Work Camp is over, now it is down to our projects. Our list was made before we left Fredericksburg and we added to it on the way home. Many more items have been added since. As we saw with the Work Camp, project creep happens all the time to almost everything.
The projects were broken up into groups; House, Coach, Maggie, and Shop, pretty much the priority as well. Here are some highlights.
And while all of this was happening I was back to work at Habitat for Humanity, usually two days a week.
House Projects
Trim work
The highest priority house project was to install a door between the work/storage room and the room where the water heater, water softener, and water pump are located. For some reason, we call it the water room. And then finish up the woodwork trim in two closets downstairs and the newly installed door. Upstairs there was some trim left to do in the hallway between our bedroom and the bathroom and in the closet. Everything downstairs is done except painting the new door. The upstairs closet is done and almost everything in the hallway is done. What is left there is the threshold between the hall and the bathroom and the trim pieces at either end. All of the parts are made I just ran out of time to finish installing them. The threshold and the trim pieces at each end have 35 individual pieces, some very small. They require great care to cut safely. I will finish them soon. Or maybe not. Priorities shift.
Flag Pole
We got a Flag Pole kit last summer and debated for months about where it should go. Susan read that it should be visible from the street. We live in the woods, no matter where we put it, seeing it from the street was going to be challenging with the leaves on the trees. I wanted to be able to see the flags from the house. Our compromise location was towards the NE corner of the shop, between the House and the shop
This involved digging a hole 18” in diameter by 24” deep. The first 8” or so were not hard, a shovel worked OK. And then much harder dirt mixed with rocks, big rocks. The next foot and a half was done with a post-hole digger. Each jab with the 30 lb post-hole digger yielded 2 or 3 cups of dirt. I pried out some good-sized rocks and fished them out by hand. This was exhausting and hard work.
This digging came after going to pick up 6-60 lb bags of concrete mix. I lifted them off the pile and onto a cart and then lifted them again into the back of the pickup. I lifted them again from the pickup and stacked them on the deck of the shop. This move really strained my hips and butt. I had to lift the bag and then step up onto the shop deck.
Once the hole was ready I put in a 16” concrete form tube and centered the sleeve that the flag pole sits in. Then moved (again) the bags of concrete to where we were mixing the concrete, lifting them one more time and dumping them into the mixing bucket (a 5-gallon plastic pail) and mixing with my 1/2 drill with a mixing attachment. Susan says it is like a giant immersion blender. So much easier said than done. And then picked up the bucket with 60 lbs of concrete mix and water to dump into the form.
I finally figured out that the water goes into the bucket first, then 1/3 of the mix, blend, more mix, more blending, and finally the rest of the mix and blend more adding water as needed for a pourable consistency. And then move the bucket and dump it in.
After some back-breaking digging, moving bags of concrete mix, and equally difficult mixing the form was full, the pole was set in the sleeve and braced to be as vertical as we could make it. We left it cure for a couple of days.
Looks pretty good. We even have a newly redesigned Minnesota State Flag. I added lights that come on at dusk and off at dawn to light up the flags. The pole is tall enough that the flag is just visible from the street. As Fall approached it was even more visible.
Driveway
We have had a gravel driveway since we built the house in 2000. We always figured someday we would pave the driveway with asphalt. It would be cleaner and easier to shovel in the winter. This year was going to be the year.
In the RV park in Alabama where we stay for the winter the asphalt roads are bordered by flat concrete curbs. This protects the edges of the asphalt from heavy RV tires and separates the driveway from the grass. And it looks nice.
I checked with the asphalt folks and they gave me a price that was more than the asphalt paving was going to be. I checked with the concrete guy in Hastings who has done most of our concrete work before and his price price was less than 1/4 that of the asphalt folks. We decided to go for it.
After some digging and scraping the forms for the curbs were placed. The height from side to side was set to allow for good drainage. The width between the curbs was at least the width of the paving machine. The rebar was placed and concrete was poured.
A week and a half later the asphalt crew showed up.
They did the final grading, added some fill where needed, dug some out where it was not, and rolled it all out.
The asphalt laying machine puts down just the right amount and does the first of the compaction. They used highway-grade asphalt and a thicker layer than is normally used for driveways. They started with the area in front of the shop.
And then moved to the end of the existing driveway.
Past the shop.
All the way to the street.
The rollers were at the ready.
It was hot stuff! It is about 300 degrees as it is laid down, after rolling it was still hot enough to boil water.
They were all done in just half a day. 87 tons of asphalt, nearly 800 ft of curb.
We stayed off the driveway for a week with the cars and a month with the coach. It takes some time for it to cool and set.
There is more to do. Much more. I have been adding fill along the outside edges of the curbs and once that is done and it is compacted then we will add topsoil from the curbs blending it back into the existing lawn. Starter fertilizer and grass seed, before we leave in November, will have us seeing new grass in April.
It took most of the summer to fill in along the curbs with a compactable gravel mix, 5 cubic yards of it, and then 10 cubic yards of sifted topsoil to smooth out the transition from the curbs to the existing yard. Our garden cart holds about 1/4 of a yard of dirt or less at a time, at least that is as much as I could put in it and still move it. So three or four carts filled with dirt in each morning session and after many days the dirt pile slowly disappeared.
Maggie was out there with me most of the time off-leash. She got very good at staying nearby. When I couldn’t see her I would call and she would come running.
The dirt was raked smooth, fertilizer spread and raked in, 25 lbs of grass seed spread and raked in, and a thin layer of straw was applied to help hold it in place. The next day it rained, perfect. Three days later we left for the winter.
Tree Removal
When we bought this property and built our house we thought great, we have less lawn here than we did in St Paul, and it will be easy to take care of. Well, the lawn is but there are two acres of woods to take care of as well. And it is continuous work. You have to keep up with it. And it is trees.
We had many ash trees die over the last year. The Emerald Ash Borers finally got to our area and every ash tree is now dead. The bugs kill one tree and move on to the next. On our property, there are at least 60 dead ash trees, more likely closer to 80. My neighbor counted almost 100 on his property. It sounds like a lot and it is, but our 2.5 acres are mostly woods. Removing all of these trees will just open up the woods a bit.
And there is a very large, very old Oak tree next to the deck on the back side of the house. It has some disease. We cut down one major part of it last summer and had the tree treated hoping to save it. It didn’t work. So that tree needed to come down as well.
We hired a tree removal company to cut down about 22 Ash trees that were near the house, one Elm, and the dead Oak. I will tackle the remaining Ash trees next summer.
The three-person crew showed up first thing one morning and had at it. The trees came down, the branches were cut off, and the trunks were cut into manageable sizes. They had a tractor-like machine with pinchers on the front that moved all of the branches into piles and the logs onto a trailer. The logs went up the street to a neighbor who cuts them into firewood to heat his house. They made quick progress.
The Oak tree was challenging, much of it was close to the deck and house.
The lead cutter harnessed up and scampered up the tree like a monkey. He was probably 50, maybe more. Up he went. He hooked up lines to secure himself and his tool and to tie off chunks of the tree that he was cutting off to control where they fell. The two fellows on the ground helped with the ropes and used the tractor machine to anchor the ropes to the parts being cut off.
Yikes! The whole tree came down in pieces like this.
They were there for two days and cut all of the trees down, moved all of the logs, removed the brush and branches, and cleaned up. I would have been doing well to cut down a couple of Ash trees from the ground and clean up at the same time.
Coach Projects
I took the coach over to the fellow who does service for me. He changed the oil and oil filter and lubricated the chassis. Lots of crawling around underneath. He also checked all of the connections between moving parts of the suspension. The coach is 24 years old. He said they were all good, that in trucks these parts last hundreds of thousands of miles. We are at about 120,000 miles.
We managed to lose 9 more shiny plastic lug nut covers and the plastic cap that goes over the rear axle hub somewhere this summer. I have replaced at least a dozen or more of these lug nut covers over the years, they just come off and are lost. They are about $7 each so after 9 more were gone and a hub cover went away I decided to get stainless steel covers that will not come off.
The new covers cover both the hub and the lug nuts. Pretty nice looking I think.
When we are parked for a while and the steering wheel is tilted up it seems like a good place to put things. I have seen that other folks make some sort of a tray that sits up there. So I made one for us.
I made the front end squared off and a bit longer. Cherry wood to match the coach. It fits well and stores easily when we travel. And perfect for our small Christmas tree in December.
I also serviced the generator – changed the oil, and replaced the oil filter, two fuel filters and the air filter.
I replaced the coach air filter, added two new water filters for the coach water, cleaned the basement, and sorted all of the basement storage tubs.
Pretty much normal maintenance stuff. I do as much of it as I can myself.
Pickup Truck Repairs
After the tow bar broke the front of the pickup needed to be repaired. It took a month to finally get all of the insurance stuff straightened out, they had a hard time visualizing how the truck ran into the back of the coach with no one driving it. Finally, the repair shop and a local adjuster got it worked out and the truck went into the shop for repairs. It took a month to complete While it was in the shop I had an odd Nissan rental SUV.
The vast majority of the work was replacing plastic parts on the front end. You can’t really repair them. And for some reason, they are slow in coming.
But when it was all done the truck looked like new. A very nice job by Kiss’s Auto Body in Newport, MN.
So all of this consumed most of our summer at home. We did manage to spend 2 months on the road. That is the next story.
More Later, Much Love
Maggie, Susan, and Roger
Home2 with Roger and Susan 