Here then, gone now

August 25, 2007 (7:06am)

54º F, Cloudy, Calm Wind.

Good morning,

The Hobbit Hus has changed again! The wall between the eating place and the kitchen is now gone in preparation for the new range a-coming. Now we are confronted with a dilemma. What do we call the new room? Do we call it a kiting or an eathen room? Margriet said the Dutch would call it am eating kitchen. Probably what it will end up to be called.

The wall came down quicker than I thought it would. The most frustrating part of the whole deal was trying to figure out what fastener was holding everything together. Everything from a 2" clip-head nail to 4" ring-shank pole barn nails. Seemed as if in some places all were used in a string of nails holding something together. The wall sheeting was made from OSB, which shatters if the nail is too close to the edge of the sheet, causing some nasty, sharp shards to tear into my meat. Not a good thing. Now I have a pile of boards and OSB to pull nails from and to store in some orderly method.

All of the wiring is hanging like a bad spider web, now that is has no wall to be fastened too. I have some work to do with that! I think I will tie the two ceiling lights, one in each room, to a common switch and power the light over the table separately. I also want to put an outlet in for the refrigerator, rather than using an extension cord. All of the boxes were held in place on the walls with 2" pole barn screws and the wires with pig staples. Both will change. I also will rearrange the outlets, hoping to put them in the walls rather than on the walls. It will be a challenge to bury the wiring in the walls though. Might not succeed in all cases. Also need to move the gas line. But that will be mostly done outside of the building and fairly straight forward.

The floor is another matter. Each room had a different floor covering. The kitchen and bathroom have a vinyl sheet covering, but the eating room has a hard maple flooring. Not your normal wood flooring though. It is made from “tiles” each made of about 8 pieces of maple about ¼” thick x ¾” wide x 6" long held together with a wire embedded into the wood. Everything is just laid on the floor with no adhesive or other method to hold it in place, other than wedges along the two edges of the room. Of course there is a “slot” in the flooring where the wall was. Not too sure how I am going to handle it. There are some pieces around here of the maple flooring so may piece them in place. How to hold things in place is another matter. Would like to replace the whole flooring, but I think that is out of the question for the moment at least.

It will be nice to get rid of the present stove. The through the wall exhaust fan also. Both are not what I would call anything close to adequate for us. While the fan does take out the air, it also howls like a tornado in the kitchen. I never have liked them, even when new. The over-the-stove kind is much quieter and much more efficient. Don’t think we will put in either again. Also thinking of painting the walls/ceilings so at least they look like one room. Thinking of a light blue with yellow strips and orange pok-a-dots.

I did manage to get the sawmill more or less assembled, at least the hardware, the other day. Since I am making it twice as long as it was originally designed to be, I need to figure out an adjustable support for it in the middle. The rail is a total of 21' long, 2 - 9' sections and a 3' extension. The 9 footers will be the cutting area and the 3 footer the starting position for the saw. The original design calls for two supports, about 5' apart in the center of a 9 foot section. I think I can get by with 3 supports with some bracing in between. Have to do some head scratching on that though.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><