Chapter 38...Bedroom Ceiling Tile

Off Grid...Chapter 38 Monday 11-24 When we got up this morning there was a red squirrel right outside our front door. Mike and I love it that we have so many animals at this property. It is really awesome to see so many kinds of animals here. I want to start getting better pictures. We drove into town to look for some pictures for our bare walls. Mike pointed out why we have so much wall space. One we have 10 foot ceilings and two we have no windows. I forgot about that fact. We stopped at the Cabin Shop and we found a nice picture with bears but we didn't like the frame and it couldn't be changed. Next we tried the frame shop and they had nothing that we could use. Oh well. It looks like this is going to be harder than shopping for furniture. Tuesday 11-25 We have been having some really dreary weather so Mike and I have become highly unmotivated. Mike started working on some of the cracks in our drywall. The cracks come from the settling and also the shrinkage of the joint compound(spackle). In order to repair the cracks first you have to scrape it out. Then you fill it with spackle. And smooth it out. Now we have to wait for it all to dry. If we are lucky we paint over it. If it shrinks more we will have to add more spackle, wait for that to dry, spackle again, and then paint. Later that day we got a call from Mike's daughter, Nicole. She just got my Christmas gift in the mail and she wants to bring it over. Nicole is both excited and nervous about her gift. She's not sure if I will like it. She gets to the house and she gives me her gift while we are sitting at the table. I open it and I realize it's a book. I look at the cover and see a nice view and then I scan down and look at the author. It's my name. Oh my gosh- this is so cool. I open the cover to see what she has done. Nicole has taken all of the chapters that I have written and all of my pictures and made them all into a book. I cannot believe she has done all of this work for me. I "know" this has taken her many, many hours to do and most likely it took her weeks. The book is part one because we are not finished with our story yet. This is to Nicole. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. This is the sweetest and most thoughtful gift I have ever received. Mike had hogged the book from the time Nicole left. I have "never" seen Mike read a book. This is a first. Wednesday 11-26 We are scheduled to get our glass transoms by UPS today. Woo Hoo. UPS usually gets here in the afternoons so we left the gate open and ran to David's. We wanted to pick up some corn for the deer and also look at some bird feeders. We think it would be awesome to get some deer and birds closer to the house. I say this know. When I do my garden next year I'll be trying to keep them away. We got the corn but no bird feeder. Now if we can just keep the cows away from the corn. We waited all day for UPS. I checked the tracking and it looks like the driver decided to go home. We never got the package. They didn't even try to deliver it. Thursday 11-27 It's Turkey day. I spent most of the day prepping and cooking. It is wonderful to have a regular oven that I can cook a whole turkey in. Yeah! Friday 11-28 Ok, we've done nothing all week. Today we are going to start working on our bedroom ceiling. First we take the mattress and box spring out of the bedroom so we have more room to work. We will be working around the rest of the furniture. We start out by putting the perimeter track in. The first tiles are in. Mike is putting the light in. We are done installing the "full" tiles. Finally, a good and productive day. Saturday 11-29 Mike will be spending the day cutting the tiles for the bedroom. We centered the tiles in the bedroom so he has to cut all the tiles along both sides and the back wall. That's a lot of cutting and then he also has to do the angles. Mike got all the angled tiles in above our door. The bedroom ceiling is complete. We have been online looking for a new camera. We would like something a little better to take long range pictures and also have the capability to be made into large prints. We have been reading reviews at Amazon and it is so confusing. Mike and I are really settling into the house. We don't leave here much. We really like our little world on top of our mountain. We have no idea what goes on outside and we like it that way. We have been relaxing and we started playing cards again. We haven't had the time to do that in a long time. It's nice to be able to relax again. That's all for this week. I hope you enjoyed.  Lisa

Chapter 36...Installing Ceiling Tile, Lights, & Floor Trim

Off Grid...Chapter 36 This was a slower week for us because 1. the weather wasn't the best and 2. we were just plain sorry. So here we are. Chapter 36 Monday 11-10 This morning we continued to work on our ceiling tile. We were doing really good "until" we got to the middle of the room. Uh oh. We realized we were off center by 3 inches. Not good. This is what happens when you have never done things before. Needless to say this did not put Mike in a good mood. First we had to figure out why this happened and then fix it. We pre measure everything so it should have been fine. It turns out that the "true middle" of the main 12 foot grid doesn't have a slot for the cross T. It is off 3 inches. Well there's our 3 inches. Mike had to take all 11 tiles and all the grid down and we had to start over. This time we started hanging the grid in the middle of the room. Then I handed Mike the tiles and he installed them. Mike is re-doing the ceiling. Installing the tile. And. Up to the fireplace and we are centered, yeah! This ended up being an all day project because of all the delays. We got up to the third row in our main living area. Tuesday 11-11 We started working on the next section of tile. Mike and I now have a system so it is a little easier. First Mike and I put 2 ladders up about 10 feet apart. Then we each carry an end of the 12 foot main grid up the ladder. I hold my end in place and Mike connects his end to the truss. The main track is up. Mike installs our first light into the ceiling. First he puts a screw into the truss, ties a wire around the screw, and connects the other end of the wire to the main grid and levels it. Then he snaps in the cross tees every 2 feet. He works his way down to me, I get off the ladder, and start handing him ceiling tile to put in place. It goes very fast when we have no tile cuts. We got all of our lights up in the main living area. We have 12 x 36 feet of tile installed and our living area looks huge. We ran out of ceiling grid so we can't finish the room until we buy more material. It was a very busy day. Poor Mike his legs are killing him from climbing up and down ladders all day. I e-mailed our order in for the glass transoms above our doors. I ordered 3 different etchings. One with deer, one with turkeys, and one with bears. It will take 2-3 weeks for us to get the order. I can't wait. It should look awesome. Wednesday 11-12 Ah, look who's at the fence. It's Mo, Larry, and Curly. Today we had to go to the dump and do the grocery shopping. That was the excitement for the day. Since we are out of main grid for the house and Mike didn't want to cut any tiles we took the rest of the day off. Thursday 11-13 Oh what a sorry day. The weather isn't very nice so we stayed in and did absolutely no work.. Friday 11-14 It still isn't nice out but Mike started working on the floor trim. He measured each piece and then went outside to make all the cuts using the miter saw. Then he used the trim screws to screw the trim to the wall. Getting the trim up. Now for the tough part. He has to make all those crazy angle cuts for our angled doors. And they look good. Now we have to fill in the screw holes and do some touch up with paint. Mike called about the rest of out furniture. It is in so we are going to have to make another dreaded trip to Hickory NC to pick it all up. Again we have to wait for a nice dry day. Saturday 11-15 Oh, what a yucky day. It's rainy and windy out. This has not been a good week for work or solar. So far we have enough electric to run the "important" things like lights, TV, and Internetbut we aren't pushing it. On a sunny day, so far, our 12 solar panels produce about 9 kWh. The past couple of days we are producing 1-2 kWh. I have no idea what the wind generators are producing. My computer was out this morning. My satellite stand actually sank into the ground because it was so saturated from all the rain. Mike had to move the satellite dish and re-align it. Ah, I have the Internet again. Mike's a good guy. We did some more cleaning and organizing around the house. Mike also installed my under the cabinet light in the kitchen. Little by little it's starting to feel like a home. Sunday 11-16 It snowed last night. Yuk. We aren't having any luck with the weather to go and get supplies. We put a thermometer outside and it is 30 degrees out. Inside we are at a steady 62 degrees with no heat. Woo hoo. How cool is that? We were a little concerned about the electric situation this morning because right before bed last night our lights dipped into "red", not good. That means we are very low on power. But we got lucky because we had a very windy night and the wind generators were doing great. Today the lights are between yellow and green(ok) and double green(great). We always have the back up generator but we are really trying not to use it although I think at some point it will be inevitable. Mike started cutting and installing the ceiling tile for the edge of the living room. He got all the cuts done and the living room is complete, at least as much as we can do without more material. That was our week in the Mike and Lisa world. I hope you all enjoyed our story and I will write again next Monday. Have a great week. Lisa