Chapter 90...Making Curbs For Our Driveway

Off Grid...Chapter 90 Hello everyone. It's time for my final chapter for 2009. It has been a year and a half since Mike and I started our journey. You have all been there through the ups and downs, all of our dilemmas, mistakes and solutions. I appreciate all of our readers including those who have been with us since the beginning and also the new readers who seem to keep finding our story. I am very thankful for all of your suggestions and help through all the phases of our building process. I have learned so many things from you and I hope many of you have also learned some things. If it wasn't for all of you continuing to read, I would have stopped writing a long time ago. So thank you to all of our faithful readers for sharing in our lives. I am still truly amazed and humbled that so many people enjoy our story. I will miss writing it. I will write next spring with any updates or changes we make on our property so I won't be gone for good. So let me take you back to the last of the Fall work. 9-6 Now that we know we made a mistake with our electric for the inspector, we have to get a meter can. We head out and try Lowe's first and they don't carry them. Uh oh. Next we try Home Depot and thankfully they have one. We get back home and Mike starts working on the meter can. He has to also re do some of the wiring. Mike spoke to the inspector and he told Mike how he wants the wires run. Mike doesn't think it sounds right but "you don't question the inspector", lol. So Mike wires it the way the inspector told him to. Three wires are in the meter can. The inside box is redone. 9-7 Today is our last day of mowing the other property. Woo hoo. We bring all of the equipment home and clean it up. 9-8 First thing this morning we go to the electric company to talk to the inspector. We want to make sure we are on the schedule for today's inspection. It's a good thing we stopped in. Apparently there was a misunderstanding of what Mike had to do. We now have to go home and re do the wires,the way Mike originally thought, before the inspector shows up. Boy we do re do things a lot, lol. The correct box on the inside. And the correct meter can on the outside of the barn. We passed the final inspection. Woo hoo. Now we are ready for electric service to our barn. 9-9 Just a new view form the top back of our property. 9-11 Today we got a call from the paving contractors. They want to come and do the curbing today. Woo hoo. You know we would never turn down any contractor who wants to work. They will be doing the curbs by hand. First they roll on an adhesive, shovel the asphalt mix onto the road, and then they form it. Curbs going down the side of our house. Rolling on the adhesive. Shoveling it out and forming the curbs. As they head down the driveway Mike helps them decide where to leave cut outs. We want openings in the curbing where the driveway slopes off. This when when it rains or snows any of the run off will go into the ditch. Here is the driveway with curbing and one opening. The curbing is done. Now we just have to hope the cows don't step on it and crush it. 9-14 Well the cows were good and we had no squashed curbs. We did get a mess form the flying pollen(?) It looks like feathers all over the curbing. I guess our curbs got tarred and feathered, lol. 9-15 The kids are coming for dinner tonight so while I cook and clean Mike works on some oddball jobs. Here he is caulking again. Next year we will do the finish on the sides of the house. He also built a box to cover the water and electric lines going into the house. This is the water line that cracked last year when it got below freezing. It is now stuffed with insulation so hopefully there will be no cracks this year. And the last job he did was paint the one ceiling tile that got stained. We found a special spray paint that is made for ceiling tile touch up.  That was the last of the work. Now it's time to enjoy dinner and having the kids over. That is the last of our story for 2009. I will leave you all with one final view picture.  See you in 2010. Lisa, Mike, and Niki