Whats up? Chicken Butt?

Its a long weekend and we did not go to the cabin :( poor swood... we will be there soon S-wood but right now we had some things at home we needed to get off our plate... such as... *insert cool music*
THE COOP!!

Yes folks, it is almost done, the outdoor pen is just about completed... Thought we would share the progress with you! I will be interested to see if the girls know enough to go into their coop when it gets dark, we are about 45 minutes away from that moment. I may find myself running around trying to shoo the chickens up the tube. Who knows but if I do, it will be pretty funny regardless.


Thats the new chicken tube. Came right out of Dave's head. I am really pleased with how it came out. We were not even done and the chickens started walking in the tube.

Whats up



Chicken butt

Coopy-wood

Come on, that's funny! I can't take the credit for the title but I still chuckle over it every time I think about it. Ah yes, the point of my story. When I posted earlier I was fretting over the possibility of the new chicken coop being 800s.f. I am here to tell you however, that this is not going to be an issue. Dave and I were discussing today all the necessities of the coop, electricity for light and possible heat, perches, nesting boxes, etc. You name it and we were talking about it. I think all this enthusiasm over raising animals stems partly from learning to take care of ourselves and being more self sustained, but part also goes to boredom.

Funny thing about all this conversation today is that this whole time that we have been trying to design the coop, there was actually an already made (but needs work) coop in our back yard that we are already paying taxes on! Oh sure, it isn't technically a coop but it could be and much faster than building from scratch!! It needs repair work and rearranging and it desperately needs airing out, although I doubt that the chickens will care much, but its a good size and its already here. Its Dave's playhouse that he used to play in as a child.

All of our research was not made in vain mind you... we have to build a Coopywood at Shmoopywood.... *couldn't resist.

So here she is... Coopywood




(where would we be without a gratuitous "Lisa" shot :)

The door that didn't fit

It has been a while, I know. Sometimes life gets hectic but I assure you, S-wood is always on my mind and I am always full of posts, just a matter of sitting down and writing them out!

It was a gloomy weekend up there weather-wise and it poured yesterday but we still had a great time, great food, and great work time. It was also a “no kid” weekend which basically means that the children are at their dad’s for the weekend so we were all alone and able to work at our own pace and not worry about other people. Dave and I are usually pretty in tune that way and work pretty straight.

Bathroom: Dave finished installing the vent pipe to the roof (of course he had to paint it so it wouldn’t stick out) but I didn’t get any pictures of it. We have still not been able to get the rest of the wood for the top of the bathroom walls. We have the wainscoting but we are waiting for the rough sawn top halves so I can paint them all at one time. We did however get a door… well actually w had a door for the bathroom, we just hadn’t installed it. We had to make a few “modifications” (we cut it we cut it) but eventually we got ‘er up and now we have some privacy with our new indoor plumbing. *I say some because we haven’t found the “used” doorknob yet. I would like to find 3 matching because right in that area are ALL 3 of our interior doorways and it wouldn’t stink to have them all match!

So here is the Before... where the door didnt fit...

And here is Frankenstein checking out the first interior door of the house! (incidentally, he continued to go in and out of the bathroom for the rest of the freaking day)

And just for the sake of showing you where we are at, this is the bathroom (wainscoting piled on the floor)

"I Think I Can Handle It!"

Let me set this up for you.

We drove up in torrential downpours on friday evening so that we could make sure the cabin is okay. This part of new hampshire is under flood warnings and flash floods and despite the rain, we headed up to make sure everyone and everything was ok.
Saturday morning we woke up early so we could get started on the railing. I was going to be putting in the "spindly things" all by myself. After proving my worth on the screen, Dave felt almost confident that I could do it but he wanted to set it up to be fool proof. THe man made me a jig, so that i would be putting the screws in the back of the railing at the same level and they would be even. WHen we finish, we are going to plug them and stain it, but we are going to plug it with a different wood so the plugs will show. Now remember, Dave has been hand notching the beams and has put hours of work into them so really, neither of us wanted me to screw (PUN) it up. So he created this jig for the screws and a guide for the spacing. The only problem is, the jig he created had a third hole.




"Do you want me to put tape over the third hole?"
"I think I can handle it Dave"
*insert eye roll here*



I mean I am a grown up right? I know which holes to put the drill in for goodness sakes. I raised 2 kids as a single parent on limited funds. I got 37 years under my belt, how hard could drilling 2 holes, countersinking them, and then screwing in a screw be?








Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm



Well Okay. Folks, I did the walk of shame down the the basement. I asked him if he had tape. He laughed thankfully and said it was easy to fix.... He did this graciously but I still felt very very small.

I did tape up the hole and our marriage was not destroyed. I also admitted my smugness was unfounded being an amateur and all. All was not lost and we continued the weekend.

Imagine that, he still worked with me after all that!

We still have to put the "top" on to the railing but we are probably going to put it on hold for a while. We have a 4 day weekend up there over the twenty something and would like to start plumbing. Plumbing alone isnt enough, we also need walls lol...

The real McCoy

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I was a bad blogger but now I intend on making it up to you with the REAL update post.
I dont even know where to start. Many hours were spent, not by me, but by Dave who painstakingly notched every beam that you can see. The notcher can even be seen carrying a large board out to the front porch in this picture. It will soon be time to put the spindly things (still have not a word to really call them) in place and make this very strong, over engineered masterpiece transform from bessie's gate, to a real live loft railing. I am pleased to say however that through all this hard work, Dave has found some peace and much enjoyment (or so he says) in the very zen-like job of notching these large pieces of Hemlock. In fact, I dare say that I have not seen him quite so at peace in a while. Oh and there is also the added joy to purchasing hand tools to add to his already astronomical collection of things I have no idea what they are really for. I leave you tonight with this, my view of Dave working on our railing. I must admit though, being the phenomenal photographer that I am, I spied this vision from the window and as I ran to the kitchen to fetch my camera and came back he had moved.... so in the interest of candid photography I forced him back into the original pose. *laugh*
Well at least I was honest about it. Photography is fun for me, but even more fun is making fun of myself for not being that great at it.
More to come :)

Weekend Update

We are back after a very rainy weekend. We weren't able to get up there on Friday because Tarynn and I had a concert to go to on Friday night but we were up bright and early Saturday and on our way!
Exciting news, well for me anyway, we finally began the railing project. It is not in any way shape or form done, but having what we have thus far has taken some of the stress off of me. You see, we just were not getting any sleep because Django wanders around at night. Neither dave nor I could keep him downstairs. We would build these barricades to keep him from attempting the dangerous ascent to the loft but somehow every night, about 3am-4am he still managed to get around them, push them out of the way or leap over them and come on up. Its about 10 feet or so up off the ground with NO RAILINGS and no barriers to tell big gangly great danes "hey you are too close to the edge dumbass" so we basically have been sleeping with one eye open on the weekends that the kids are not with us.

Great pains (not great danes) have gone into the actual design of the style of the railing. You see, at first, we wanted to build a rustic cabin. We wanted it to be alot like the Little House on the Prairie houses we all loved so much as kids but since the actual plans for the house quadrupled in size and took shape into a fairly large CAPE, It just didn't fit. Then we started to acquire many furnishings from our D-store and Craig's list, so it morphed more into an early 1900's style. With the addition of the brown couch (that nobody will ever see because its covered with sheets to keep down the Drool from Monsters - shown on the left) it kind of just morphed back into eclectic styling. Finally one day, I just surfed the net and pulled out a bunch of pictures of different style railings ranging from stick rustic to regular bannister type that you see in every house and by golly, we found something that was rustic but sturdy. Dave has set off to building it.

We are aware that at this time it looks a bit like a corral fence to keep in cattle (isn't that what it basically is?) but its not close to being done at this point. Once we do the finish work - little spindly posty things between the beams - and stain it, it will be far more elegant than Bessie's gate... Ok maybe not FAR more elegant but we really like it and 200 pounds of dog can bump and lean on it and they will remain on the second floor and that really is priceless.


Here we see the right side railing.














And here is the left side. You might be asking why it doesnt go to the wall, I have an answer for that (some may argue I have an answer for everything)










The answer is: Knee wall ;)













I needed to add in this picture because it really shows the very fine, tight fit of the beams that Dave painstakingly chiseled out by hand. The beams are rough saw Hemlock to match the beams that we installed under the loft which are shown in the next shot.













































There were some modifications done to the tiny little solar set up too, but once again, I will let Dave post about that because I do not posses the knowledge to post about it in any way. ;) I am really happy with the progress this summer and I think Dave is too. We have the top 4 items on the list and still have a good 3 months to complete them. 1. Porch 2. railing 3. dog fence 4. Indoor plumbing. We realize we need walls and the solar stuff as well but we actually work full time and had to prioritize the big things and work on the other things in the mean time. Since we have spent 2 solid years up there without ALL of it, we are OKAY as far as I am concerned. Thank you for hanging out with us.

On the Green front: our composter is on its way! WOO HOOO

ok thats it have a great night!

Weekend Re-cap

Towards the end of last week we FINALLY decided on the loft railing design so this weekend our goals were simple, put some finishing touches on the screen porch (springs for the screen doors, put the knob on, put up my new solar christmas lights, find a LOCAL lumber yard to order the wood for the railing, and complete the screen that would be on hinges.) Dave and I are both avid target shooters and one of our first projects after purchasing what would someday become S-wood, was create a shooting lane. We wanted to be able to open a screen and shoot. I am happy to say we accomplished all of our missions AND had some time to hang out with our dogs - side note - thoroughly enjoyed watching me try to get a picture of the attack hummingbird which i failed miserably at.

What you are looking at on the left here is Dave's version of the best place on earth. A local lumber yard. Yes folks not only were the prices reasonable and the staff accommodating, but the words "beautiful" must have come out of Dave's mouth at least 15times. Now before you say HEY WAIT! Thats not recycled. Part of our "green" outlook is yes, using recycled materials but our other hopes is when we have to purchase wood, or materials, we stay local. This is 8 miles from our door!






This is just probably something only I will enjoy, but to me, this is the epitome of "kid in a candy store". We got our wood ordered for our railing and we hope to start building it next weekend. Not only is it one of the things that we just need to do (aside from walls) but it will give us piece of mind. With the dogs at night wanting to be near us, and us being on the second floor, there have been several sleepless nights.

















Please ignore the great dane, he was not cooperating, focus instead on the hinged screen window above the dog :)






I am sure dave will update in a later post but one of our coolest accomplishments besides all of the above, was we hooked up 2 small Solar Panels to charge our deep-cycle batteries that we run our lamps off of. I have some pictures too.

We did have one not-so-pleasant experience which I am surprised we have not encountered before. Now that the porch is done, we are happy to be able to extend the living area in this hot weather. We are in the middle of nowhere, no electricity so no outdoor lights. Our dog Frankenstein alerted to something outside. Normally this could mean anything from a neighbor stopping by to him thinking a neighbor stopped by so we removed him from the situation and I went to the front to see if there was anyone in the drive, there wasn't. I went to the back to see if there was a deer or something in the rear. When I stepped out onto the porch, I could clearly hear what sounded like a small dog barking about 150 feet from the back door. We could hear it but not see it. I asked Dave what it was (only there may have been some colorful wording in there) and he said Coyote. JUST as he said it, more "barking" and suddenly howling as well. We figure there were about 6 or 7 of them. What was scary about it was that our dogs were going nuts, i mean with all that howling, our dogs were making alot of noise.Our dogs are big, about 350 pounds together, yet the coyote started to advance TOWARDS us and our house. We are staring towards blackness and listening to the howling and yapping of many coyote. The hair was raised on my neck. It sure was scary that they were NOT afraid of us, or our dogs.

So thats my "critter encounter" story for the weekend, not one that I want to experience again. I like the woodchucks, turkey and moose stories WAY better.

my first construction project

We are back! So many pictures, so little time :)
We worked our butts off yesterday trying to get the screened porch finished so that I could stop being attacked by the nasties up there ;) and We accomplished our goal! Dave spent alot of time with chisels and other instruments, notching the beams for the back door (the dog pen door) that we got from Craigslist last week. The door is at least 50 years old and makes that neat SLAM noise when you let it go! LOVE that. I have so many pictures of the weekend and so many topics to discuss and update on so I will do it one day at a time because we are unable to go back up there until after the 4th of july :( because Dave is on call for work.
Ok, so in this picture is the frame and I had just finished stretching screen over it. The wood is actually left over from building the house, and the screen is just something we happened to have laying around the house!

Here Dave is, notching one of the beams to fit the door. It came out awesome! He put alot of time into it and the workmanship really shows!





























This picture you can see a bit closer how snug the beams are.














Here is a picture of the really cool $15 door from craigslist. It needs a coat of paint and it needs to air out a bit too ;) it smells musty.





























Here is the finished product from the inside!















And here it is at night, we thought it would look cool and it did!
Well all in all, it was about 2 days work but really well worth it as we sat in there and got no buggy bites!

Screened Porch

We are back from our wonderful extended stay at shmoopywood. As you know, we intended on getting some of the porch framed and hoped to move the eventual process of screening in this porch up on our list of things to complete this summer. We have very limited time up there so alot of the work was completed last week. We basically designed the porch around this very cool door that we had found at the dump... yup thats right... the dump!
SO here is the "before" picture taken only mere moments before we began swinging our hammers.
(keep in mind, I never have built ANYTHING before hehe)

As you can see the door is already framed with some 2 x 4's. AFter this shot was taken, I was given the job of removing the nails from the newly removed 2 x 4's because it was framed in the wrong spot ;)






Proof that I actually built the railings!


I had forgotten to take the telephoto lens off the camera so in order to get this shot, I had to climb up the incline so my apologies if it is not the best. The perplexed look on Dave's face is a direct result of my meandering up the side of the mountain so I could get the whole porch in the shot instead of changing lenses. ;)








Dave then spent some time notching some beams in order to fit in for the new door jamb, You can see the notch in the top of the new beam in the above picture.
And a closer look.
I really think these extra touches are making a big difference in the quality of the job done. It may have taken us all day to complete but we really enjoy putting the extra effort into the work we do plus recycling building materials as much as possible.





















The challenge will be when we build the frames for the screen. The purpose behind making the porch this way was because it will be easier for us to replace WHEN the great danes wreck the screen. (notice the WHEN).








And our final picture for the progress on the porch demonstrates that even the most well thought out plan can go awry. We decided (at the last minute really) that we were going to build a fence off a portion of the porch so that we could have a safe place for our dogs as well as a visitors dogs. Not every dog can be as well behaved off lead as Django, and we wanted to be prepared for any guests that may want to get away from it all by coming out to our almost solar powered haven. So the big gap on the right side is left to fit the next salvaged door we locate hopefully this week.
In a later post, Iw ill show you what we do for "utilities" at this time and be more specific.

Another small project that I worked on a bit was removing the old fixtures (oh and sent them to the salvage yard to be recycled to someone else who may want to save them from a landfill)
The new fixtures were located on ebay. The tub was salvaged as well.

Our Plans - this helps us carry them out!

Dave took the day off to bring supplies up to the cabin today and measure for the screened porch inserts. I think it just might be a ploy to spend the day in the beautiful sunshine!

Anyway, he will be bringing up some of the crap we have collected over the winter to live in the cabin as well as bring up the water tank we purchased (with water) and some wood. He will also be bringing back the supplies we got for the screened in porch and hopefully he will be building the porch here at home. He will be building it at home, in parts, and then we can install it up at the cabin. It has turned into a necessity due to the deranged black flies and monster sized mosquitoes that live in that area. It would be awesome and it is our plan, to leave the back French doors open at night in the summer to facilitate some AIR in the house as well as let Django sleep cooler. There will be a door (that we can latch so nobody can get out) and there will be “dog safe” screen. This just means that we need to create something that will keep the dogs from running THROUGH the screens if a critter meanders by. This is a likely scenario. Although I trust Django to stay put, Frank is a loose cannon and can (and has) run through a screen without even realizing there was anything there!

You can see above in the pictures, the full back of the house (picture was taken in april when there was still snow) and a closer shot of the porch from yesterday. I will try and get some pictures of Dave building the porch inserts (porch is not even framed – hard to see in the picture) and then post pictures of the progress next weekend at the cabin. I do believe that we will be spending 2 weekends in a row up there and hope to accomplish quite a bit. Riveting isn’t it?

I know its alot of work, but we are also very able to enjoy this work and spend the time there. We allow for some play and some work, although the work is hard, its FUN! ;)
Here is some comic relief:
Over the winter, NH had more snow than we have in 100 years or some such crazy shit, so D and I drove up to the cabin just to make sure it was okay. We have a HUGE driveway and it is very steep, which makes it impossible to climb in a car when there is snow on the ground. We had to park, and walk up. We also have a metal roof, and had not considered the amount of snow that came flying off of it! THere were snow banks until MAY! Here is a picture of me trying to navigate the snow banks and one of me deciding the easiest way down that driveway was on a cardboard box!
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