More sheet rock finishing today

Ben's moving right along with finishing the sheet rock. When the sheet rock is finished, the only major things that will be left to do are paint the walls and stain the concrete floor.

Except for paint the exterior is finished

Except for painting the south wall & painting around the front door and window/door trim, the outside of our Irish cottage is finished. Ben finished up the stucco trim on the front door this morning and it looks GREAT (click on the picture to enlarge it):He also made some good progress finishing sheet rock in the master bath and the hall:Rather than show you the open plumbing wall again (Howell has to come back tomorrow because he bought a defective part at the plumbing supply and it has to be replaced), I decided to show you a VERY RARE ONE OF A KIND photograph of a plumber in a tuxedo (Howell and his wife Sharon attended a black tie event at St Andrews Sewanee School where he works. Black tie was optional but he and Sharon dressed to the nines and attended... don't they look great!?):Alexis' garden and hanging tomato continue to look healthy, to wit:Here's hoping we can drop the per tomato cost this year from $57.13/each down to somewhere in the $10/each range (Alexis doesn't like for me to tease her about her garden but I can't help my celibate self).

Two steps forward... one step back

Ben, my stucco guy, was having truck problems so he couldn't come today to finish the trim around the front door and continue finishing sheet rock. I worked on my software project with my friend Roger Gertz in the morning and ran some errands in the early afternoon. I planned to meet Howell King - our plumber - late in the afternoon here at the house to hopefully solve a water leak inside the wall behind our infamous Interstate-24 sanded (patent pending) washing machine.
For the last few days Alexis and I had noticed water on the floor coming out from under the washing machine and vanity. Last night we actually saw water FLOWING out from under the sheet rock behind the washing machine when the machine was discharging water. For sometime we had had a sewer gas smell in the utility room and this problem needed to be resolved as well... today was the day.
Howell arrived as scheduled and he began tearing into the wall to find the problem. As time progressed the hole got bigger and bigger. We put the washer in the discharge mode and finally found the leak... water was gushing out of the drain line just beyond the washing machine trap. I was hoping Howell had forgotten to glue a joint or the original PVC pipe was defective or cracked so the repair would be his responsibility.

NO SUCH LUCK!BUMMER!

Yours truly had screwed not ONE but TWO screws into the drain line while attaching the base cabinets to the plumbing wall in the kitchen which backs up to the utility room (with faux pas like this it's no wonder that I was able to perfect a technique to automatically sand home appliances using only the Interstate pavement!).
Soooo... the needed repair is on ME! It was bad enough that it was MY fault but Howell didn't have to gloat about it! Wipe that silly grin off your face, King!Unfortunately he didn't have all the needed parts and will have to come back tomorrow afternoon to finish the plumbing job. Then I have to re-sheet rock behind the washer and the vanity. If it ain't one thing, it's another. The silver lining to this mess is that this repair will solve the sewer gas problem too!

We're ALMOST finished with the exterior

Ben Williams was here today and almost finished the trim around the front door (he still has to "float" the final coat of stucco to complete the job). He wasn't happy with the dining room window so he spent some time squaring it up. I appreciate Ben because he is a stucco pro and is interested in doing a good job. I am fortunate to have found him. Here's the front door:Tomorrow the back (south) wall can be painted as well as the window trim on the front (north) side of the house.
It started raining so Ben came inside and started finishing the sheet rock in the master bath. The window in there needed some major "adjustments" and he got that done before the end of the day as well as starting on two walls.If I can track down Aaron tonight, I'll have him come tomorrow and do the exterior painting. We're getting there... slowly but surely.

Next we'll paint the textured stucco

Here are some photos of the stuccoed and textured south (back) wall. Next we'll paint the wall "Dove Gray" to match the other three walls (eventually we'll build a deck in front of the door and windows looking south out into our woods):Note the 3' overhang on this south wall. It was part of my passive solar design to block the summer sun which is higher in the sky than the winter sun. The winter sun is lower in the sky and shines directly in the windows and heats the concrete floor and air. I was really happy with how well my simple design worked to keep the house toasty warm last winter.Ben also got the trim attached around the front door (AAC block strips and styrofoam). Tomorrow he'll put the first coat of stucco on the trim.Here is a close-up photo of one of the front windows (north wall). A coat of "Dove Gray" paint will touch-up the wall around the window while the trim will be painted stark white (the blue is masking tape).After Ben gets the trim stuccoed we'll move inside and start finishing the sheet rock. Slowly but surely we'll get the house finished.

Gettin' close to wrapping up the stuccoing

Today was an absolutely "GREAT-to-be-alive-day" here in middle Tennessee... mid-70s, clear blue sky and spring-time GREEN everywhere ("Tennessee put the double "e" in GREEN!).
Ben Williams got in a full day of stuccoing today and got more than half of the south wall finished. He told me he could have probably finished if his helper wasn't so dad-burn lazy (ME). I suspect he'll finish this back wall the next nice day which will probably be Friday. He also is trimming out the front door with the 2" X 4" AAC block strips. It will most likely rain tomorrow so I'll bring him in to begin finishing the sheet rocking. Here's a picture of him stuccoing this afternoon:
Here's what he got finished today:
Here's what he has done on the front door trim:Yesterday Ben finished up the front windows. I bought the WHITE masonry paint for the trim this afternoon at Home depot. I think it's going to look GREAT when it's finally painted and the flower beds/climbing roses are in.
Boone-hoond is a really great "little red dog" ("little" as opposed to Baxter, our "VLD" - "Very Large Dog"). He's well-behaved and HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY! He and Mosby love to curl up in these Coleman-type fold-up chairs... here is Boone-dog yawning in his chair:My VERY talented friend John Ladd came by this afternoon and measured our south windows for screens (the north windows came with screens). With the exception of 10 or so days this summer, I don't think we'll need the window air conditioner at night with the windows open.

"Tie me kangaroo (washer) down, sport"

On Thursday afternoon I drove to McMinnville, Tennessee, a picturesque little middle-Tennessee town, which is located about 40 miles from Sewanee to purchase a new washing machine for our Irish cottage. Our "magic box" had given up the ghost and I needed to get us a more reliable machine than the one we were using (I called it the magic box because it didn't have an agitator and I was NEVER able to quite figure out how it washed the clothes... if I opened the lid while it was washing and tried to peek in to see what was going on, the machine INSTANTLY stopped?).
Back to my story... I ended up buying an almost new Kenmore repo for $300 less than retail... it WAS a beautiful machine with ALL the bells & whistles ("WAS" being the operative word). Before I got to McMinnville I stopped by my friend Tink Driver's salvage yard on "Possum Paw Road" and bought two 4' X 8' sheets of 3/4" plywood which wouldn't allow me to close the tailgate of the truck (before retirement Tink had been a VP for Reader's Digest... interesting guy... I'll write about his "dirt overcoat" and 15 Corvettes some other time).
We loaded the machine onto the plywood and pushed it tight against the cab/back window. They suggested that I tie it down but "Mr Know-it-all" declined, thinking it would ride safely right there. Twenty-five minutes later while speeding down I-24 at 75 miles per hour in HEAVY interstate traffic, I looked in my rear view mirror and watched the washer shoot out the back of the truck into an oncoming $50,000 Infinity automobile followed closely by a cavalcade of 18 wheelers also going 75 MPH (why couldn't it have been a $200 1962 Ford Fairlane?). I watched in horror as the machine slid down the pavement at 75 MPH with sparks shooting out in every direction. The good Lord had his hand on me because the Infinity was able to stop on a dime and actually pushed the washer off the road onto the shoulder like a bull dozier. The big trucks changed lanes without slowing down and what could have been a catastrophe was averted! PTL!
I checked with the lady in the Infinity to see if she was alright... she was and drove off looking a little annoyed. I spent the next 20 minutes picking up broken pieces on both sides of the east bound Interstate.
Baxter, my Cedar-Crest-Velvet-Earred-Nucklehead, was with me and he would have helped me lift the washer into the back of the truck if he had had thumbs. I was able to get it back on by myself (adrenalin I guess?)... and tie it down this time.
Looking for a silver lining to my Thursday afternoon cloud, I realized that I had developed and perfected a new way to sand down the front of any kitchen appliance in preparation for repainting. Just get a friend to push the subject appliance out the back of the truck at 75 MPH.
Actually the story has a relatively happy ending. I took the washer back to McMinnville Friday and the appliance guy fixed the machine for free and tested it while I waited (I offered to pay him but he was having too much fun making jokes about my misfortune). I thought I'd contact Whirlpool (Kenmore) to see if they'd like to buy my story as a testimony to the durability of their appliances. Here's the washer after I repainted it:

Our Tanks Arrived this Morning

Our two 1,600 gallon potable water tanks arrived this morning (3,200 gallons total). We intend to begin collecting rain water off our roof for future use as a backup system in the event of TEOTWAWKI ("the end of the world as we know it"). My good friend Jerry Hawkins helped me off load the two tanks from the 18 wheeler's 48' van. Following Jerry's lead and his good old boy common sense allowed both tanks to be off loaded in 10 minutes. They are approximately 6' tall and 7.5' in diameter. The dark green color discourages alge growth although you have to add a little bleach periodically to kill the critters that will grow. We will filter our drinking water through our British Berkfeld ("Big Berky") ceramic filter... the one I bought during y2k (false alarm but otherwise instructive).I need to prepare the pad next to the west wall of the house so the tanks will have a level and smooth place to sit (I'll hide them behind a 6' stockade fence). Next I have to tie the gutters into PVC pipe and connect it to the respective fittings at the top of each tank which will allow the rain water to flow into the tank. Fortunately, I was able to buy the bulk of the stuff I need to tie the gutters into the PVC pipe this afternoon at Home Depot. Next I'll need to hook up a pipe to the bottom of each tank and run it underground into the house where it will be tied into our home's existing plumbing system. I'll pressurize the water with a pump run by a small solar panel/battery setup. It would have been nice to have a creek or a pond on our property but this will suffice if the facets run dry.
Alexis continues to work hard in her square foot gardens. I built her 3 more 4' X 4' boxes last week which still have to be filled with dirt, compost and COARSE vermiculite (the capitalization of COARSE is an inside joke between us about last year's small crop of $57.13/each tomatoes... expensive but tasty). Speaking of tomatoes here is this year's attempt to grow a tomato plant upside down in a contraption that looks like this. It's hard to see in this picture but the tomato plant is growing out a hole in the bottom.