Chapter 83...New Awning And Drain Pipe

Off Grid...Chapter 83 What a wet time we are having in TN. Where is the sun, lol? It's hard to get motivated to work with all of this rain. Ok time for the next installment. 7-26 It looks like rain for the rest of the week. We lost our chance for finishing the painting on the front of the house. Mike and I don't like the way the trim around the doors look on the front of the house. Yesterday Mike got a chance to scrape down the side trim on the front doors. That night it poured. 7-27 It is threatening to rain again so today Mike and I concentrate on some other matters that have to be taken care of. 7-28 Woo hoo. It looks like we might get a break in the weather today. Our 2nd paving man shows up to give us an estimate. He seems like a very nice man. Hopefully he can give us good references and he will come in with a better estimate. After he leaves Mike and I get the painting equipment back out. We start painting the second coat on the front of the house. Mike is being very careful on the ladder. Great now we both don't like the ladders right now. Here I am painting. And Mike is still painting the top part. Uh oh, we are just about done and it looks like rain again. I hope the paint dries before it rains. On a good note we got a delivery. Our 2 awnings came. They came in 2 boxes and Mike says to me "they must have the metal in one box and the fabric in the other box." No, they should be exactly the same. Sure enough we open up the 2 boxes and one is completely empty. I don't know if it is just us but it seems like everything we touch lately something goes wrong. Anyway, one of the empty box had already been opened and taped. It looks like the awning was taken. I called the company and they said ":this has happened before". Well don't you think you should fix the problem? They will send out a replacement awning. Later that night it pours. Hopefully the paint is dry enough. 7-29 and 7-30 It rained both days. We met Jim(our concrete man) and his wife Kelly at our other property to show. It's funny how small the world is. They saw our ad, didn't know it was us, and called about the property. 7-31 It rained all day. The sun finally came out about 5:30. We saw a couple of small bubbles on the house. We will keep an eye on them. 8-1 Finally, it isn't raining this morning. It is very humid out which means nothing is drying out so we can't fix the bubbles yet. Thankfully there isn't many bubbles. We also can't install the gutters until everything dries more. We picked the perfect time to have the gutters off the house, lol. Since we took the gutters off the house it has rained every day. Mike and I added another extension pipe to the drains on the front of the house. We started out with 2 10 foot drains on each side of the house then we added another 10 foot section to each one. Now we are adding one more 10 foot section. This will make our drain pipes run 30 feet away from the house and down the front hill. We start out by getting the buckets so we can shovel the dirt into them. This will keep the job clean. We have to dig out 2 trenches to fit the pipes in, cover them up and then seed. Mike is digging the trench. The pipe is in the ground. Covering it up and then seeding it. Mike moves on to the second trench while I go up top and mow the lawn. 8-2 We got the front lawn mowed and then it rained. 8-3 This morning I had a Doctor's appointment and when I got home the new paver called. They are going to bring over some of their equipment this week. Woo hoo. Time to get this place clean. I can't wait. We are only doing a partial job this year. We will have them pave along side of our house, the back parking area, and down the steepest part of our driveway. They will also be adding curbs for us to keep the water on the road and not wash out the sides. Later on we went to the other property. While I mowed Mike called the towing company to pull him out of the grass. Remember when he got stuck in the wet grass? They got the motor home back up on the pad. It will stay there until this land dries out. Here is the mess Mike made with the motor home. We got back home and Mike started to work on our "one" awning. First we figure out exactly where it will go and Mike puts the clips on the house. Next we slide the awning onto the bar and attach the bar to the clips. Then Mike screws in the side brackets. The awning is up. The wrinkles will work themselves out. Now we are just waiting for the company to send out the second awning. 8-3 We tried to go over to the other property to mow but we got rained out. 8-5 This afternoon Mike and I are meeting his daughter at a house she wants to see. It looked nice from the outside but it is a major disaster. The house is only about 5 years old and it has foundation problems, warped floors, cut structural beams, beams coming through the floors, and so many more really major problems. It isn't even safe to live in. It makes me feel so much safer in our house. I don't think a bank will ever approve a mortgage for that house with so many problems. After that Nicole came over for dinner. We had a really nice and "quiet" time with her. It's nice to see her without the kids sometimes. Then we can have real conversations, lol. 8-6 The paving company brought over some of their equipment. He pulled off the side of the road into a field to unload. Sure enough he got stuck. Mike called Jimmy for him but he isn't working locally. The man ended up calling someone he knew to get him out. Mike left him at the road after being down there with him for about an hour. They are supposed to start paving on Monday. 8-7 We finally got over to the other property to do a knock down mow. It is just so wet that there isn't much we can do. That is all for this installment. Sorry about all of the rain comments but it has been a really rough summer. Next week if all goes well we should get a lot done. Lisa

Chapter 20...Pex Is Awesome...Drywall Is Not

Off Grid...Chapter 20 We had a very productive end of the week. First of all let me tell you that we have been successfully running on our own "M&L Power". Mike had to make one modification so far because we kept popping 60amp fuses. He fixed that and everything is good. When Mike perfects our system I will give you all the details. Thursday- 8-14-08 Mike ran most of the pex plumbing for the bathroom. And the kitchen. He used the pex tubing and ran them through the walls. The blue is for cold water and the red is for hot water. We also finished wiring the master bedroom and the kitchen for electric. Today was also mowing day at our other property. It took us a little longer than usual because Mike had to put the sharpened blades back on the mower and I had a lot of weed eating to do. At least there was no beaver dam this week. Maybe they moved down the creek. I hope. We got back home and started sheet rocking the bedroom. Our first 3 walls. Friday 8-15-08 Today we had to make another Lowe's run. Sometimes it seems like we live there. We had a big list with a lot of little things to get. When we got home we started working on more plumbing. Mike had to start "connecting" the pex piping. This is how you connect pex piping. First you cut the pipe down to the size you need, then you put crimp collars over both pieces of pex, and then put a Tee or an elbow inside the middle of the pex pipe. Slide the crimp collars over the Tee or elbow then with a crimping tool you crimp the ends. That's it. Pex with a connector. Another piece added to the cold water. And Mike crimping it. Then we hung more drywall. We had to stop and go back over to Nicole's to finish the plumbing on her bathroom sink. Last time we ran out of parts. Mike got that done and now Nicole can paint and tile her bathroom. Saturday- 8-16-08 Today was an awesome day. We got so much done. First we sheet rocked the back wall and side of the bedroom. Then we put sheet rock on the bedroom/kitchen wall. And more. After we got the sheet rock done on the bedroom/kitchen wall I was able to put the insulation in. This is my favorite job. I love doing insulation. I even told Mike to stay away from my insulation ha, ha. I finished the kitchen wall. Before any questions come up we are only insulating the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom interior walls. The front of the house was sprayed with insulation. We are "not" putting insulation in the exterior walls that are surrounded by dirt. The reason for this is we are more concerned about keeping the house "cool" in the summer since we have no air conditioning. We will have no trouble keeping warm in the winter because we will have a propane fireplace. So this is intentional although not conventional. Mike finished installing the sheet rock in the bedroom and then he showed me how to tape the walls for Spackle. I did great on the walls I could reach but then I had to use the dreaded scaffold to reach up high. I'm not really sure what my problem is with the scaffold but it makes me really nervous. Mike was making fun of me because, after all, I'm only about 4 feet off the ground. I told him he has to tape the high spots. This is Mike doing a much better job. We also hung the bedroom door and we made a last minute decision. We have a nice sized opening at the top of all our interior doors and we have no windows in those rooms. So we are thinking about installing some kind of decorative glass above each of the doors. At least this will give us some lighting and we thought it would look nice. Here is our door. Looking at this picture it looks a little crooked. We have to check that today. I didn't look bad when we hung it. Then Mike started spackling the bedroom. Overall, we had a great day. Sunday- 8-17-08 Mike started off the day by installing the drain pipe in the back wall for our washing machine. Then he installed the vent pipe in the bathroom. He also cut down some of the pex pipe, added connectors and crimped it all together and then stapled them to the wall. Now everything is getting neater. Sunday 8-17-08. We started to sheet rock the front of the kitchen wall and then we got to the angled wall which was a headache. If you remember when we put the original wall up there was no plan to do an angled wall and doorway so now we have to modify. Mike had to add some "scrap" 2x4's and back cut the sheet rock to make this unusual angle work. We got the one side done. Only 3 more to go. Mike got tired of doing small boards with lots of cuts so we decided to put a full bathroom wall up. We are using green board for the entire bathroom which is waterproof. First we had to add some scrap to screw the green board into. Our first board is up. Can anyone see what I forgot? Oh yeah, we have to take that board back down so I can put the insulation in. Oops. We also installed one sheet of green board on the back wall. Thankfully we don't need insulation on that wall. We are really moving along. Mike thinks we will be finished with the "inside" of the house in September. That's good because we need to be out of the motorhome before it gets cold. As usual, we hope you are enjoying our story. Lisa and Mike