Winter Update

Do you have any idea why I constructed these three things for the JayBee out of cardboard? The answer is at the end of this post.

Late last fall, after I made sure I had two working bottle jacks, I crawled under the JayBee to level up the house. I tried to wrestle a footing out from under there that had gone wonky and was in my way, but I couldn't do it; I couldn't leverage enough strength in that tight space. So, I enlisted my brother's help.

He was able to pull it out of there. Thank you!

Here was my view after I dug out a spot for the jack and put it to work.

I wedged a block under the northwest corner of the JayBee's trailer, which had previously been sitting on the ground, and got the JayBee leveled up. (The drain pipe you see is the one coming from the toilet.)

I got some primer paint on the shoe shelves, knowing that the access I have now is a lot better than it will be once the wall boards go up.

I put some sound proofing around the shower stall.

I spent a bit of time staining boards for the ceiling. I'd rather do all of these steps down where I can easily reach the boards than after they are installed. First I wipe them down (turns out they have caterpillar hairs on them, which give me a terrible rash), then I apply a coat of conditioner and two coats of stain/finish.

I've been storing stained ceiling boards by length up in the storage loft.

This winter, I have created a number of drawings of storage elements that go in the JayBee, and I'm getting eager to get started building them. When I go looking for wood, though, the door to the "shop" is still all iced in...

...and the door to the garage is behind a big snowbank. I guess I will wait awhile longer yet.

I caught two deer in the early-morning light the other day.

George outside today.

The JayBee as it looks today. It would be nice if I moved into it before it gets too much more weathered.

Answer to starting quiz: I made the two rectangular solids to use outside the JayBee's front door to discourage nest building. The larger, more angular solid is for the top of the air exchanger on the north wall. Nest Arrestors. I will not keep them permanently installed, but I will use them during the prime nest-building months.

Dryer Vent

All the time I spent thinking about the bathroom vent brought me to think about the dryer vent as well.

I had installed the dryer vent very early on--well before installing the shingles on the north wall of the JayBee.

I installed it low on the wall, even though the dryer will sit on top of the washer in the house, because no appliance lasts forever and a possible future washer/dryer combo unit could still use this vent without having to blow upwards to vent. With my current washer and dryer stacked, though, it will require snaking duct hose down the wall from the dryer to the vent lower down the wall.

Here is the wall with the dryer vent, all insulated and protected with the vapor barrier.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the dryer vent wasn't quite right. If an elbow and round duct was installed on the inside of this wall, the washer and dryer would be pushed out from the wall by more than four inches. Too much real estate inside the house wasted.

I briefly considered buying specialized duct that is flattened rather than round and takes up less room, but I was worried that it would encourage the buildup of lint. (I know I should regularly clean all lint out of the dryer vent, but I rarely actually do so.) So, I am sticking with round dryer duct.

I decided I had to build a channel inside the wall so that part of the diameter of the duct can run inside the wall.

<sigh> I opened up the finished vapor barrier...

...and pulled out the insulation--at least the insulation in front of the wires. Hmm, there certainly are a lot of wires in this wall.

All those wires take up so much room in the wall that I can't push the dryer duct as far into the wall as I was hoping to. Nevertheless, I trimmed the vent stack to be shorter, and I built this channel.

I primed the channel and covered the back side of it with plastic--so the vapor barrier will end up being uninterrupted across this wall. I installed the channel in the wall, and I installed one of the elbows in the vent.

I insulated well behind the channel and insulated the rest of the wall cavity.

Then, I restored the vapor barrier.

Without extending the duct or installing it, I propped the duct and upper elbow in the channel to get a rough idea of how this will work.

While it looks like all this work and the special channel will only save about an inch of space, once the tongue-and-groove boards are installed on the wall, it will save close to two inches. I'm pleased with the results.

Bathroom Fan & Vent

Oh, my goodness--what a  l o n g  day! What I thought was going to be a relatively simple project ended up giving me fits and taking all day long to finish.

I had finished insulating this bathroom wall and installing the vapor barrier--but, I finally decided I should have a fan in the bathroom. So, I had to tear into what was already done.

The light is going to go here. (I didn't have to install the trim here that I installed on ceiling joists elsewhere in the house because the bathroom is going to have a ceiling installed on the bottom of these joists.)

The bathroom fan will be installed closer to the wall behind the light, on the other side of the ceiling joist.

I peeled back the vapor barrier and pulled out the insulation in the top part of this bay.

Then I drilled a hole all the way through the wall. It was well worth buying a three-inch hole saw to do this. I can't imagine how long I would have taken on this step without that specialized tool.

Here is the vent I planned to install.

I had read in reviews that it was a great little vent but that it didn't stop bees and hornets from nesting in it, so I added a piece of screen inside it.

I had to pound and pound and pound on the vent to get it installed in the wall. The hole was three inches in diameter, and so was the vent pipe, so it was a very snug fit. (Of course it would have been much better to have drilled a hole slightly larger than the vent, but I had purchased the largest hole saw available at the store I visited.)

I had started the four screws before pounding so I could keep the wedge pieces behind the vent aligned correctly. I cut the wedge pieces to give the vent a solid surface in one plane to butt up against, instead of trying to snug the vent up against the uneven shingles. The screws were loose, of course, and they kept falling out as I pounded--and getting lost in the foliage below.

Eventually, all the pounding split the wedge pieces. Aargh!

I had to hand screw at least the upper two screws because they were up under the overhanging eave, but the only screwdriver handle I had that was short enough to fit has lost something (magnetism? a ball bearing?)--whatever should hold in the screw bit, so the screw bit kept falling out and getting lost in the foliage below.

What a never-ending pain in the ...

Finally, it was installed.

I cut a short piece of duct and installed that on the vent. This duct will expand/telescope, so it is more than long enough to reach the fan once it is installed.

Then I re-installed the insulation...

...and the vapor barrier.

I am going to wait until later to install the fan so I have more maneuverability in this space for now. I will also have to drill a hole in the joist so the fan can draw power from the light fixture. The light and the fan will be controlled by the same switch.

Phew! Long day, but the bathroom wall is back to being done.

Time to Catch Up

I have been lagging in my posts! To catch you up...

I have finally finished installing insulation in the JayBee. It took me way longer than I'd anticipated because...well, everything takes me longer than I anticipate. Plus, I was working around some birds. Yup, birds.

This was the first sign that the birds were taking over. If you look closely, you will see a bird's nest sitting on top of the air exchanger that's above the north side window.

Then, I noticed mud splatters around the front door of the JayBee. And, a partial nest fell to the doorstep.

Not to be deterred, birds quickly finished this nest on top of one of the lights outside the front door.

Every time I went in and out of the JayBee, I had to contend with anxious, dive-bombing parent birds. I worried every time I turned on the compressor that I was traumatizing them. I didn't dare leave the front door open for air flow because I thought it would lead to a crazed bird flying around in the rafters. I couldn't hang the awning on the front of the house to cool it in the summer sun because it would block the parent birds from getting to the nest.

After way more weeks than I thought it was possible for birds to sit on a nest, there were finally two big fat babies.

As of the end of last week, it appears that all birds have left the nest. (No feathers in the driveway either, so the cats didn't snag any of them.) I've been warned that sometimes birds re-use a nest for a second hatching, so I better get busy with taking it down and crafting some kind of nest blocker.

In the meantime, I did finish insulating...

As I worked on the insulation, I kept finding places in the framing that needed nailers to catch the ends of boards when I install them on the ceiling and walls. To save time later, I installed those nailers as I went.

The city Code Enforcement Officer signed off on the insulation today, so that's good.

I took delivery of a lot of pine boards (for the ceiling and walls) and some fir boards (for the bathroom). 

As the load was tipped off the back of the delivery truck, the bottom boards stuck to the flat bed and pulled themselves far out from the rest of the load. In order not to snap those boards off when the load crashed to the ground, the delivery guy propped the load in a bizarre (but effective!) fashion.

I spent the rest of that hot, humid day carefully stacking every one of those boards. There were a few moments when I thought, "Wow, these stacks are getting pretty tall; maybe I should use stickers." Note to self: When you have a nagging thought, PAY ATTENTION!

The next day, when I heard a thunderous crash, I knew just what it was. (I worried that the avalanche of boards had killed George, since one of his favorite hangout spots is in here, but he was elsewhere and just fine.)

It took me another entire hot, humid day to pull the boards out of the garage and re-stack them--with stickers.

As I work on installing plastic as a vapor barrier on the interior walls, and installing the radiant barrier (which will also serve as a vapor barrier) on the ceiling, I am beginning to stain some pine boards so I will have some ready to install on the ceiling.

I had explored the possibility of using beetle kill pine on the living-room walls. It turns out it is outrageously expensive to purchase here in Maine, since it all comes from Colorado and Wyoming, so I nixed the idea and purchased regular pine. I couldn't get the idea out of my mind, though; I think it's that pretty! (Have you seen it? Check out these images.) So, I have been experimenting with creating my own faux beetle kill pine effect with a custom blue-gray stain, and white milk paint used as a whitewash or pickling on top. Something like this maybe?

For those more interested in news of the river...

It's still here!

The sturgeon are jumping. I hear their loud belly-flop smacks up at the house all the time, and I occasionally see one poised high in the air over the water.

I hear eagles every day, and see them often. There are at least a few of them living right around my house this summer.

We had some extreme rainstorms this spring. In all 26 of the years I have lived here, I have never before seen this kind of erosion occur as a result of one rainstorm. Bizarre, dramatic, dangerous.

For those of you more interested in the cats...

Cat (Bear) sleeping in the woods on a hot day.

At first glance, this next shot looks like George sleeping in the driveway.

It's really a dead-to-the-world George in the foreground...

...and interloper tuxedo cat hanging out with Bear up on the drain field.

I will finish with a small gallery of George--who turns 18 this summer. He appears to be quite deaf at this point, which puts him at a distinct disadvantage because things can creep up on him. In fact, he was attacked by a fox (yes, a fox!) as he lounged on our deck. I was home at the time, heard the commotion and ran to the door, just in time to scare off a fox. George did not appear to be injured, and he still wants to spend all his time outside, so I just hope he keeps his wits and sharp claws ready. He still is able to channel his former alpha self when it's needed, thank goodness. And he still likes to go on walks with me.

[Side note: I felt like wildlife was invading my life this spring. Bird nests everywhere. Fox attack. Eagles screeching every day. Startled a porcupine sleeping in the garage one day when I went to take out the mower. Three strange cats (tuxedo cat, marmalade cat, and tiger cat) spend a lot of time in the yard--sometimes "hanging" with my cats, other times fighting with my cats. Startled a skunk on my deck one night--yes, who sprayed, thank you very much. When taking compost out to the compost bin, I regularly startle deer who are grazing on top of the drain field--and they startle me back. I spent eight weeks covered in a rash caused by caterpillar hairs that had me digging my skin raw. Thankfully, things seem to have calmed down a little these last few weeks. It was just exhausting!]

When I heard George make a cat-fighting sound one morning a few weeks ago, I immediately went running. I thought maybe a fox was after him again. Instead, this is what I saw. Now, keep in mind that George hasn't caught a creature in forever. I never see him stalking or catching anything any more. Back when he did hunt, he did it silently. So, for him to make a fighting sound means that either something attacked him or startled him. I think this stupid squirrel touched a soundly-sleeping George, and this is what he got for his trouble.

The squirrel ordeal wore George out so completely, he didn't leave this spot on the deck for the entire next day!