The Project That Would Not End!

What a great week! Do you know what it is like to start your day with a smile in your heart each and every day of the week? That is what my week was like as I woke up each morning, turned on the computer and opened our blog just to read those three special words “I was right” That is why I waited two weeks before writing this next post. As it will replace the previous one like it never happened. Oh well, it had to happen sometime and I prolonged it as long as I could…..

But first a picture of Daisy staring down at me from the loft....

What's going on down there?

These past two weeks has been like a movie. Remember the movie Ground Hogs day with Bill Murray where he wakes up every day to the same thing day after day after day. Or how about the saying; “the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”.

Those two things come to mind when I think over our progress on the house the past two weeks. Monday, February 10^th, the day after Kevin and Cheryl left Barb and I got busy with the tongue and groove on the ceiling. The first three days we got up a total of 3 rows. Three rows, 5 inches wide and 38 feet long. To be honest we had more up but we kept ripping it down. We spent almost two frustrating days trying to get the first row straight. The last thing Kevin said before he left was “Make sure the first two rows are dead straight”. So we ran a string line from one end to the other and started putting up the first row. Do you know how hard it is to keep a line of tongue and groove dead straight over 38 feet? Finally on the 3^rd frustrating day I called Kevin and said I am ¼” off over the 38 feet. “Perfect”, he said, “With the variation of the wall, the variation of the tongue and groove, ¼” over 38‘ is pretty darn good, you will never notice it”. So away we went….

Once we got going we were averaging a whopping 1 row per hour. Our patience level was about 4-5 hours and given there are a total of 66 rows total, this is going to take us…. FOREVER! Or at least that is what it seems like.

But before we start to hang it Barb has to varnish and sand each board twice to get the proper sheen on it. But the varnishing is not included in the 1 row per hour scenario. That is done all before we start to hang it.

Why is it taking so long you ask? Well when you are married to a self-admitted over thinker things are bound to take a lot longer than they should. One would think that you put up a board, grab the next one in the stack, and put it up and so on…. No…. Once we put up a board, we have to step back and look at it, admire it and then go through each board in the stack to determine which board would look best next to the one we just put up. Not only the characteristics of the board, but also the color and knot orientation. 

We used a 16ga finish nailer to secure them to the trusses

Once the board was selected Barb had to determine the perfect length of each board and where the seam will be in the entire scheme of things. Painful! Then there is Kevin….. We just can’t put a board up and butt the ends of the boards together. No, we have to make each one pretty by taking a block planer and beveling each of the butt ends so they are nice and pretty. A block planer? Really? Who uses those anymore? Apparently I do, on each and every board. 

I thought I would go my entire life without using a block planer

The perfect bevel

Okay,  maybe it looks better then two straight edges....

I will have to admit, the end result of both the over thinker and the perfectionist is incredible but it will take like… FOREVER!

On day 13 we finally made it to the bathroom wall. A momentous moment as this shortened our ceiling runs but just over 9’ which really sped things up. Once we get to the guest bedroom wall it will shorten it but another 3’ or so!

Almost to the peak!

We did take a couple days off. One day to run to Rapid City and another day because we had some very special visitors. Farmer Bob and DeAnne were in Utah last week on vacation and stopped by on their way back home! This was a very special event as we had not seen them in quite a long time since we did not make it up there at all for our regular spring or fall trips in 2019.

Thanks for stopping guys!

We did not do a whole lot except visit but it was really great to see them.

When we were in Rapid we were able to find a new to us couch and love seat for the living room. We have been looking for a couple of weeks but everything we were finding was either too much, too worn or already sold. But on this day we were in the right place at the right time and drove away with a nice set of furniture. We were really tired of sitting on our camping chairs!

So much more comfortable than our camping chairs!

The weather has been in the 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s in the past two weeks. This fair weather has really brought out the wildlife. Kevin had brought us out a large grass/alfalfa hay bale that the deer absolutely love! 

I put a trail camera up to see who was visiting

Nice little buck showed up the other day

Action shot!

We have a variety of birds visiting our feeders every day; woodpeckers, nuthatches, juncos and chickadees are our most frequent visitors providing for some entertainment and great photo ops. 

Nuthatch

And the turkeys have left their winter range and returned to our area two days ago and now hang out under the bird feeder a couple times a day to pick up the seeds cast aside by some of the messier birds. They are so aggressive they will try and run the deer off. Sometimes it works, sometimes the deer chase them off. 

And sometimes they all get along just fine. 

They certainly are ugly birds!

So if you are wondering what we are up to this week we will be watching the der and turkeys and plugging away on the other side of the ceiling. One board at a time. After time, after time, after time....