Month: February 2018

We only had a little while to work at the place yesterday, but it was beautiful weather, so we made the most of it working outside. Our goal was to finish clearing the section behind the shed and that is what we completed. The fence is clear all the way around and we now have two big burning piles out in the pasture. It is so nice to be able to see through that area, either from the pasture to the house or vice-versa. A huge job done, although there will be some days of cleaning it up and getting the ground itself free of debris, vines, weeds, etc.

Here is a progression of the brush cutting we’ve done behind the shed. They are not taken from exactly the same point each time, but it is the same general area. I’ll get some good shots from out in the pasture when we totally finish it. But the last picture is how far done it is as of today. We still have to haul a lot of brush that we cut today, but it was raining and we just wanted to get in where it was dry!  There sure is a lot more room for air movement around the house now!

For people who have never cut brush in Tennessee, you need to know that every branch is held in place by multiple vines, many of them coming from overhead! You can cut off a tree, but it doesn’t fall until you loosen it from all the other stuff that is wound around it. It makes for a lot more work than we’ve ever done before cutting brush!!  But it is going to look so nice when summer comes.

https://youtu.be/6JEMDMSWzlU – Change My Heart, O God  (February 15)

https://youtu.be/K4IBu_BNxac – Humble Thyself

I went to the property this morning for about an hour and a little more and worked on the floor some more. When I got tired, I went out to move the brush I’d cut the other day over to the pile, but I smelled a skunk so I went home.

Don and I went back in the afternoon after his dental appointment and we worked together on the floor and finished it except for the part behind the counter.

I only worked a little over 2 hours yesterday, but I got a lot done. Don was sleeping, so I went alone.

We had taken up the carpet on about half the area that was carpeted. That was pretty easy – just cut it and pull it up and roll it up and take it outside. Then we took the ice scraper and scraped the black foam off the floor. We got a little over half of that done on Saturday. We will still have to go back and scrape the final layer of black off the floor if we intend to paint it. If not, it is probably okay.

So yesterday, I first finished scraping the rest of the part with the carpet up. I bagged that and put it in the shed. Then I decided to scrape as I went, so I did two fairly wide sections like that. By the end, it seemed that the scraper was getting dull, so I decided to wait on scraping until we’d tried to sharpen that up a bit. But I cut and pulled up three more sections of carpet. So the carpet is gone all the way past the start of the shelving on the right side, but not quite to the shelving on the left. For sure we are into the second half of the project and maybe even the third third!

Then I worked some more on clearing brush because the weather was pretty nice, though cloudy. I worked on the section out from the heat pumps and along that fence that had frustrated Don. It was really a mess of vines tangled around raspberry stalks – very tall raspberry stalks! It took a lot of cutting small vines to get things loose, but I finally got a fairly large section of that cleaned out. I can probably finish the rest on that side of the fence in one more day. I didn’t haul the piles yet – I didn’t really have the best clothes on for hauling – a knitted sweater that was always getting hooked with something. So I’ll haul that when I’m wearing my brown jacket. It is going to be so nice to have that section cleared out and neat, so we can see through to the hill! It will also let the breezes through a lot better, so it doesn’t become a haven for mosquitoes or other bugs or even for wild animals like skunks!

We spent the whole afternoon at the property because it was warm and sunny today and it is supposed to rain for the next three days. We worked outside all the time. I started cutting vines in the yard to the west of the house. That was very tedious and I probably got a section about 2 feet by 10 feet finished. Once the vines are all gone, there really isn’t much left but dirt and a few clumps of grass here and there. It will be interesting to see if that eventually fills in with normal lawn or if the vines just keep coming up and getting cut off by the mower.

Then Don decided to cut trees and brush with the chain saw, so I decided to help him haul the brush. Instead of putting it in the driveway like we had been, we put it on the pile in the pasture where a pile had previously been, judging from all the debris left there. It was a little longer haul, but now it is out of sight. First we worked on the fence line by the heat pumps. When that got too exhausting, we went to the grove of shade trees right behind the shed. We worked there for quite a while and got a brush pile that is probably 5 feet high and very wide. We cleared out a large area, leaving 4 or 5 clumps of trees and a few lone trees that will come out if they aren’t anything pretty. When we were tired and wanted to quit, it wasn’t quite 3:00, so we moved the old brush pile out from the driveway to the new pile and then it was 3 and time to go for a snack. We took the back roads to Chick-fil-a and got a frozen lemonade to split.

When we got back, we went up to the neighbor’s because we saw there was someone there. But it wasn’t the owner, so we didn’t stay and talk. Then we worked on the door to the shed, which was quite dented and falling apart. We got it pounded back into shape and screwed securely to the shed, so no on will be getting in. Don went to the back and cut down a couple more trees that could be climbed by raccoons hoping to get inside and Abby and I took a hike up the hill and sat and enjoyed the view in the dimming late afternoon light.

We also put up the sign that shows where to put the water meter and the sign that says that this property has applied for a change of zoning. That last one is a very big sign, not that much of anyone will see it there at the end of the dead end. We had Abby with us all afternoon and she did a pretty good job of staying around, especially after I closed the gate to the pasture with the barn. She does like to eat things off the ground, though, which is a concern because of the raccoons.

The raccoon guys finished up yesterday. They sprayed the downstairs, too, so we can be confident any danger has been taken care of inside. Outside, we are still planning to pour boiling water wherever we think there might be contamination. Mostly that is beside the building where debris might have dropped down through the overhanging eaves. Only then will I be totally confident that our health is not in danger!

Don spent a lot of money yesterday. After paying the raccoon guys $2,800, he went over to the Blountville Water Authority and paid them their $830 to hook up the water meter and get the water line to our property line. And he paid the zoning commission their $100 to start the work on getting it rezoned. It turns out there is a March meeting and an April meeting that we need to attend. We are not worried about getting in changed back to residential, though, because we checked with them about that before we bought the property and they said that switching in that direction – commercial to residential – is not a problem. Going the other way is where the problems lie.

Don also had the plumber we used on 1800 Windsor over to look at the project and we have him on board for various parts of it. First he is going to bring his scope and look at the inside of the pipes to make sure they are all water tight before we start running water through them. He can also check on the integrity of the septic system. He told us that the size of the septic (small) shouldn’t be a problem since it is right by a sink hole!

Yesterday we got a call from the wildlife eradication people and they wanted to work on our house right away since it was raining and ours was an inside job. They arrived a little after 9:00 and stayed until about 6:00 and actually almost finished.

Instead of removing the insulation after they vacuumed up the poops, they just cut up the insulation and sent the whole mess down the vacuum hose. As they moved along, they left a totally clean attic floor behind them. So they thought it would be finished in about three hours today with just a partial crew. We are going to ask them to spray the disinfectant downstairs, too, when they are done, so we can be sure the entire building is clean. I’ll probably go around later and pour boiling water around the base of the building outside, just in case anything escaped into the soil. Apparently hot temperatures kill the organisms.

It will be so GOOD to know that the place is sanitary and safe for us to begin work!

Don is talking to the Blountville Water Authority today about getting the meter put on and to the plumber we used in Bristol about hooking the water up to the existing water in the house, so we will have water to begin the power washing project. If the dust settles today, we should be able to go back over there by tomorrow and work safely in the yard until we have water to work on cleaning the inside.

So exciting that we are started 2 1/2 weeks earlier than we expected!!

This is where I’m going to keep a record, with pictures, of our project on the hilltop. So, some pictures from yesterday.

The pictures loaded in a different order than I wanted them, so the first ones show the wood stoves, the next ones the empty trailer, the shed after we closed the door and the view from the front window just before we left. And the last ones show the diggers hotline markings. The blue are the private water line and the red are the BTES electric line.

On Saturday, 2/3, We brought in the wood stoves from the trailer, with some difficulty. We used both the winch and the yellow strap with the ratchet, then the four-wheeled dolly and the two wheeled dolly and a lot of effort and got them out and where we wanted them. It was a huge victory, in that we did it without getting hurt or wrecking anything!

We also put up the mailbox, but I don’t have a picture of that completed project. The mail lady happened by while we were there, so we had a nice chat with her. And, while Don was working on the mailbox, I cleared a lot more brush from the east side of the house and made the burning pile that much bigger.

I also took another, slightly better, video of the interior before we do any work on it. It can be found at https://youtu.be/ksE5nxbCkJE

Work previously done has included meeting with the men who will be taking care of the raccoon problem – removing all the waste product and the raccoons and blocking the areas they gain entry, taking the shelves down in the area where the kitchen will go and bringing various tools and supplies out to the project.