Ded Dawgs

Just wanted to share some cute pictures of the dogs in various "ded" poses.

Elais says, "I'm not getting up yet and you can't make me."

Elias has gone belly-up - he's ded for sure! (Note: he's really just trying to get someone to rub his belly)

Even guardian dogs like Anie must sleep sometime. I'm just not sure how many of them sleep upside-down in the ded dawg pose.

Reba: not quite ded, but displaying near-perfect ear floppage.

My personal favorite - the night of the living ded - "vampire dog" edition.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled house blog.

Update on Anie

A number of you sent e-mail congratulating us on adopting Anie, our Great Pyrenees guardian dog. Unfortunately, we did not have a chance to introduce her to our chickens the night we got her, and the chicken's yard area didn't get locked that night. I'm sure you can see where this is going - the next morning when I went out to feed Anie and the chickens, only to find her standing over four dead chickens.

I have to say, it was one of the most horrible moments of my life, and my husband's as well. Here we had invited an animal into our home to guard, and instead she had killed our pet chickens. The chickens were still warm, so it had just happened, and one of them was still slightly alive. My husband ended up having to drown that one to end her suffering, which was just awful. The kids were absolutely devastated, and there was immediate discussion as to whether or not to keep Anie.

In the end, we decided that the chicken incident was probably our fault. We left the gate unlocked, and she simply pushed her way in. We didn't lock the coop (we normally don't) so the chickens didn't have any protection. We also didn't introduce them because it was night and the chickens were asleep. Anie seemed to think that they weren't supposed to be there, so she took care of them. As soon as I saw her, I told her "NO!" and she immeditely left them and looked chagrined. And in general, she's such a sweet girl it's really inconcievable that she would hurt something unless she thought she was supposed to do it - she is a guardian dog after all, and it's her job to take care of anything that's not supposed to be in her territory.

So, we decided to keep her and introduce her properly to chickens. First, we had to get several more chickens, so we found someone who was selling older laying hens on Craigslist and picked up 5 of them (as an aside, they're really laying well!). We also got some younger "nuggets" who will be our next batch of layers. Over the last week, we've gradually been introducing her to both sets of hens, mostly by holding them up to her and letting her sniff them.

Generally, Anie doesn't like to come in the house. However, we've lured her in a few times to groom her. Here the hubby is keeping all three dogs occupied with bits of cheese. Attentive dogs!

Surprisingly, Anie is not that much bigger in size than Elias is. However, she seems to be broader in her body and is definitely much, much poofier! We're not sure how much she weighs though, but we're planning to take her to the vet this weekend.

Anie after her second grooming. The mats are almost gone, except for a few on her haunches which are very hard to get at because she spends so much time sitting or lying down.

For the past week, we've kept the new chickens in their yard. We've shown them to Anie daily and introduced them as friends. She's sniffed them but was otherwise uninterested. We took her into the yard, supervised, and she watched them a bit but was otherwise more interested in being petted. So far, so good.

Today, we let the chickens out into the main part of the backyard and supervised Anie while she was out with them. Again, she wasn't very interested, and after we went back in the house, took up her customary spot on the back deck.

Chickens getting closer. Anie continues to do her imitation of a doormat.

Still getting closer. Not very interested.

Anie looks mildly interested that a chicken is on her doormat.

All five chickens in close proximity to the Poofy White Doormat. Doormat seems completely uninterested.

The chickens were out for the afternoon and the entire time, Anie layed quiescently on the deck. When the chickens got close, she watched them, but didn't make any moves toward them. Eventually they put themselves to bed in their coop and Anie reminded us it was time for her dinner. We locked the chickens in their yard for the night but will let them out in the morning for some more supervised time with her. However, overall, it seems like a very successful introduction and we are hopeful that Anie will turn out to be a good chicken guardian.

During the last week, we've gotten to know her quite a bit. She's only barked once, a deep "WOOF" sound, immediately after which we heard a loud rustling sound in the woods behind our house - so something was back there and she was letting it know not to come any closer. She doesn't get excited when the dogs on either side of our house attack the fence - unlike Elias, she just ignores them. She spends most of her nights in her bed in our shed, apparently keeping watch. During the day, she likes to lay on the doormat by the back door. She spends so much time there, we've taken to calling her the Poofy White Doormat. Certainly she just looks like a big lump of fur!

She's a sweet, sweet girl and likes her pets, but has no interest in running with the other two dogs. She nearly always lays on her right side, I think because there's something not quite right in her right hip or right leg. She's stiff when getting up, but she can bound around if she wants to. I think she may be older than the 6.5 years she was advertised as being, but we'll know for sure when we take her to the vet. Even if she is older, that's OK... she's a good introduction to the breed.

So right now, it looks like she'll be staying with us. Please keep your fingers crossed that she continues to guard the chickens, because we'd really, really like her to become a permanent member of our family!

Fun (haha) with plumbing

Over the holidays, we were gone visiting family and had turned off the water to the house and drained the pipes. A big part of why we chose to turn the water off was because we weren't certain that we had done the plumbing for the bathroom fixtures correctly and didn't want them to leak while we were gone. We ended up leaving the water off until yesterday, which turned out to be a good thing because last week we had three days of weather where it didn't get above freezing. We had three friends with burst pipes, but both of our houses came through just fine.

Or so we thought. Today, we had turned on the water to mix mortar and whatnot, and things seemed fine. About 30 minutes later, the husband was showing his sister (who is in town visiting) and her SO around the property, and they happened to include a tour of the guest house... where he found water fountaining from under the kitchen sink. Awesome! Apparently, even though we had turned off the water to the house and drained the pipes there, we didn't drain the water in the pipes in the guest house. With the freezing temperatures, a pipe had burst somewhere in the wall behind the kitchen sink. We quickly turned off the water to the house again and decided to deal with the mess later. After all, we plan to gut the kitchen in the guest house sooner or later - with the termite damage in the walls and the floor with the impressive topography, we expect to have quite a lot of work to do there. I guess we'll be replacing the plumbing there too. Sigh. We also want to install a cutoff valve for the guest house water so that we can shut it off independently of the main house. Of course, first we have to FIND where the water comes into the guest house first...

Back at our current house, we had a rather nasty backup in the kitchen sink drain. After pulling out the p-trap and finding nothing, we got out the toilet plunger and went to town. One of the kiddos helped the hubby while he plunged.

One technique - using a toilet plunger to unclog your drain.

Although we eventually got the sink to drain, we discovered about 5 minutes later that it had backed up into the laundry area in the garage. We had nasty, disgusting gunk from the drain all down the wall where the laundry drain is and under the washing machine. The husband and I spent the next half-hour cleaning up the muck and hosing out the garage. Fortunately, the nastiness didn't spread too far in the garage, but it was still really gross. Unfortunately, our garage still stinks and so does our backyard where we hosed everything out. We've put out vinegar and sprinkled baking soda everywhere, so hopefully the stench will clear up soon.

I believe out next trip to Home Depot may include the purchase of a pipe snake so we can finish fixing the clog. The sink drains, but it's still not totally right. Oh well, I guess we'll add amateur plumbing to our list of talents!

Houston, we have tile

Friday, our friend Alexis and his wife very kindly came from Houston for a day to help us get started with the tile in the house. Since the hubby and I had never tiled before, we were pretty hesitant to get started, but Alexis has done a bunch of tile and has all the accouterments, so he offered to show us the tricks of the trade.

The day started at Lowe's, where we realized that the tile the kids had picked out for their bathroom would be way too dark for the size of their bathroom. We quickly picked out another option and hoped that the kids would be OK with it. We went with an 18 inch tile instead of the 12 inch because apparently bigger tile is more "in" these days. We also snagged mortar and tile spacers for the job.

Once at the house, we started by cutting a single tile in half diagonally, since we were doing a diagonal lay. Despite all the tile books saying to start in center of the room and tile outward, Alexis assured us that in such a small space, you could start along one corner and work your way from there. So we started out in the back right corner, by the toilet, and worked from there.

After cutting the first half-tiles, we marked where we needed to cut out on the tile to fit around the toilet. Alexis showed the husband how to use his amazing water-cooled tile cutter, and holy cow is that thing cool! It makes really quick work of cutting tiles, both in straight lines and in curves. We cut and fit the first two half-pieces, then worked on toward the whole pieces around the toilet. We put spacers in between each piece as we went, and cut each tile to fit as we went.

Drawing a line on the tile as a guide for cutting it in half.

The husband with the tile saw. Having the right tools makes this job SO much easier. Thank you Alexis for loaning this stuff to us!

Halfway done cutting and fitting the tile.

After we cut every tile for the bathroom, we moved the entire thing to another room and reassembled it on the floor.

T. mixing the mortar (women with power tools... be VERY afraid!)

First two corner tiles laid and mortared in. You can see how we had to cut bits out so that they would fit around the toilet.

We also ended up putting in marble trim around the tub to make the transition from tub to eventual tile surround. We chose to do this in part because of the fairly large gap between the backerboard and the tub itself.

You can see the marble transition better here.

An embarrassing picture of me laying tile. Fortunately it's not entirely a "plumber" pic, otherwise it would not be appearing on this blog.

The finished product. It's starting to look like a real bathroom!

We still have a lot of work to do on the bathroom - putting in the grout, running the wiring for the lights, putting up the drywall, tiling the tub, etc., but this is really a huge step toward having a usable bathroom. It's very exciting!

It's sort of like an Amazon rain forest in here...

Last Thursday, which happened to be the Worst Day in Recent History (more on that later), the husband arrived at the house mid-afternoon to find it raining in the attic.

I should note that it wasn't raining outside, no, this impressive little indoor rainstorm was created by the combination of the near-freezing temperatures outside and the fact that our furnace vent doesn't - it merely stops an inch below the roof decking, letting all the nice, warm, humid air into our attic. Which of course then condensed on the decking, causing a little localized weather system reminiscent of the Amazon rain forest.

Remember this picture? That's our furnace pipe on the right, the roof decking all around, and the metal plate covering the hole where the pipe should exit to the exterior.

Now, I know, you're wondering why we didn't fix this back in November when we realized it was a problem - actually, we were wondering this too as we watched water drip from the attic. We had planned to do so, as part of installing the new metal roof. Needless to say, we haven't gotten to the new metal roof yet, so the venting issue hadn't been fixed. However, the rainstorm in the attic gave us a certain motivation to fix the problem, post-haste. We took the coward's way out and called our roofer. Best $75 we have spent so far.

Several hours and two trips to the hardware store later, we were the proud owners of a properly-venting furnace. Here's the sheet of metal that the roofer ripped out:

That flimsy bit of metal was all that was covering a fairly sizable hole in the roof where the furnace should have vented. It's almost rusted through.

And here is our beautiful new vent:

I know, it doesn't look like much, but there was a nice, steady poof of steam coming through the vent when I took this picture.

It's amazing the little things like a proper furnace vent that make you happy when you're dealing with a renovation project of this magnitude. And hey, now it only rains in the attic when it's raining outside!

The Ford Diesel Truck Convention

Today was extremely productive, although this is going to be another short post because, once again, I'm too tired to write something longer. Many thanks to Fuzzypony for helping us out again today!

Today was a truck-filled day. We used both our truck and Fuzzypony's (THANK YOU for the loan!) for everything - I have no idea what people do without big diesel trucks!

First, we unloaded Sean's new toy that we picked up yesterday (with Fuzzypony's truck) - an early 1990's model Craftsman GT 6000 garden tractor. It's not pretty, but it works well, has a 44 inch mowing deck and top speed is something like 20 mph. I shudder to think of the kids driving a riding lawnmower at 20 mph around the property... eek!

Note the maniacal grin. Good thing that's not a real tractor... ;)

Just after we finished that, the guy came to deliver the round pen we purchased. We got a good deal on the panels, and they're really versatile, so it seemed like a good thing to buy. More on that later.

Next, we took a load of roofing materials to the city dump. It looks like we have about another half-load of stuff to go, but we can handle that later in the week. We also talked to the local handyman, who agreed to haul all the metal off to the dump tomorrow. It's worth a little money to recycle it (about $6.50 per 100 lbs), but considering how much time it would take us to do it, we figured we're better off having someone do it for us and get the money instead.

Then, Fuzzypony and I took both trucks and picked up mulch for the sacrifice paddock for the horses. While we were doing that, the husband took his angle grinder and cut down the 6 metal posts that were all that was left of the carport demo. The carport is now entirely, completely gone, except for one load of trash and the bits we are saving to reuse. We still need to patch the places where the posts were, but it's done!

When we got back, we spent the next hour unloading and spreading the mulch we'd picked up.

Looks like an advertisement for Ford Diesel Trucks!

Fuzzypony unloading mulch to put it under the shed.

With the truck empty, we picked up the panels from near the front gate where they were dropped off and hauled them out back.

Check it out! Sacrifice paddock has been built!

It's starting to look like horses should live here, don't you think?

We still need to run the electric fence, install water troughs and feed buckets, and a few more things, but it's almost ready for the horses!

Weird picture of the day - Fuzzypony ran over this wrench with our magnetic sweeper, then ran over some metal shavings from where the husband cut down the carport poles with his angle grinder. The wrench was magnetized and the metal shavings stuck to it!

Carport demo

This is going to be a short post because I'm tired, but I really wanted to get it up because we FINISHED THE CARPORT DEMO!!!

The carport had to come down so we could get the electrical fixed - to make a long story short, electric lines from the pole can't go over a roof. Ours went over the second carport, and so it had to come down. We had planned on removing the carport eventually, but not quite so soon. However, we want to get the electrical stuff handled before we move in, and our electrician is available starting next Wednesday, so we had to do it now.

So, in pictures, the story of the carport demo.

The husband... on a mission... with a roofing shingle scraper. He tackled the back part of the carport first.

We tried both scraping the shingles and then removing the decking, and just removing the decking with the shingles still on. Here you see part of the front of the roof has been removed.

Whew! All the decking is off. You can see the power lines that we had to work around just over the husband's head. (And notice those sexy coveralls that he's wearing! Santa sure knows what to bring a guy who's remodeling a house!)

After the shingles and decking were gone, we started removing the joists under the decking. These boards are 2x6x16, so we saved them. We're hoping to use them on the new barn, when we get to that.

Using a 2x4 that we'd already removed to push down the last section of the roofing.

Tools in action!
See that enormous beam going across the entire picture? Turns out it was held up with three nails. It made a rather loud crashing noise when it came down... and the husband was triumphant!

One more to go... the perimeter of the carport was constructed of 6 4x10x12 cedar beams. We're saving the beams to use in the new barn. We're also saving the decking from the ceiling of the carport for roof decking for the addition, since it's 3/8 in. plywood in excellent condition.

And... it's gone! Well, not entirely... we still have to take down the metal support posts and patch the driveway, but that can wait.

We also have several HUGE piles of materials that have to either be hauled off to the dump or disassembled further and stacked. We have probably 50 2x6x12 or longer white pine boards, not to mention the beams and decking. We're hoping to use it for future projects on the house, because lumber is expensive and we'd just as soon reuse stuff than buy new.

Many, many thanks to both Foxfire and Fuzzypony for their help with everything. Y'all made the demo go so much faster!