I am pretty well accepted in the area, as I don't look like a revenuer or G man , the very beard and clothing that has so distressed those who have concerns over big city appearances, has made my transition nearly flawless, with the exception of my vocabulary, and funny accent, I fit right in. And I can keep my mouth shut if I need to, It's best to let the other feller chat a bit, so's ya know where ya stand. Now I need a tractor with a three point hitch, and a pickup truck, but they aren't hard to find where I'm going. Things are looking up.
New projects, they are abundant, have to replace two showers, carpet, and door hardware immediately, make plans for immediate (spring) expansion, and get everything moved from two complete households and sell them. So nothing really pressing is in the works at this point. Well, I have to get moving so I can get all this wonderfulness started, and I won't be able to update this, as I'd like, for a while. So check back in a month or so, and see if I survived.
ray...
the happy farmer.
The first project. Roof on the old house.
Due to a leak in the roof on the old house, the ceiling in one of the bedrooms collapsed and continued to leak enough to require buckets and tubs to collect the water. Even though I didn't own it yet, I hate to let deterioration continue. The situation came to the attention of Don Carr "Master Roofer" and Earl Holderfield, "Master Roof Stripper". In one "full bore" day we striped and re roofed the half of the roof on the old house that was damaged, and even created an actual ridge connection between the new shingled roof and the existent steel roof. It's our intent to cover the outside of the house with siding resembling a log cabin. It will be used to house visitors, for a weekend or overnight that come to visit Ruth, or Chris and I, as we are nearly an hour and a half away. Though only 20 minutes off the interstate. Some folks think an hour and a half drive is excessive to visit a family member, but that is another story.
Another little issue is the old house has no heat, it has a rather new Lennox Furnace and air conditioning system, but no source of heat, I mean gas. The large white bottle the LP comes in, is missing. Actually it was intentionally removed. Seems the fellow living here for a while, had a tendency not to pay his bills, or care for anything. Now, not Jim, the fellow I bought it from from, he's a real worker and a great guy, this was a young guy with a similar name. He let many things go, things that were in great shape a couple years ago were really in a state of disrepair in short order. There is an amazing amount of water on this property, it is everywhere. In addition to the three springs there are a variety of wet spots and even some underground sources, I'm thinking might be worth checking out. Anyway, The furnace was so new, I thought there was surely no problem, just get a new gas bottle and fire it up. Well did I mention the ladybug invasion of 2006? At least, that's what it looks like happened in the little house, Lady Bugs everywhere, I swept for days to get them out of the upstairs, and evidently, they were downstairs in similar numbers.
Anyone who knows me, knows I like to figure things out for myself, it's like solving real world puzzles sometimes, to find out "what the heck is the problem" with things that don't work. Kind of why I like computers and such. Anyway, a lady bug was stuck in the" pilot light shield" for the furnace. And the orifice for the pilot light had rusted out. Odd for a thing, whose replacement is made of anodized aluminum, to do really, but it may have had something to do with the bug being encrusted into it .( I had a real time with the tail section of an earwig in the fuel line of my Bobcat but that is a totally different page!) I finally found a furnace place and bought the parts to fix it, and got it running at Midnight on Jan 16th. I also found another little ground water issue, but I think some piping will take care of it real nicely, unfortunately it will have to wait till I get some other things done first.
Keep reading page two follows.....
