Chapter 42...Clogged Culverts, Ceiling Tile, And Closets

Off Grid...Chapter 42 Our holiday was great because we got a ton of work done. As you should all know by now Mike and I do things differently than most. Christmas for us this year was a work day just like our anniversary and my birthday this year. When Mike and I have a project that is our priority. Christmas was great because it was beautiful out and we got a lot done. Next year we will do the tree and decorating. Then we will truly be able to sit back, relax, and enjoy all that we have done. For now- we work until we get it done. Monday 12-22 It's time to work on the last room in the house, the office. First we have to run to town "again" for more sheetrock and 2x4's. The closets are using more material than expected. It seems like we live part time at the building supply and Lowe's. I am so tired of those stores. Making the closet for the washer and dryer. The sheetrock is up for the washer and dryer closet. Tuesday 12-23 Today we are working on the last closet in the house. Woo, Hoo. It's the closet for the electrical in the office. It will be identical to the washer and dryer closet and the space in between the two closets will be perfect for a daybed. Our grandson is waiting to stay over and he can't wait until we finish that room. The first frame is done for the electrical closet. This closet is more involved because we also have to sheetrock and paint the inside of it. This will be a walk in closet so it has to be complete. First we have to measure and screw the sheetrock into the studs for the first interior wall. Installing the first interior wall. All of the interior walls for the closet are done. And after many hours of measuring, cutting, and screwing the closet is done. The sheetrock is "done" in the entire house. Woo Hoo. No more cutting and installing sheetrock. We are done except for the spackling and painting. Wednesday 12-24 Mike starts the day by putting the first coat of spackle on both the closets in the office. I am right behind him cleaning the big plops on the floor. Now that we have all the walls up in the office we can go back and finish the ceiling. The first thing we do is finish hanging the perimeter track around the closets. Then we move on and install the last of the main grid and the cross tee's. And Mike continues installing the full ceiling tile. It was a very good day. We got a lot done and we are very happy. Thursday 12-25 What a beautiful sunny day. Mike has been itching to work outside so today is the day. We have been having problems with my internet satellite dish. My satellite dish for the internet is a portable system(for when we travel) and it sits on a tripod. Unfortunately when it is really windy my dish gets moved and I lose my signal. The first thing Mike does is dig a hole to bury a 4x4 post. This is still temporary but at least my dish will stay in place. While he did that I took the tripod in the house and cleaned all the mud off and we put it back in the motorhome. Installing the post. Here is my newly mounted dish. At least it won't move now from the wind. Next Mike starts working on the other downspout and drain pipe. We finished the first one a long time ago and today we are doing the other one. First Mike digs out the trench "again" and installs the long drain pipe. Then he connects the downspout from the gutter to the pipe. Now all of the excess water will drain far away from the house. After he is done we cover the pipe with dirt. It's still very muddy and mucky so we will have to let it dry out more. Back into the house to start working on the ceiling. Mike is installing the last of the full ceiling tile. Installing the last, yeah, overhead light in the house. Lastly, the really hard part. Mike has to start cutting the tiles to fit. He starts with the angled tiles by the door. Friday 12-26 It took all day but now it's time to celebrate. The ceiling is done in the entire house. Woo hoo. Mike is so happy. The office ceiling is done. After the ceiling was done Mike did a light sand on the closets and a second coat of spackle. Later on we hung the closet door for the washer and dryer. Saturday 12-27 We are so close to finishing the office. We still need the cabinets, the bed, and the desk. We drove to Lowe's to pick up 3 24" cabinets to put in the office. We will have a total of 8 feet of cabinets in the office. We already have one cabinet home that we had in the bathroom for awhile. We also picked up my kitchen cabinet knobs. They were on sale so I finally got them. We get everything home and we have to open the cabinet boxes up to carry it all down to the house. The boxes are just too heavy so we have to make a lot of smaller trips to get the cabinets in the house. Finally we are in the house and putting the cabinets together. I can't wait to start organizing. Putting the cabinets together. Here is our "wall of cabinets". Talk about storage. Now that's a lot of storage space. Next we start working on the knobs for my kitchen cabinets. The kitchen knobs are done. All 25 of them. We can't get used to them. There are so many. We've never had kitchen knobs before so it looks a little "much" to us. Sunday 12-28 It's rainy and drizzly out today but we discovered a problem yesterday that we have to take care of. On our way home driving up our driveway Mike says "where's the culvert?" Uh, oh. Yup it's buried in mud and we can't see it. So today we went down with our rubber boots, gloves, shovels, and the tractor. Sure enough our 30 foot culvert that runs under our driveway is full of mud on both sides. We start to dig it out. This is our clogged culvert. Digging and dumping the muck into the tractor bucket. We dug out 5 bucket loads. It's getting better. By now we are a muddy mess and we just can't get it done. It looks like the pipe is completely clogged and we just can't reach it all. This was our own fault. We should have been watching the culvert all along to make sure there were no problems. We can only hope that a heavy downpour will clear out the mud. If that doesn't work we will have to call Jimmy to tear the 30 foot culvert out of the ground, get the mud out, and re install it. It's a good thing we didn't pave the driveway yet. We head back into the house and dump or muddy clothes into a container. What a mess. We didn't do anything else today. After 2 hours of digging in the rain we had enough. Just another week in the Mike and Lisa world. We are getting so close to finishing. Now if we could just get some more nice weather to start our outside projects. I hope you enjoyed our story.  Lisa