M.T. Acres

We got the last of the grout done in the master bedroom.  Tina got the grout haze on the floor in the master bedroom mostly cleaned up this weekend.

These tiles are the absolute most miserable things I have ever worked with.  Not only were they a pain to lay, but Tina is having to scrub them with a stiff bristled scrub brush and mop them several times just to get the grout haze off of them.  Once she does that, they look great.  But damn what a chore these have been!

For my part, I did get the toilet permanently set in the master bath.

I also got a sink set in the laundry room.  This is a big deal because it is the first time we do not have to go outside to draw water.

I did not fix it to the floor permanently yet as we are not sure how it will fit with the washer and dryer.  There will be some cabinet somewhere between 8 and 12 inches wide, but until we get the washer and dryer I am not sure of the dimensions or the location.  So it seems wise to keep it not affixed to anything until we figure out the final dimensions,

You will also notice the blue wash bin under the P-Trap in the sink…  That is a testament to my lack of confidence in my plumbing abilities.  (I HATE plumbing with a passion!)  But so far, it is dry as bone…

I also got the rest of my hand tools put away in the tool chests and got them put where they belong.

We also got the last of the machines moved from the rental house to M.T. Acres and started putting them together.  It is nice to finally have a shop again after going for almost a year and a half without one.

I also got my tablesaw put back together.  That was a big job and it took the better part of a day because there is a LOT adjusting and fiddling around to get the cast iron wing and the sliding table exactly square with the top and matching the table height exactly.

I have not yet squared the fence or the mitre gauges because I did not have any scraps of plywood large enough to test cut them.  But that will not take too long to do after I have rough cut the cabinet sides and have the scrap from that.

I was amazed at how well the top of my tablesaw survived the mild winter here!

When we were living in Minnesota, every spring I had to spend an entire day just cleaning off a very thin layer of rust that would build up on my saw top from the humidity during the snow melt.  There is virtually no rust on the top this year that I need to worry about!

I still have to unload and assemble my jointer and my lathe.  But both of those are quick and easy to assemble.  I also have to unload my drum sander, but there is nothing to assemble with it, only finding a place to put it.

Finally, we got all of the appliances ordered and paid for.  That was a real pleasant surprise.

We had originally priced appliances at Lowe’s and Homie Despot and nearly had a heart attack from sticker shock.  Then I found a small local family owned appliance shop in Sierra Vista, AZ (a small city about 30 miles south of our rental house).  This was one of those finds that was absolutely by chance and was worth a LOT of money.  They not only saved us more than $3000 over what we would have spent at the box stores, but they also got us much higher quality appliances than we were looking at in the box stores.

For you fellow Arizoniacs, if you need a new appliance, check these guys out.  Their website sucks and their showroom is nothing to write home about, but their service, selection, price and help navigating which brands and models to buy is the best!

http://www.kgsappliances.com/

We were only out at the build house for a day and a half this week.  But I was able to get the last of the floor tile laid in the master bedroom!

So I am done laying floor tile for the immediate future!  We do still have my office and the guest bedroom to do.  But we are not yet sure if we are going to tile them or do wood or something else.  We are in absolute agreement they will not be carpeted!  Regardless, those two rooms can wait until after the final inspection to make a decision.

I could not be happier with how the tile came out at the end of the far wall of the bedroom.  It was strictly by luck and not planning that we ended with a full tile against the end wall of the bedroom.  (I must be living right.)  I laid out the tile long-wise to be centered in the main part of the bedroom.  But I laid it out short-wise to be centered on the hallway coming into the bedroom.  I could not have planned this any better and it is sheer dumb luck that it worked out this way.

We got a good start on the grout in the master bedroom, bathroom and closet.  Unfortunately, we ran out of grout before we ran out of floor.

And of course, these being the tiles from hell, grouting them has been more difficult than the other tiles as well.  We are going to have a ton of cleanup after the grout is fully dry.  I sure hope these end up looking as good as I think they will, because they have been an absolute nightmare to work with, every step of the way.

(Also because I was the one that picked this tile and grout combination.  Tina did not object, but I was the one that said “Oh yeah!  Let’s do that!”)

I also spent the evenings unpacking and organizing some of my my hand tools.  I think I am missing a box of clamps from the move from Minnesota. I am sure the missing ones are in the rental garage somewhere.  But at least I was able to find enough to be able to build the kitchen.

And I do not think my wrenches and sockets have EVER been this organized!  I am sure I will not be able to find anything.

The plan for next weekend is to finish the grout in the master bedroom and to transform the garage into a proper cabinet shop.  That will require us to get my tablesaw and other machine tools put back together and get the last few machines moved over from the rental house.

I also want to get the toilet permanently set in the master bath and get a laundry sink in the laundryroom.  That will be a BIG milestone since it will mean we have actual running water INSIDE the house!

I apologize for not writing a post last week.  For the last two weekends I have been doing the floor tile in the master bedroom, master bathroom and closet.  It has been extremely slow going due to the tiles being 6 by 36 inches.  Therefore, more than half of them have required cutting to fit.

I am especially pleased with how well the bathroom turned out.

Thankfully, I am almost done with it.  I have an area that is 6 by 16 feet yet to do in the main part of the bedroom.  Otherwise, the rest is complete.

It does look pretty nice, but man what a pain it is to lay!

We also noticed a mistake the builder made when framing the guest bathroom.  Typically, when they frame a bathroom that has a bathtub going across the full width of the room, they put the studs a 1/2 inch wider than the tub.  Then, once the tub is set in place, they put a 1/2 inch lathe on the face of each stud prior to sheetrocking and taping.

In the guest bathroom, they failed to put the lathe up before sheetrocking.  Thus, it left a gap along the back wall of the tub.

Obviously, that would not have worked with wall tile.  So we contacted the builder and they came out and fixed the problem.

Tina had to prime and re-paint the wall.  But otherwise we should be in good shape now.  (Note: I forgot to get a picture of the completed wall before we left.)

Since Tina does not have a lot she can work on until I get the mouldings and start working on the cabinets, she put together a couple of planters for outside.  She has a cactus garden at the rental house that is growing like mad.  So I think we will be moving some of those over in the next few weeks as we come out to work on the house.

Lastly, in the evenings we started putting some shelves together and started to organize my workshop in preparation for building the cabinets.  We still have quite a few tools to mover over from the rental house.  But we are taking those a few at a time as we get the shop organized enough to make space for them.

Now that the floors in the living room, dining room and kitchen are done, we focused our attention on the floors in the master bedroom and bathroom.  But before we could begin, we had to move our sleeping quarters into what will be the kitchen and move our tiling supplies and tools into the living room for storage.

I also had to remove the toilet from the master bathroom to be able to tile the floor.  So I started the whole process by permanently setting the toilet in the guest bathroom.

When the plumber ran the lines throughout the house, he used a new type of line called PEX rather than copper.  Since I had only ever worked with copper lines, I was more than a bit apprehensive about how easy the PEX would be to work with.

Plumbing has never been my strong suit in home repair/remodeling.  But after cutting and putting on a couple PEX fittings, I am absolutely sold on it as a product!  You literally cut the PEX to the correct length and push the fitting on.  That’s it!  There is nothing to tighten or soldier or anything.  And they simply do not leak!

It took some time to get the waste pipe cut off and get the hole in the concrete cleaned up enough to glue the toilet flange in place.  But once that was done, it literally took about 15 minutes to set the toilet and get the plumbing done to connect it to the PEX line.  Did I mention that I am now a PEX True Believer?

Then I was able to remove the temporary toilet from the master bathroom so I can tile (and put a bag of grout over the waste pipe to keep the sewer gas out of the house).

I got started on the floor tile in the master bedroom and bathroom.

These tiles are much slower to lay than the tile in the living room because they are 6X36 inches.  So there is a LOT of cutting.  But they do look pretty nice.

By the end of the week, my knees and back were in pretty tough shape from kneeling on the concrete.  So I decided to take a break from the tile and start moving my shop tools from the rental house.

I did get all of the parts for my tablesaw moved over, but have not yet put it back together.

And of course my “Steel Tina” (roller outfeed table for my tablesaw).

Note to any budding woodworkers: a “Steel [insert your wife’s name here]” is a MUST for your shop.  They are pretty cheap, (I paid about $150 for mine) And they will absolutely save your marriage if you have to rip long boards or cut sheet goods.

I also got my tool chests moved over.

But still have to put the tools back into them.

I plan to spend my evenings when I am done working on the house for the day, re-organizing my tools into my tool chests.  But I will need to take a day or two and dedicate it to just organizing my shop and re-assembling my machine tools.

Plus, I do still have a few machines at the rental house: a lathe, a jointer, a 22″ drum sander and a drill press.

Also, our friend Danny came by and helped me lift the wood stove from its shipping pallet onto some furniture pads.  The furniture pads will allow me to slide it into final position by myself once I get the pipe for the chimney.

I like it a lot!  I think it is going to look really sharp once we get the final trim done.

Finally, all of the recent rain has caused some sink

holes to appear.

We have had 2-3 of them appear.  The one in the picture is the biggest.  It is about 16 inches deep.  At first, I thought it was over the leachfield.  But it is too far away from the house for that.  So I do not know why it happened.

When it rains, the hole fills completely with rainwater and mud, much to the delight of Belle The Amazing Water Dog.

The last week seemed like an endless sentence of pain, punctuated by well problems.

We discovered our well pump is great until we get a rainfall of more than an inch.  Then it quits working.  10 months per year that would not be a problem.  But we are in the middle of monsoon season, so the well pump quits working about every 2-3 days!

We discovered this inconvenient behavior early in the week and called our builder.  Since the pump guy was out of state at the time, our builder came over and diagnosed the problem with the pump guy over the phone.  The problem was a faulty transducer.

When I asked what the transducer does, he informed me it replaces those old fashioned pressure switches.

My follow up question was: “What is wrong with those old fashioned pressure switches?”

Our builder replied: “The new transducers are really cool because they can talk to your smart phone”.

“I don’t care if my well pump can talk to my smart phone.  I do care that it can pump water, even when it is raining.”, I responded.

To make a long story short, the builder showed me how to reset the transducer to get the well going again.  That proved to be a very short-lived fix because on Saturday we got about an 1 1/2 inches of rain and the pump quit working again and no matter how many times I reset the transducer, it did not start transducing again.

Finally, on Sunday morning the pump guy showed up and replaced the transducer with an old fashioned pressure switch.  Then, to make the builder happy, he spent a couple of hours screwing around with the control box to make the pressure switch talk to my smart phone.  It gives me such great comfort knowing that next week, when I am in Columbus, OH, I will be able to determine if Tina went to M.T. Acres and flushed the toilet from my cell phone.

On our part of the build…

When the builder framed the house he put two access panels into the attic, one in the garage and one in the laundry room.  The panels are typical of most houses where I just had to put a frame and moulding around the hole and a piece of the sheetrock from the ceiling would sit on the frame.

We were both plenty happy with that arrangement, but unfortunately the building inspector was not.  He insisted that we have a spring-loaded trap door with a folding ladder in the garage.

So after enlarging the hole in the garage ceiling, my plan was to screw two braces to the rafters to hold the door in place while I screwed a few sheetrock screws to hold the door temporarily in place.  Then Tina could remove the braces from below and open the door and I could climb out of the attic and bolt the door permanently in place.

It was a good plan that went awry during implementation.  I put the door up in the attic and climbed up after it.  Tina was below on the ladder helping me to get it into place when the back of the door slipped off one of the braces and the door came down right on her head nearly knocking her out.

Of course, I did not see any of this because I was up in the attic.

She toughed it out and we were able to get the door installed.

But the lesson for you youngsters is: When you finally meet the girl of your dreams and convince her to marry you, do not hit her in the head with a 40 pound door.  That may work in caveman movies but not so much in real life.

We also undertook doing the epoxy on the garage and laundry room floors.  The first step was to wet sand the entire floor.  Then once the water dried, Tina scrubbed the entire surface with a broom to loosen up the dust from sanding.  Then she was able to go over it with a shop vac to remove the dust.  She did that twice.  Finally, she mopped it with a microfibre mop and denatured alcohol.

Once the floor was completely dry, we were able to prime it.

After about 3 hours, the primer was dry enough we were able to mix and spread the epoxy.

We are both pleased with how the epoxy came out.  But it was much more difficult to do than the manufacturer’s instructions led us to believe.

I also got the wall tile behind the wood stove up and grouted.

Finally, I picked up all of the floor tile for the master bedroom and bathroom.

I got the last of the tile set in the pantry and both of us got the grout layed.  It does not sound like much, but this was a bitch of a job.

I am especially proud of that I was able to maintain the pattern from the living room, into the pantry even with the weird wall angle.

You will notice there is one extra grout line on the door frame to the right. There was no way to fit the tile with the wall without it.  Admittedly, it looks pretty bad, but there is nothing I could do to get it to fit and it will be under a door anyway.

Here is the rest and thank God it is done!

We only had about 2 1/2 days to work on the house last weekend due to my travel schedule.  I had to leave for the Tucson airport at 3:30AM Sunday morning to catch my flight to Montreal this week.

But still, Tina managed to the door frames done.  They came out real good.

I was able to finish laying the tile in the dining room and kitchen.

All that is left for that tile is a little bit in the pantry, but I did not want to be kneeling on the tile in the kitchen to lay those until the kitchen tiles were good and dry.  So I will put those down this coming weekend.

Unlike my disappointment with the job I did on the hall tile, I am very pleased with the job I did in the living room, dining room and kitchen.  In a span that goes over 25 feet, I was off by less than an 1/8 inch by the time I had worked to the far end of the rooms.  Furthermore, I was even able to hide that in an area of the kitchen that will be under the kitchen cabinets!

Finally, Friday evening Tina and I were sitting in the garage doing what rednecks do in a garage.  I.E. Sitting there watching the world go by, when I looked down about a foot from Tina and noticed we had a visitor.

Tina quickly got up and grabbed the dogs and got them in the house and I whacked this little guy with a shovel.

The two pistols that we alway carry out to the house (a Springfield .45 for me and a S&W 9MM for Tina) seemed to be a bit of overkill for a stupid snake.

Tina does have a Ruger Single-Six in .22 Magnum that I think we are going to start bringing with us as well.  They make snake loads for it and being a single action, it should work well.  I am going to have my friend Dwight make up a proper holster for it to keep the dust and dirt off it.  Dwight suggested a full-flap cavalry style holster for it which I think will be perfect.  I’ll post some pictures of it in a few weeks once we get details ironed out on what we want and Dwight gets it made.

Shameless plug:

If you are in need of a new holster, please take a look at Dwight’s web page:

http://www.dwightsgunleather.com/product-examples.html

He does outstanding work and his prices are about the same for full fitted custom holster as you will pay for a semi-fitted off-the-shelf holster.  Just tell him you found him on M.T. Acres!

Tina got all of the doors sanded, sealed, re-sanded and 2 coats of varnish!  They look great.  In addition, she started on the door frames.  She got the frame to the master bathroom completed so we could re-hang the door and have some privacy…

I think we will get the mouldings in the next few weeks and get started on those.  Moulding is a low priority item since we do not need to have those completed for the final inspection.  But it is a good thing for each of us to work on as filler while we wait for the other to complete the critical work.  I.E. Tina can be finishing moulding while she waits for me to build the cabinets and I can be hanging moulding while I wait for her to finish the cabinets.

When I first started the tiling, I could not figure out why I was having such a tough time getting things to fit right.  Everything measured out correctly, but when I got to a wall or a doorway, they just did not fit right.  Historically, I have always been pretty good at laying tile.  I am slow.  But things always end up square and looking good.  That is why I was having such frustration with this job.

At first I thought it was my new tile saw (pictured without the water tray).

The tile saw has been a source of severe frustration.  The blade that came with it started to burn after less than 10 cuts even though there was plenty of water flowing on both sides of the blade.  And by the time I had done 20 cuts it was as fried as the brains of our HVAC guys.  So I replaced the blade with a decent blade.  Then, I spent another couple of hours trying to get the table square with the blade.  Finally, I was having trouble with the table jamming up.  That problem was solved by pumping nearly half a small tube of lithium grease into the bearings.  After spending almost $500 on a tile saw who would have thought that grease was not included?  GRRR!!!!

When this build is over, before I sell the tile saw, I am going to find somebody that owns a monkey to bring the monkey over to the house and throw poo at that bloody saw for a day!

Even after getting the saw so it mostly works pretty well, I still found using a small angle grinder and a pair of nippers works best for angle cuts and complex cuts.

But after all my frustration with tools, correct measurements but incorrect results, etc. etc., I looked at a box of the tiles and finally figured out what the real problem was.

THESE ARE MUSLIM TILES!!!  The Muslims waged tile Jihad on my hallway!

Once I figured that out, I started treating them like Muslim tiles and they laid down nice and neat in the livingroom.

And of course my boy Boomer is always helping me…

Good friends help you hide the bodies…

We bought a wood stove for the house last March.  We had to pick it up a couple of weeks ago or begin paying storage charges.  So I drove up to Tucson and had them load it into the back of my truck.  My biggest concern was how we were going to get it out onto the ground.

I threw out a blanket lifeline call for help to get the stove down from my truck and our friends Danny and Bonnie responded.  We have known Danny and Bonnie for about 10 years (since our first visit here on vacation) and they are great folks.  But they do not owe us anything.  Still, they saved our bacon.

Last Monday, Danny showed up with a tractor with a hay fork!  We quickly repurposed hayfork as a forklift and got stove down with a bare minimum of physical labor!

We cannot thank you both enough.

The next day, our friend Eve, who we have also known since our first vacation here, called and asked if we wanted to come down and take a proper shower at her place.  HELL YEAH!  (This is a normal shower not some weird California thing.)

To those of you that I have not introduced Eve to, suffice it to say that she is a True American Superhero.

And having a real shower after a hard day’s work is a REAL treat.

Lastly, the photos I failed to post last week.  I got Tina a washer and a dryer.

I have this week off from work to spend more time working on the build house.  So we came out Friday night and will be staying until July 9th.  The wildfire that we were so worried about, directly behind us, is finally out.  The firefighters did an outstanding job on that one.  Only one structure was lost and a few more singed.  But nobody was killed.

There is another fire, also started by lightning, several miles to the north of us, the Frye Fire.  It started as a little nothing thing of less than 500 acres.  Since it has grown to over 40,000 acres.  It poses no danger to us as it is still over 30 miles away.  But it is definitely visible.

The photo above was taken Friday night.  After dark we could see the flames.  By Saturday night, the smoke was so thick we could not even see the flames (or the mountains).  Our prayers are with the firefighters and the folks in the Safford, AZ area that the Frye fire turns out like our Lizard Fire.

Back on the house…

Tina was able to get doors #5 and #6 almost done.  She only has one coat of varnish left on one side.

Doors #3 and #4 came out unbelievably good.

For my part, I got the floor tile done in the guest bathroom.

I am really pleased with how well I was able to freehand cut the hole for the toilet.  That was a real bugger to do and it came out better than I hoped it would.

I was also able to get the transition tiles set for the guest bedroom and my office.  They look pretty nice.  They are a lighter color in real life than they appear in the picture.

When we dry fit the tile for the main hall, we just did not like the look of it at all.  I was so disappointed with the look, I was prepared to rip up all of the main hall tile and redo it with something different.  Tina had a better idea that only required a little bit of rework.

Her idea was to put in a couple of transition rows of tile at either end of the hall to break up the monotony.  It also allowed me to mostly hide a mistake I had made.

Overall, I think it looks pretty dang good for a couple of rookies.

I have the last 6 tiles for the last row cut but did not lay them because it would have required me to kneel on wet tiles to do so.  Laying them in the morning will not be a big job and then the evil hallway and bathroom are done!

I am hopeful that I will be able to greatly increase the speed of my tiling now that I will be moving to more open space in the living room, dining room and kitchen and will not have nearly as much cutting and custom fitting to do.

Unrelated to the house, Boomer figured out a new way to stay outside, yet keep cool.  Sleep with your ear in the water dish.

Lastly, they say New York City has the greatest skyline in the world.  I have seen the New York City skyline dozens of times and it does not hold a candle to our skyline.

Sorry I missed posting an entry last week.  My travel schedule for work has been brutal the last 3 weeks with last weekend being the worst.  I got home from Seattle about midnight on Friday and had to leave the rental house at 3:30 AM Sunday morning to catch a flight to Augusta, GA.  So we did not even go out to the build house last weekend.

Tina did go out for a few days while I was in Augusta and got started finishing the doors.  They are really coming out nice.

She is doing these a little different than the way she did the doors in our Minnesota house.  Instead of putting on a coat of sanding sealer, she sanded them down well with 220 grit sandpaper, then varnished them with a mix of 2/3 varnish and 1/3 mineral spirits.  Then she sanded them with 320 grit sandpaper and put on 2 more coats of varnish (without the mineral spirits).  The result makes the grain really stand out.  And with the high gloss, they look like you can put your hand right through them.

Unfortunately, we only have 2 sets of sawhorses, so she is limited to doing 2 doors at a time.  I think we are going to go to Home Depot this week and get 2 more sets of saw horses.

But we were pleasantly surprised to learn how quickly the varnish dries in the desert.  In Minnesota, a coat of oil based varnish took 10-12 hours to dry.  Here, they are dry enough to add another coat in about 90 minutes.

When Tina was at the build house by herself, she did catch one of the most beautiful sunsets.  Of course, she had to rub my nose in it by texting me while I was stuck in the heat and absolutely miserable humidity of Augusta.

For my part, I did finally get started on the floor tile.  It has been 7 or 8 years since I have done ceramic floor tile and I found my skills are a little rusty.  Of course, I had to start with the most time consuming part of the tiling as well – the hallway and the guest bathroom.

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I did this doorway.  You will notice the tile comes right to the door jamb on the right side of the photo and left is about 1/2 inch beyond the door jamb.

Oh well, that is why God made angle grinders.

But I think the transition pieces we got for the doorways will look really sharp once I get the tile straightened.

Also, we had to pick up the wood burning stove this week.  We bought it back in March because they were due to increase the price and they agreed to hold it for us for 2 months.  After 3 months, I guess they wanted their warehouse space back because they were going to start charging us to keep it.  So I picked that up on Saturday too.

Unfortunately, with the pallet and the attached shipping stuff, the thing weighs about 350 pounds.  So it is still stuck in the back of my truck.  Since I am taking the week of July 4th off from work to work on the house.  I am hoping I can impose on our friend Danny and our friend Eve to help us scare up a couple strong backs to help me lift it from my truck onto a dolly.