Fire Protection and Preparing to Build Days 60 – 120

May 1 – June 30

Ok.  So I have heard it from all directions may times:  “Get your act together, sit down, and write a damn update on your blog!”  To that I say:  Thanks!  Sometimes I just need a major kick in the ass (or 10).

So it is nearly 4 months since my last update.  Geeze, I’m getting worse, not better.  I don’t believe in excuses so I won’t give any.  I just didn’t take the time to blog.

As you can see from the title and dates, this post won’t get you up to date, but will cover half the time since my last post and I will try to follow this one up in a few days with a second post.  I spent much of yesterday evening and part of this evening gathering photos and getting them uploaded to the site here for inclusion in the blogs.

I really didn’t get much done in May, so not much to blog about.  I think this blog post will primarily be photo’s with associated commentary and will close with a number of lessons learn that you may find humorous (mostly due to my sheer stupidity).

One afternoon I walked over to Boyd’s for a visit.  Being spring, there were a lot of things in bloom so I snapped a number of photos as I went.  Enjoy.

 

 

 

That is all four walls.  Ready to stucco, right?  Welllll… maybe not.  Watching youtube videos on stuccoing got me nervous.  Chances are, I wasn’t going to do it right.  That is fine.  Not doing it right will certainly lead to wall failure and need to repair.  Good to learn.  But to what end in this case?  Where else on my property do I plan on stuccoing over wood?  Answer:  No where.  Note I said “plan” so that could change in the future.  Soooo….. What might I do instead that would be fairly quick so I can move onto building the utility building?  Metal…  So back to Sierra Vista for supplies.

They didn’t have the metal siding that I wanted to use in stock, but they had corrugated metal roofing.  Good enough for my purposes.

 

Question:  Did it occur to you that I wasted days filling in the gaps between the boards so I could stucco only to turn around and install metal sheeting instead?  It did me.  Oh well.  Having all those boards installed made it easy to put up the paneling as I didn’t really have to worry a whole lot about whether or not there was a board behind the panel to screw into.  I just picked a spot that looked good to screw and screwed it in with very few misses.  That small consolation which saved me an hour or two at most makes me feel (slightly) better about spending days putting up those boards.

I took a few days in the month of June to visit with family in Michigan in the wake of a death in the family.  While it would have been nicer to visit under better circumstances, it was still really great seeing everyone again.  Will be back in Michigan in December for about two weeks so there will be more time to make the rounds and visit with friends in addition to family.  Might have to pay for an extra suitcase for extra clothing so we don’t freeze while we are there.  🙂

And now for a few more lessons learned (all of which I had forgotten to share in the last post).

When you are working outside around here (especially around the wood chipper) and need to sit on the ground for what ever reason, make sure you take the time to clear the ground where you are going to sit of mesquite thorns.  Jeans do nothing to stop them and they really hurt when you get one in your ass.

Don’t nature pee up hill – especially when wearing crocks.

When you are really fatigued, you are outside, it is breezy, you are all alone with no one around,  you need to pee, and you are contemplating taking a nature pee:  Don’t!  Your tired and mindless ass won’t take into account what direction the wind is blowing and you will piss all over yourself.

With that TMI, I’ll end here.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll try to get another post out Sunday.

Time to go blend the dog food then off too bed.

Night all!

Cary