National Folk Farmhouse - Rainbarrel - Hose Rack and Faucets

The weather was pretty hot and miserable and steamy yesterday so we didn't get a lot done on the outside wall of the She Shed.

We did do some measuring and figuring, and started to lay out the exterior siding plans. I'm going to give each piece of siding double coats of paint before they are put up. I'm waiting for a less humid day to do that.

It's very peaceful to stand out in the yard, listening to the birds and feel the wind and enjoy the sunshine while I paint on my saw horses in the yard. With this hot humid weather it just was not comfortable at all to say the least.

Once I get all of the siding painted, then Steve will be able to start putting it up. We will try to match up the lines as well as we can to the existing siding on the north side of the house. That way it will make a smooth transition around the corner to the west wall.

We did stop at a little local nursery to check out some of their shrubs and trees. I would like to get a clump or two of white birch for the front yard. Also I'm thinking a couple nice globe arborvitaes and maybe a tall spire arborvitae around the window area of the She Shed. That way it will make that section look more like a part of a house, rather than just a converted garage.

While we were at the nursery, I found 2 clematis plants that seemed to be pretty healthy, even though it's the end of the season for planting. They were an additional 30% off which was very pleasing to me when we reached the checkout. One has the most beautiful red blooms, and the other one has the deep rich purple that we used to have at our last home in Chilton.

I planted the red one down at the South end of the porch with a cute little white trellis that had been left behind by the previous owners. Steve found the trellis in a package, brand new, in the garage.

We mounted it to the edge of the porch and hopefully we can get the clematis to climb up the trellis. Then maybe it will soon get up onto the porch railings.

I decided to put the purple one on the north wall of the She Shed. It needs a trellis that we will pick one up today or Steve will build one.

This north wall still gets sunshine in the afternoon and some bright light in the morning as well. I hope it will take off there. It looks pretty healthy.

Maybe somewhere down the line we will build an arbor across between the She Shed and the big garage. Maybe I can get the clematis trained to grow up and over the arbor. Or maybe some nice ivy. Or maybe a bit of both?

I looked up arbors and found one that I thought was really pretty. Of course this one is in plastic PVC vinyl. I think we will build our own out of wood and make it the way we want.

But before we tackle anything like that, we want to get the She Shed done. I miss weaving on my looms and sewing on my quilts, as well as spinning yarn on my spinning wheel or knitting socks on my antique circular sock knitting machine.

Steve and I took today off from building things... instead we are visiting Steve's Dad up in Door County.  It's a beautiful day for a ride. The sky is blue with puffy white clouds. Sometimes we have to relax and take a break and enjoy our summer, before things get hot and humid again.


Catching up on a few of our past projects that we have done during my blogging hiatus, here is one that I thought was kinda sweet.

At our last home in Chilton, I had ordered a beautiful metal hose rack. Since it was bolted to the house, it needed to be left behind as a "fixture" when we sold the house.

I decided I liked it so much, because it was a classy wrought iron metal design instead of a cheap plastic bracket or a chunky vinyl crank device. I ordered a new one for our new home.

Steve mounted it tight to the side of the house and I brushed over the black with a layer of red paint on the outside surface. Now it's highlighted and matches nicely to the rest of the house. It's those little things that make you smile you know?

Speaking of outside faucets, Steve was replacing the cold faucet to the exterior and at the same time he ran a hot faucet as well. These are just bolted temporarily into place until that piece of siding is replaced.

We have always liked having access to both hot and cold water on the outside of the home. It's good for washing vehicles, the motorhome,  washing dogs or filling things up like grandkids swimming pools. We bought a little Y shaped adapter that allows us to blend the hot or the cold to just the right temperature as desired.

Of course, in the winter, these hoses and the Y adapter are all removed. But the faucets themselves are frost-free and the valve is set way deep inside into the basement so we can still use water if we need to in the winter.

Another project along the north side of the house was to put one of my rain barrels there for watering my flowers.  Steve first replaced all of the cracked and missing pieces of plastic rain gutter with nice new steel rain gutters and downspouts.

I had repainted the rain barrel from its original blue and white pattern from our last home, to red and white for this home. Once he was done with the downspout and gutter I was able to set my rain barrel into place. He leveled it off to get it correctly balanced so it can fill up now during the next rainfall.  I painted my little metal watering cans as well. That's another thing that makes me smile....

Our car ride is done here, so I think it's time to post this blog.

Stay tuned for more progress tomorrow on my She Shed at our National Folk Farmhouse!

Tic Tac Toe - Smashed Table - and the Big Red Chicken

Tic-tac-toe!

Three-in-a-row!

We were able to complete the work on all three windows in a row across the West wall of my She Shed.

We had a little helper to get us started. The youngest grandchild, Little Claire, sure had a busy weekend helping us around the house with all of our projects.

Especially being Grandpa's Little Helper with her own set of "tools". These are the same little plastic building tools that have gone through all seven of our grandkids, starting with Jameson at the top all the way through to Claire at the bottom. 

She's just so stinkin cute that

I can't put only one photo of her. 

So here are 4 with her tools

 on the floor of my She Shed.

We got the outside surface of the wall wrapped with house wrap, sometimes called Tyvek. But that's a brand name. It only comes in 100 foot rolls. Our neighbor was kind enough to give us some leftover from his siding project he worked on last week. There was just enough to finish up what we needed!!! 

We just set one window in place to see how it would look. By dry fitting it into place Steve made sure that the windows will fit correctly. 

Once he had it set up into place, I had to hold it there while he walked backwards to see how it looked. I gave him the camera to snap a picture of the window. I didn't know he was going to include me in it. It was a hot humid muggy day and we were both sweating bullets. Not my best photo. Especially with all of my hair in a knot on top of my head.

But heck, I'm trying to show you what we're going through to build a she shed. And if it takes hot sweaty looking photos, so be it.

After a supper break we went back out to work on it again. We plumbed and leveled each window into place.  Steve did a great job building the wall to replace the garage door opening. Everything fit within a quarter of an inch.   

It was so very exciting to go back inside and see how nice the windows looked: 

TIC TAC TOE, THREE IN A ROW!

These are double hung windows that can open from the top or the bottom. The screen runs the full height of the window so we can position the glass parts any spot to let in air flow. Also, each pane of the windows unlatch and tip inwards for easy cleaning both inside and outside. We don't even have windows this fancy inside of the house!

That was enough work for the evening. We went in and hosed off about 10 lb of dirt and sweat in the shower. Whew... but it felt good to know we did a good job together and we were one step closer to making my She Shed become weather tight.

The next morning early we decided to get a head start before it got too hot. We started putting up soffit and fascia across the front of the roof line where it meets the wall. There has been an abundance of wasps looking to start their homes under the eaves.  Every day it seems we are knocking down little nodules of paper wasp nests. Once the fascia and soffit are up, they will have to go look elsewhere for places to attach their homes. We have plenty of trees out back. They can go there!

We also added flashing tape around the windows in preparation for the engineered wood siding. I started painting the siding strips in advance. It's much easier to paint the siding flat on sawhorses piece-by-piece by running a roller along it, than once it's all nailed up on the wall. If there's any little spots or streaks or grubby handprints I can touch them up once all of the siding is up and in place.

I even painted up some shutters that will go on each side of the windows after the siding is in place. I found a set on clearance that matched our other shutters on the rest of the house.  Bit by bit, step by step. It is exciting to get the room enclosed so we can start working on finishing up some of the other areas.

The She Shed is going to be home to my 14' long Hinterberg quilting frame, my 3 weaving looms, a large center island cutting table and sewing area, as well as our sunroom furniture looking out the back over our yard.  It's going to be over 430 sq ft of space when it is finished.

Speaking of yard, as we finished up, 

we looked out back to see this beautiful deer 

on the edge of the yard looking back at us!

~~~~~~~~~

Now to catch up on some of the other projects we've been doing during my blogging hiatus, here is something that happened to us that was a little upsetting.

I saw this beautiful table online, and went on Amazon to order it. I thought I was ordering it directly from Ashley furniture via Amazon with free shipping. It turns out I was actually ordering it from a third-party re-seller called Sierra Sleep by Ashley? Dang, I should look closer when I order things on line, even from Amazon I guess.

Anywhooooo, I placed the order and it came a very slow strange route as I was watching the tracking notices. For 2 days it was held up somewhere near Minneapolis, and then it took a route down to Iowa and then back up to Eau Claire. Then from there it went down to Chicago and then finally up to here.

By the time it was due to arrive at our house, I knew by tracking that it was finally going to come that day. It didn't come again.  We thought that was strange. We had the garage door open and we were kind of waiting and watching for the UPS truck to pull up.

The next day, it was listed on the UPS site again it was out for delivery.  We were home all day and waiting. I heard a funny noise out of the open kitchen window and looked out to see the UPS truck parked down the street almost in front of the next house about 150 feet away. The guy was going as fast as he could back to truck, lickety split, dragging his dolly cart behind them going clang clang clang over our bumpy lawn and then over the curb and into the truck. He tossed in the dolly cart and drove away as fast as he could?!?!?!

I hollered out the window to Steve who was in the big garage with an open door, doing something.  "Wasn't that the UPS delivery?" Steve replied "I don't think so". He was in deeper in the big garage. We both met out in front of the little garage where the door was wide open. Lo and behold there was our box laying on the floor ----with our table.

IN PIECES!!!!!

YEP, THIS IS EXACTLY HOW WE FOUND 

OUR BOX SETTING IN OUR GARAGE.

That UPS delivery person had no business dumping it off like that. He knew we would never accept it in that condition. I would have never agreed to even have it unloaded from the truck. It's not a light table. The box is 90 lb. He could have saved himself the trouble of trying to unload it. All he needed to do was knock on the house door or hollar to Steve in the other garage.

Of course, all around the table it was totally damaged and all of the wood was shattered and broken. I didn't even go so far as to look for the center glass piece if it was even intact. It didn't matter. The table was destroyed. There were pieces falling out of the box all over so I don't even know if all of the iron legs and brackets were included.

I immediately got on the phone and called over to a local business supply store. I called there because I know the UPS driver stops there last before leaving town. He loads up there with any outgoing UPS packages as it is the only shipment hub for our small town. The owner at the office supply store said she will catch him and tell him he needs to come back to this address. He never came back. I called again. His excuse was that his truck is too full and he couldn't fit it in, so he left town!!

Boy oh boy did that make me angry!

My next step was to contact Amazon. I thought I had ordered it directly fulfilled from them and sold by Ashley. But then I found out it was a third-party seller called Sierra Sleep by Ashley.

I was really worried that I would have a hard time getting a refund and getting a return shipment ticket. I was very surprised when Amazon contacted me back within 20 minutes and had me print out a return authorization paper and authorized a credit directly back to my credit card. What nice service was that!!!

I contacted back to the local business supply store and told her I didn't want to haul the 90 pound box over there just a couple blocks to ship it back. Could have it picked up here? She said yes absolutely no problem. She plugged it into the computer and scheduled a UPS pick up from our house.

Steve and I did the best we could to strap the whole box back together. We noticed there were three different types of tape added to that box so I am sure somewhere along the line the box had broken open at various depots and shipping facilities and people tried to fix it along the way. So I can't blame the last driver for destroying it. But I can blame him for dumping it off when he knew full well we would never accept it in that condition. We were not happy with UPS at all. Of course, I could fill out a complaint form on the UPS website, which I did. Never heard a word from them since.

The next day, a different driver came to our house to pick up the box. He was apologetic and said that there was no way that that box should have ever been unloaded from the truck after I showed him the photos on my phone. He and Steve loaded the box back up into the truck and away it went.

But now what to do? I really wanted a table like that.  Knowing that the damage during shipping could easily happen again. The box was not that very well made, and was thinner cardboard than I would think for a 90 pound table.  I read a couple other reviews from people who had the same problem. Damaged during shipping. Improper packaging.

I decided to contact the Ashley store directly in Green Bay. They don't carry the table in their store but I could order it through them. It was $60 more to order it from them than via Amazon. But it was free shipping if I had it shipped to the store and not to my house.

I asked if I ordered the table from them, could it come to their shipping platform and let me examine it right there before I pay for it?

The salesman said generally they don't do that. They require full payment up front when they order something that they don't normally carry in their store. But he agreed to only charged me fifty percent of the table's cost to get it there. And if for some reason I didn't want the table I could use the 50% as a credit for something else within the store.

Well, I still wanted the table, so that was better than nothing.

I placed the order and the table came in a few short days. We drove down to the loading dock and the nice worker there helped unbox the table. We examined every single piece. It was shipped correctly there was not a mark on it and all of the pieces were complete! 

He even let us wrap it in a blanket to load the pieces into the back of the Tracker and leave the box and all of the styrofoam packing material behind for their recycling program.

We got the table home and put it together toot sweet. It looks so perfect, exactly where I wanted it!!

I already owned the four matching stools. They were from Ashley as well, from our previous island in our last home. I took them with us when we moved, and these stools were of the same series with the matching curved wrought iron parts as the table. Called their "Glambrey Design".

I love the beautiful pieces of laminated wood, especially the center circle of wood down below in the foot rest area. its like a big starburst disc. You can see it through the top beveled glass as the light shines down through the table. The pretty rope edging compliments the rope edging we have on our dining set, hutch, and buffet in the dining room too.

The over head light fixture that we put up just makes the wood gleam and shine.  I am glad it is finally in it's rightful place, and the kitchen is now complete.

This is in the corner of our kitchen with the beautiful windows facing out to the East and the South. The morning sunshine streams in and it's the perfect place to sit and have a cup of coffee.

The dogs think it's a perfect place to curl up next to us in the sunshine and wait to see what we're going to do for the day.  And hope for a dropped piece of bacon?

Oh....  one more little bargain find I wanted to mention. I was shopping with my friend Vicky a while back. We hit a favorite thrift store down in Plymouth Wisconsin. She found this big beautiful red chicken?!?!  I told her when I was a child my mother had a little white milk glass setting hen that she used to save our Gold Bond trading stamps and S & H Green stamps in. It made me smile as I stood there in the store, holding this huge big red nesting hen.

She told me that I must have it, that it was meant for me. So I bought it.

I kept it on a shelf on the island in our house in Chilton for a few months before we were packing up to move. I was debating on various things if they needed to come to the new house or if I should donate them back to the thrift shop. I came across this big red chicken. It made me smile again. I guess it's that thing from that organizer lady who says if it brings you joy, you must keep it. Well that smile was pure joy. Vicky was right. I needed it.

When we came to look at this house the first time, the seller, Peggy, had the kitchen all decorated with chickens and roosters! It made me laugh and smile.

Now the big red chicken is proudly displayed in a premiere spot in our new home. If the grand kids eat all of their dinner or deserve a special snack, I tell them they can go check the big red chicken.

  I keep replenishing the treats inside

 so there is a variety to choose from.

(Steve keeps snitching them too)

Until tomorrow....  have a cool and enjoyable evening!

National Folk Farmhouse Modifications - She Shed Wall and Kitchen Island

Asking for a special prayer request 

for someone close in our family 

as we go through some difficult times.

~~~~~~

Instead today I will focus on some of the other projects we are working on.

Yesterday we were able to get the OSB board up around the newly framed wall. Steve then got some leftover tyvek house wrap from the neighbor so we didn't have to buy a hundred foot roll.

The weather got way too hot and humid to be able to do any more work, so we took a break.  Soon we can start closing it in by installing the windows, and then soffet and fascia around the roof line.

In between all of this She Shed work we have been messing around with other projects. So here's one of the other things we've been working on because I'm trying to catch up the blog.

I know a couple blogs back I talked about putting new handles on the kitchen island so it matched the rest of the cabinets. Steve also dressed up the island with some things you don't see. We converted two of the cabinets on each side of the stove with pull out units called Rev-A-Shelf. One is for our kitchen trash and the other one is for our recycling.

Although the instructions say 15 minutes to install, those buggers took us probably half of the day. We've installed these before at our other house and it was never this difficult. I think they're making them cheaper with thinner metal, they flex as you screw them into place. You'll have them all measured accurately and marked correctly, and then once you screw it down, the metal of the actual frame unit twists. Very frustrating!!

We shimmed it and corrected it and fiddled with it until both units would finally slide in and out with ease.  Whew.... what a job!

~~~~~~~

Of course, the island was not original to this 100 year old national folk farmhouse kitchen. The previous owners made the island out of five pieces of store-bought cabinetry, stacked around the fancy dancy stove they put in the center of the island. They added beadboard panels to the sides as well as an electrical outlet. On the top they put a big piece of faux carrara countertop. Then they added a beautiful stainless steel hood vent over the top. More on that later....

The only problem with the island is that with the cabinetry that they added, it did not have sufficient shelving inside of the cabinets. They were large cabinets, but a lot of wasted space above each appliance. They needed shelves inside of the cabinets for better storage. Nor were there any notches or holes to add pegs for extra shelves.

Does that stop my Steveio? No it doesn't! He cut some nice pieces of wood for shelves and some strips to hold them into place. Then we went around the rest of the island cabinets and figured out which appliances went where, determining the best positions.

He put in the shelves according to what heights I needed. Now all of the appliances are stowed away and can be taken out easily to set on the island when in use.  What a guy!!!

Oh, back to the hood vent. It's a beautiful hood vent and works very well during cooking as far as the vent portion goes. But the four lights on the underside leave a lot to be desired.  They aim downwards but don't shine well onto the cooking surface and surrounding island prep areas.

They are a funny bluish cast LED color and not bright enough to illuminate the work surface area. Especially evening cooking or early morning, the lack of light is frustrating. We need to turn up all the other lights in the room to illuminate the food prep and cooking area on the island.

I googled the brand of vent hood and everybody else had the same complaint. I looked up the company website and the only replacement lights they sell are the exact same 2 watt cool blue LED lights. I wanted something warmer white and brighter.

But in one woman's review, she stated that she was able to buy little replacement LED discs to put into the individual light fixtures. She even gave the link to the website where she found them.  The only drawback is that they needed to be soldered into place.

https://www.aliexpress.com

Well that's no problem, Steve is very good at soldering. So I went to the website and placed the order. I didn't see the two little words at the beginning of the listing title saying "10 pcs".  Instead, I just went to the drop-down menus and selected "3 watt", then I selected from the next drop down menu "Warm White". The price was under $7 and I thought that was okay, I selected quantity 4 with free shipping. Done.

Little did I know, that I actually ordered 4 lots of 10 LEDs! 

That makes 40 lights!!! 

Lol lol lol

Oh well, the price was still reasonable compared to the exact replacements on the manufacturer's website, and the lights came in about 3 weeks from Hong Kong.

Steve disassembled one of the old light fixtures and I held it steady with a pliers. He was able to remove the old light connections and attach the positive and negative wires to the sections on the new light disk.

Steady.... steady...steady.....

We plugged it in. It was amazing!

The two lights in the back in this photo are the older bluish ones. The one to the foreground on the left is the newer bright one... and the hole on the right is while we were working on the second light.

Soon we had all four lights replaced. it was amazing---- illuminating the cooking area with warm bright light that really made a huge difference.

He now has 36 more lights disks to do something creative with. He had a bright idea and started soldering them one at a time into the halogen fixtures out in our motorhome. Soon all of the under counter and under cabinet lights in our motorhome will be changed over to LED.

That's enough for today's blog. Time to get a move on here.

I am babysitting our Little Beetlebug Claire, the youngest granddaughter for the weekend. Steve is taking care of family things and we would appreciate any and all kind thoughts and prayers.