Chapter 116...Staining The Patio

Off Grid...Chapter 116 Mike and I are slowly running out of projects. The stories now will be just a little shorter now. So let's get to it. 7-9 The cow family brought a new bull in for our girls. He is a new small bull and Mike and I are keeping our distance since we don't know his personality yet. Of course on our way down to do some work, what do we see? Yup..the new bull is in our rocks in the ditch line rubbing his head on our nice rocks Mike and I picked up more rocks from around the property. Here is another area next to one of the ditches. We loaded up the tractor bucket and cleaned up another area. We took those rocks down to the pond and picked up a bale of hay for the side of the house. We also stopped off at the dirt pile and got some more dirt to bring up top. Oh the fun things we do On the way back up we saw the new bull pushing Mike's big burn pile around I really hope this new guy settles down soon. The rest of the day I did the mowing and Mike did stuff in his building. 7-10 Time to get the patio ready for staining Mike starts off by scrubbing the concrete off the front of the house. Then we move the patio benches off the patio. We stack them on top of some logs by our wings. Mike uses a new concrete filler to fill in the cracks on the patio. It looks pretty good. Hopefully the stain will cover the line. Then Mike uses his grinder to grind down the rough edges on the patio table. Since the table is too heavy for us to move we are going to tape off the bottom and stain around it. We don't normally do something like this but we don't plan on ever moving that table Next we clean the patio and get it ready for staining. I use the scrub brush on it while Mike hoses it down. 7-11 Today we helped Mike's daughter with some of her trim work. It is hot hot hot today. The outside temp got to 102 The house is very warm but not unbearable. It is the humidity that is very high. 7-12 OK...it's time for the fun stuff. First we are going to repaint the front of the house. We want everything to look fresh and clean when we are done. I do the cut in while Mike does the rolling. It takes us about an hour to paint the front. Mike finishing up. Now it's time for the stain. I really hope the color is OK. We picked up a solid stain of a color that is a lighter green. We are hoping it will compliment the house and make it cheerful. Uh oh...it's not looking good Mike is rolling the stain on and it looks like mint ice cream Ugh!!! This will not work. It is downright ugly. Oh well...you all know how bad mike and I are with colors Mike rolls out the rest of the can to use as a base coat. We have a sample color of paint that was off the same card as our house color. We thought about using that for the buildings. We try that sample color out....and it is too blue. Yuck!! another color we don't like. It's back to town to get more sample colors. This time we try the tan colors. We don't like those either. Oh well...so much for trying a new color. It's back to town and we stick with a weathered concrete color. We also switch to a floor paint since the solid stain didn't cover very well. 7-13 Mike starts out by painting along the crack that he filled in. I use the brush to paint the expansion joints, around the table, around the posts, and near the house. Mike rolls the rest. Now we have to let it dry and then we can do the second coat. 7-14 Same story different day We get the second coat on. Mike rolling again. Well we didn't get a color but it is clean looking The crack filler helped but they didn't get completely covered by the paint. I really thought the paint would cover the fill in. Oh well..it's still better than it was For the next few days it was just the usual chore...cleaning and yard work. On Saturday the neighbor's bull from behind us got in again Mike called our cow people to let them know. They were not happy about it since our neighbor was supposed to put his bull in another field. So our cow family, Howard, Eric, and Ivalee showed up along with our back neighbor to get the bull out and then fix the fence line. It took awhile but they finally got the bull into the barn and locked him in before loading him up. He is so strong that he bent the steel gate They finally got the bull loaded up and Eric found a buyer for him. That bull is on his way to Virginia For the next few hours we all went up and worked on the fence line. At least we won't have any more trouble from that bull. He actually got into a fight with our new bull and our little guy did get hurt but he is OK. I know it was a short story but Mike and I have really been knocking things off this year. Next we have to get the driveway ready to get the final section of paving done. I hope you all enjoyed the story. Have a great week and I'll see you again next Monday. Lisa P.S. Nike says she can't wait for it to cool down so she can get back to supervising us