Tag Archives: Homestead Kids

House Update: electrical and plumbing

Oy! It’s been so long! And we don’t have much to show for it. Yes, we’ve been making forward progress on the house, but very slow.

My last house update was about the windows and doors.

Since then, we got all the special fire blocking installed, all the electrical lines run, and all the drain/waste/vent pipes installed. Here’s a few pictures to show you. Unfortunately, these systems are hard to see in pictures, so I really don’t have a lot.

Working on the fire blocking. It is 5/8″ sheetrock that creates draft stops every 10′ horizontally. It has to go floor to ceiling. It was a jigsaw puzzle to get it between walls, etc.

Installing the electrical wires. This took so much longer and a ton more thought than we expected! We’ve worked with small circuits before. Wiring a whole house was something else entirely!

Flower girl was sad when I put up the fire blocking. It blocked off her “playground” in the walls.

Always the monkey!

My little niece found a chew toy! Good thing it’s not “hot” yet!

Our first drain. This is for the main bathroom sink.

The laundry drain system. It has a stand pipe for the washing machine, and one for the water softener.

Hubby starting the to cut the hole in the roof for the drain vent pipe.

Now it’s REALLY starting to look like a house with the vents sticking up!

Sparky, sparky. Putting a 2¼” round hole in a metal building is a challenge to be sure.

Starting the process of putting on the flashings on the pipes.

Safety first – that roof is slick!

It ain’t pretty, but it keeps the rain out.

Another of the projects that we got done had to do with the electrical system. We mounted the breaker box. But first we had to find the underground pipes that will bring the power lines from the eventual solar system on the garage over to the house. We did this because we decided to move the panel location from what was originally planned.

Dug down to find the pipes and cut into one and add elbows and risers for the new electrical panel position.

Mounting the box

Having the breaker box there was a small but significant upgrade, especially for winter time. It means we can now run the electrical cords from our generators and our small temporary solar power system in through the box rather than under the laundry room door. Which means that we could finally install the threshold under the laundry room door. Which means we no longer have a 1½ inch gap there for cold air, rain, and dirt to blow through. As I said, small but significant.

In looking forward to the holidays and knowing that we weren’t going to be getting much work on the house done, but also that we’d have a lot of people around, and already having gone through a couple winter storms where we had to trek up the hill to use the outhouse, we decided it was high time to get our toilet scabbed in.

To “scab in” something means to do it in a manner than is just temporary. We will have to take the toilet back out and maybe even some of the sheetrock off the walls in order to get our next inspection, but we thought it was more than worth it to be able to use a toilet in the house.

Flower girl doing her language book work while I take measurements for the next piece of sheetrock.

Prepping the toilet and the drain hole. This toilet was free to us. Yet another free item that still works perfectly good, and we will get plenty of use out of. Sure, it’s not exactly what we would have chosen for ourselves, but free is the perfect style and color. 😊

It works! 😆😆😆

Because this is just temporary and we don’t actually have our water supply pipes done yet, we ran a garden hose from the laundry room (where the water comes into the house), over the wall into the bathroom and that’s how we fill the toilet tank.

The end of the hose has a shut-off valve on it.

Here’s a little video tour of the bathroom (plus a look at our very messy after-Christmas living room 😆).

And that’s it. That’s all we’ve gotten done since June. Part of it is just busyness of our normal lives. Soon after my last post, we started school and since Flower Girl is now 7, I figured it was high time she actually learn to read. So we’ve been spending a more concentrated effort on schooling, which takes time away from building.

Another thing that is taking some time away from the house is that I resumed my hiking training for a couple backpacking trips I’m going on in 2020. So I’ve been going on more hikes, which is good, but it does take up time. [Want to follow along with my journey? I post sporadically on my Blog I’m doing for that, I also have a YouTube channel and Instagram.]

Also, the end of October is the beginning of the holiday season for us starting with one of the girls’ birthdays, followed just two weeks later with the other, then Thanksgiving a couple weeks after, and then Hubs birthday in the beginning of December, mine in mid December, plus all the normal holiday activities, and wrapping up with Christmas and New Years. It’s an exciting and exhausting time of year for our family.

But once the holidays are over, we’ll pick back up on construction. For now, we are enjoying the rest of the year by playing with new toys and pets, catching up on some reading and blogging (obviously), and me getting over a cold I came down with on Christmas Eve. Until next time, Happy Holidays!

One of Flower Girl’s favorite gifts – a volcano experiment set with dinosaurs from a different gift.

Princess Girl’s favorite gift – her new cat 🐈

The Great Potato Experiment of 2019 – Day 118

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(Also the Great Onion Experiment of 2019)

We harvested the rest of our potatoes today. As you can see from the picture above, the purple potatoes were much more prolific, but the red ones grew bigger.

Overall I am very happy with the results of our “experiment”. I learned a lot about growing these varieties of potatoes. I should have planted them earlier so they could grow larger (especially the purples), and I coulda planted the rows quite a bit closer to get more yield out of the planting bed (a 3’x6′ bed in our terraces). And we’ll need to plant a ton more to feed our family for more than a few meals. And how to get those purples bigger? Also need to experiment with the long storing varieties like russets once we have a good place to store potatoes. But it’s good to know that it’s possible to grow potatoes here in the dry, high desert.

Also, can we talk about those onions?

Again, they are nothing to brag about, except that I have tried numerous times over the years to grow onions and have never been successful. So the fact that I got ANY harvest this year is pretty amazing to me! They won’t last long since they’ll be eaten quickly, but I’m rather proud of those cute baby onions.

Helping hands

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When we first started this journey of building our house (actually started construction), our girls were 11 and 4 years old. We wanted them to be involved as much as they could be in the actual building process.

Princess Girl (being older) quickly showed that she could be a good helper with many of the tasks that abound while building. She was an extra set of hands for many projects. And now that she has 2 years of experience under her belt, she can do most of the jobs her daddy and I can.

Princess Girl using the chop saw to cut metal.

But not only that, she often gets the homemaking jobs of cleaning the trailer, washing dishes, and doing laundry that keep our family running while Mom (ie me) is busy schooling Flower Girl (who is now in Kindergarten), and building our house. She truly is a huge help and a blessing.

But what do you do with a 4 or 5 or 6, or even a 7 or 8 year old?

Well, first of all, have them around. Don’t ship them off to the babysitters. Let them play nearby. Let them see you working and let them be familiar with the goings-on at a construction site – providing they can do so in a safe manner, of course.

Many an hour spent playing in piles of dirt while we worked nearby

One of her favorite things is to climb around inside the walls.

Most owner-builders work at a slower pace with fewer people than a professional construction crew, making it safer for kiddos to be around. Even then though, safety rules need to be in place and strictly enforced. Even the smallest infraction must be caught and dealt with. And of course, there are times when it is just best if the kids are not around. But we have found those instances to be few and far between.

Playing with “blocks”

Watching us finish the stairs

But how do you get them actually involved with the family project of building your own home?

The answer in a word: patience

It takes a lot of patience.

Little people are slower. They make lots of mistakes. They don’t understand. But it is so worth it to see the joy on their faces when they “helped”.

It mainly means slowing down enough to find jobs that they can do.

Flower Girl – barely 5 years old

Age 4

And it means taking the time to help them along the way.

Recently, Flower Girl and I took on the task of building a wall in the house.

Just her and I.

But what was a six year old really capable of?

Well, she moved the lumber around.

She measured and marked the studs.

She swept up the sawdust after I did the cutting (and if we’d had the chop saw set up, she would have helped with the cutting, too.)

She clamped things together when needed (and sometimes when not needed 🙄)

She put screws in and backed them out as needed.

And she helped tell me when boards were level/plumb.

Overall, how did it go?

Did she slow me down?

Of course she did.

Was it harder building that wall with her “help”?

You betcha.

Was it worth taking the time to do it with her?

ABSOLUTELY!

OUR wall

We believe that by involving our children in all aspects of our lives on the homestead, and especially the building of our house, we are giving them something important. They are learning many important skills that they just wouldn’t anywhere else. And it’s important to us that when they look back on this time of their lives that they can say “we built a house”, not “my parents built a house”.

It takes a lot of patience and effort to get the little ones involvef. But it is so worth it!

We are building this house!

House Update: we have stairs!!

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We got a huge step forward on the house accomplished last month (pun totally intended! 😁)

We got our stairs built!

But, if you’ll remember, the last time I updated about the house, we were working on the hat channel on the ceiling.

We got most of the hat channel on the south side of the house (the side above the second floor), and then realized we needed to build the other end wall before we could finish that.

But, we also decided that we wanted to get the stairs in to make working on the second story that much easier for us since the ladder was getting old real quick!

But in order to get the stairs in, we needed to put the hat channel on the ceiling of the north side of the house since once the stairs were in, it would make that task infinitely more difficult since we wouldn’t be able to use the scaffold effectively in that area.

Dominoes.

So, we worked on the ceiling above the dining room area.

And, as usually happens, once we start a project, we like to see it through. So even though we could have stopped after the first ⅓ of the roof, we decided to keep on going.

The upper half of the hat channel all the way across the north side of the ceiling.

Princess Girl learned how to use the chop saw to cut the hat channel to length.

Sometimes you just have to get in there!

Yep, working in the walls. 😁

A good friend came to help out and we put her to work helping me with the hat channel.

In between working on the hat channel, we started the prep work for the stairs. Since the stringers needed to be made out of expensive LVL engineered lumber, we decided to buy a cheaper piece of wood to “practice” our stair-making technique.

Neither one of us have any prior stair-making experience, so we did quite a bit of research prior to starting.

We bought a special layout tool off of Amazon (not an affiliate link, nor are we receiving any kind of benefit from sharing – we just happened to use it and like it.) The website affiliated with the layout tool also had a stair calculator so you could plug in your measurements and it gave you a printout to follow.

It was super easy to use (though we did have to watch the video tutorial a couple times to make sure we were beginning and ending correctly). It gave us the confidence to know that our measurements were accurate and precise.

So we cut out one stair stringer out of the cheaper board and are ever so glad that we did. We discovered that we needed to change a few things around and change a measurement or two.

That stringer was not complete waste though. We can cut it shorter and use in various other locations around the homestead. So for now, it’s living in the garage.

So now we were confident about how to build the the stringers, but we needed to put in a post.

Way back when we were laying out the foundation, I made a mistake on the placement of a shearwall. It is 8 inches out of place from what the plans call for. Not too much of a big deal. It just means the bedroom is wider and the dining room is narrower. But that also means the staircase is narrower. Too narrow actually. Building codes state that staircases have to be a minimum of 36inches wide. Because of the mistake in the placement of the wall, our available space was only 35″. Oops.

Had we realized our mistake when laying out all the other walls, we would have just made the pantry wall that the stairs tie into a bit longer. Problem solved.

But, of course, we didn’t realize the problem until ALL the downstairs walls were built and we were working on the flooring for the second floor.

So after quite a bit of brainstorming, we came up with a solution that we actually really like. We decided to add a post to extend the wall where the stairs attach and we are going to leave it exposed. It’s more work, time, and money, but in the end, we are really going to love the exposed posts in our kitchen. And I say posts – plural – because the way we have to tie in the pony wall on the upper floor (because of our mistake) necessitates a post on each end.

So, anyway, we purchased a 16ft long 6×6 and then Hubs and Princess Girl got busy making it purty.

After sanding, Hubs put boiled linseed oil on it.

We just love the way that the BLO makes the grain “pop” and gives the wood a warm glow.

Then we attached it to the wall with ½” lag bolts.

Once we had a full width wall to attach the stairs to, we purchased our LVL boards and got to work cutting the three stringers.

I was the one to use the circular saw because I have a steadier hand than the hubs. Probably from all the sewing I’ve done in my life. 😊

And Hubs is slow and meticulous when it comes to hand work (he’s much more patient than I), so he did a great job getting the little corner bits that the circular saw couldn’t get.

It’s a messy job, but someone has to do it.

And just like that, the stringers were made and ready to be installed.

But first, we had to build the landing.

And put on the Simpson stair hanger ties.

You can see in this picture how much the wall is extended with the post. The very left hand stair hanger bracket is actually on the post itself.

And then came the fun part. Installing the stair stringers. Princess Girl and I worked together on that project while Hubs was at work.

Princess Girl learning to use the palm nailer.

Where has a palm nailer been all my life? It makes nailing in tight spaces so much easier!

Those stairs aren’t going anywhere!

Ah, the fun of climbing the “stairs” for the first time!

When Hubby got home, he was very excited to see our progress. He and Princess Girl got to work ripping down leftover ¾” plywood to use as the riser boards…

And I cut down all the stair treads to the appropriate length.

Then the most exciting part…putting on the risers and treads!

And just like that, we have stairs!

This was one of those projects in this house that, like getting the interior walls up, really changed the form and function, the whole look and feel, of the house. We were giddy with excitement for days afterward. And even now, I get a deep sense of satisfaction whenever I run up and down those steps.

I am rather proud of us.

Bluebirds of Happiness

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We have bluebirds!

About a year ago, the girls and I built bluebird houses following plans found online. (This is a really good website all about bluebirds and how to make houses for them with lots of different types of plans for houses.)

We modified the plans a bit to use materials we had on hand (mainly just swapping out black ABS pipe for the thinner PVC pipe called for on the plans), but basically we used the plans for the Gilbertson PVC house.

But we made them too late in the season and nothing ever nested in them. But this year they are fighting over them!

Yep, we have at least two “couples” who are arguing over who gets to build their nest in one of the houses. The cool thing is that one of the couples are Western Bluebirds and the other couple are Mountain Bluebirds.

Blue arrows are the Western and white arrows are the Mountain

Looks like the Westerns are winning as they are the ones I see perched on the roof all the time.

The bad thing is that this little coop that it is attached to is actually occupied this year with chicks. That means we go out there several times a day to check on and interact with the chicks. I hope it’s not too much human activity for the bluebirds.

Luckily, the door to access the chicks in on the opposite side from the bluebird house.

Here’s some pictures of us building the boxes last year.

Marked the inside rim of the pipe onto the board to make the bottom plug

Fits great

Nearly perfect. Notice the hole in the middle, along with not fitting 100% perfectly around the edges will allow for drainage if water somehow gets inside.

Drilling a hole to be able to screw in the bottom plug without cracking the plastic pipe.

Scraping the rough edges

Also cut holes near the top as vent holes.

Smoothing out the edges even more.

Checking for proper depth and hole size.

More smoothing

Placing the hanging block.

Attaching everything together. It is all upside down at the moment.

Painting it so it’s not so dark, thus not so hot in the sun.

Taa daa! Installed on our little brooder coop.

And the other one hung on the outhouse. Not sure if anyone is scoping that one out or not.

It was a fun little project, and we are excited that a bluebird family is moving in this year. We plan to have lots more birdhouses around the property as homes for our feathery friends!

A little bit of winter fun

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Every winter, we look forward to the right conditions to use our old fashioned runner sled.

Check out our YouTube channel to see a short video of Flower Girl and I going for a ride.

While you’re there, be sure to subscribe to our channel. We don’t post videos very often, so you don’t want to miss a single one. 😄

House update: we have a second floor!

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Yesterday, Hubs asked where something was and I responded that it was upstairs.

Upstairs!!!

We actually have an “upstairs” in the house!

Now, it doesn’t look like a traditional second floor yet, just some plywood on some floor joists, which we access by a ladder.

But it’s a second floor nonetheless.

Here’s a picture of almost how far we’ve gotten so far.

Floor joists about 1/3 of the way across the loft with plywood staged to attach to the joists.

But now we go back to the beginning of the second floor framing…

Floor i-joists in the staging area (ie our dining room and kitchen areas)

Some of the joists placed on the walls in preparation for attaching

A friend helping us get the framing finished in preparation for the joists.

Princess Girl helped space the joists out on our 16inch-on-center layout

Once the joists were in place, we needed to add some additional blocking where an upper wall will be attached.

Then it was time for plywood!

We glued then nailed the subfloor to the joists.

Once we got a few sheets of subfloor down, we needed to put more joists on. Here, Princess Girl and I are starting the measuring process for the next section of joists.

And that’s about as far as we got, and not likely to get much more done in the next week or or so because I was stupid and got injured.

We got the next joists cut and ready to go, and while we were putting them up on the second level, I forgot to watch where I was walking, and walked off the edge of the plywood! Blessedly, I didn’t fall the 9 feet down to the concrete floor, but that does mean I fell onto the joists. I added an arrow to the previous picture to show where I went through.

I landed on the joists sideways with all my weight hitting on my rib cage. Can I just say that this is one of the few times in my life I’ve been glad for the “extra padding” I have? Between that and the fact I was once again wearing a sweatshirt and puffy vest, I escaped more serious injury. I shudder to think how bad the contusion would have been had I been wearing just a t-shirt as in the picture above.

As it is, I am very bruised and sore. I did not go to the ER since they could not do anything for me anyway other than confirm that my ribs are, or are not, cracked, and send me home with a prescription for pain meds. I do not have any symptoms of internal injuries, but I am continuing to keep an eye on how my body is doing.

The treatment plan, even if my ribs are actually cracked – which I don’t think they are – is just rest (and ice and painkillers, etc). So, it looks like I have an unexpected “vacation” on my hands. Time to catch up on some reading and crocheting I’ve been wanting to do. I’ll update on my condition in a few days.

-Maridy

Goals for the New Year

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We’re not so different than most people this time of year. We eagerly make our goals, we start out with determination, we work hard to accomplish them.

Besides the obvious goal of completeing the house (which barring any more major set backs looks totally doable by summer time), we have quite a few other goals for the homestead and in our personal lives.

One of our goals for the homestead is to get rid of this junk wood.

It’s right at the entrance to our property and looks uuuuugly! I want it gone!

One of the personal goals I have is to work on getting my legs back in shape. I want to start backpacking again and right now, my knees could not handle that. Especially with the injury I sustained this summer.

Remember that?

Laid up with a bum knee in June 2018

Yeah, not fun.

So, I have mapped out a one mile route from our trailer, around the house, up the upper driveway and around Castle Rock and back.

The girls and I will be walking this route every day for a while, then we’ll find a way to extend it and build up our miles as our muscles build up. We will also be taking longer hikes once a week, and this summer I want to go on a couple of backpacking trips.

And while this goal is not specifically about homesteading, I love, love, love that I can walk an entire mile on my own property (well, mostly – part of the driveway is technically on our right-of-way on the neighbor’s property). Also, staying in shape is going to help out with gardening and animal care, etc as we get back into that. Especially on this hilly property, and especially as we get older (I turned 40 last month, so I’m feeling my age a bit). It’s the only way to be even somewhat sustainable here. We gotta stay in shape!

Also, I share this with you all to help hold myself accountable. As all the success gurus tell us, writing a goal down and sharing it with others makes you more likely to follow through.

So, there we are. Building a house. Daily walks. De-junkifying the property. Oh, and I want to have a small garden this year. And chicks! I need some cute little baby chicks in my life once again. And through it all, teaching Flower Girl to read, taking some fun school outings, working my summer job, a big family vacation in July that’s been in the works for a few years now, and of course, deepening my relationship with the Lord.

I’m excited just thinking about it all!

What are some of your goals for 2019?

House update: more interior framing

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We have more walls up!

We have had many of our friends ask when they could come up to help with the house. So, we set a date for a Framing Party for Saturday, December 29th and let all of our friends know about it.

But before everyone showed up, we needed to get the most complicated wall built since it was heavy on the calculations and decision making – something Hubs and I wouldn’t necessarily have time to do with 10-15 people looking for direction.

So on the 27th, Ahma and Pops (my mom and stepdad) came up to help with that wall.

It was all angles and complicated calculations and we had to make decisions on where (exactly) the door and window needed to go.

But we got it built and raised in about 6 hours.

On the 28th we prepped for the work day.

Framing Party:

December 29, 2018

Here you’ll see a couple familiar faces, but mainly these are friends from church and a few others.

These ladies provided us with lunch. It was amazing that we didn’t even have to think about it. They just showed up with the food and we ate!

When all was said and done, we were able to build and raise 8 walls in one day. Eight! On the 27th, we got one. On the 29th we got eight!

We definitely couldn’t have done that without all the help from our wonderful friends.

And then we ran out of the right length studs. Guess my calculations were off.

So, an after-church trip to the lumber store was in order the next day.

Today is Monday the 31st. We have yet another friend coming today to help out. We should be able to finish all the bottom level framing. Then it’s time to put on the floor joists and floor sheeting and then the upstairs walls. But that will take a bit of time. Nothing like 8 big walls in one day!

Probably without even thinking too hard, you can guess what our goal for the New Year is. 😄

Finish this house!

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

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Here’s our biggest and best gift this Christmas…

Our wood stove was installed earlier than expected!

This has been a game changer! Not only is the house nowhere near ready to install a furnace, but we plan to heat nearly exclusively with wood, so having this system installed and usable is amazing.

Since we were closing in on Christmas and were loving just hanging out by the stove, we moved some of our collected free furniture into a living room of sorts.

I was even able to spread out for wrapping Christmas gifts. So nice after the last couple of years of using my bed as a table to wrap.

We collected a bunch of junk wood that we had laying around and cut it down to length. I jokingly said that this pile would last us a day or two, and I wasn’t too far off.

With as cold as it was and as small as this wood was, and as little insulated as the house is with gaps still here and there, we went though that wood very quickly.

But it kept us warm enough that we decided to have our Christmas Eve and Christmas morning and day celebrations in the house.

Our first Christmas in our house!

We moved our tiny tree and stockings from the trailer and put them on the scaffold. 😊

And the girls spent Christmas Eve night and Christmas night on the pulled out hide-a-bed. The first people to sleep in our house!

We woke up Christmas morning to a slightly white Christmas. We normally get the majority of our snow in January and February.

So it was magical to have snow on Christmas.

And then we had a good friend give us some actual real firewood.

This stuff burns much slower. It is great to put a few logs on and not have to feed it again for several hours.

On New Year’s Day, we are hosting a movie marathon and we’ll all be down in the house. All because of a wood stove.

So nice!

I hope you all are having a great holiday season, no matter how you celebrate.

Happy Holidays.