Well, I have been at the farm working at work and working on the house. I have only been able to spend about 3-4 hours a day 'cause I am also working at my real job too. I finished the bead board on the porch left side. I also ran the electrical for the two flood lights on the roof corners. I realized I forgot the right side before I put in the bead board and closed in the ceiling area. That caused me to crawl in the roof space to run the cable. Fortunately I remembered the floodlights before I finished the left side, so I ran that cable while I ran the porch lights.

In addition to the bead board, I framed in three of the beams; the left porch front and rear beam and the gable rear beam. I have two more to finish; the front gable beam and the rear right porch beam. After I finish those two I will begin to frame in the gable ceiling. The top photo is a closer shot of the left side bead board and the new beams, plus you can see the electrical wire I ran. Below is a front elevation photo of the porch at this time...you can see the two sections with bead board installed and the new beams. By the way, Tuesday afternoon, the wind kicked up to about 20 mph, so it was fun positioning those 1"X12" 12' facing boards up 10 feet. Reminded me of trying to cross Seawall Blvd. in Galveston with our rented surf boards back in the '60's.

Continued Installing the Bead Board

This table was the most significant accomplishment from this weekend. It resulted in a 300% productivity improvement. That is a pretty good continuous improvement result! (Not bad for a quality guy!) I made the table for two purposes, obviously for a work table, and most importantly to stand on so I can reach the ceiling joist. It took me less than an hour to build the table from scrap wood I had stored in the barn, which made it even better.

Last weekend I spent all day putting up 10 strips of bead board by myself, and as I said earlier, in a 20 mph wind with gust over 40 mph! With a similar wind Saturday, I installed 34 boards to finish the section, plus I roughed in the electrical (wire and boxes) for two ceiling lights. I built the table 42" high so that my spectacular bodacious 6' frame could reach the joists and nail the bead boards. Above is the finished ceiling on the right side. I installed the two ceiling light fixtures and wired them up. That 100 year old bead board will really give the porch some character!

I have the left porch ceiling ready for the bead board now. I added the 12" front beam Sunday and the laths, and then moved all the bead board to the other side of the porch to clean up the work area. But it is ready to go.

Starting the Porch Bead Board Work

This is my work area for this past weekend. I was preparing the porch ceiling joist on the left for the recycled bead board.

A couple of weekends ago, I pressure washed the bead boards and dried them. Using reclaimed lumber (these boards are about 100 years old...you'll see them later) saves money, yet it is time consuming. Removing nails (thanks Garland), cleaning grooves, pressure washing, etc.. I had to put in some 1x3 laths so I could run the bead board front to back. Hard to tell here that the house front is bowed, which would have showed if I ran the boards parallel to the front wall. Heck, it's just more wood, labor and expense, but you might as well do it right.



You can see the lath work in the picture above. Also in that picture you can see the reclaimed bead board...they are the white, green and blue boards on the ceiling. All of this work is at 10' 8" high. Saturday and Monday I got to work in winds gusting up to 40-45 mph. The wind was blowing my ladder over when I wasn't on it to weight it down. Guess I need some sand bags next time.

Now then, about that guy below. He (?) watched me Saturday, Sunday and Monday. All day he sat watching me. I guess he thought between the wind, my age and the power equipment, he just might get lucky...



...I am just glad he was patient and didn't want to make his dinner!

Indoor Plumbing Added

Construction on the old farm house has begun. Kenny came up to put in the "indoor plumbing" this last week. He installed all the rough plumbing, including the drain pipe to the septic system and supply hot and cold lines. He did a really good job, although, working by himself under the house probably ate his lunch with a 30 mph wind chewing on him.

I didn't take pictures of the trench, but I rented a DitchWitch 1030 trencher on Veterans Day. Kenny and I dug a 60 foot trench for the new 1" supply line to the house. I think we found every rock there was. The small rocks were no problem, but there were old foundation limestone pads and sections of the old septic system. One rock was so large, we had to alter our straight line path to the water source.

Saturday, Kenny finished setting the toilet and bathtub in the small bath. Yeah, this isn't part of the roughing, but we were concerned about enough room for the lavatory, toilet and tub, so we laid it all out (well, Kenny did). He did a great job setting it all in too! After he turned on the water to the house, we checked for leaks and also, flushed the toilet! Yea!! We had a couple of small leaks that required tightening, but every thing looks like it is working great! This really gets me excited to get started on completing this project.

Next up is to close in the front porch I built a couple of years ago. (OK, I didn't procrastinate on this, there was this thing called Ike and few other issues that took over my life.) I digress, Saturday I went into the barn to locate the old bead board I saved from this house so I could recycle it. I was surprised how much I had, so it will save me quite a bit of $$$. I may not have enough to do the entire 500 sq. ft., but it should come close!

First Entry

This is my first entry in my blog, so who the heck knows where it will go. I plan to use the blog mostly in the new year as I begin semi-retirement when I plan to finish building our farm house at Withering Pear. Counting down the days for when this begins, although the house building may be delayed a month or so due to the cold weather in North Bell County.

Down at the bottom of the page, I have included a slide-show of my photos I have uploaded to my Flickr pages. Hope you enjoy them. All for now, I'll check back later!