January 24, 2021 Lights!!

Not much has happened since my last post, but we did get all the framing, electrical and plumbing rough-in inspections, and two-third of the insulation inspection all approved. So we began installing the interior drywall.  

I had found a drywall lift jack on Craig's List a few weeks back for $100 and I had put it up on a single level of scaffolding with the intention of doing the main room ceiling last week. But we took the thing down and decided to learn how to use it in the Bedroom section of the house. The process is laborious and hard on the lower back since the screws have to be done over-head. The drywall jack takes a whole lot of the work out of the job. 

We started off in the Office since this is where our Son Jack has been camped out. He had to take his place down entirely whenever the Inspectors come visit, because living in the house is technically out of bounds, so the room was empty for the day. We got as far as getting the ceiling, and two of the interior walls, covered before it began to get dark. 

As we put the ceiling up I installed the two L.E.D. lighting fixtures for that room. Cutting through the wires leading to the room from the electrical panel, where the circuit breaker was definitely off, brought the revelation that there must be a wire crossed somewhere, so I'll need to find the wire and buy some new wire cutters. The crossed wire also needs to be found the get the lights working. 

Jack came home from work at Supper time and put up the Window wall in the Office to allow him to move back into the room. Now the space is easy to heat and what little light there is bounces around, so it isn't so much like camping as it had been for the past few months. 

Tuesday, we did the wall which separates the Main room from the Bedroom section to make heating the Bedroom section easier. Now the entire Bedroom section is insulated and walled off. Until the Main room ceiling is up and insulated, that end of the house is impossible to heat and the difference between the two halves of the house is easily felt. The walls are much easier to do, but the whole thing weighs a ton.  The next day brought muscle and joint pain, so we  took the day off to rest up. 

On Friday we put up the Bedroom ceiling. This is a bigger room so the drywall jack does the job much easier. Even though the walls aren't covered it feels like a space we will be very comfortable in. I put the lights in the ceiling, as I had in the Office, but we still needed to put a few outlets in before putting power to the room. Saturday we had errands to run so all I got done was putting in the last two electrical outlets in the Bedroom. The lights came on with the flick of the switch. Real electric lights too, like the kind people in town have! Very satisfying. 

In non-Farmhouse news . . . The weather at the Farm was dry all week. Can't say it was ever warm, but not windy and wet passes for a nice day in the north-western Oregon Winter.  The mud subsided  a bit. The ducks dried out a the Chickens started producing eggs in a big way. Saturday we got thirty-one eggs, a new record. 

We are rapidly approaching breeding season for our hounds and we will soon re-enter the breeding business. I have been accumulating a Waiting List of people wanting a puppy, so most of the first litter is likely already taken even though we have nothing to take. We will do at least two litters this year, a good thing since were beginning to see the bottom of the money bucket. We will have to do the first litter in the Farmhouse since we are still living in what will become the new kennel once the house is done. A necessary sacrifice, but the pups will have a safe dry space with a floor, walls, heat, and lights. 

Lastly, the County was doing some tree trimming work on the electrical wires on Sell Road and our neighbor, Jay, had talked the crew into dropping all of the ground up trimmings onto his place. But he hadn't many places to put the stuff so on Saturday morning I warmed up Rosie the tractor and brought all that woody stuff in to make a six inch thick path from the Driveway to the Back door of the new house. The trimmings are not neat and tidy, but the mud will never get through it. Projects everywhere getting done, progress abounding at Creekside Farm. 

January 15th, 2021

The world has been very strange of late. Politics, insurrections, and so it goes.

But here at Creekside Farm it has mostly just been wet. Buckets of wet, wet, wet, wet.  Two days ago the West Fork of Dairy Creek came over its banks down the road a bit. Flood stage is 225.6 feet at the back of the property and we got at least that high, but the back of the Farm is really 231 feet so -no problem for us. It has rained nearly every day since my last post. Perhaps two sunny days since Christmas. Wet, wet, wet. The Farm has become its customary mud pit. Walking around requires a bit of care. Luckily for us we have a nice dry house to work on. 

The Farmhouse project was stuck at the framing inspection stage for the past few months and that broke free around mid-December. We also had the rough plumbing and electrical inspections at the same time. All three inspections happened about the same time as main power was hooked up to the house. The inspections had just a few fixes necessary and let a few other things go ahead. 

One was the insulation. We had a bit of a worry getting insulation but it turned out easier than it sounded at first. Another was a slight framing problem which was solved by adding a few boards. The third was replacing one of the Bedroom windows with something that would let a fireman in with a full pack. All of this took a bit of time and money, but it got done. We also needed to bring in some OSB board to finish the framing of the inside of the end walls, and boxes to finish the electrical stuff. Wood prices have continued to rise so a sheet of Oriented Strand Board, which cost twelve dollars in the Summer, is now thirty-two dollars. We only need a few so we were a bit luck anyway. 

Following on the fixes we had the Inspector out again and he gave us the go ahead to insulate the place. This is good since our son Jack is living in the office room of the new house and it was like a refrigerator in there most of the time. We did the insulation in just a few days and invited the Inspector out once more to approve it so that we could finish the sheer walls and start drywall. I did some of the outlet and switches so that we could use the power and disconnect the house from our tiny house cabin. There's less circuit breaker tripping now. and fewer power cords lying around in the mud too. The house is much warmer and once we have drywall up in the main room we ought to be able to heat it with a hair dryer. Improvements abounding at Creekside Farm.

We started carting the drywall out this past week. My little truck can carry about fifteen hundred pounds, so it will take three or four trips to get it all. With that much weight it is also a problem of driving over mud. The truck sinks in a few more inches with every pass. So far, so good.

We built a section of scaffold and put our new panel jack on it so that we can put the drywall ceiling in the great room. The ceiling is fourteen feet high so pushing an eighty pound sheet up and nailing it down is a problem that needed solved. We think we will be able to do the job now but won't start the work until next Monday. The lower ceilings of the Bedroom side won't need scaffolding at all. Note to self: build the next house with eight foot ceilings. 

With the house coming along quickly now we will soon be moving one of our hoop houses out into MacGreggor's Market Garden so that we can begin growing plants for Spring. There is much to do before Spring. A few trees must come down too. 

Our Chickens are laying eggs at a rate above one dozen a day, so egg sales are good. If you need some, and you do, just get in touch. Between egg sales, puppy sales, and stimulus checks, we ought to do okay in 2021.