Month: April 2006

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Springtime Maintenance

Spring time…

Time to clean up the yard, fire up the mower, pickup all the sticks (logs) that have fallen out of the trees.

Ugh, I need to do some maintenance on the the o’l BobCat Zero turn.

bobcatzt.jpg

It’s time for complete fluid changes. Oil and Hydro drive fluids. I put this off last year because the design of this thing is not so hydro-drive oil change friendly.

Now the walk behind has its issues too. I broke the starting rope this winter trying to start it to move it out of the way. No good.

My record with re-stringing pull starts is not a positive one. I think I’m like 0-3. Generally I end up taking the cover off, and to get to the old rope that’s left you have to take the winder thing out. Somewhere along there, that’s when I here the ‘ping’ and “Pssst??? as the spring unwinds and everything falls apart. I’m not sure that I’ve ever gotten it put back together. Nope, not on a lawnmower, or weed whacker, so we’ll have to see how this goes.

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Making progress in the Attic

Alright!

So we’ve framed out the rafters across one side.  Now we need to deal with what we’re going to cover them with.

Our original thought was wood paneling, you know the wainscot looking board, but the unfinished stuff is outrageous right now.  The dimensions are also screwed up.  Still per sq foot it’s probably the best bet.

I did find some nice unfinished flooring at lumber liquidators that would be awesome. (Yeah flooring on the walls) but in this old house it would rock!

I’m going to look into some tongue and groove boards, 12″x some really long length and see if it is in any way shape economical.  I doubt it but it would far easier to put up than something that runs vertically.

Heck anything that runs horizontally will be far easier to put up.

We still need to box in the sky-lights too, but that’s a “We’ll figure it out when we get there” kind of thing.

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Let the bleeding begin

The Deposit has been made.

Let the barn building commence.

Let’s see, things that are going to put a drain on the ol hip pocket:

Barn: (check)
Fence: (still waiting on final damages)
Stalls: (I don’t even want to know)
Barn will need electric: (We have a couple options here, none are cheep)
Barn will need water: (Drilling a well, boo-yeah, that will come later)
Build a Tack Room and Feed Storage: (ooh, my head hurts)
Gravel for driveway: (anyone have spare rocks they don’t need?)

Motorcycles are way cheaper than horses, that’s all I gotta say.

🙂

OK, *most* motorcycles are cheaper than horses, and OK they don’t love you back

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Things are shaping up nicely

We finally got the design of the barn agreed upon.

We finally got the pricing from the lumber yard, and we almost know where we’re going to put it.  Well, we know where, but just not the orientation.  I think we do, but it’s not something you can change later so we need to be sure.

We ended up getting Charlie to build the barn, it should be done in under 3 weeks.  That’s a bonus, we know what kind of work he does.  He built the barn across the street and everyone, including the farmer that farms our land only uses him.

That being said, there is still much to figure out and decide.  How are we doing the stalls?  We building them? or Buying free standing stalls that we can move around later?  Something in between?  What about the fence? We think we know what we’re doing here.  How we going to get electric and water to the barn?  Claudine thinks she can handle not having water out there, but I keep reminding her we don’t have a pickup anymore, and, well, horses drink a lot and dragging 5 gallon buckets around isn’t a lot of fun.

We need a pond, anyone have one we can borrow?  Anyone want to dig one for fun?  Have a bulldozer they don’t need to use for a while?

-Let us know.