Tag Archives: remodeling

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This is not what you want to find when rebuilding….

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Our old baby barn/shed has a dirt floor with heavy duty rubber mats on top. Due to numerous woodchuck holes and tunnels, we had to drag all the mats out. That sounded easy enough until I realized each one of them weighed the equivalent of an African elephant…

 

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Seriously.

A pregnant, morbidly obese African elephant carrying a suitcase I packed for an overnight trip.

 

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Did I mention they were all covered in pounds of dirt as well?

 

 

So as we’re moving the next to last mat…..

 

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This.

 

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A chipmunk burrow with tiny scraps of paper, plastic and leaves.

Upon further examination…

 

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A maze of tunnels, which I thought was pretty cool, until… it moved.

 

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Do you see the leg?

 

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Yeah.

 

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Not a tunnel.

A nursery…

 

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Which means we had to find the other end of the tunnel and relocate them. Not an easy task.

Five minutes after we found them?

Momma found us.

 

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And she wasn’t happy.

She ran around squawking and chirping and looking for her babies.

 

 

After a while I think she found them, because she stopped searching and started stuffing.

Stuffing her little cheek pouches full of all those little scraps of paper….

 

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And scurrying back for more.

Within minutes she’d cleaned up the whole lot.

Watch her cram a dried leaf that’s almost bigger than she is below.

(And please pardon my husband’s cursing. Things were not going well with the rebuild at this point…)

 

 

After we wasted time relocating chipmunks, we realized we had to relocate a bird’s nest as well.

 

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So many evictions.

I felt like an evil slumlord.

 

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Back to work…. and things did not go well.

Which was completely the husband’s fault.

 

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He had the crazy idea he could square the building properly  (After 40 plus years of Maine frost heaves? Madness!)  and changed the original footprint….. which in turn threw everything off kilter.

More good times.

 

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Did I mention he uses tools from the 1950’s picked up at a yard sale or the dump?

This little jewel feels like it weighs 50 lbs.

 

But he has the original box… and vintage lube.

So it’s special.

 

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P.S.  For those of you who pay attention, this post is actually out of sequence. That back wall is gone now. Apparently my blog scheduling has run amok.

 

 

 

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Another weekend, another wall.

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Work on the baby barn project graduated from glacially slow to slow as molasses last weekend…. and we managed to frame a wall in 3 days.

 

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Though to be fair, ripping off that old rotted pressboard is like Chinese water torture.

 

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It literally shreds in your hands.

But slowly… we saw daylight.

 

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And by Saturday afternoon we had open space and a center post that was barely hanging on.

And by barely?

 

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I mean barely.

 

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The husband did the usual dirt shuffle in his ongoing attempt to level the building. A pipe dream at best as it was built in the mid 70’s… and it’s Maine.

Frost heave central.

 

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Measuring is fun.

 

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Ripping out posts that were nailed in with spikes?

Not so much.

 

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Pardon the sun glare and bad manicure… but damn.

Talk about overkill.

 

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Framing started Sunday, with a new window taking center stage.

 

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And continued when the husband decided to dig out all the dirt underneath the structure…

 

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And lay paving stones in yet another attempt to level it.

 

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Then came the rain… and a mad dash to put everything away before it got soaked.

And then?

Then… the baby barn got a rainbow.

 

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And I found my honey at the other end.

 

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Can I get an awwww?

 

 

 

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And so it goes….

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Work on the baby barn continues, albeit slowly.

 

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My husband’s master plan involves a serious amount of temporary screwing, refitting, removing and replacing. He’s not a huge fan of measuring… but he’s a man.

This is not surprising.

 

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Of course this means 3 times as much work.

 

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I think one planned demolition and rebuild would suffice…. but I’m a woman.

What do I know?

 

 

There’s also a good deal of shifting the husband’s  crap we don’t need now, nor will we ever need again   stuff from one place to another. Like the hurricane generator we bought in 1992 when we lived down south and haven’t used since.

 

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Or the wheel weights for the tractor we no longer own.

 

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Or the numerous tires for the cars we no longer own.

 

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Or the table that went with the chairs we no longer own….

 

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Right beside the small refrigerator I had no earthly idea we owned.

All of these things are heavy and filthy and must be moved over and over again because he can’t be convinced to throw them out.

Good times.

 

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There was hammering.

 

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And crowbar-ing …. and yes. A good deal of cursing because the structure is 45 years old and not exactly plumb.

There was also a good deal of displaced dirt.

 

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Thanks to numerous woodchuck tunnels…

 

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Which undermined our attempt to simply re-side and re-shingle the damned thing.

 

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Now we have to completely dig up the hard packed floor and smooth it all out.

 

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Doesn’t that sound like fun?

 

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