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

Chapter 41...More Closets And Ceiling Tile

Off Grid...Chapter 41 It was a good week in the Mike and Lisa world so here we go. Monday 12-15 Today we started our day by loading up the trailer and going to the dump. On our way home we were going to stop at the builder's supply but the skies looked like rain. We didn't want to take a chance with the sheetrock. We got home and Mike filled our water tank. After that we started to clean up the office, again! We are thankful for that room because it is our storage room right now but we have to start working in there. So we moved stuff around again. Mike started installing the floor trim in the office. We got the first part of the washer and dryer closet up. And Mike put up the ceiling light, temporarily. It's the last light in the house to go up. Woo hoo. Tuesday and Wednesday It's been really dreary out with no opportunity to pick up supplies. Mike and I really miss the sun. It makes working so much more enjoyable. I know, I know no excuses right. Ok so we didn't do much work. We did one thing. We started installing the perimeter track for the ceiling tile in the office.  We are jumping back and forth on our last 2 rooms. We just have the bathroom to complete and the office. Then we will be done on the inside of the house. Thursday 12-18 It's now or never. The skies aren't terrible so we hook up the trailer to the jeep, grab the tarps, and head for Lowe's. On our way it starts to drizzle- oh no! This is really bad. Mike thinks maybe it will pass over if we give it a little time. So we decide to go to Nissan to look at a used truck they advertised. We "still" need to get a small 4WD truck but the new ones are just so expensive. The one we went to see was a 2007 and it looked rough. The salesman said "the man used it to haul firewood". Yeah it looks more like he used it to cut the tress down in the woods I am amazed that the dealer didn't try to fix the truck a little before they tried to resell it. If it was all scraped up on the outside you know the engine was also beat on. Oh well. Off to Lowe's. The skies are still gray so we decide to get everything except for the sheetrock. We loaded up 3 louver doors, ceiling tile grid, and 2x4's onto the trailer. We wrapped it up with tarps, tied everything down and crossed our fingers all the way home. Finally we made it and everything stayed dry. Now we can get to work. We started putting the ceiling grid up in the office. The first ceiling tiles are going up in the office. As usual we put the full tiles up and the cut tiles will be done last. Because our tiles are recessed not only does Mike have to cut the tiles down he also has to cut out the recessed part. It's a very tedious job with a lot of up and down on the ladder. We also picked up some pipe insulation to wrap the water line that comes into the house. Here is Mike wrapping the pipe. I love this stuff, the pipe insulation. It's like a hollow piece of foam that comes in different sizes and has a slit down the middle. You open it at the split, wrap the pipe, pull off the plastic(which covers the sticky part) and squeeze it together. Now your pipes are protected. Friday 12-19 We can see a little bit of sun so we make a mad dash out the door to the local building supply to get the sheetrock. On our way it starts to drizzle. Oh no here we go again. We pull the jeep and trailer inside the building at the building supply. They have the most awesome set up for their business. It's a huge metal building with a big door in the back and a big door in the front that exits out onto the main road. You pull around back, into the building and park. You go inside to the office and showroom area and pay for your items. Go back out and give the guys your ticket, they load you up and off you go. You stay dry the whole time, it's great customer service, and very convenient. We got the sheetrock loaded and wrapped up. Off we go. Fifteen minutes later I am opening our gate at the top of the hill. We made it and the sheetrock is dry. Yeah. We are happy campers. We bring it all into the house and we start working on the bathroom again. First he screws the bottom plate into the floor and through the concrete. He is installing the first piece of sheet rock for our water heater closet. Almost done. Next he goes into the bathroom with the spackle bucket. He has to tape up all the corners and fill all the screw head holes. After that he starts working on the closet door. The door is up and working. We decided to take take the big cabinet out of the bathroom because it was just too much for the room. Saturday 12-20 This morning I went to the library and scored on 3 new books I was waiting for. On the way home I did the grocery shopping. While I was out Mike installed the rest of the perimeter track and more ceiling tile in the bathroom. Later on he cut and installed some of the side pieces of tile. Sunday 12-21 Today we kicked butt. Mike was determined to get the bathroom done. He is almost done with the ceiling tile. And the bathroom ceiling is done. Next he had to redo the floor trim where we took out the cabinet and also do the trim around the new closet. After that he sanded and put the second coat of spackle on the closet. Hopefully it will be ready for paint. After dinner we moved into the office and started working on the washer/dryer closet. First we put up more studs to hold the sheetrock. All the wood is up for the closet. And the first piece of sheetrock is up. It was getting late so we stopped there. That is our story for the last week. I hope you all enjoyed. Lisa