until next winter. Finish the porch is the biggest project with the biggest price tag. Finish the siding. Install drains along the drip line on the north and south sides. Build book cases. Build desk and shelves adjacent to kitchen. Stairs. Trim everywhere. I doubt I'll get to it all.

Update

2010-03-05T20:06:00.002-05:00

With spring right around the corner it's time to think garden. Last weekend I went to a meeting for the local community greenhouse project. They've got a near wholesale price on the materials and great design ideas, and while it's true that I'd like nothing more than to build a state-of-the-art greenhouse, it's also true that I have other uses for what would amount to a couple thousand dollars. When I built our first greenhouse about six years ago, I had to buy a 20' x 100' roll of greenhouse plastic when I only needed about a fifth of that. My plan, then, is to go with what I've got. For a couple hundred bucks in materials I can build a very basic greenhouse (12' x 32') and use the plastic I've got to cover it not once but twice (8 years worth). I'll use the greenhouse project folks to buy enough polycarbonate panels to make some nice cold frames to go inside the greenhouse for the winter.

I been slowly finishing the drywall returns on the windows upstairs. I looked into buying a sander that attaches to a shop-vac so I could finish the windows downstairs without covering everything we own with a layer of joint compound dust. But then I read a suggestion that was worth a try: Sand with one hand and hold the shop-vac hose underneath. For someone doing this sort of thing professionally, I suppose this arrangement would get tiresome, but for what I've got to do it worked like a charm.

Chickens are loving the weather. I've got to fence them in some time soon. We're getting about a dozen eggs a day. Half for us. Half for the neighbors. And every now and then we give a dozen to friends.

Plodding Along

2010-02-24T16:02:00.003-05:00

I've been chipping away at a number of things over the past few weeks. As the pictures show, I managed to fashion a backsplash in the kitchen using the stone left over from the cutting of the countertop using a 7$ diamond blade in my circular saw. The blade was useless by the time I was making my last cut; what do you expect for 7 bucks? Looks nice though. Wiped it down with the same penetrating oil I used on the concrete floor. The chicken is no longer using my workshop/porch to lay eggs. I had to board up my exit to the outside to keep her out. I've moved to the next bedroom with the finish work. It's ready for another pink and green polka dot floor.

I've been making sketches of greenhouse to attach to the barn. There's a meeting of a greenhouse co-op this Saturday. A group of people have gotten together to order materials to get a bulk rate and save on shipping. This green house will have polycarbonate sheets for walls and roof, not plastic sheeting. The polycarbonate sheets last a lot longer and have a better insulating value. (A cross section looks a bit like corrugated cardboard.) This greenhouse would serve as winter chicken quarters and a hothouse for everything that needs a hothouse in Maine.

Backsplash and wayward chicken

2010-02-23T19:16:00.001-05:00

Kid's floor

2010-02-04T06:51:00.003-05:00

Lots of pink and green and polka dots.

Groundhog Day

2010-02-02T17:00:00.003-05:00

With temperatures at about zero overnight and daytime highs approaching 20F, keeping a house warm isn't easy. This is the time of year when firewood is consumed at an alarming rate, and you hope that you've got enough to last the winter. There's a saying out there and I don't know exactly how it goes, but the gist of it is that you should have gone through half your firewood by Groundhog Day. By that formula I will burn about a cord and a half to heat our house this winter. It's hard to believe that we have to have a conversation about whether or not to light a fire in the stove on a night with a temperature near zero. But after a string of cold sunny days of pumping solar heat into the slab, it's really not worth it to start a fire when the sun goes down. A little fire first thing in the morning will quickly warm the house when the kids are getting ready to go off to school, and then the sun will take over. Yesterday, I spent an enjoyable few hours cutting and splitting red oak for future winter's use, enough to heat our house into January. So not only am I saving trees from going up the chimney, I'm saving time. Less time operating a chain saw, more time on the couch with a book.

Hazel and I took a trip into Ellsworth today to buy everything we need to start seeds inside with lights. Our garden is going to hit the ground running this year. The chickens are laying more consistently now. Average of about 6 a day. One project on my list this summer is to build a greenhouse off the south side of the barn. It would give the chickens a warm place to run around in the coldest months of winter, and chicken manure fortified soil for spring, summer and fall growing. I could even grow a cover crop in there as winter forage.

Fun Floorz

2010-01-22T16:35:00.003-05:00

The vacationers arrived home yesterday afternoon exhausted from travel and happy to be home. Chloe and Hazel knew that I was busy transforming the second floor into a more livable space while they were running around on the beach and submerging themselves in the hot tub. What they didn't know was that their room now had a pink and green polka dot floor. They were floored when they saw it, pardon the pun.

I had mixed feelings about the floor as it was going down. It's visual impact was hard to predict. The girl's room is kind of like stepping into a scene in Alice In Wonderland. The rest of the floor is less jarring but is distracting nonetheless. It's durable, easy-to-clean stuff though. Good for as long as we can tolerate it. That may turn out to be a long, long time given the list of higher priority projects. The drywall is no longer shedding dust, and the windows in our bedroom and Michelle's office turned out beautifully. Another marathon of work is over. I spent a good chunk of today reading to Hazel and falling asleep in the process.

Our barn now has chickens. Twenty-eight laying hens busy laying eggs. I have never been close to chickens before, and I'm slowly becoming a chicken guy. A friend lent me a couple of chicken books and I'm learning the in's and out's of chickens. Not much to it really.

Michelle will post pictures of the second floor.

Two Weeks

2010-01-09T06:37:00.003-05:00

Michelle, Chloe and Hazel are off to Florida for a couple weeks. In their absence I'm going to try to finish one bedroom (0urs) and paint, or at least prime, the entire second floor. The only unknown in this equation is trimming the windows. It should be perfect joint compound drying weather so at least I've got that going for me. I'm going to leave the flooring as a complete surprise. I was struggling with the options in terms of wood flooring that would fit our budget and produce satisfying results. So I found something that...well, let's just say that the kids will love it.

Today, before they leave we're going to work on a space in the barn for some laying hens in need of a home. I don't know exactly how many yet. Something around twenty. Their owners are off to New Haven for a while, and we, along with a our neighbors, are taking over.

Home Again

2010-01-03T07:32:00.002-05:00

We've been back from the holidays for a few days now. Our house was just as it should have been upon our return. If we had a programmable thermostat, we would have been able to see how cold or how warm it had gotten when we were gone. I did note that there was water in the overflow tray of the solar storage tank meaning that the water in the tank had gotten so warm that a pressure relief valve had let a little out. If there is a flaw in the system, it is that the two parts, the solar and the propane back-up, work well together when heating our hot water but not when heating the space. To most efficiently heat the space I have to be here to manipulate the system. If I'm not here to press buttons, the benefit of solar heat going into the slab is lost. One problem is that the heat is controlled by thermostat. Since the house is passive solar, on any day that there's solar heat for the slab it's already warmer inside than the temperature set on the thermostat. So at the time when it would be free (no propane use) to add heat to the slab, nothing happens. When I'm home at a time like this, I turn up the thermostat for a few hours and the excess solar heat flows through the concrete. The result is impossible to measure, but imagine, for example, that the 1000 square feet of concrete goes from 65F to 67F in the few hours I'm able to dump heat in. At 3am when it's in the single digits outside, those two degrees are slowly seeping from the slab, keeping the house just a little warmer. As the day lengthens throughout the course of winter, on sunny days there'll be more and more of this excess heat for the slab. By March the days we'll need supplemental heat from the wood stove will be few.

Michelle and the girls are off to Florida soon. My job is to transform as much of the upstairs space as possible when they're gone. Painting, trimming windows, painting the plywood floors. I should be able to put a large dent in it in ten days.

A nor'easter dumped a foot of snow yesterday and last night. Today might be good for building snow forts.

The Case for Manual Labor

2009-12-29T08:57:00.003-05:00

I like getting books for Christmas. This year I forgot my book at home and ended up wandering around in circles or reading the Times on the computer. It wasn't until the 27th that I finally opened something to read. My brother-in-law, Brian, gave me a copy of a little book of philosophy I hadn't heard of called Shop Class as Soulcraft. The author, a PhD in philosophy who owns a motorcycle repair shop, makes the case for the value of working with your hands. Engaging your mind in the creation of something. When I graduated from college twenty years ago, the joke was that I was fit to split firewood and tend sheep. My roommates found this amusing. Graduates of Holy Cross do not become shepherds. Since 1990 I have been a cook, reporter, English tutor, package store clerk, carpenter and laborer, teacher of EFL, substitute teacher, artisan baker, sail maker and carpenter again. The one omission from this list, a print estimator for my father's printing company, was my only real attempt to join the white collar workforce, and it failed. Square peg, round hole. I have spent about thirteen of the last twenty years acquiring various trade skills. Now the joke is that I have an advanced degree in Home Economics. I cut and split my own firewood. I am poised to tend a flock of sheep. Had I known myself a little better twenty years ago perhaps it wouldn't have taken me so long to get here.

The Holiday Test

2009-12-21T06:46:00.002-05:00

When you're committed to heating with wood, there's only one issue to address: What do you do when you're not there to light the fire? Initially we had a very conventional solution. A wall mounted direct-vent propane heater could easily keep our house from freezing even in the coldest mid-winter weather. Then it occurred to me that running heat through the slab wasn't all that expensive. If we weren't there to light the fire, then we wouldn't be there to use hot water either, and the domestic hot water system could double as a source for in-floor heating. When we leave for the holidays tomorrow afternoon, the solar hot water system will heat our house or at least keep it from freezing. (I doubt it would freeze anyway, but I'm not willing to put my suspicions to the test.) I'll set the thermostat to 60F and close the door. Neighbors will check on it and Ox, the cat, who more or less takes care of himself.

The Shortest Days

2009-12-17T05:08:00.002-05:00

With Winter Solstice right around the corner, the sun hangs low on the horizon and disappears to the west shortly before 4 in the afternoon. Yesterday was a good day (sunny, cold and short) to check the performance of a well insulated passive solar house. During the day, obviously, there's no need for supplemental heat from the woodstove. At noon in mid-December sunlight penetrates deeply into the house, lighting up the back wall of the first floor. The temperature inside is just below 70F. A couple days ago I made an adjustment to a setting on the solar hot water system allowing more solar heat to be pumped through the slab, and yesterday was the first day to give it a try. Around mid-day I turned up the thermostat and pumped heat through the floor for a couple hours. Our domestic hot water usage is predominantly later in the day so a little loss of heat to the floor in the middle of the day leaves enough time for the tank to recover temperature before the sun goes down. At 10pm with the temperature outside approaching the single digits, inside it was still a pleasant 66F. I could have lighted a fire in the woodstove before retiring for the night, but I thought it would be a good night to see just how cold it would get inside without the benefit of extra heat. The heat for the night would come from what was stored in the concrete floor. A 4:30am it was a little on the chilly side at 54F so I started up the woodstove to give us a little boost before the sun starts working again. Not bad though. When your average house would have been burning something all day and night to keep from freezing, I used nothing but solar gain. It will take some time to tweak the system to achieve maximum efficiency, but we're off to a good start.

The East Side

2009-12-14T20:53:00.002-05:00

The East side is finally done.

Winter

2009-12-08T06:43:00.002-05:00

Here's an efficiency snapshot, an early example of how our house will heat this winter. Last Friday it was cloudy and in the 30's with snow predicted for the early afternoon. We hadn't really fired up the woodstove for any extended period of time so I started a fire in the morning and more or less kept it going all day. That night before we went to sleep I loaded it up with wood and shut it down for a long overnight burn. When I woke up at 6am the following morning to 5 inches of snow, the stove was just barely warm. The temperature inside, however, was a tropical 77F. We didn't need any more heat from the woodstove until I started a fire the following Monday afternoon.

Like Lambs To....

2009-11-29T16:49:00.003-05:00

The pigs left today in an operation that went a little too smoothly. Their transportation, a large pickup pulling a small livestock trailer, backed up to the fence, let down it's tailgate, and within five minutes the three pigs walked up the ramp and in, the scent of slops luring them forward. The driver, Frank Herrick, raises pigs himself and has a little pig exhibition at the Blue Hill Fair. I didn't know this when I'd arranged the pick-up, and I was pleased to see that the guy doing the delivery was someone who appreciates pigs. He was thoroughly impressed by the pen I'd provided. Can't get any better than that, he thought. Without taking measurements I'd guessed that the largest pig weighed something over 200 pounds. His more educated guess put him closer to three hundred pounds, on the verge of too big, in his opinion. Anything bigger, he said, and they're just putting on fat. He knew from looking at them that they'd come from Feed and Seed. I was under the impression that the guy who supplies the Feed and Seed piglets raised them himself. Frank said they might have come from Canada. Although, he'd heard that there might have been trouble getting pigs from Canada this past spring and that my pigs may have come from the Buckeye State. Next year's pigs, if there are any, will come from Frank. He doesn't raise the pink variety. His are black with brown spots; I think he called them Tamworths.

Will there be pigs next year? That's an open question. After my first season of pig raising, I'm not sure. There's the question of eating what is clearly an intelligent animal. They're social, friendly and smart. More or less the same description one might have for the family dog. This is an issue for me but not the most compelling. There is the issue of cost: How much did I spend to produce a pound of pork. I know that the cost of the piglets themselves ($240 total) and the bill to feed them (something around $700) is a significant sum, but I'm not going to lose money on the deal; that's clear. I'll most likely end up with something less than 600 pounds of pork. If I sold it all at the reasonable price of $3.50/lb, that's $2100. There are processing fees I'm not considering here, but the total cost is not as significant as what I spent the money on. While it's true that my pigs owe some unknowable number of their pounds to eating whatever they could forage from the land, it's also true that they consumed roughly three quarters of a ton of commercial pig food. (Add to that hundreds of pounds of restaurant and home food waste and wild apples.) On the vast oak estates in Spain, home of the famous cured hams, a pig typically roams four acres of forage. That's a stunningly different way to raise a pig than what happens on your average American pig farm. We've got four acres of oak trees. I'm thinking that I could double the space I have now, and buy half the commercial food and see what happens. I'd rather have three smaller pigs with less outside input. My three (they never got names) are due to be slaughtered tomorrow morning. Hopefully, they'll never see it coming.

2009-11-19T17:54:00.001-05:00

Michael digs a duck pond and lo and behold, a duck arrives

2009-11-19T07:07:00.001-05:00

The First Third

2009-11-17T19:33:00.002-05:00

I'm finished siding the south face of the house. One down two to go. I'm not really sure how I'm going to finish the siding directly above the porch on the west side. I may have to buy something that clamps to the seams so I have some way to stretch a board across the roof as a platform for a ladder. Working on the house two or three days a week makes for slow progress, but I seem to be settling into my new schedule. I told the insurance company today that it's reasonable to assume that I'd be done with the siding in six weeks.

I went running today for the first time in a year. (And what little running I did on Block Island while I was unemployed was the first running I'd done in years.) Just like riding a bike. Building a house must have a sufficient amount of cross-training what with climbing ladders and general lugging stuff around. On my short tour of the neighborhood I climbed a hill on a dirt road about a half mile away and got a nice view of the house in the distance. I'll try to get a picture from this vantage and post it.

Too blue

2009-11-09T22:02:00.002-05:00

Beginning the siding

Stairwell lights, off

More siding

Stairwell lights, on

Slowing Down

2009-11-03T05:11:00.003-05:00

Michelle and I sat down one evening and made a list of all our monthly expenses and compared the sum to our sole source of income at the moment. We were pleasantly surprised to find a small surplus. Then we added up all the debt we have accumulated over the last six or so weeks since our well of funds ran dry and we started using our line of credit. Though we have not reached the limit of our line of credit, a little short of a year from now we will come close. Ikea and HSBC both offered us credit cards with 0% for a year. Our total debt to those four accounts amounts to about $17,000, free money for a year, after which we will just add that debt to our line of credit. The implications of this almost come as a relief. We can't spend any more significant amounts of money on the house any time soon. There are countless little things I can do which don't cost much, and after the exterior is finished I'll concentrate on those. A limitation of options is, at this point, a relief. We have a warm, dry house with a wonderful kitchen and a more than adequate bathroom. It's time to slow down.

The Cost of Free

2009-10-31T06:14:00.004-04:00

Mark showed up yesterday to finish most of what's left of the plumbing. The sink in the bathroom was the only questionable installation. It's a lovely little sink taken out of my sister's renovation in Greenwich. Who knows when it's pipes last held water? Our plan was to put it under water pressure and see what happened. Old fixtures, according to Mark, ofter had leather or some sort of natural packing material that would swell when it got wet and form a water tight seal. So, much like a wooden boat introduced to water for the first time, it's got to leak for a while before it will work properly. If this fails, we'll have to disconnect the sink from the wall and rebuild some of the connections. After 12 hours under pressure, it's still leaking from a few places. Though the sink was free, we'll probably end up spending at least few hundred dollars to get it to work. There's not much in this house that's used. The two bathroom sinks will be our paltry contribution to the reduce-reuse-recycle ethic. (I'm forgetting the insulation; That's reused.)

The Irony of Well Placed Screws

2009-10-30T05:56:00.002-04:00

The Marvin Windows service guy, John, came to check out the slider yesterday and after fifteen minutes knew that my analysis had been correct: The two fixed panels have the wrong glass. He'd brought along a little square sample of double pane insulated LowE 179, and we took turns holding it up for each other and standing back for a good look. This exercise together with my own observations about heat and light passing through the panels was enough to convince him that two of the three panels were wrong. If it were the operating panel that needed to be replaced, the fix would be easy and quick; it can be removed and replaced in minutes. The fixed panels, however, are more of a challenge. A few months ago when the same guy came and helped me with the original problem of putting the whole thing square in its frame, he removed the screws that fix the panels to the frame. The screws fastening the right panel to the frame had been put in at an angle so they'd be easier to cut with a sawsall if the panel ever needed to be removed. John had decided to put the screws in straight for a better purchase. Odds, he thought, were against replacement. Little did he know how soon this decision would come back to haunt him. Since new panels ordered now would be ready in the middle of January, we both decided that the slider should spend the winter as is and plan on replacement in mid-April. None of this interferes with trimming or siding so I can get right to it. The barn boards arrived yesterday, and I'm ready to start putting them up.

The solar guys came and fixed their two leaks. Some of the sealant around both penetrations had cured, shrunk a little, and pulled away leaving a gap. The third leak I fixed myself with a tube of silicone as I leaned over the edge of the roof as far as I could from the very top of the extension ladder. Not as dangerous as it sounds but another situation in which I wished I were just a little taller.

And Then There Were Three

2009-10-28T05:30:00.003-04:00

I now have only three five gallon buckets in my employ inside the house. Mark finished plumbing the sink yesterday and then left. It's a busy time of year for plumbers around here; they've got a long list of summer residences in need of winterizing. He said he'd try to be back on Friday. We looked at the leaky plumbing vent and discussed strategy; I think I can fix it without too much trouble and eliminate another bucket. I ordered 2000' of white pine boards for the exterior. They should be here today. It will be a pleasant change to start working outside again after concentrating on the interior for so long.

Leaks

2009-10-25T16:59:00.002-04:00

I woke at around 2am last night to the sound of wind driven downpours battering the house. Through the noise I managed to hear sound of a single drop of water, a single muffled splat amid the countless splats beating against the exterior. The drop I heard differentiated itself from the masses by not being outside the house but in. As I listened closely, I heard the drop with some regularity. Once every thirty seconds perhaps. It was falling right at the foot of Hazel's bed and originating from the globular light fixture in the center of the ceiling. I knew, more or less, where it was coming from. I got up and pulled down the attic stairs. There happens to be a plumbing vent right above our bedroom, and the rubber boot around the pipe was letting in water. Five gallon bucket to the rescue once again. Now I was awake and I couldn't help checking out the other penetrations in the roof. There's one more plumbing vent and two penetrations for the solar hot water system. Two out of the three were leaking. Two more five gallon buckets to the rescue. Now I was even more awake. The wind and rain was driving hard against the south side of the house and what better time to check the windows than this. The slider was really leaking and the windows to each side were a little damp in the corners of the sills. I made some notes about the location of the leaks and somehow managed to sleep again. As I studied the south side of the house in the morning, I discovered the source of the leaks. Two plus inches of wind driven rain had not just penetrated around the window and slider openings, the entire face of the sheathing beneath the house wrap was damp. Perhaps it's not as water repellent as it used to be. Perhaps the stuff reached a saturation point. Water was not getting by my flashing; it was getting behind it. In a way this was good news. Moisture was traveling down the face of the sheathing and if it weren't for the windows would have kept on going. Today was a perfect day for drying the whole thing out, and tomorrow will be another warm sunny day. Putting the siding on will solve the problem and that's the next job. The leaking holes in the roof are someone else's problem to solve. They'll hear about it tomorrow.

Sink!*

2009-10-23T20:36:00.002-04:00

Yes, the kitchen sink is in. I washed the dishes in it this afternoon. There is an asterisk, however. Mark brought along a standard drain set-up for a two basin sink; the sink is not standard. Someone was supposed to bring him what he needed but didn't by the end of the day. So, there's a five gallon bucket (What would I do without my collection of five gallon buckets?) under the drain pipe connected to each basin. It's a ten gallon sink at the moment, more than enough water to wash a backlog of dirty dishes. The stone counter is sweet. Perfect fit. The toilet in the downstairs bathroom is also up and running. Nice but not nearly as critical as the sink. And a washing machine is ready for its first load.

Bathroom door, washer/dryer, SINK

2009-10-23T13:42:00.002-04:00

New stacking washer/dryer

Mark, the counter and the sink

Counter, Sink, Slider

2009-10-22T20:03:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow promises to be a busy day. The plumber's coming (hopefully) to hook up the bathroom sink, toilet, dishwasher, and, quite possibly, the kitchen sink. The installation of the last item will depend on whether the counter's done, and I've been all but absolutely promised that it will be ready to pick up in the morning. A washing machine and dryer are also slated for delivery tomorrow. This is to replace the backordered/no-longer-available dryer that didn't come two weeks ago and a new washer to match. The appliance store, a place with a reputation for service, dropped the ball on every aspect of our order. The missing dryer, the fridge with the door that opens on the wrong side, a dishwasher with no instruction or installation manual (ok, that's a minor infraction), and a range with the wrong vent. All these issues have been fairly speedily and happily corrected but there seems to be a competence issue with the sales guy who took the order. Good with sales; short with details.

I've got another service call from Marvin windows set up a week from today to examine the slider. The woman I'm dealing with seems to be at a total loss as to how to address this problem. It appears that removing the whole unit and shipping it off to the glass manufacturer would be that only way to positively identify what's in the panels. I find it hard to believe that there's no way to track down where, when and by whom the slider was built. That there's no paperwork at all to give any clues as to what might have happened. That the only solution they can come up with is shipping the whole thing to Minnesota? That's just plain stupid. As a first step, however, the service guy is coming to take a look and he's bringing with him a sample of the glass that's suppose to be in the windows. We'll see if this helps. Standing directly in front of the glass there's no discernible difference; it's from twenty feet back that the difference is clear.

On a more positive note, with or without the aid of the right glass, it was 67 F in the house this morning from heat left over from yesterday's solar gain. That's with no supplemental heat for about two days. Nights in the low 30's.

Certificate of Occupancy

2009-10-21T06:17:00.002-04:00

Months ago when I was on the phone with Amica, our insurance company, the woman asked me when I thought we'd get a certificate of occupancy. I explained to her that we don't have certificates of occupancy up here. (It follows that there's no building inspector; that should give any insurance company pause.) In more civilized parts of the Maine, you can't move into a house without a CO. I'd always thought that the purpose behind a CO was to protect the homeowner from the hazards of the the construction environment. Electrocution, fire, falling, hazardous materials. I've come to realize, however, that these protections are secondary; the primary purpose of a certificate of occupancy is to protect sanity. I wonder if there's a study out there that shows how many days it would take on average for the absence of a kitchen sink to effect a complete mental breakdown on the occupants. My guess is about 20 days for a COMPLETE breakdown with positive signs showing at the end of one week. It goes without saying that some occupants are more susceptible to degradation than others. But perhaps the worst part of living in a house as it's being finished is that progress, the one thing that serves as a prophylactic against insanity, becomes extremely labored just when you need it most.

office and kitchen

2009-10-18T20:16:00.001-04:00

The Home Stretch

2009-10-17T19:52:00.003-04:00

It's been a long haul, and all we really need now is an operable sink. While Michelle, Chloe and Hazel were off to Block Island, it was non-stop floor finishing and cabinet assembly. The floor looks great. The oil and wax combination gave it just the right finish. It has a sheen but not too shiny, and it's smooth and easy to clean. For the first coat of wax I experimented with a wooly buffer attached to a drill. It shined the floor so it there was a touch of glare to it. Too shiny. I put on the second coat of wax as evenly as possible and didn't rub it at all after it dried. Just right. There was a minor incident during the oiling process, however. I applied the first coat with a old cloth diaper and rubbed it in as I went. After about a half hour, the directions say to rub off any execess that hasn't soaked in. After this first coat there wasn't much to remove. Both the oil and wax are Bioshield products. The oil is a blend of linseed and tung oil and some other natural ingredients. No thinner, though. No petroleum products. Zero VOC. For the second coat I decided to brush it on because the first application covered a lot more square footage than Bioshield estimated. (The typical application, though, is wood, not concrete and it's hard to tell the porosity of a concrete surface.) I started brushing it on a little too heavy and, as a result, had to go back and wipe off a significant amount of oil that was sitting on the surface. The one rag I'd used to wipe down the first application was quickly saturated. So I got a whole pile of worn out t-shirts to get the rest of the oil off the floor before it got gummy and hard to remove. Some of you out there may see where this is going at this point and are shaking your head in disbelief that I could be so stupid. As I continued to wipe down the floor I started to accumulate a pile of rags on the first tread of the stairs. Yes, it was a pile of OIL SOAKED RAGS! Then, thinking nothing of it, I went back to assembling kitchen cabinets in my little workshop on the porch. Hours passed. Maybe five or six. By then the floor was pretty dry; I could walk on it with clean bare feet without leaving a print. I was on my way up the stairs and I put my hand down on the pile of OIL SOAKED RAGS(!) and was more than a little surprised at the heat of it. When I peeled away into the middle of the pile I was even more surprised to see that it was smoking. I immediately picked up the whole pile and brought it outside and spread the rags out on the wet ground. Some of the rags had brown blotches. It was pretty clear that combustion was narrowly averted. Wow, close one. I think it would be an abuse of hyperbole to say that I almost burned down my new house. I almost caught the stairs on fire; that's true. But it don't think it would have gotten very far. How could I have done this when I knew it was possible and the warning on the can is pretty clear? Hard to say. I'd never experienced this before and had no idea that the reaction could take place so quickly. Additionally, I assumed, possibly incorrectly, that a product without a volatile additive like mineral spirits was less likely to combust. All's well that ends well; I learned my lesson.

I'm now at the tail end of kitchen assembly. Putting together Ikea cabinets is, on the whole, an enjoyable process. Yes, the instructions, without a word of guidance, only little drawings, can be maddening, but once you get the basic process down it's not so bad. The cabinets went together precisely. Ikea's manufacturing process must have some exact standards; everything fit together just so, and if I found something not working out, it was always my error in interpreting the pictures. The cabinet bodies are run of the mill birch veneer, but the doors are solid birch and the drawer hardware and hinges are fabulous. We're now waiting on the stone counter top. After I assembled the row of cabinets on either side of the sink, I took precise measurements and handed them over to Freshwater Stone and Brick. Hopefully, we'll have the cut pieces this coming week. Without the counter we have no sink, and until you have no sink it's hard to appreciate how vital a link it is in the everyday chain of events that surround eating. It's too bad that we're handicapped by sinklessness because the range is up and working and it's really nice. The butcher block is in place to either side of the range and it works well with the cabinets that make the island. All that's needed to finish the island is to raise up the section for bar stool seating. The plumber's got a good day of finishing up and connecting things when we're ready. Kitchen sink, dishwasher, toilet and bathroom sink will all happen at the same time.

Skunk news: He's still around. While everyone else was away, I cleared most of the remaining food out of the barn. One night, however, I forgot to keep a light on and play the radio in an effort to discourage him from just coming in and hanging out. Under cover of darkness and with a little peace and quiet, the skunk was able to break into the mini-fridge and devour a package of riblets. Left the bones in a pile. Of course, I didn't catch him with a mouthful of beef so I could be unfairly pinning this crime on an innocent skunk. His history of resourcefulness, however, makes him the most likely suspect.

cabinets and couch

2009-10-14T10:29:00.003-04:00

First fire, appliances, painted walls

2009-10-08T12:55:00.003-04:00

We're In

2009-10-04T06:33:00.002-04:00

We've slept in the house for two nights now. It was certainly the invasion of the skunk that tipped the scales in favor of evacuating the barn. The night before last I laid down planks of 1x12 around the perimeter of the barn hoping to make it a little more difficult to get in from under. I also, on Michelle's recommendation, left the light on, played the radio, and sprinkled cayenne pepper around the outside. For one night there were no signs that the skunk had entered the barn, but last night he must have wanted it a little more badly and tunneled under my 12 inch deterrent. Perhaps the rain had diluted the effectiveness of the cayenne pepper. Or maybe he's more amenable to pop radio than NPR. (I had changed the station thinking that late night classical might be too tame.) Too many variables. I must admit, though, that sleeping in a quiet, warm house is nice however totally premature moving in may be. One thing going for us is spaciousness; we've got plenty of room to move around in as we finish. Joe's got a half day of sanding upstairs and he's done. After a thorough clean up, we'll move our sleeping quarters into one of the rooms upstairs, and I'll be able to get working on finishing the concrete floor, a process which will take three or four days. Once the floor is done, the kitchen cabinets can go in...I'm getting ahead of myself.

It looks like Michelle and the girls will be going to Block Island for a few days over Columbus Day weekend giving me some valuable responsibility-free time to get things set up. In a couple week's time we should have a functioning kitchen and bathroom.

Skunk(s) Again

2009-10-01T19:02:00.003-04:00

Now I'm not so sure about my original two skunk hypothesis. There's only one skunk trying to get in the barn right now. Peeking in the screen door, scratching the cat door and generally pawing around. The events of last night are the reason I'm changing my mind on the issue. Michelle woke me up somewhere around 2am to report noises down below. Access through the cat door had been blocked. The screen door was closed. What could it be? Skunk again. So I propped open the door, even though it obviously didn't need a way out, and went back to sleep. I was up early enough to see in the pre-dawn light and solved the mystery. The skunk had come in through a tunnel under the sill of the barn, a tunnel made, quite obviously, by a skunk getting out, not in. There's no way of knowing what happened when. The cats and the skunk don't seem to mind each other, oddly enough. If a strange cat approaches the barn, Ox will fiercely defend his territory. A few minutes ago all three were out front within a several feet of each other. (I trained the flashlight on the skunk and told him to get lost. He left but not in a hurry.) I went around the corner outside and noticed that he had been trying to dig his way back in at the same spot as before. I interrupted this attempted break in by banging on the wall with the pointy end of a broom. Hopefully, he's gone for the night. Given that, according to an entry in Wikipedia, skunks have powerful front legs and long claws that a perfect for digging, there's no way we can stop him from getting in short of digging around the perimeter of the barn and burying some sort of wire mesh. If this had happened at the beginning of the summer, I'd had done that by now. But we've got such a short time left in the barn I don't know that it's worth the effort.

I finally got the wood stove up and running. There's a fire blazing in it right now. I'm not taking any chances that, come tomorrow morning, the last application of joint compound won't be dry. The diversion of heat from the solar hot water system is working beautifully. It was 69F in the house this morning just by turning something we hadn't used into heat for the floor.

Showers and Skunks

2009-09-30T20:16:00.002-04:00

At 4am this morning I woke to the sound of something getting into the bag of cat food. I thought it was one of the cats; maybe their bowl was empty. Ox is black and white but this animal was black with a white stripe running from nose to tail. I very carefully propped opened the screen door with a pumpkin and tip-toed back into the barn and up the stairs to the loft. The skunk appeared to pretend I wasn't there. I sat at the top of the stairs, listened to the sound of skunk mastication and waited for it to leave. When it had gotten its fill, it left the way it came in- through the cat door. (That we have been trying to teach Harry to use the cat door for a few weeks without success was the first thing I thought as I saw the skunk effortlessly exit.) I wasn't much in the mood for sleeping after that so I went to work for a couple hours before breakfast. Fast forward to 6am and I'm standing at the sink assembling oatmeal when I hear a rustling from behind the couch. Apparently the first skunk had come in with a partner. (I had closed off the cat door after the first one left so this was certainly a different skunk.) When it saw me, it retreated to safety behind the couch, curled up and went to sleep for the rest of the day. Michelle sat at this computer and worked all day. We were in and out. Ate lunch. The skunk slept. Our strategy was to vacate after sundown and give it a chance to leave on its own. After dinner out we returned to a skunk-free barn. We'll keep the cat door closed tonight.

I haven't had a chance to write that a couple days ago I took the first shower in the house. It was at the end of the day the solar system was up and running and the plumber had come and brought water to the shower stall. The cedar shower was fabulous. The scent of warm red cedar filled the bathroom. We don't have propane coming into the house yet so this was all solar heated. On the first day the 80 gallon storage tank reached 130F. On the second day excess heat from the storage tank was pumped through the slab and kept the house warm all night. So far the whole system is exceeding my expectations.

The last coat of mud went on the drywall today. Sanding on Friday.

House, Drywalled

2009-09-27T13:08:00.003-04:00

Here's a slideshow of images of the house drywalled. If you want to view them individually, they are online here.

This Week

2009-09-27T08:42:00.002-04:00

Several things come together this week. Weather permitting, the evacuated tubes will be installed tomorrow. There's one tube in place now and it actually heated water Friday afternoon while the system was primed and tested. But we're waiting on the plumbers to bring the water supply to the system before putting the rest of the tubes up. That will also happen tomorrow. So, if all goes as planned we could take solar heated showers tomorrow afternoon. Getting propane into the house was supposed to happen Friday but didn't. It's just as well because the original guy running the gas lines last week was out on Friday and another, more problematic guy was going to take his place. When I chose Solar Marine to do the hot water system, I was unaware that there is a less than pleasant relationship between the plumbers and solar installers, and the most troublesome element of this friction is the guy who was supposed to show on Friday but didn't.

The drywall is scheduled to be finished on Wednesday or Thursday, and we may try to get together a painting party on Friday afternoon. After a coat of primer and a finish coat on the ceilings and walls downstairs, I'll finish the concrete floor with sealer and wax. This process could take a few days. While it's curing, I'll start assembling the kitchen cabinets. We can also take delivery of the appliances. We should stay out of the house for as long as possible. Yesterday morning, however, the mercury dipped to 28 F and it will be difficult to stay in the cold barn when there's a warm house next door.

Solar collectors going on the roof

2009-09-24T19:07:00.001-04:00

First floor shower stall

2009-09-24T18:48:00.002-04:00

Moth-Free Shower

2009-09-24T06:47:00.002-04:00

I bought red cedar from the Brooklin Boat Yard to construct a shower stall. If it doesn't work out we can always use the stall to store sweaters. Weather permitting, we will be getting solar collectors installed on the roof today. If the gas guy shows up, we could be very close to having running hot water. Joe, the sheetrock guy, has been out with a bad head cold for the last two days but I expect him today.

Pig news: Their date for slaughter has been arranged for 11/29. Seems like raising your own pig has been gaining in popularity. I called one place that was fully booked until January and is already reserving dates for next year.

Baker's Hours

2009-09-23T05:40:00.006-04:00

What better time to clean the workshop than just past 3am? After serving as a workshop for the past couple months, the porch was a disaster. Cluttered with wood cuttings, sawdust, trash, scattered tools and whatever else needed to be out of the house, it was difficult to work without tripping over something. The porch had become a reflection of what was going on inside my head, and cleaning the porch was a good first step to tidying up my brain. Waking up at 3am and thinking about the pile of things that have to happen over the next several days doesn't accomplish anything. I didn't just wake up on my own and start obsessing over work; Harry woke me up because he hasn't been able fit the cat door into his peanut-sized brain even though he sits there and watches his buddy and mentor, Ox, come and go freely. When I finally get to work today and go to use the now unburied table saw, I'll say, "Thanks, Harry!"

Hazel and I spent an entire morning running errands in Ellsworth. At Viking Lumber I checked out their selection of tongue and groove red cedar for the shower stall and discovered that, in the words of one the guys working in the yard, "They're not giving it away." At $3.38 per linear foot for 1x6 our shower stall would cost over $700. Sticker shock sent me to Eric who had a pile of left over mahogany from a job at the boat yard. The mahogany needed a lot of work and may not have been enough to do the job so we took a ride to boat yard to look at other left overs that Eric could get for me at cost. How lucky to find a pile of beautiful 3/8 x 6 red cedar left over from planking the 90' sailboat launched this summer. Eric's going to get back to me about cost. If the guy running the gas lines finishes this week, we could be very, very close to having a shower up and running!

At the woodstove store I discussed but did not leave with what I would need for stove pipe and heat shields. I was hoping to buy it all and spend the day running all the pipe, but they didn't have one of the heat shields in stock and without it I wouldn't have gotten very far. A thousand bucks in pipe, though. (Minus a 30% energy tax credit for biomass burning system.)

At a plumbing supply store we checked out a variety of kitchen faucets not available to the general public. They sell to plumbers, but I've found that if I mention that I'm a contractor I can buy at wholesale. I'm a contractor who just happens to be working for himself at the moment. Selecting a kitchen faucet isn't as easy as it would seem, or more accurately, it's as easy as you want to make it. The internet, though, with it's vast, mind scrambling resources can make something as simple as buying a kitchen faucet into an adventure in indecision. What to buy? Who from? How much? Reading consumer reviews....Michelle is particularly bad when confronted with this excess of information. She's determined to make an informed decision and ends up unable to make one. Ask her about her toilet research.

The rest of the barn is waking up and I'd better get breakfast going.

More drywall

2009-09-22T09:35:00.002-04:00

Backside of electrical panel

Stairwell

Downstairs mail desk

2nd floor hallway

Drywall and Solar hot water

2009-09-20T21:51:00.003-04:00

LowE 179

2009-09-13T07:09:00.003-04:00

One of the chief reasons I chose Marvin windows was that they had a glazing option that worked well with passive solar design. If you know what to ask for, you can get a Cardinal Glass product called LowE 179 for the south facing windows. It's got a solar heat gain coefficient of .70 and a U-factor of .28. The high solar heat gain coefficient is what sets it apart from typical coated LowE glass. Typical LowE glass would block about 60 to 70 percent of available solar gain, a property that's awfully helpful in Florida but not in Maine. So imagine my surprise when I noticed something a little odd about the light passing through the three panels of the sliding glass door. Not long after installation a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that light passing through the two fixed panels of glass was different from the light passing through the middle operating panel. As it shows on the dark concrete floor, the light from the middle panel is clear but the light from the two panels on either side is slightly yellowish. I also noticed that the floor is cooler to the touch where it's been heated by the yellowish light in comparison to the floor behind the middle panel. I couldn't think of a reason why the panels should be different. The information etched into the glass in the upper corners of the panels didn't mean anything to me, and the stickers on the windows which normally provide glazing information were blank. To try to get to the bottom of this, I first called Cardinal Glass, the folks who manufacture LowE 179. The guy at the coated glass plant in Minnesota shared my conclusion; if it looks different and feels different, it's not the same. He said it was probably standard LowE glass in the two fixed panels, but without any other information he couldn't be sure. Armed with this information I called Marvin. Presented with the facts, the woman at Marvin directed me to Cassie at AW
Hastings, the same Cassie who was involved with arranging the repair a few weeks ago. (As I understand it, AW Hastings actually makes and distributes Marvin windows.) She said she'd look into it and get back to me, but I imagine that the same guy who helped fix and install the door will be paying me another visit. No hurry this time; I don't see those panels coming out until June. The visible difference in the panels can be seen in the picture of the slider below; it's subtle, but it's there.

Michelle and I finished the IKEA marathon in just over seven hours. We left with all the parts to assemble the kitchen cabinets, a bed frame, a sofa and a few lights. The drywall guys finished hanging yesterday and will be back tomorrow to start taping. Winter is closing in.

Live, From New York, It's Saturday Morning!

2009-09-12T06:47:00.003-04:00

Just before 7 there's a steady hum of traffic seeping in the open window of Tim and Anna's apartment in the city that doesn't sleep. It's nice to get away from the constant work, but I can't really leave it completely behind. Perhaps putting a few days between me and the house will loosen its grip. Michelle and I think that a real vacation is in order once the critical work of kitchen and bathroom is done. Then I'll be able to relax. The ultimate goal is to fashion a way of living that doesn't produce the need to go on vacation.... Seems like the rest of the apartment is waking up.

Sheetrock

2009-09-11T07:21:00.003-04:00

Writing from North Smithfield, RI, on our way to NYC for the weekend. Joe and his sheetrock hanging helper showed up yesterday morning just after 7am, and the truck with all the sheetrock for the house arrived shortly after. After an hour or so of lugging sheets into the house, they got right to work, and by the time we left at 3pm, they'd hung the stairwell, the ceiling for the second floor and they were working on the ceiling downstairs. Michelle and I were working to get the place ready up to the last minute. It's been a long haul to get to this turning point; and, because of the rush and pressure, it hasn't been an enjoyable process. The last month in particular. By the time we return late on Tuesday, the whole house will be hung and ready for tape. We'll return with our kitchen cabinets in a rental truck.

More photos

2009-09-08T07:29:00.003-04:00

Almost There

2009-09-07T19:45:00.002-04:00

With two days before the drywall shows up, we're looking good. The first floor is ready to go, and the second needs a clean up and a once over to make sure that all the framing is in place for sheet rock. And it's not a moment too soon; the mercury dipped below 40 for the first time this morning. This morning was an early indicator that the design of the house is working just fine. Though many of the upstairs windows were open and the attic and second floor cold storage is still open to the rest of the house, the house was considerably warmer than outside. If the excess heat from the solar hot water system makes even a small contribution as it is added to the slab over the course of a sunny day, we may not need to fire up the wood stove until December.

Recent photos

2009-09-05T07:51:00.003-04:00

I've been remiss in adding photos. Here are a bunch.

The new slider, showing the gap

Plasticing up for Danny

The new door

First day of kindergarten and looking so small.

Michael and the Marvin guy install the big slider

Fixed

2009-09-03T20:50:00.002-04:00

The Marvin rep showed up this morning and fixed the door fairly easily. If someone had been able to tell me what to do, it would have saved everyone a lot of time and trouble. The panels are not siliconed into place as I had thought. The three screws I had removed a couple of weeks ago were really all that was holding the panel to the frame. All it needed was for someone to brace against the bottom of the frame while another gave the bottom of the panel a shove. After the fix it took us all of 15 minutes to install it in the opening, and I spent another hour putting in the operating panel and finishing the installation.

The drywall guy showed up at the very end of the slider installation. We walked through the house again and went over a contract for the job. He's having materials delivered next Thursday and will start hanging sheets while I'm still there to fix any last minute problems. If all goes as planned we'll be off for a trip south after Chloe gets out of school. A week from today. A much needed break.

The Power of Not Thinking Negatively

2009-08-30T19:40:00.003-04:00

After cutting in panels of insulation for most of today and getting help for a few hours from Team Molly/Eric, ninety percent of the insulation is in place. What's left is fastening the full panels to the studs; this should go quickly relative to the tedious job of cutting to fit. The drywall guy is supposed to come early this week with a contract. We'll walk through again to make sure everything's in place. Danny didn't dump as much rain as expected, but the two-plus inches we got was more than enough. Everything was dry inside thanks to the plastic covered openings. With a little luck, we'll be just about ready for drywall by the end of the week.

I've been hearing a lot lately about how I need to relax about the pace of things. It is true that a variety of issues over the last few weeks have got me not very optimistic about getting things ready enough soon enough. I've been so focused for the last three and a half months on what needs to happen before October that I really didn't think about a plan B. So, absent any alternative, I allowed stress to muddy my thinking, and I passed off some of this anxiety to my electrician who's not accustomed to working under such conditions. (Sorry, Michelle) I'm feeling better about it all for reasons not entirely clear, and if we have to rent the little red house up the hill for a month or so it won't be the end of the world.

Tomorrow will start by bringing Chloe to school for her first day of kindergarten.

Marvin, Meet Danny

2009-08-28T21:30:00.002-04:00

I spent most of this morning getting ready for 4 or 5 inches of rain courtesy of tropical storm Danny. I put up plastic over the 12' hole where the slider should be courtesy of Marvin. After earlier assurances that someone would be out to see the slider at the beginning of the week, there's still no sign of them. When I received this month's invoice, two thirds of which was the slider, I made the deduction and sent off a check noting that the missing money would be forthcoming when Marvin fixes (or replaces) the sliding glass door. Nonpayment has a way of getting people's attention.

Our entry door is in and operable. I got Thermatrue energy star rated doors. Half light for the entry door and full light for the door to the porch. (Half light means half of it is glass, in this case, insulated glass.) Michelle is done rough wiring, and after a little testing, we'll be ready to wrap up the insulation. I tested out my low expansion foam gun a couple days ago. This is a professional version of the polyurethane foam you can buy at the hardware store called Great Stuff. I'll use it to seal around all the windows and doors and around the gaps between the rigid foam and the studs. It's tricky to use at first, but I've got the hang of it now. I ordered the tankless hot water heater that will operate in conjunction with the solar system and also help heat the floor, (Another energy tax credit, 30% of $1200!) and Dave, the system installer, may start running pipe for it next week.

Pig Escapes!

2009-08-25T20:17:00.003-04:00

When I returned from a trip into Blue Hill, Chloe yelled from the barn loft window, "A pig got out!" I thought she was pulling my leg. True, though, a pig had gotten out and, then with Michelle's help, back in. She and the girls had stepped out for a cone of ice cream at the Bagaduce Lunch, and when they returned, there was the biggest pig on the wrong side of the fence looking for a way to get back in. The grass, apparently, is not always greener on the other side. It's my lack of attention to the fence that allowed the breach, be it intentional or accidental. I know I'm supposed to walk the perimeter frequently to check for signs of mischief, and I haven't. Absorbed in other pressing matters and possibly a little too cocky that my pigs are so content that they'd never think of escaping. (After all where else could they get their snouts on five gallon buckets of garlic mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese.) Perhaps the biggest pig was just being curious and wound up on the other side. Michelle found a place where she could lift up the bottom of the fence and the pig scooted back under. And just in time too; I hit the jackpot at both the Co-Op and Table and returned with two days worth of tasty stuff.

I'm still waiting for the guy from Marvin to pay us a visit. Michelle is pretty close to having the whole place wired; she's got the phone and internet stuff left and that's about it. Then I can get in there and finish insulating. Since the truth is already out there, I suppose it's time for me to tell about Michelle's freak accident with a drill. The day before Chloe and Hazel returned from RI with my parents, we were both working away when I heard a sort of startled yelp and then a call for help. Michelle was inside drilling holes for wires to pass through the studs and using a rather long speedbore bit to get into a difficult to reach spot when somehow some of her hair got wrapped around the shaft of the spinning bit. When I arrived on the scene, she'd already removed the bit from the drill and was holding it in her hand along with the hair it had torn from the side of her head. The sight was something of a shock for me; she had no idea what she looked like and appeared to be in a state of disbelief about what had just happened. She claimed at the time and still does that it didn't really hurt. A whole patch of hair from above her temple down to her ear and back maybe five inches was ripped out right down to the scalp. She's really, really lucky that hair was the only thing that came away. It could have been much worse. That said, she is missing perhaps a third of her hair on the right side of her head. Since she didn't quite know how to deal with this, she swore me to secrecy and wore a hat or scarf for about a week, and then slowly the news leaked out.

Big Chunks of Money

2009-08-24T20:47:00.002-04:00

I got a contract for the installation of the solar hot water system this morning. After an early morning visit to the plumber's, the choice seemed pretty clear to me. First he'd quoted the wrong system. Then he dragged his feet getting me the information on what I'd wanted until, finally, today I presented myself once again for information. When he produced the quote the number was considerably higher than I'd expected. It may have been considerably higher than he expected. The problem is that I know more about these systems than he does. The benefit of having our plumbers install the solar hot water system was supposed to be a break on the installation since they'd never done one before. While he dragged his feet, I called a guy who's done many of these installations (I'd spoken to him way back when the house was still being designed.) His systems are custom while the plumber's system is a package he's buying from a distributor and simply installing. The difference was a couple thousand dollars in the custom/experienced guy's favor. So I decided to quit dillydallying and sign on with the guy who knows what's he's doing. There's $14,700. I also called the low bid on the drywall. At $6,700 well worth it. The giant slider, once it's fixed, comes to $4,100. After we pay for all these things, we'll be ready to eat into our home equity line of credit. At that point the house will have all its doors and windows, all the walls will be ready to paint, and it will have a top notch solar hot water system that's also capable of heating the slab. What's left is buying the kitchen from Ikea, appliances, the stuff of one bathroom, and a woodstove. Just a roughly educated guess on cost is somewhere between $17 and $20 thousand. The rest can be finished in the not too distant future. With a lot of this stuff we're racking up the energy tax credits. At 30% of the cost we're looking at about $5000 in tax credits. We'll have to take the credits over more than one year; we usually pay little, if any, federal taxes. I may have to make more money just to take advantage of the tax credits!

Say It Ain't So, Marvin

2009-08-21T21:23:00.002-04:00

The delivery of the big slider has been hanging over my head for a week or so, and this morning it finally happened. When I ordered a 12' patio slider, I'd expected it to come disassembled. The sliders I installed this past winter had to be put together frame first in the rough opening and then the glass panels fit into place. Slider assembly is no fun. So I was pleasantly surprised and a little intimidated when I learned that the slider I'd ordered from Marvin came pre-assembled. It came ready for the rough opening just like a window, nailing fins and all. The intimidating part was handling such a large piece. When it arrived this morning, the two stationary panels were fixed in the frame and the middle operating panel was in it's own box to be installed once the frame was in place. With the help of Chris, our neighbor, we got the slider off the truck easily enough. Within 20 minutes of delivery, it was ready to go in the hole. That's when I noticed something a little funny. At the bottom corner of the left fixed panel there was an eighth of an inch gap between the edge of the panel and the frame. When I put a straight edge on the frame it showed the same 8th inch out of straight. After a few hours of trying to figure out what, exactly, was out of whack, I finally realized that I could withdraw the screws holding the frame to the panel. That allowed the frame to go straight. The gap, however, remained; now it ran from bottom to top, an 8th inch to nothing. The screws had been flexing the frame in the middle making it look like the bottom was bent out. The real problem is that the panel was fixed in the frame but the frame wasn't square. Unfortunately, this isn't an easy fix because, though the side of the panel was free after I pulled the screws, the top and bottom of the panel remain siliconed in place. The three hours I spent figuring this out also involved back and forth phone calls between between me and Eric at Viking Lumber and Eric and Marvin Windows. In the end we decided that I'd done enough investigating and that a Marvin representative would come and fix it early next week. Chris, Michelle and I carefully moved the slider into the house, and what could have been an easy hour's worth of successful installation had wasted an entire morning.

Short Lived Experiment

2009-08-18T17:25:00.005-04:00

My test run with a rented diamond abrasive concrete grinder lasted less than a minute. That's how long it took to know that it wasn't going to work. The grinder worked well enough; that wasn't the problem. Just under our solid surface of dark concrete sits the stuff that holds it all together. A few seconds with the grinder wiped away the hardened creme surface and exposed little bits of sand and gravel. Together with the black surrounding the aggregate, it looked pretty awful. I loaded the grinder into the trailer and took it back to Ellsworth. We don't want a floor that looks like a patch of polished highway.

My inquiry into the possibilities of heating water with an electric tankless heater and PV was also short lived. If it made any sense at all to do it that way, people would be doing it. Electric instant hot water heaters use a tremendous amount of electricity. So much juice that I'd have to have about $35,000 worth of PV panels on the roof just to produce enough electricity to run the system for a half hour a day.

One drywall estimate is in: $7800 all materials and labor. That's a lot of cash but I haven't figured out what the material cost would be for me if I were to do it myself.

Zero Balance Invoice

2009-08-17T20:27:00.002-04:00

This morning I signed and dated an invoice with a zero balance at the bottom. After pressing the issue a few days ago the folks who poured our floor finally addressed the problem and decided that, if it was fine with me, they'd relinquish ownership of the floor in exchange for a relinquishing of responsibility. In other words it was going to cost them more to fix it than I was going to pay them. It was in their interest to let it go and in mine as well. I expected to pay $4100 and now I won't. Tomorrow morning I'm going to rent a walk-behind diamond abrasive grinder (like you'd rent to take down an old wood floor but this is for concrete) for $150 and test it out under the stairs where it won't be visible no matter what happens. If we like the results, I'll take down the whole floor. This was an option for the floor installers, but they couldn't find someone to take on the responsibility. If they were to hire an outfit to grind down the floor (this is not something they'd do themselves) and in the end the results were unsatisfactory to me, then they'd not only be stuck with the first job but also the second. There are two unknowns complicating the whole mess: the depth of the defects and the depth of the aggregate. If grinding to fix the defects gets into the aggregate, then I'd be able to say, "That's not what we paid you $4000 for." So in the end it was better for them to chalk it up as a loss and let it go.

Chloe and Hazel are back from their fun in RI with Meme and Nono so it's back to business as usual here. We accomplished a lot in their absence and are grateful for the opportunity. Thanks Meme and Nono! Just before the girls and I drove off to go swimming this hot afternoon, a drywall guy showed up to check the place out for an estimate. I gave him a tour and an explanation of the quirks of the place and left him to take measurements. Not only is drywall my nemesis on jobs past but we're pressed for time at this point and could really use a boost from another sub coming in and getting a big job done quickly.

We also had a very pleasant and informative consultation with Terry Wessel, the electrician who set up the intial installment of power the house. He didn't have much to correct with Michelle's work and gave some helpful hints on a number of wiring issues. He also noted that he does solar electric installations and that our house would be perfect. He's going to work up a proposal for us. I went to the plumber's this morning to press them on the solar hot water and did get some new and not entirely welcome information. The price he gave me a few weeks ago was for the wrong (flat panel) solar system and that the one I wanted (evacuated tube) was a few thousand dollars more. The solar system with tankless water heater would run a little over $11,000. It got me thinking as I did a little more reading on the Houseneeds website; why not install PV panels instead and get an efficient electric tankless water heater and take propane out of the equation altogether. With a roof full of PV we could net meter back to Bangor Hydro in the summer and use credits in the winter and do away with one more system that uses fossil fuels. I'll have to look into it.

Trimmed Windows

2009-08-15T17:56:00.001-04:00

Painting trim

2009-08-13T21:11:00.002-04:00

More Occupants of the House That Are Not Us

2009-08-13T20:37:00.004-04:00

Dead mother spider and tiny baby spiders leaving the wood shavings nest, just before I drilled a hole right next to them. (Click on photo to see tiny babies.)

Drilling for Electrons

2009-08-12T17:57:00.002-04:00

Michelle gave me a little list of things to do this morning, the last of which was drilling holes in the mudroom studs for running wires. With a touch too much enthusiasm I drilled right through the first stud and on through the conduit holding the LIVE wire carrying power to the barn. My error produced a small spark when the drill bit hit the wire but no shock. Perhaps I was grounded by my rubber clogs. So I had to go and confess to the electrician that I'd cut power to her computer. Michelle made a splice, and everyone was back to work in no time.

The Electrician Returns

2009-08-11T21:37:00.003-04:00

Michelle is back on the job in her role as electrician. She's finding that this house is bigger and more complicated than the last. Nothing that her diligence and superior organizational skills can handle though. Got another visit from the heating engineer concerning the solar hot water system. We've got to get the ball rolling on that job, or we won't be seeing hot water for several weeks. Still no response from the floor guys. Tomorrow morning I'm going to try contacting the owner of the business since his employee hasn't returned my calls.

Window Trim Exhibition

2009-08-07T20:03:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I spent the morning mocking-up two windows with different trim treatments. Michelle and I both chose the simplest trim, but when a group showed up later that afternoon for snacks, beer and house tours, most chose the other. There was much discussion of the merits of either choice, and in the end I thought a small modification to the simple version is the way to go. While the kids are in Rhode Island next week, I'll trim all the windows and help Michelle wire. Mark the plumber (a real licensed plumber) showed up today and ran most of the vents. We talked about the possibility of installing the instant hot water component of our solar hot water system. We could hook up an outdoor shower; Michelle likes this idea. With no call from the concrete guys today, first thing Monday morning I'm going to call and tell them their decision making time is up. We need a resolution; the sliding glass door is coming in a week and we need to install it asap.

Another Empty Nest, Pigs, Home Equity

2009-08-05T18:57:00.006-04:00

When Michelle and I stepped out onto the deck of the porch this morning, four startled fledglings flew to a new perch and eyed us warily. In a matter of a couple hours they were gone, another crop of phoebes hatched and away. While it's possible that the parents will try for another round, I think it's time they found a new nest site. We'll see if I can persuade them to do so. In pig news the largest one (they still have no names) seemed to be having a little trouble getting around, limping maybe, and then a few days ago he seemed to have a little trouble getting up. Sprain? Bruised hoof? Pulled hamstring? I called friends who have a farm and got more or less a wait and see approach. Sure enough the next day he seemed a little better, and today he was just about back to his old self again. The biggest is the boss; the other two had a too brief vacation from his tyranny.

Tomorrow afternoon Michelle and I are closing on a home equity line of credit. Why we're eligible for this sort of financing is mystifying considering all that's happened over the last year. It certainly wouldn't have been possible to get a home equity line of credit on an unfinished house through a major national bank. Wells Fargo admitted as much and suggested we seek local financing. And voila! We have about $50,000 to finish the house.

After several calls to the plumber and none in return, I showed up at the office at quarter to seven for a face to face chat, and as a result they'll be on the job in a few days. We've also started in on the wiring on the first floor. The solution to the concrete problems is still up in the air. Talked to the guy today, and he said he was waiting to hear back from a company that specializes in fixing this sort of thing.

Spalling

2009-07-31T22:17:00.004-04:00

Having just returned from a fundraiser spelling bee, it's sad that I had trouble spelling spalling. The computer's spell check doesn't know spalling, but you can be sure that the concrete guys do. Spalling is their worst nightmare. (Or at least in their top ten.) It's when the surface of concrete (or any material; spalling is not specific to concrete) flakes off. I noticed one such area a few days after the floor was poured and have since found maybe a dozen more simply by tapping on the surface. If the there's a hollow sound, the finished surface is not adhered to the mass of concrete. When I called in my discovery, Dale Dagget (Dirk Diggler?), the representative who'd come out to see the problems, said they're already looking into what he called retro-plating, the remedy of last resort. It would involve taking the surface of the floor down a bit to a new unblemished surface. This is tricky business because the aggregate (chunks of stone) that give concrete its strength sit just below the smooth surface. If you grind down into the aggregate, the surface would no longer be a solid color but flecked with bits of polished stone. Some concrete floor specialists add aggregate of a certain color and then grind it down and expose it on purpose to get a special look. We, however, do not want this look. I suppose it all depends on how far down the aggregate sits in the floor.

I'm just about done putting in the first layer of rigid insulation in the walls of the first floor. It's not difficult, just a little tedious and time consuming. My first job today, however, was to cut a new window opening in the west wall looking out onto the porch. This proposed window has been a matter of much discussion over the last few weeks, and it all started when both Chris Doyle and Eric Blake pointed at the wall in question and said, "You need a window there." Since then we've asked everyone who's shown up for a tour to weigh in on the subject, and the results were mixed but in favor. So today I framed an opening for a good sized awning window, and I must say I like it already.

The King of Knuckleheads

2009-07-30T20:22:00.003-04:00

For a few hours this morning I was in the presence of royalty. None other than the King of Knuckleheads was driving the truck carrying my insulation. Though humility is hard to find in a king, this one cared not that truck driving might be beneath him. He was having a good time, circumstances be damned. After backing his way down Sis Porter Rd, he was in the middle of making a valiant attempt to pull the back end of his rig onto our drive when the left half of his front end went a little too far off the pavement and promptly sunk in the mud. The whole thing was pitched to such a degree that most of the wheels on his right side were up in the air. The King knew at once that he was hopelessly grounded. He laughed it off; kings do not let such trifling matters ruffle their feathers. He called for help, and then started taking pictures to send off to his subjects and document his extreme degree of stuckness. "Ron has just got to see this!" he said as he snapped a shot of his wheels floating in air. While we waited for the tow truck, I was lucky enough to hear royal tales of ridiculously excessive beer drinking (his belly was size of a keg) and four wheeling with his friends. He never stopped talking. For about two hours his chariot completely blocked Sis Porter Rd.
On the plus side we did get to meet the folks from the other end of Sis Porter, who, looking for a way out, found a tractor trailer blocking their path. Fortunately, they didn't seem to mind or have any place urgent to go. Perhaps they were simply humbled by the presence of The Knuckleheaded King. But we got our insulation. It could have been much worse if the early morning rain had continued. Instead we got a swampy afternoon in the 80's.

Stuck truck

2009-07-30T19:50:00.001-04:00

Floor Problems

2009-07-29T21:16:00.002-04:00

After spending ten hours pouring and finishing a beautiful concrete floor, it's a shame that in the final twenty minutes they dropped the ball. When the floor is hard enough to walk on but still setting, it's easy to leave a mark if there's dirt or even dust on the bottom of your shoes. The mark, if not troweled in, will set in the concrete, and that's what happened when the machine used to cut control joints was rolled across the floor. Not only are there wheel marks but a handful of boot prints as well. My efforts to wash these marks away the following day were not effective. They're part of the concrete. That's one problem. Yesterday, as I was sweeping up after framing some walls, I noticed a area of fine cracks about two feet long and six inches wide. Tapping on the area produced a hollow sound. I remembered that there was a little low spot there that they'd filled in with a very thin coat of cream. As it cured, this thin layer didn't adhere to the concrete below, and it's well on its way to peeling off. A phone call yesterday got somebody to come and look today. What course of action will be taken is still up in the air. But, since I haven't paid a dime for the work thus far, the ball they dropped is most certainly in my court.

Bird lovers out there will be pleased to hear that a minor relocation of the baby phoebes went without a hitch. I decided for everyone's good that they'd be better off outside the main part of the house. I chose the screened-in porch, made a little shelf for the nest, and very carefully slid the nestful of birds onto a cedar shingle. Down one ladder and up another, I carefully deposited the shingle in the new location just around the corner. All is well; the parents found them easily and now have a sight with less traffic.

A tractor trailer of insulation is due to arrive tomorrow morning.

Phoebes: Part 2

2009-07-26T05:51:00.002-04:00

It occurred to me yesterday as I was cleaning up bird crap from the new concrete floor that I hadn't mentioned anything about the phoebes return. Phoebes frequently have more than one batch of babies over a summer, and ours are true to form. About a week after all birds, babies and parents, vacated the house, the parents came back, reassembled a new nest and, before I knew it, filled it with three more eggs. Those eggs hatched some time over the last few days, and now the parents are in and out with food. Their means of exit are dwindling, however; I've got all but two windows installed. There's the big slider opening, two door openings, and the not yet closed in eaves. The last batch of baby phoebes flew away in a couple weeks.

Log-R-Head

2009-07-24T20:21:00.004-04:00

The floor pouring was a great success. What we have is a smooth matte finish resembling honed slate in texture and color. It will be interesting to see what an application of wax will do to the look of it. It's supposed to bring out more of the color and give it a little more shine much like a coat of satin polyurethane will enhance a wood floor. Tomorrow I'll spray it down with water, remove any debris and cover it with a couple layers of the same heavy duty pinkish paper used under hardwood floors. Installation of the first floor windows immediately follows.
One might be thinking at this point: What's with the title? Was there some irreconcilable conflict during the pour? No, nothing of the sort. It's about a log and my head and how, almost impossibly, they got together. Since I really had nothing to do today but oversee the pouring of the floor, I decided that, despite the weather, I'd finish up with the firewood. At the start of the day I had a little more than a cord to stack and split. Because of the rain, I'd throw a pile of wood under the shed roof so I could split and stack out of the weather. What happened is hard to believe, but it went something like this. (I'm not 100% certain.) There was a jumbled pile of logs at my feet, and I stood one upright to be split. I raised the maul, brought it down, made contact with the log, and somehow the end of a log just under the one split flipped up in an action very similar to what would happen if a cat was sitting on one end of a see-saw and an elephant stomped on the other. The log went almost straight up perhaps six or seven feet, and, then, on it's way down landed right in the middle of my head. I saw stars, felt for a lump and came away with a bloody hand. The blood ran down my forehead as I walked briskly to the barn, hand applying pressure. In the end, it's wasn't so bad. No stitches. I could not perform this feat again if I tried for the rest of my life.

Floor Pouring

2009-07-24T07:58:00.001-04:00

Firewood

2009-07-23T20:52:00.002-04:00

Approximately 72,000,000 Btu's of firewood arrived a few days ago. I was surprised to see that the load was very nearly all red oak. Typically, in these parts, a delivery of firewood will be predominantly red maple, ash and birch. I have a soft spot for oak. Though there are just more than a few types of wood that top red oak as a source of heat (apple, black locust, hickory, white oak) and a couple that are tied (sugar maple, beech), in this neck of the woods red oak is the best in the most-likely-to-get category. If you asked a firewood supplier if there'd be any apple in the mix, the answer would be most definitely NO. The same would go for just about all the above mentioned species save beech. So, when you order three cords of firewood and it turns out to be 98% red oak, consider yourself lucky. The only issue with oak is that it takes longer to dry, and burning oak with too much water in it extinguishes the benefit. Ideally, the wood I bought this year would be next year's heat, but since I had only a little more than a cord of wood cut from last year, we'll have to rely on some portion of the oak just delivered. To speed the drying process, I've been splitting most of it in two. (This requires just a touch more effort as it takes to lift the maul above my head and letting it fall. Red oak is easy to split.) After a day or so of chipping away at it, I'm just about done. Chloe is excelling as an apprentice wood stacker, not so much for productivity but enthusiasm, and she'll be ready to take over full time in a few years.

Floor!

2009-07-23T12:40:00.002-04:00

The guys pouring the floor are due to arrive at 6:30 in the morning tomorrow with the concrete truck coming at 7. Everything's ready to go. We'll post pictures as we take them.

Wood and Windows

2009-07-22T19:50:00.001-04:00

Windows and pex tubing

2009-07-18T13:09:00.000-04:00

Windows Tomorrow

2009-07-16T17:16:00.002-04:00

Called Eric at Viking to see if the windows were on the horizon and he says, they're just coming off the truck right now. Off one truck onto another; they'll be delivered tomorrow. I'm ready to pop a few of them in on the east side. My plan is to install all the second floor windows, pour the concrete floor and then the first floor windows will go in. Or maybe I'll pour the floor before all the second floor windows go in. I finished installing the under slab insulation and mapped out the radiant tubing. I should be able to call the concrete guys early next week and give them the green light.

Now for some pig news. I'll be picking up food waste from a new restaurant in Blue Hill called Table, owned by the same folks from our favorite place in Ellsworth. Three five gallon buckets per day should put on some serious pork. They're doing well, still dividing their time between rooting, running around and sleeping. After I gave them their first installment from Table, they ate ravenously then slept for the rest of the morning.

Deet Dipped

2009-07-16T07:28:00.002-04:00

Along with this summer's near record rainfall comes a seemingly inexhaustible supply of mosquitoes. As the hours ticked away last night I was awake thinking about all-things-building and trying hard to shut my brain down and go to sleep. Just as I felt I may be getting somewhere sleepy, a particularly aggressive mosquito would swoop down and destroy any progress I'd made. This went on until 2:30 and I decided to take evasive action and try sleeping on the couch downstairs. (It worked.) Every time a mosquito would attack I'd think of my promise to make this place mosquito-proof. I've been chipping away at what might be ways for them to get in, but it doesn't seem to be making much of a dent. I could look at the glass as half full and think of the thousands of mosquitoes trying but failing to get in, but that's not much consolation at two in the morning. In my sleep deprived state last night I fantasized about using an industrial sprayer to apply a wash of 100% Deet to the exterior of the barn just before dusk every night. A more sensible way to maintain sanity would be to use a mosquito net.