salvage

Getting some progress, though not as much as I’d hoped

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Today turned out to be a gorgeous day. We reached a high of 22C/68F and, as I write this at almost 9pm, we are still at a lovely 14C/57F.

As usual, my day started with the feeding of the outside cats and my morning rounds.

I got an enthusiastic “thank you for a warm breakfast!” cuddle from Colin.

We were expecting my brother to come out today with their storage trailer; they had to hire a semi truck driver to haul it out for them. With that in mind, after I had my breakfast, I headed back outside to start re-bagging the aluminum and removing the mixed metal. Quite a few of the bags have been torn open by the cats; they can smell all the empty cat food cans in there.

After opening the gate for my brother, I set myself up by the garage, where the bags are stacked, with a folding camp chair, a crate for the mixed metal and the magnet keychain the salvage yard gave me.

And gloves.

Definitely gloves!

Then my phone started going of with messages from various people, including my SIL, keeping me up to date on their progress, so I would know when to expect them. It was a pleasant surprise that my SIL was able to come along this time.

With all the interruptions, though, I barely got through sorting half a bag before they arrived with the truck driver!

So, of course, I joined them and got some video to sent to them later on.

While my brother and the truck driver got the trailer lined up with where it needed to be, my SIL and I were staying a safe distance away. This put us near the old log building by the fire pit with the collapsed roof. Thinking about by brother’s suggestion to have the metal salvage company come out in the spring, instead of this fall, to give us time to add more to the salvage pile, I decided to take another look inside the log building to confirm my memory.

Yes, there were several old appliances in there, and even an old wringer washer. In fact there is quite a lot of metal in there.

Including…

… what that another grinding wheel sharpening stone? (I’d found another one, several years ago) Also…

… what was that I was seeing next to it?

Something that most definitely NOT be going for salvage!

What a find!

I can’t see well enough to know how this old grindstone was powered. The gears are all ceased, but that can probably be fixed.

If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see the grinding wheel still has its axel, unlike the one I’d found back in 2020. It’s a shame there’s no sign of the pedal powered frame it would have been on, though the pieces may well be buried in there.

I showed them to my SIL and told her, I’m thinking we have enough to have the salvage company come out this fall, then come back again next year. As far as I know, they won’t go into a collapsing shed like this to get stuff, so we’d have to pull out all the metal ourselves.

I forgot to talk to my brother about it, though, by the time the trailer was set and the driver left. They then needed to check inside to make sure nothing fell over or got damaged, so I left them to it and started going through the aluminum again.

They had to leave soon after checking the contents, but they will be back again next week, this time with a friend and a second trailer to haul things! They’re going to be running out of space to store things soon. 😄

After they left, I finished the bag of aluminum I was working on, then headed inside to help my daughter. Today was the day we could finally put up the tub surround!

That took way longer than either of us expected.

The problem was figuring out where exactly to cut the holes for the taps and faucet, then how to cut the holes themselves. We don’t have any hole cutting tools.

After much measuring and marking and measuring some more, my daughter marked out where the holes needed to be on the back of a panel. Then we headed outside and used incrementally larger drill bits to make the holes. My largest drill bit wasn’t going to make a large enough hole, of course, but I could still use it to enlarge the holes before we switched to using a utility knife – one of the alternative tools recommended in the instructions.

Eventually, we got them done and set it over the pipes to see how it fit.

For all her measuring, one of them didn’t.

The problem is, there is nothing level or plumb in our bathroom – neither the walls nor the tub!

We took turns carefully shaving off more and more of the opening over the hot water tap until we could finally get it on, and the panel was flat against the wall.

Which is when my daughter discovered her mistake.

Before we started measuring for the holes, the panels themselves had to be set against the walls, with their positions marked off, so that the corner pieces could properly cover the edges.

She measured and marked the back of the panel, as if it were the front. The whole thing was off by about half an inch.

But only at the top.

🫤

We’ll just have to figure it out.

Last of all, a notch had to be cut out at the top to fit under the shower. The previous tub surround fit under it, but these panels are ever so slightly taller.

They are also ever so slightly narrower. Which means that areas of old adhesive cannot be covered by the new panels.

We will also have a bit chunk of open wall open on one end.

We’ll have to figure out how to work around this.

Meanwhile, I had to move on to other things while my daughter got out the caulking gun to apply the adhesive. I was able to give her a hand as she was finishing with the second panel, then helped her with the third.

After being adhered to the walls as best could be done with how things are, they were taped in place and left to sit for about 20 minutes, before she could remove the protective film, then adhere the corner pieces.

So I headed back outside to work on the aluminum again.

I ended up out there for several house, coming inside only long enough to hydrate or use the bathroom!

Here is how things looked when my daughter finished adding the corner pieces.

It now needs to sit for 48 hours before they can be caulked with a silicone sealant.

Which is probably what we’ll have to use to cover the gap between the panel over the taps, and the corner piece.

Once the sealant has had a chance to fully cure, we will finally be able to put the new taps and faucet back on, and the tub and shower will be useable.

Though we still don’t have hot water.

I was supposed to call and see if we might still be able to get a warranty replacement, but never got to it. Meanwhile, the powered anode rod we ordered is ready for pick up, and I wasn’t even able to do that!

I did, however, get some decent progress on the aluminum.

In the first photo above, you can see the six bags of sorted aluminum. I had only two new clear bags left, so I have been finding ways to salvage bags that weren’t too badly damaged, and reusing them. With the mixed metal removed, and filling the bags as much as I could while still being able to tie them off, I was able to combine at least 8 bags into those six. I wasn’t really keeping track, but … hold on. Maybe I did…

If you click through to the next photo, you can see the rest of the bags that need to be sorted through, on the left. On the right, there’s one bag with mixed metal in it, had half a bag of aluminum (it got too dark to continue). I had to throw away three bags that were too torn up, one of them a smaller blue plastic recycling bag, but a couple of bags were double bagged, and I was able to salvage the outer bags. When putting things aside for the night, I stuffed three empty bags to reuse, into the crate. Not counting the two new bags… That makes 10 bags of that I’ve sorted through, for 6 1/2 bags of aluminum, and almost a full bag of mixed metal.

Tomorrow, I plant to keep at the sorting, then we’ll see how many we can fit into the truck. Unfortunately, we are now expecting to get rain between 8am and noon. If it’s raining, I’ll move the truck out so I can bring the bags into the garage to continue sorting. I don’t expect to be able to head to the salvage yard until the afternoon. After that, I’ll be heading to the nearest Walmart for more cat food. We are almost out!

While was writing this, the Cat Lady started messaging me. She has someone who is looking for two male feral cats – actual ferals – to adopt! That would require trapping. We’ve got a few that we can’t get close enough to see if they are male or female.

We should be able to catch 3 female kittens and one adult female without need of a trap, so she will see about booking us for spays next month.

I told her about my plans to go to the salvage yard with some aluminum tomorrow, then to the Walmart, near where we usually meet up. She had asked me to let her know when I’d be going there next, as she has some cat beds and a cat tree for us! When I told her I was needing to buy kibble, she told me she would get a couple of bags for us, and can meet me tomorrow afternoon. That is so awesome of her! Every little bit helps. That 40 pound bag I got just a little while ago is already almost gone, partly because I had to use it for the inside cats, too.

So that’s my plan for tomorrow, I guess!

Which means I’d better be getting myself to bed.

Until next time, then…

Have a wonderful day!

The Re-Farmer

Isolation shelter build started

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I’ll be honest, here. We’re really just winging it on this build, even though it’s going to be quite a bit more complex than the kibble house and water bowl shelters. It all comes done so what materials we can scavenge.

There are plans, however!

Plans that needed to change, but still plans! 😁

The original plan was for a 4′ x 4′ cube, divided up inside to have an enclosed shelter that will be insulated, a not quite enclosed shelter for a litter pan, and two levels with space for food and water bowls, and just hanging out.

We had a couple of pallets that were left by the roofers. My original intention was to dismantle them and use the wood mostly for the floor.

That did NOT work out!

The pallets are nailed together mechanically. The nail heads are deeply embedded in the wood – and the wood is quite thin. When I tried to pry them off, the wood started splitting.

Time for plan B!

The pallet will be the floor, more or less as is.

I measured the pallet’s length and width at the boards inside, and each side was slightly different. I brought over the circular saw and cut the ends flush to the outside boards. The most damaged side will be the bottom of the floor.

I could still work with 4′ lengths on two walls, and the other two will be 40″, to fit on the pallet. The shelter will still be 4′ tall.

For the main parts of the frame, I’m using the true-to-size salvaged 2 x 4 lumber in the barn. There’s hardly any of that left, but there’s enough for this project. It feels like a shame to “waste” it on something like this. The wood is old and the ends have started to rot a bit, but it’s really solid and heavy wood. It is, however, what we have, so that’s what we’ll use. Other parts of the build will have more modern, standard 2×4’s, which are not true to size, and are quite a bit lighter. We have even less of that, so we’ll have to plan accordingly.

For now, I’ve cut lengths to make the front and back panels, which will be 4′ square. The frame will be attached directly to the pallet once put together, but that won’t happen quite yet. The dirt floor of the garage is pretty level, but not flat, mostly due to shallow tire ruts. Right now, the pallet can’t lie flat on the ground. I’m heading into the nearer city tomorrow, and will be looking at what wheels are available, and affordable.

Once the pallet has its wheels, it will be able to straddle the uneven parts of the floor, and be sturdier to work on.

Once the “box” is framed out, the interior will be worked on, including things like extra surfaces for cats to lie on, something they can scratch at, and so on. Once that’s all figured out, access panels or hinged doors will be made so that the litter box, food bowls and enclosed shelter can be reached from the outside. For the enclosed shelter, what I will probably do is make an insulated box that can be removed completely, if necessary.

I haven’t fully decided on how to do the roof. It will most likely be a low slope metal roof. I just haven’t decided how I want to make the slope while not having any gaps.

Last of all, the welded wire hardware cloth will be added to those walls that are not enclosed with wood. We might not be able to pick that up until the end of the month, though. Unless we find something on hand that we can use.

Anyhow. That’s progress so far. Reworking the plans and making the first cuts for the frame.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

A bit more updating

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I think the outside cats are very happy the roof is done!

I think I actually counted 28 this morning, including two of the bitties that were under the cat house!

We have been having almost rain, almost snow, lately. Many trees look like they’re covered with hoar frost, but it’s actually a layer of ice.

Something I had to deal with when switching out the memory card on the gate cam!

The entire front was covered with a layer of ice! The camera lens has a plastic protector in the front cover. I spent some time trying to melt it away with the heat of my fingers, then trying to scrape it off. Then I use my palms to try and melt the ice off the solar panel. There’s not much I can do for the divots in front of the infrared flash lights. At least not without some kind of tool that can get in, but from the looks of the file, enough light is getting through that the night vision still works. At least as much as possible, when the lens itself has a layer of ice over it!

I went around the house this morning, taking pictures from the ground (not getting very good angles in most places!) of the new shingles, and moving a few things back that got missed.

This is what’s left of the chimney! A lot of the bricks are broken, but that’s okay. We will likely use these to make paths, and broken pieces can be used mosaic style.

While they were working on the roof, I’d burned a pile of wood over burnable garbage, adding a few old and rotten pallets I’d cleaned out of the yard in the process. This morning, I found this on the banked ash pile.

I’d seen these by the house while they were working and was wondering if they were going to keep them or not. It was too funny to see they’d added them to my burn pile!

They didn’t stay there. There’s some salvageable wood in there! I moved them to the barn. The bottom one was a bit singed by hot spots in the ash pile, but that one also has more broken pieces, of it was better for that one to be singed than the one that is in better shape. 😊

I got a message from my brother saying that he wanted to come over again – not as early as yesterday, though, thankfully! I told him I was leaving to meet with the cat lady, and thought I’d miss him entirely, but he was here when I got back. So I stayed outside after the cats and other stuff was unloaded into the house. There isn’t much I can do to help him, but I still wanted to be available!

I also took advantage of the daylight and walked around looking for “flyaways”. They cleaned up as best they could in the dark, but there was bound to be stuff they missed. Especially the clear plastic strips that covered the adhesive under the shingles. Those are hard to see, even in daylight, and are so light, they were blown around all over. There were also pieces of white plastic, on white snow, that were very easy to miss. I expect we will be finding more bits and pieces when the snow melts in the spring!

My brother sent me a picture of Dishy – after he secured it to the roof! It was held by only one screw. We figure they lost the other two while working around it.

My brother also tarred around the new anchor bolts he’d put in for the antennae wires, and checked the septic stack vents. There are two of them, and they were pretty blocked with debris. Not from the roofing job, but just from years of exposure. These vents are there to ensure no vacuum forms in the pipes as water drains to the septic tank. Now that they’ve been cleared, we should notice water draining better, throughout the house. He had a chance to talk to one of my daughters about it and, now that they know, they will include checking the vents when they’re up on the roof to clean the eavestroughs. They’d cleared those before the snow fell, but my brother found the downspouts were all full again!

Oh, and I had to laugh when I came outside this morning. Do you see the roof of the kibble house, behind the satellite dish? With something in the snow?

It is a forgotten can of A&W Root Beer! One of the guys must have put it in the snow, where it wouldn’t slide away, and would stay chilled, then forgot it there. 😄

There is one thing that we found – or should I say, didn’t find – that my brother is not happy with.

The parts and pieces from our old satellite dish that was still up there. Also, the remaining supports from the one that is now stored in the basement, that we’d left in place rather than leave screw holes in the roof.

I think they got taken to the dump. Those were not supposed to be throw away.

My brother will see if he can find out what happened to it when the company contacts him with the bill.

Oh, and he remembered to tell me something our mother had said when he visited her yesterday. She was complaining that none of the roofers, or someone from the company (I still haven’t figured out who she thinks it should be) came to visit her. Then she started saying that if they did any extra patch jobs on top of replacing the shingles, she won’t pay for it.

As in, if they found and fixed any rotted areas.

So… while talking to me, when I said they’d found no rot (only later did I find out they’d found and fixed one small patch of it), she was upset because she didn’t believe they’d recognise rot when they saw it, and/or that they would have put new shingles on top of rotten wood, rather than fix it, and the roof is gong to collapse like she saw on the news, who knows how long ago.

But in talking to my brother, she’s saying that if they DID fix anything beyond what was included in the estimate, she won’t pay them… for repairing the damage she doesn’t think they’d competent enough to recognise, and/or too corrupt to fix, therefore the roof is going to collapse.

My brother and I both know that she will try to go back on her word to pay for this, so he didn’t say much, or she’d get mad at him and use that as an excuse to not do what she promised she would do.

We will both be very relieved when the bill if finally paid!

Meanwhile, as my brother was up on the roof today, and I was picking things up around the house, he noticed a dark SUV suddenly slowing riiiiiggghhhttt down as it drove past on the main road. Slow enough to almost be stopped on the road.

It kept going until we could no longer see it through the trees, then I saw it going down the road by our driveway, as if it had driven around the other way. Which, since there is a “missing” road at a one mile mark, meant driving around an extra section (which is 1 square mile) to come back from that direction.

We both recognized the vehicle as one our vandal owns.

We saw it again, driving very slowly the other direction.

With the roofers coming, but not knowing when, we’ve had the gate wide open for quite some time. I went over to close it, but I looked down the road first. From our driveway, we can see open road for about 3/4 of a mile, but there was no sign of the SUV. I should have been able to see it. For it to be gone, it had to have turned into a field, and there are only two driveways into fields out there – one of them being part of this property, that is rented out. The other is a barely-their driveway that, as far as I know, doesn’t even get used in the winter.

I closed up the gate, then started walking back when I heard an engine coming.

Sure enough, it was the same SUV. Wherever it had disappeared to, it had turned around and come back, again driving ever so slowly.

So I started walking up the driveway towards the gate. Basically, I wanted our vandal to know that we could see him stalking around the property. When he saw me, he started driving faster, turned towards his place and didn’t come back.

Since he stayed on the road and never stopped, I don’t think he could be considered in breach of the restraining order we have against him, but he sure was on the edge of it!

My guess is, he noticed the new roof and was wanting to get a better look at what was going on, since he still seems to think he has some sort of claim on this place.

Which reminds me.

It turns out he’d called my mother again, though I’m not sure about the timeline of it. He said he wanted to come and visit her. She told him, sure, and started laying out the conditions of behaviour if he did. He’d responded by saying that he was going to be there on his own terms!

My brother asked her, why are you even wanting him to come over at all? What do you think he’ll do? She told him he’d probably do the same thing he always does; make demands, rant and rave, without letting her get a word in edgewise. So my brother asked again, why do you want him to come over? She started making excuses but, my goodness… if she knows he will only continue to be verbally abusive and coercive towards her, how does she think letting him come over will help?

So we’ll have to keep an eye out on my mother, in hopes she doesn’t self sabotage again.

Meanwhile, it looks like we’re going to have to make sure to keep the gate closed and locked again. I was hoping to be able to leave it open for the winter. There isn’t much snow right now but, last year, when the snow got so deep it was hard to open and close the gate, we left it open – which our awesome neighbors took advantage of and cleared our driveway for us, before we even knew they were there! It’s just a lot more convenient to not have to be constantly locking and unlocking the gate, either for ourselves, or for when we are expecting things like prescription deliveries, etc.

I’d hoped, after things had been so quiet for so long, our vandal was finally letting go, but it looks like he’s still watching us.

Just one more reason we want to plant lots of berry bushes and trees, as privacy screens! Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about the driveway.

I am really hoping we won’t have to apply to renew the restraining order when it expires, but I strongly suspect we might have to go through that all over again.

Ah, well. We will deal with what comes.

My brother managed to find all sorts of little things to do while he was here, going up and down the ladder many times, and in many different areas. While I was still gone, he even carried the step ladder up the ladder so that he could use it to get to the second level roof! I was very happy to be there so he could lower it down to me, rather than try and climb down the ladder while carrying the step ladder!

It was starting to get dark by the time he was done, and he still had errands to run. He just never seems to stop!

I love my brother, but as much as I appreciate all he does for us, I wish he would take a break sometimes! He’s burning the candle at both ends.

It’s all done, though! All that the roofers were responsible for, plus the extras my brother did.

This should make quite a difference! I’ll have to remember to ask the girls, over the next few weeks, if they notice a difference in temperature upstairs. It wouldn’t be much; it’s not like insulation was added, but those extra layers of plastic barriers under the newly laid shingles might be enough for a noticeable change for them.

The Re-Farmer