Our "New" Truck

We bought this old, '92 Dodge diesel truck this summer.  It's been a work truck it's whole life, but it still has some spunk left in it.

After a bit of body work and some spray paint- thank you tremclad

It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself!

I even covered the windows and stuff this time!

EDIT:  I knew someone would ask, lol.

Ok, so a long time ago we had this van, and it had some scratches on it, and Husband kept saying he was going to fix it, and I kept saying it was going to rust, and two years went by, and I was right.  It started to rust.  So I got fed up and went and bought the factory colour match touch up paint.  I sprayed the rusted spots, and a few other knicks and scratches while husbans was at work.  He was not impressed.

The problem with the colour match paint, is it matches the original colour, not the sun faded, weather beaten colour your car becomes after ten years or so.  We drove around in a spotted van for a couple of years after that.

Then a few years ago we bought this beat up old Ford Ranger- Barney.  It was already rusted up, and it was just a farm truck, didn't spend much time on the road, just hauled manure and firewood.  But I knew from previous experience, if I waited for husband to do the body work there would be nothing left but a bucket of rust.  I also knew that matching paint wouldn't match.

I started with a can of black spray paint.   Most of the rust was on the edges, so I gave the truck a bit of a trim.  That didn't look too bad.  But then there was a bit of rust here, a bit of rust there...  Hmmm.  Mom suggested camouflage.  Ok then.  I bought a variety of greens, cut some pine branches, and went to town.

  A liitle green here, a little black there, cover up the rust, let it dry, start again...

I worked on it a bit at a time, over the course of a couple of weeks.  We used the truck nearly every day, so it was usually an end of the day touch up thing.  And I never covered the windows.  I can't find a picture with it finished. :-(

At any rate- everyone who drives the truck likes to complain about the little bit of over spray on the windshield.  Whiners, the lot of them, lol.

The body work is still not done, but Barney still lives on carting manure.

(Did you know, if you edit a published post it takes the post down?  Hmmm.  Will it now publish as a new post?  Or will it go back where it was?...)

Hay Days & A Barn Facelift

We did hay this year with our neighbours up the road. Their farm, their hay, their equipment, our labour.

Weather was wonky, as usual, and there were some equipment failures in the beginning, but by the end of August we had hay coming in, and still no hay shed.

That worked out ok though, since we were able to stand on the hay while we did construction.  Easier than a ladder when you're weilding large beams.  Skids on the ground for a floor, logs, poles, and spikes for construction materials, and plastic for the roof.

 #2 decided to replace that old board they've been climbing over for the past four years with a real gate.  That'll make feeding much easier this winter.  He's such a good kid, worrying about his mama like that.

The hay kept coming.  Awesome.  553 bales in the end.  We'll need to build another hay shed for next year.  For this year, we have two stacks piled under tarps.  We're already feeding a bit of hay now, as the grass in the pasture is getting pretty sparse.  Most of these stacks will probably be gone before winter really sets in.

The last load was just me and the littles in September.  The bigs had gone back to highschool.

Earlier this year husband used the tractor to push the barn back up on it's foundation.  It's getting kind of old, and, unfortunately, was not constructed well to begin with, made out of 2X4s and pressboard mostly.  It had never been painted, the pressboard was peeling, and the bottom was rotted out.  And the critters knocked the doors off AGAIN!

We added a couple rows of 1X6s to the bottom of each side to patch the holes and strengthen the base.  Then I started on the paint job.  #3 and #4 helped out the first day, cause you know, it's always fun to paint on the FIRST day...


I couldn't quite reach that patch on the top with the ladder I was using.  I had taken the big ladder back to the house to work on the chimney.  I figured I'd just get that later, instead of carting the ladder back and forth.  Wouldn't you know it though- it's rained every day since I finished the chimney.  The patch remains unpainted.

The back side of the barn doesn't have as much slope on the ground, so I was able to get all the way to the top.

I painted the north side of the barn beige a couple of years ago.  That's where the hay lean-to is.  I'll give it a fresh coat of paint in the spring.

While the Boys Were Away

The mom will play...

Or work.  Definitely work.  When we bought our house we had these lovely chunks cut out of the walls in the older boys' room.  The ceiling was falling- slanting...  The previous owner cut through the wall and installed beams in my room to hold it up.  Then he stuck the cut outs back in and taped them up.

It looked even worse with the cracked and peeling tape ripped off.

Many, many layers of poly filla ere applied.  Four days worth, with sometimes three coats in a day.

Then I started painting.  Home mixed paint, once again.  It may not turn out the perfect shade of "Norlandic Ice Blue", but if your tastes are less specific, and your wallet less thick, you can achieve a nice shade of blue for little to no cost.

A five gallon pail, the mixer attachment for the drill, and 5 one gallon pails of assorted shades of blue latex paint.  Most of these I picked up at the township paint swap last year.  One can was a mistint that cost me less than $10.
 

Surprised and happy boys returned from camp.

Now I just need to finish the younger boys' room.

Fancy Light Switches

Aren't they pretty?  They should be for $5.95 a piece.

And I only need 2 single light switch covers, one triple light switch cover, and 5 plug cover plates to do the living room...

Or...

How about I make my own?

A can of shiny brass spray paint (or silver or gold, or whatever you like) runs about $3-4.  And it'll cover all I need and more.

Just wash up your old cover plates and lay them out in a well ventilated area on a piece of cardboard.  Lay the screws out too.  Make sure you spray them from all four sides so you get all of the edges.  Easy-peasy, fancy-schmancy.

 Except, of course, for previous paint jobs that went right over the plugs & switches.  Debating on whether to try painting them as well...

Painting

We have a lot of out buildings built out of press board, most of which were never painted before we moved in. Since the sun shine tends to be in limited supply around here, I tend to go a little overboard when I see a week with no rain in the fore cast.
This is Pop's little house that we built for him. It looks much better with a coat of paint.  It still needs some work around the edge of the roof, and then I'll be able to finish the paint job.

This is the generator shack. It also stores buckets of sand for winter cat litter.

This used to be the work shop. The garage didn't have hydro when we moved in. Now I'm using it to store farm supplies that aren't tack. Rabbit cages, water heaters, feed dishes, etc.  My second batch of chicks also started off in here.

This is my garden shed. It used to be an extension of the chicken coop. We moved it over to the garden since we weren't using it for chickens anyway.

If you're wondering why most of it is pink, it's really not that I'm a girly-girl. I'm just cheap. I'm not fussy about colour, but I am fussy about price. I watch for mistint sales all the time. Some places will sell mistints as low as $2/gallon. The town also does a paint swap every year, so I go late on the last day and pick up all the leftovers. I buy all sorts of colours, and then mix them together in 5 gallon pails. Whatever colour they turn into is the colour I paint. I do try to keep similar colours together, so everything doesn't end up brown or gray, but that's the limit. As long as it's all latex anyway. I don't like oil paint. Too much work and waste for clean up- I reuse the same rollers and paint brushes all summer, sometimes longer. I also don't think they mix as well, not to mention the smell. To be honest though, the pink was an excellent deal- $25 for a 5 gallon pail of mistint.

 We did the garage and the entrance way to the house the first summer here.  It was leftover brown from our last house.  It was kind of a mistint too.  We knew the base paint was for a dark tint, but it was really cheap, at $15 for 5 gallons.  I bought three of them, and tried to get them tinted as light as we could.  I ended up lightening the brown as we worked our way through that house, adding white after each room.  Still had about 8 gallons left when we moved here.

 The garage was actually the beginnings of a small house that the previous owner got from the guy who was building it.  He had it moved here to be a garage, but never did anything with it.  My dad and hubby put the big doors in the front of it.  Then hubby reinforced the floor. 

 There were a couple gallons of brown left afterwards, so I added all the latex paint that the previous owner had left in the basement, to create this greenish-beige.  Unfortunately 5 gallons only covered one side of the barn.  The older and more weathered press board gets, the more paint it takes to cover it.  It chips and bubbles and falls apart while you're painting.

My bedroom and living room are both painted from the same bucket of mixed mistints. The computer desk was a gallon of mistint that I had set aside.  I love the chocolate colour. 

I'm hoping to get pop's place and the barn finished next summer.  And then there's always hope that I might get the trim done all the way around the house, too.

The Centre of My Universe

AKA...  my computer desk.  I didn't take a picture of it before I started.  The clutter and chaos were unbelievable.  But then about halfway through clearing it off, I decided to paint it.  So I snapped a couple of shots to show you what it used to look like, kind of...

We used to have one of those big corner desks.  You know the type...  They look really cool in the store, or other people's houses.    But then you buy one, and discover that it's really very crowded.  And then you move a couple of times, and try to figure out where to shove it in a corner where it's not going to block a doorway or a window.  And then you still need another desk, because there's no place to put your printer without it being a pain in the arse.  And then your kids get bigger and you get a second computer... 

Well, we ripped that sucker apart.  The shelves you see on top and bottom come from the original desk.  Press board with that fake wood veneer finish.  Hubby cut a sheet of 3/4" plywood in half for the desk top.  The ends are two small MDF bookcases that we had at the time.  One was painted green, the other brown.  The book shelves face outward, which worked really well at our old place.  The desk fit perfectly between two doorways.  Here, that doesn't work so well.  There's only about a foot and a half of space between the left end and another book case on the wall.  I keep my printer paper and stuff I don't want the kids digging through down there.  It actually works pretty well that way.  Out of sight, out of mind.

I cleared off about half of the desk- all the stuff that was likely to fall off- and we pulled it away from the wall.  I washed the wall and did the putty.  And as I'm standing on the ladder looking down at the top of the desk, I am really annoyed with the whole mess.  The dust.  The clutter.  The crappy press board that's chipped in various locations.  The stains on the plywood.

I kept dusting and cleaning as I waited for the putty to dry.  Well, I got to wondering how the paint would go on over that crappy veneer.  Hmmm...  So I grabbed a brush and did a little test spot at the back.  I only did one coat, so it still kind of shows the wood grain look through the paint.  And off I went...  I had the desk done before the wall.  #3- the head of the computer addict department here- had himself a very miserable day.  But I think it was worth the whining. 

I think it came out pretty good in the end.  My crappy camera doesn't do it justice.  It is rather strange not to be surrounded by stacks of clutter though.  The really cool thing...  Right there in front of my keyboard...  That's $19.  $19 that I lost months ago in the clutter.  Money that we collected for a fundraiser, that I ended up paying out of pocket.  So it's kind of like I got paid for cleaning up my disaster zone.  Gotta like that!

I finished the final wall today.  Hung up the kids pictures that we had taken in the spring.  Nothing like getting things done in a timely fashion, eh?  Sorted through printer paper and books.  Tossed a ton of papers that I no longer need.  Still have two bins of receipts and bills and such to file, but at least they've been moved to the 'tax zone', rather than cluttering the computer desk.  By tomorrow night I should have the rest of the stuff back on the walls and put away.  Just in time to set up the tree!

Winter Work

It snowed!  It finally snowed.  Just starting off gently this year, with a mere 8 inches.  Then some rain, and it sunk.  We're sitting with about 4 inches now, but it's staying, with more in the forecast.

It is officially hermit season.  Yay!  I am so happy!

I wish I could say all my chores were done and I can settle in for a long winter's nap...  but no such luck.  I still have my white rocks to put in the freezer.  But while I'm procrastinating about that, I decided to paint the living room.

That was not a well thought out plan.  The staircase comes down into the living room.  The wall on the far side of the staircase covers two floors.  I can not reach the wall.  Hmmm...  I painted it with a roller on a pole.  It looks ok from downstairs, but upstairs...  uh-oh.  Thankfully there's no reason for guests to head that way.  I need hubby to build me some kind of platform to put the ladder on so I can finish the edges.

The next little hiccup was the front door.  There is a nasty draft along the edge of the door joints.  It causes condensation.  The paint will not dry.  It's going to need some touch ups in the spring.

The third little hiccup.  I already have the south side window covered in plastic.  And I am too lazy to take it down, paint the trim, wait for it to dry, and recover it.  So I will need to finish it in the spring.

The fourth hiccup.  Not really a hiccup.  Just an observation.  Kind of a hiccup.  Should really rip the wall apart...  Ok.  The south wall had these two spots near the ceiling that were very badly covered in soot from the woodstove.  I had been assuming that it just accumulated there because of the way the air flows in the room.  But once the furniture was out of the way, and I started washing the walls, I discovered that they are cold spots.  Either there was never any insulation there, or the insulation has fallen.  Either way, it should be fixed.  Which will be a very messy project.  Which isn't going to happen this year.  For now it has been painted over.
And finally...  my computer desk.  Uh-oh.  The huge monstrosity needs to move.  Before it can move, it needs to be cleaned off.  It is the catch all for papers of all sorts.  It is the centre of activity.  It is the drug of choice for all of the addicts living here.  I have this wall yet to do.  TODAY!  Oh, no.  I am afraid.

But it will look stunning for Christmas.  Because everything will be clean and dusted and uncluttered for the first time in... !!? ...  EVER?  So I should get to work...