Chapter 45...Making A Desk, Futon And Cleaning The Water Tank

Off Grid...Chapter 45 Monday 1-12 It's cold today but at least the sun is poking through the sky. We have a very cold forecast for the week so Mike and I went to town for staples. After we got home Mike sanded down our piece of wood that was leftover from our old counter. We are going to make our desk. Then he took the wood outside put it on a box to spray paint it. He is starting to spray it. Oh what a pain this stuff is. It's made by Rust-Oleum and it's a stone textured finish. As you can imagine it does not want to spray through the nozzle. It keeps clogging. We have to keep taking the top off and clean it out with a needle. We had to do this at least a dozen times for this one little board. Finally spraying more on. Then we brought it inside to dry because it was too cold outside. The fumes were too strong even with the doors open so we brought it back outside. When it dried Mike sprayed a gloss coat on for protection. After the gloss coat dried we brought it inside and put it on top of the file cabinets. Our turkeys are visiting. They are still petrified of us but they come into our yard everyday for seed. Tuesday 1-13 The last time we filled our 1200 gallon water tank we got some really dirty water from our well. For months we had beautiful crystal clear water and last week we got this sludge. We are bringing a sample to the well company to see what they need to do. Hopefully they will fix it. It happened after a heavy rain. Today we pumped out the nasty water and Mike got inside the tank and cleaned the whole thing. Ah. Now the tank is almost like new. The whole time pumping out the tank and cleaning it we had our well running. By the time we re filled the tank our water was much clearer. Mike also drained out our hot water heater and re filled it with clean water. It's a good thing we had bottled water to drink. Wednesday 1-14 It started snowing late yesterday so this morning there is a layer of white covering the ground. We are so lucky we did the water yesterday. Unfortunately because of the snow we couldn't work on the culvert as planned. So Mike hoked up the generator and I cleaned and did laundry. The house is getting less and less dusty since we finished the construction. Mike started organizing our new desk and it fits perfect in our spot. He also hooked up my Internet to the laptop in the office. I used to go on-line while I sat next to Mike in the living room. Now I feel like I was sent to my room for being bad. We are going to have to get some kind of wireless router so I can use the Internet while I am in the living room. Thursday 1-15 I went on the computer this morning all by myself in the office. It is very quiet and lonely. Mike is always asking me "what are you reading?" and his favorite "any 'sponses?" We haven't been this far apart since pre- motorhome days. It is frigid outside. The sun is shining and the wind is blowing so at least we are producing power. But we are "not" going outside today. Friday 1-17 I woke up at 5:00am and I checked our water. Guess what? We had no running water. It froze. There is no running water in the house so I woke Mike up. He bundled up and went outside with the flashlight and the hairdryer. He has to try and find where our water line froze and try to melt the ice using the hairdryer. It is 3 degrees outside. This is the coldest it's been here in years. Mike got the generator running so he could use the hairdryer. While he was outside I put on coffee and turned on the fireplace so he could warm up quickly. Mike had to go back and forth to keep checking the hairdryer. We also aren't positive where our line froze so Mike also checked the lines inside our water tank. He opened up the tank lid and steam came out which means the freeze is closer to the house. Finally, 40 minutes later the water starts running in the sink. We got lucky. Usually we leave the water dripping at night but it has been so long for us that we didn't even think about it. Time to go back to bed for a couple of hours. We turned the heat off and went back to bed. When we got up we decided to get ready and go to town and do a little shopping and go bowling. We needed to get out of the house and "do" something. Just as we were ready to leave the phone rang. It's the furniture store and our futon is in. Ok. change of plans. We hook up the trailer and go the other way to town and bring our futon home. We bring the boxes in the house and start to unwrap it all. We decided to put it together in spot. Here is the first part of the frame being screwed together. The rails are done. The frame is done. We put the mattress on and it is a perfect fit. Now we just need a picture for the wall and some pillows. Saturday 1-17 It is sunny out but very cold. It got down to zero last night and we still didn't use the fireplace during the night. We drove to town to pick up a couple of things. No bowling today because it is saturday. We bought a wall shelf for the bathroom. When we got home Mike started to put it all together. Here he is organizing all the parts. Sunday 1-18 It looks nasty outside. It is cold and icy. My satellite dish and our solar panels are covered with ice. We had 24 turkeys in our front yard this morning and it is so cool to see them that close. I couldn't get a picture because they are so skittish and I didn't want to scare them. Mike took out the old hook in out bathroom and he installed the shelf. Here is our shelf with and the hole filled with spackle where our hook used to be. Now we just need a hamper below it. And we got our cork board up in the office. Lisa