Barn is Painted

I missed a post last week, although it would have been a very short post. On the second day of painting the barn, our brand-spanking-new-handy-dandy sprayer worked about as good as a diesel truck running on water. Yep. After much grumbling and frothing at the mouth, Shawn had enough of the thing, and took it back to the store to get his money back. I guess you can't beat a roller and a hand brush. Shawn did a little bit at a time during the evenings, and I helped a few times.

Then my dear father-in-law, Derald, saved us again. He took vacation from work and came down on Thursday night to help us get that barn painted. So Friday, Shawn took some vacation from work and the two of them went at it. Shawn's brother, Brian, stopped by after work for a couple of hours. By evening they had all of the red paint done. Friday night my mother-in-law came down. We had a full house, since my parents are visiting. On Saturday, my parents babysat Evan, while we tackled cleaning the barn. My in-laws could not stand the mess so before they could help us finish the chicken house we were building in the barn, they happily suggested we do something about the clutter and mess in there. We've been wanting to do something about that mess, but we've been too busy or too tired, and with the extra help, it actually was not that bad. I think this is the first time since the haunted barn party that we've seen the concrete floor in there (and that was a few years ago).

Here's the beatiful barn, in all it's red glory.
We still have a few details to finish, like the white paint on the new windows we fixed up for the coop. The door also needs a second coat of white paint. It rained right afterI painted it, and you can see it washed off. We also missed half of the fascia board on the back of the barn.
We sent the pictures to the insurance company. We'll see what they say. They will probably ask that we fix the hole in the siding on the front, or some other obnoxious little minute detail to fix.

On the house construction, not much progress to report. Painting has taken up our time, and the weather is still not helping. We met with the electrician to discuss how to go forward now that the new law in Iowa prohibits us from doing our own work. Just thinking about it makes me shake with rage, but I'd have to start another blog to rant if I get started >:S

Anyway, we'll wait to see what the quote is for the electrician to do things that we are perfectly capable of doing. Alas, I will not go there.

Shawn did start sealing around the windows with low expansion foam, since we really haven't been able to work outside. It's been raining a lot, and it is supposed to rain some more the rest of this week, so chances are we will get nothing done outside yet again.

We need to dig the utilities and redo the grading before siding can go up, and we need the ground to be dry before we can dig anything. I think what we can do is seal up between the sill plate and the ICF foam on the exterior. I will not be pretty work, but it will be dry enought to do that.

At least the good news is that with all of the rain that we've had so far, out basement is still dry. So we must have done something right with the dampproofing on the basement.

So, hopefully we can finally get the siding started soon. Maybe we'll side the upstairs first since there is a trim board that goes around horizontally all around the house, and we can start from there. Then we can do the basement siding once it actually gets dry enough to get the utilities dug and the grading finalized.

Barn painting

So the insurance company says that we have to do something with the barn siding, and painting was acceptable to them. So last night Shawn and I bought a paint sprayer and a five gallon bucket of red paint.
In the store, the paint color looked like a nice dark red barn color. But when Shawn started to apply it, it looked like he had just murdered somebody and was using their blood to paint the barn.

Take a look.
We are hoping that maybe with the second coat it will darken up, and that it might look a bit different once the paint dries up (cross fingers). Otherwise we'll have to live with the blood colored barn. We think that it will take 10 gallons of paint to do two coats, so maybe we can get a darker red bordering on brown for the second 5-gallon pail that we buy. We'll see.

The paint sprayer is nice. Shawn did this in about 45 minutes, 20 of which were setup. I'm not sure that he thinks the pain of cleaning out the parts after he's done is worth it. But Shawn hates painting regardless of the method, so that might be clouding he's judgment a bit.

I started placing marks on the house plan to locate outdoor outlets and other things. Also, the electrician is going to call Sunday to set up a time to meet to discuss running the electricity from the pole to the house. I'm hoping to have him mark where he wants the trench for the wires so that we can dig it when we rent a mini-excavator. I think if all goes well, we'll be excavating the weekend of the 24th or the first weekend in May. It's supposed to rain all this weekend, but the ground is drying much faster now, since the ground has finally thawed.

I also spoke with the Power Cooperative to get more details about setting up a second meter on the pole to run the electricity for our heat. The company has a special rate for heating purposes of about $.05/KWH which is cheap. But you have to use the electricity exclusively for heating. And the guy said that if we hook up our A/C to the same meter, in the summer time the rate is about $.06/KWH, which is still half of the normal electric rate for everything else.

Also, having two meters will mean that we have two 200 Amp service panels: one that will serve the house needs, and the second which will serve the heating and cooling equipment. I was worried that with the loads of a boiler, water heater, lights, stove, microwave, etc. etc. we might need a 400 Amp service panel (think $$$$$$$). 200 Amp panels and wiring is a lot cheaper. Having two meters with two separate 200 Amp panels works out great for us. Right now, going all electric is more economical than our other fuel source option of propane. I just pray that electric rates stay relatively low, since I can only see propane prices increasing. It sounds like the power coop also has a nice rebate for some boilers, and AC/heating units. They also have an electric water heater for a very good price.

My dream is that in the future we can install a small wind turbine to supply most of our electric needs, and maybe supplement with some solar electricity. What I am really counting on is that all of the money we are spending on insulation, good windows, and making the house air tight will pay off in lower heating and cooling loads, which in turn means that we will need smaller heating and cooling equipment than a normal built house of the same size.

I had no idea how involved it is to figure out HVAC for a house. The very first and most critical part of the whole process is to calculate your heat loads using what is called the Manual J from the American Conditioning Contractors of America. Then once you have that, you can figure out the size of equipment that will satisfy those loads. And if you're using ductwork, you have to do a different Manual calculations. And I'm saying this in the most basic form. Me, being the nerd that I am, find this stuff intreaguing. And since I do not trust the "experts" to know what they are doing, I have started doing my own Manual J calcs for heating loads so that when it is time to find an HVAC contractor I can compare my numbers with his.

The first thing I'll ask if what they use to do their Manual J calculations (there is some very nice and very high priced software for contractors to use), and if they say huh? I'll move on to the next guy. The worst thing you can do is hire a guy who uses the rule of thumb of some many tons of A/C for so many square feet.

A good HVAC guy will base the equipment on the size of the house, location and orientation of the rooms, window sizes, occupancy rates, building method and materials, and such. A guy who has a 3000 s. ft house with all of the windows facing north will need heating a cooling equipment different than a guy who has the same square footage, but with most of the glazing facing south. And these two house could be side by side! Those little pesky details make a huge difference, and from what I understand, oversized or undersized equipment is beacoup de dollars down the drain, and you'll have a house that is never cold or never warm. I shiver at that prospect.

New Steps and another building gone

We'd had on our to-do list the demolition of the old, small detached garage that had holes in the roof. The insurance company asked that we fix it, so we opted instead to tear it down. We'd planned on doing that all along, but we were not going to do it until... I don't know... 2030?
The insurance request was just motivation to get it done now.

So here's a picture of Shawn beginning to tear down the old building. I would have liked to save the siding since it had that old weathered barn board look, but right now we don't have the storage nor the time to pull all those nails.

I did get Shawn to cut me four wall sections that I am going to use to build a compost bin. He's still grumbling about the extra work that was.

Shawn did all of the work, though Evan helped riding the lawn tractor trailer during clean up.

Now the insurance is saying that we need to fix the barn siding. Take a look. The insurance adjuster must not have an appreciation for that antique look. I'm trying to find out exactly what they mean by "fix" the barn siding. If it's to reside it, then I'm afraid the barn will go the way of the garage and end up mostly in the burn pile (unless I can save those nice barn boards.)

I like the old barn, I think it's neat. I am working on converting an area in there into a chicken coop, and if we end up tearing it down, I'll have to build a whole new coop.

I am hoping that they will accept my idea that the siding is perfectly fine, and that a coat of paint will do wonders for it. So, if painting is good enough... guess who will be hosting a coincidental BBQ with some activities around the barn that may or may not (will) include some fun with a paint bucket?
We're still waiting for the weather to allow us to do some outside work. We had snow this past weekend, which is in the process of melting and making muck out of the lawn-less area around the house. Anyway, here's our pile of siding waiting for us to get going.

There was a minuscule amount of new work at the house. Pam and Derald came on Saturday since we had tickets from my SIL Cari to go to cheer the local arena football team.

They stopped by our place to drop off the brand spanking new steps Derald and Shawn built the previous weekend. So here you can see the steps up to the house in the garage. We still need to level the dirt under them, but they look nice and they work perfect. It will be nice when we finally have some concrete poured in there, but for now those steps make it a lot easier to get in and out of the house.

Nothing new

Last week I was gone on a biz trip for work, so apologies for the lack of update. Though you have not missed much since not much has happened.

My uncle passed away so we spent Friday and Saturday with family for the memorial and scattering of the ashes. Funerals are always bitter sweet occasions since you do get to see family that perhaps you don't get to see often, though the reason for gathering isn't a happy occasion. At least I can rejoice in that my uncle knew the Lord, and I know he is in a much better place now.

On Saturday, we went to see Shawn's parents, and Derald did have a house related project. My father-in-law, bless him, had in mind to build a set of steps to get from the dirt in the garage up to the house. He probably almost broke his neck going up the folding step ladder I have there now, so it might be in self-interest that he decided to do this for us. Either way, it will be nice to have some steps! So he and Shawn built them last weekend, and he will be bringing them down this weekend. We're all going to an arena football game on Saturday with Shawn's brother Brian and family.
I forgot to take pictures of the steps, but I'll get some for next week.

Now that the ground is thawing, it seems to dry much faster after a rain. We're sort-of dragging our feet since there's too much to do and we have no idea where to start. So I think this weekend we're just going to start doing something to get going. Usually once we get started, it is easier to keep going as things begin to line up. So, first thing we'll do is foam up the joint between the wood framing and the icf basement. Also, we are going to start, tonight, on designing the outdoor lighting so we can locate electrical boxes and what-not.

On the Chicken front, my order of new chicks arrived yesterday. I went to the post office to pick them up and brought them home.

Here's Bandit inspecting the peeping box. He sniffed vigorously wondering if this time he'd get a taste of chicken.


Aren't they cute? So as to not hijack this thread with chicken lore, I've decided to start a Chicken Blog.

Yeap... I hear my husband go "What?" as he's sitting next to me right now.

I know... I know... but Chickens and Construction are two separate things and some may not be interested in my Chicken endeavors, while others might rather see what a Chicken is up to rather than this construction nonsense, non?

So, check out vadgo.blogspot.com if you're interested.

Back to construction. I will take pictures of our nice stockpile of siding, and we should have some pictures of some actual work next week!