The little man has been in a pretty good mood today. He has eaten well, been out to see his grandmother, and is currently napping. Hopefully we will go for a walk at the AG Center later this evening. It has been nice and cool today and it should be lovely out in a couple of hours.
I arrived at the farm around 6:30 and resisted the urge to take a nap. Instead I put down the rest of the screws on the porch. It was boring and tedious, but thankfully now finished. Next I organized the tools inside the house and set up my two new scaffolding sections. The will come in very handy for putting the siding on the front of the house and installing beaded board on the ceilings. The HVAC guys came to start on the duct work and I talked with them briefly. I went to the roofing/insulation supply place, but the office was locked. I’ll return next week to speak with them about insulating the house. After a late breakfast I went by the Cub Cadet dealer and briefly looked at lawn mowers. They had some nice ones, but it’s hard to get excited about spending so much money. Back at the farm I just loaded up the cardboard boxes from the scaffolding and hit the road. I could have done some cleaning up outside, but it was really so muddy that I didn’t feel like walking around in it. There was also a chance of thunderstorms, although I don’t think those ever materialized. I’ll be back down tomorrow.
It rained steadily pretty much all morning. The ground was a real mess and working wasn’t much fun. Also my power cords kept tripping the breaker. That is probably better than getting electrocuted though. I cut and installed the deck boards for the porch. I’m really pretty satisfied with how that went. The boards were mostly in pretty good shape and went down well. It was a real pain to screw all the boards in, and I actually didn’t finish that. I will tomorrow though. This porch will really make it so much easier to install the siding on the front of the house. I’m thinking of doing the deck on the back before putting up any more siding there. Not much else happened besides the porch. I cleaned up a little and put the bath tub in the house with the loader. The plumber and electrician should finish up tomorrow. I tried to take a little nap but couldn’t really sleep. Probably because My clothes were soaking wet. The sun actually came out and it got really steamy. At that point I decided to hit the road in order to beat rush hour traffic. So I got back to the condo around 3:40. I washed some dishes and changed Luke’s diaper. He is pretty relaxed now.
This will be brief because I’m pretty exhausted. I got to the farm just before six and my dad arrived soon after. I slept very poorly last night. My neck was really sore and every time I moved it was painful. Fortunately that went away mid-morning. We spent a little time repairing a siding issue and adding a lot of nails to the existing boards with the nail gun. Once the wood for the porch was delivered we started working on that. The 20 foot pressure treated 6×6’s were huge and heavy and a pain to deal with. Eventually we got them into place and it felt great. Lunch was at Sonic. Rather unusually I didn’t feel sick afterwards. We put the band in place and then my friend Emilie came with her three kids to see the farm for the first time. Unfortunately it started raining not long after they arrived. They left and the rain continued. It made a real mess of things. Once it finally stopped we put in the joists. That went pretty well. We started cutting the deck boards but got pretty tired. My dad left and I cleaned up a little. On the way back to the condo I stopped at Home Depot in Spring Hill for some deck screws.
Tomorrow and Friday there are supposed to be thunderstorms. I will still go the the farm tomorrow with the hope that there will be enough dry periods for me to finish the porch’s decking. Once that is done it will be a lot easier to put siding on the front of the house. The electrician and plumber worked today and are saying they will be finished tomorrow. One bright side of the rain is that it has been a bit cooler. I only took one picture of our handiwork, but will get more tomorrow.
Luke seems to really enjoy things that spin. We first noticed this a couple of weeks ago as he stared at the ceiling fan in the cottage. There was a little spinning rotating thing that came with his pack and play, but you had to move it by hand, and it was pretty lame. So a couple of days ago I ordered him a new one off Amazon. It arrived today and I started messing with it this evening. Although it was very highly rated, it had a couple of shortcomings. First, it didn’t include anything to dangle from it. To remedy that I took a couple of little bits from the old device. Second, it wouldn’t mount to his pack and play. For that I just used some shipping tape to attach it to the old post. He has been laying down and watching it for the last little while. It seems to make him pretty happy.
