A Round Of Applause For The Band

While Ed was gone this week I managed to get two whole rows of shingles up. What a frustrating experience! It takes me forever to do things that he makes look so easy. Simple things like nailing the ledger board up took me forever. Hammer, check: nails, check, ledger board, check. Oops. forgot to measure, so set it all down and reach for my tape measure. Somehow it always stays clipped on Ed's jeans, but it's fallen off mine, and I have to find it. Ok now, measure..crimony, where's my pencil? Then check the line and make sure it's level. Miracle of miracle, it is! Ok...where'd I put that hammer, do I still have nails? Like that. Two rows took several hours.

The farm chores don't stop just because we have a building project to work on. The grass in the pasture was getting pretty long, in some places as high as the tractor tires, so off with their heads! Ed mowed half of Sunday and half of Monday and got all three fields cut.

Monday afternoon and Tuesday, we worked on shingles. It's much easier when you have someone there who knows what they are doing and is comfortable with tools.

By quitting time on Tuesday evening, we had enough shingles wrapped around to give us a good idea of the look and I have to say, we're getting pretty excited. The shingles against the green trim looks really good., and is a color combination we will be happy with for a long time.

Ed has been working alone on this project for a year, and sometimes he feels like he isn't making the progress that he should, or that he should be further along.

Dude.. you're a one man band playing all the songs.

Just look how much things have changed in that year!

This week, we listed an ad in the paper to sell the double-wide, hopefully to have it off the site by end of August, first of September. Then this apartment will be home sweet home through Phase II of the project.

Will I Measure Up?

The weather has been springlike, which means rain followed by glorious moments of sunshine, followed by rain, accompanied by explosive of growth by anything with chlorophyll.

For the most part, the rain isn't particularly cold, and is only occasionally windy, so depending on the project, work can continue.

On a particularly windy and rainy day, Ed started making the eave brackets. These are cedar, stained not painted, and there are 14 of them for the garage. They are going to look awesome!

While Ed was gone last week I painted the green trim around the garage doors and the lower windows. That way, we can start shingling. Ed made a board ledge thingie (I'm sure there is a name for it) that keeps the line of shingles straight and exactly 7" from the row below. That's assuming of course, that you put the ledge board on correctly. Then you can line the shingles up the way you want them, and go back and shoot the whole row in. Then, every three rows or so, check all your measurements, level and plumb, and continue. Simple, yes? You're talking to the woman who measures a yard of cloth by holding it from one shoulder to opposite fingertip. It is now my life's work to shingle while Ed is back at work.
"Just measure," he says, "You'll be fine."
I sighed heavily.

I want to do it right, and I want it to look good. But the whole process is a little scary to me, being out of the realm of prior experience. Guess I'll just jump in, and if I mess it up, nobody dies. I'll just take it out and fix it.


We know that the best practice is to hand nail all these shingles on, but.. really.. If I were Bill Gates, I'd hire a crew of 15 or so to do that, but it's just Ed, who is gone half the week, and me, who hasn't a clue what I'm doing, so we're gonna shoot em in. We're using a Senco SCN49 nailgun with 2" 6D hotdipped galvanized nails. We have 80 psi on the compressor and the nails go in like a hot knife through butter.
We were interrupted by Abby's sudden discovery of a porcupine. It was her first, and hopefully last encounter. Six quills to the nose was a painful lesson to mind her own business.

By yesterday afternoon, we had a few rows of shingles up and it's looking good! This morning Ed went back to work and I'm on my own. The sun is supposed to come back out this afternoon and be nice all week so the pressure is on.

They Are Such Fauxnys!

While Ed was gone this week, I worked on the faux painted carriage doors. After staring at pictures of real doors on the internet, I worked up the courage to paint the shadows. Amazingly, it worked!

My mantra was "underneath and on the right, underneath and on the right", thus putting the light source to the west which is where it is in real life. It did a fair job of making the doors look three dimensional...in a painty sort of way.

Remember all that glaze with black paint that was so horrible as the glaze coat for the rails and stiles? I used that stuff for these shadow lines. I taped the straight lines off, leaving about an inch, sponged on the lines and then immediately took off the tape..like it was sticking anyway...(see prior chapter). That way it wasn't a solid black line, but sort of mottled. I had to free-hand the curves, and with a sponge, it ain't easy.

Hallelujah! Sunshine this morning..at least after the fog burned off. By 0930, I was out with my paper handle and hinge stencils and went to work. I knew that trying to tape the stencils up and paint was not going to work, so I kind of held them up and drew them in with my trusty construction pencil. Once they were all drawn in, I took the black paint (unadulterated) and some cheapie art brushes and started in. No major problems there, except my stencilling wasn't always exactly the same for each one. How can that happen!!?? Oh yeah..the tape wouldn't stick and I drew them in. Once I got them all painted, I added a few details, like the screws and some curve marks on the handles. They still need some fine tuning with a teeny brush, but I'm pretty happy considering it was the first time I've ever done anything like this.

Which reminds me, tomorrow is Mother's Day, so it is time for a little motherly advise.

Just Try

I had never painted anything artistic...ever... No art classes in high school, convinced I couldn't draw. When I retired I told myself I would try new things, even if they sounded silly or hopeless. I signed up for a local Bob Ross painting class, and while the method isn't my favorite, the painting was a blast. I had a wonderful instructor, DeDee Crouse, who has since moved to Machias, New York and has opened up a business there, Black Sheep Art and Antiques. The moral of the story is, I was afraid to fail, and I wound up having a really good time.

Do they look so real that you'd reach out for the handle? No. But if you're that critical, you might want to go read some other blog. I'll come back with a little brush and neaten things up, make the door handles exaaaactly the same length..stuff like that.

In the meantime, from the road, the doors look pretty good...better than the white-on-metal that they were. Once the neighbors stop laughing, they can pass by with affection and say "Look what those people did to their garage door!"

Just wait until all the shingles are on! I can hardly wait. Oh..wait.. I'm the shingler. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice for the first part of the day, then cloud up and rain the rest of the week.

Chapter 2:The Pumpkin Changes to a Carriage

Now that the plumbing is signed off, Ed took the last steps to hook the sewer lines to the live septic system. Once that was done he shoveled all that dirt back into the trench. And take it from me...well actually from Ed since he did the work... when it rains hard for two days, that dirt is really heavy!

He had so much fun shoveling all that dirt he went right down to the pasture and started digging out rootballs for cucumber vines. For those of you not familiar, cucumber vines are Washington's version of kudzu vine. They have rootballs as big as a Gold's Gym Exercise ball. He dug some of them with the backhoe on the tractor, but some of them were in inaccessible areas, so he dug them up with a shovel. Needless to say, at the end of the day his back was pretty sore. I volunteered to walk on his back, but he declined saying that probably wouldn't be a good idea. Whatever could he mean!?

In the meantime, I was having fun pretending to be the Fairy Godmother, trying to turn the Cinderella garage doors into carriage doors.

I bought Valspar Ultra Premium exterior paint. It's thick, high quality paint with very good coverage. I chose Pale Cordovan for the base coat, and Natural Cork for the contrast (rails and stiles). I also got a quart of black to mix in with the tint and glaze for the wood grain definition, and for detail painting later. First I painted the base coat. We wanted it to look like cedar. After the base coat dried, I mixed 1 qt glaze with 2 oz of the Pale Cordovan, 2 oz of the Natural Cork, and a splash of black . I rolled that mixture over the base coat, in 3' sections, and wiped it with a damp rag. Once that was dry, the pumpkin effect was toned down a little, and there was a little definition to the grain.

Sunday after church, I got my grid and my pencil and started drawing the design. Once I had all three doors drawn out I spent the last hour putting tape on the first door so that Monday I could get up bright and early and start painting. I was stoked!

I got up Monday, went out to start painting, and almost every single piece of tape had come right off and was in a heap at the foot of the garage door. Between the rough surface of the door and the humidity, the tape had just floated to the ground. That turned out to be a good thing because had I tried to roll the paint with the rough surface, the paint would have bled under the tape and been a horrible mess. I just got out a brush and followed my little pencil lines, and painted the first coat of contrast. I was pretty happy with how the first coat came out...a little light on the color, but I was thinking that when I put the glaze coat over it, it would be fine. So I did all three doors, and went to bed dreaming of an equally charming Tuesday.

The next morning, I got up, did some household chores, and went out to paint. I mixed one qt of glaze and 1 cup of black, the recommended ratio, and began to paint. For the glaze, you paint on a small section, say 3', and texture, in this case, wipe with a slightly damp rag. Well the darned stuff was really really black. So I wiped some off, and then wiped some more off. I finally got it to where it didn't look like an old tire, and went to the next section. By the time I had half of one door done, Ed and I agreed this was not what we wanted. Now what? Do I just put on another coat of the contrast coat? Do I drive two hours to go get a different color? Do I fiddle with the paint I have to see if I can make it work? Yeah! Let's try that! There was about 3/4 of the gallon of the contrast color, Natural Cork left. I stirred in about 1 c. of the black, and started to re-paint. Well, that worked out just fine! So I went ahead and painted all three doors with that mixture, and we're pretty happy with the result. As you can see, the sun came out to bless the doors, which is pretty amazing since we have had over three inches of rain in the last four days. Rains here all the time.

Cinderella's Door

Ed worked on window and door trim this weekend. The side trim is narrower at the top and wider at the bottom. This line echos the front columns and overhang, and will tie everything together nicely. Ed cut the trim pieces from the cedar boards that we painted a week ago, then I primed the cut sides. After they were dry, up they went. It is a little tough to see here up against the felt paper, but the green trim will stand out well once the shingles are up.

The same theme is carried through the windows on the back. These were existing windows to the original garage. I primed the sill today.

We decided to wait to replace the existing plain garage doors until the entire construction project is done and we can re-evaluate finances. The existing doors are well-built and functional. They just don't look like craftsman doors. So I thought I would try to paint them with some detail. The worst that can happen is that it can look horrible and we repaint them a solid color.

After searching the internet for different ideas, I came up with my own. I wanted it to have the rail and stile look, but reflect the eyebrow dormer detail over the window on the second story.

If Cinderella had a garage door, this is what it would look like. Plain but functional, hardworking but not very pretty...and needing a bath.

But then....the Fairy Garage Door Opener appeared....and...poof!

And the Handsome Prince drove his Jeep inside and they lived happily every after....oh..sorry..got carried away. And no, it doesn't turn back into a grungy door if somebody's not home before midnight.

But yeah, I can paint that. Dark brown for the rails and stiles and light brown for the panels, black for the wrought iron hinges and door handles.

So I TSP'd the garage doors today, and first thing tomorrow, I'll drive into town for some paint. I went outside and drew it on the garage door itself to make sure it wasn't going to look silly, and it looked darned good! Unfortunately most of the pencil came off during the TSP process. Yes, Mom, I wore safety glasses, and it's a good thing too, cause I splashed that stuff all over!

Hopefully by tomorrow night, I'll have the base coat on and dry, and can get out my grid and start plotting the contrast color.

April Come She Will

April has definitely had a mind of her own. The first breath of spring was felt three weeks ago, with stunning weather,with high 70s and beautiful sunshine. Wahoo! Get the paint! So we broke out the rollers, the sunscreen and the hats and got to work.

The trick is to paint these trim pieces before putting them up, thus significantly reducing time and risk on scaffold that is very high. Remember when Every Mom said "Get out of that tree, you're gonna fall and break your neck!" This is way beyond that.

After we made this stack, we made another just like it. It was so warm that by the end of the day, the paint was sufficiently dry that we could bring the boards in and stack them in the garage.

But spring can be a bit capricious, and Easter weekend was cold and wet. The Monday after Easter, it hailed and rained all day...mostly hail. Tuesday wasn't much better. Ed managed to get some of his seedlings planted though. Every year we get several hundred seedling native trees from the conservation district and plant them. We like the cedars but the elk eat them like I eat sunflower seeds. Spruce are also native, but are very stickery. The good news is that most of the animals leave them alone, so Ed has planted a lot of spruce.

This last weekend it was stunningly beautiful all weekend. Sunny...warm...green...it would have been easy to just laze about and soak it in, but the list of things to do is growing exponentially. Ed put in the furring strips..is that the right term?..for the flare at the bottom of the wall. You can see the TV satellite dish right behind Ed. What you don't see is the old satellite dish for the internet that he had to take down. Who would have ever guessed that this year's wasps had decided that the hollow insides was a good place to start a nest... fortunately for Ed they aren't ravenously vicious this time of year. I hate wasps and stood far far away.

After the furring strips went up, we put plywood sheathing over it. Once we put the shingles on, it will give the exterior walls a nice soft flare.

I will be the shingler (shinglette.. shinglee..) at least for the first 15' or so, depending on how comfortable I get on the scaffolding. Between shingles, insulation and sheetrock, our spring and summer is pretty much full. I don't see myself getting much stained glass done any time soon.

But I also know this is the part where things start moving faster. Friday I drive to Portland to Lumber Liquidators pick up hardwood flooring. Soon, I'll need to find tile. Blink, and it'll be September and we'll be moving in.

Electrical Is Done!

After a month of mundane electrical work, the rough electrical and plumbing has passed inspection. The Jennair range is here, the downdraft vent is installed. All of the can lights are wired in. There are 220 heaters in the bathroom and the living room. There is a dedicated circuit for the microwave and one for the fridge. Ed changed out the main electrical panel. Outside lights are wired in, even out on the tiny patio. The State inspector said it all looks good. The County inspector signed off on the rough plumbing.

Now the fun stuff starts. This is where a week-end's work really shows some visual results. Once we start with the insulation and the sheetrock, we can get that last window in and ..EEEEEKKK

aaah.. the sound of brakes!

Ed has already planted over 50 spruce seedlings this year, and has about 100 more trees to go..hemlock, cedar and pines. I ordered 50 maple seedlings, so that's my project. Those all need to go in before warm weather hits..I think we're covered there. Yesterday Ed spent most of the day with Darin and his assistants from the Water Conservation District, while they surveyed our creekbed, for some bank restoration work.

I'm pretty sure Ed said he wanted to do some of the outside trim work..soffits? ..before he started with the insulation and sheetrock.

One step at a time, and all in the right order. It's hard to visualize actually moving into the studio apartment, much less the finished house. All in due time.