Here is a YouTube vid of a quick walk-through of the house.
Now that the entire house is primed, we are preparing for the rest of the paint project. However, here are a few tips about the priming phase: 1: Especially when using a big pump sprayer, you will want to dilute the paint a bit for priming. To do this, you need a couple of empty 5-gallon buckets (no problem, since we did our own mudding and taping). Using the buckets, you will add 2 gallons of water for each 5 gallon bucket of primer. You will pour the water and paint back and forth, mixing the paint and water until […] 
As of Wednesday (May 1st), we have the entire house completely textured and primed… Pantry Walls Textured and primed A few notes about mudding and taping and texturing. We found the buckets of Joint Compound (green mud) to be very convenient to use for banjoing and the first coat of mud. Mixing it well (and adding no water at all) was the key to smooth mud for the banjo and also for using to apply the first coat to screw heads and seams. Early on, we tried adding a bit of water to the mud to make […] 
Early on this spring (before all the night freezes), we had the most beautiful blooms on our Gravenstein apple tree: Gravenstein apple blossoms Gravenstein apple blossoms The trees from Peaceful Valley (with the exception of the fig) are all doing nicely… 
We have been working on the next part of the drywall experience the past two weeks. We began on our own in the garage (which was a good thing). Then, starting on Feb. 28th, we had the help of a professional to get things done right in the main living area of the house. In the past 7 workdays, we have made pretty good progress. We began with patching the heads of the screws on all the sheetrock panels using “green” mud, also known as all-purpose joint compound. Apparently, this stuff is harder (and more difficult to sand) and is […] 
We had a cold front move through the area, with the coldest night being last night… since we’ve been watching the weather forecasts since the bare root trees arrived, we decided to wait until that really cold night was past before planting. I had the trees soaking in water before planting today. I had to clean out the holes again in preparation for planting. It has been so windy, that the holes keep filling up with blowing dirt. Yesterday, I had prepared wells around the tree locations, so things were ready to go. Peaceful Valley was running a special when […] 
We spent a good half day putting in the irrigation system for the garden and orchard. Since we are not in the house, so cannot really use the automatic feature of the system until all the finish plumbing is completed, we will have to manually turn water on to each zone in the meantime. However, it will be nice to have the biggest part of it done early and it does give us a more efficient way of watering trees and garden raised beds until then. We planned the lines so that each zone covers a particular part of either […] 
I got email notice earlier this week that our fruit trees will be here on Saturday! So… preparation of the orchard, including irrigation system, hole-drilling, etc. had to be done. We mapped out where we want the garden beds to be and planned the irrigation system for them and the grape arbor all at the same time. Together, Oz and I measured out where everything would be and tried to design an efficient system of valves and lines. First, we had planned the tree location (photos earlier); now we planned the layout of the raised beds, marking them with stakes. […] 
Being a bit uncertain as to how much time it would take to do these, we decided to hire this part… Having never done it before, and wanting to be very sure the shower pans don’t leak, we got a quote from the same fellow who did the workshop for us before we came here. For three shower pans, he charged $500 for labor (not including materials). In hindsight, we may have overpaid, considering that it took one guy (plus a little time by the boss) one day to do them (and it wasn’t an early start — 10 a.m.). […] 
So… even though the house progress isn’t to the point that we can concentrate on the outside, based on the urgings of a very good friend, we decided to go ahead and start the orchard. Peaceful Valley has a special going on right now on their bare root fruit trees — 10 of them delivered for only $199. Here’s what we ordered: 1 Honey Crisp Apple Tree (Semi-dwarf) 1 Gala Apple Tree (Semi-dwarf) (the gala is a good pollinator for some of the other apple trees that are not self-fertile) 1 Cox`s Orange Pippin Apple Tree (Semi-dwarf) 1 Gravenstein Red […] |