You make bath time lots of fun

Up until now, the shop has looked like this inside.

the wall partially insulated - you also see my

favorite addition to the shop, our  fridge

With electricity installed, our next step was to "finish" the inside - putting up the rest of the insulation, covering it with Sheetrock (bare insulation and cats with too much time on their hands seemed a poor combination), putting in the windows, hooking up the rest of our appliances, and plumbing in the sink and shower. Tres' dad was on his way back up to help us and to bring the other appliances and fixtures, so our job was to get everything we would need ready. We rounded up the rest of our supplies (more PVC, the tub, and a tankless water heater) and then, while Tres continued to work on the pipes, I cut and put in the frames for the windows.

sawing window frames

It took Tres' dad just a few hours to put up the rest of the insulation and then we were on to Sheetrock. After he carefully notched out spaces for the outlets/fitting into the metal uprights, we fitted each piece onto the wall and he attached it on the sides.

screwing on the first sheet

Next, I screwed each sheet on, making five rows of five screws each.  I am not shall we say. . . adept with an electric screwdriver (nor with non-electric models, for that matter), so this felt like a major accomplishment.  He was also sure to save the most fun task of all - screwing in the bottom of each sheet - just for me.   Suffice to say, he now knows most of the colorful phrases in my vocabulary.

screwing on Sheetrock

one bay covered in Sheetrock

Once the Sheetrock was up, we needed to waterproof the walls around the kitchen/bathroom area.  Tres' dad taped, mudded, and primed the walls, then I painted the edges and he and Tres took turns painting them.

primed and edged

walls painted

While I worked in the field and office with Tres for the rest of the week, his dad installed the sink and counter, hooked up the shower, and plumbed the whole mess.  It was definitely a major job and we're so grateful for all of his hard work.

setting in the sink

 indoor shower

Tres finished tweaking the shower on Saturday (adding a showerhead, etc.) and I helped him rig up a shower curtain, then: indoor showers. . . with hot water.  It was, in a word, amazing.  

that first shower feeling

Tres has been working on installing the windows a little every day after work and he finished yesterday!  In retrospect, it would have been easier to do during construction, rather than having to detach the siding, trim it, slide in the metal framing and the window, then put it all back together, but now one is done and it's lovely.  Just one to go!

first window

trimmed sheet metal lends itself to oh-so-many uses

Can you dig it, baby?

Only two weeks later than planned, we have electrification (and watering - that is, hooking up water) of the shop nearly completed. First step: trench!

our new mountains

trenched from both sides

electrical line running from the box to the shop

While it is difficult to get a sense of scale from these pictures, the trench comes up to my chest, when I'm standing in it, and the mounds of sand are about 4 - 5 feet high, when you're standing next to them. It took about a week to have it dug - not the actual labor, mind you (which took about 3 hours or so), but to get someone out here to dig it. Specifically, the someone we had already hired. As in all of our endeavors thus far, all subsequent work was dependent on getting that finished. . . so, we waited. Once we had our trench, then it was a matter of 4 days, or so, of work and voila:

panel box

wired with outlets

lights!

outside light and outlet

Now, during this process, it was understood that the people who had dug the trench would return to bring water down to the shop. After numerous unreturned phone calls, however, it became clear that this was not going to happen. With some discussion (and time being of the essence, as we are getting ready to move all of our stuff from Seattle this weekend), we decided we would do it ourselves. After copious reading online and discussions with his dad, Tres and I hit the home improvement store and bought a bunch of PVC and glue, then spent some time on the weekend gluing it together and laying some of it in the trench (poor boy had to dig a portion out by hand, as our master diggers had failed to make room for a drain pipe). It was stinky, but, I thought, kind of fun.

trenching for the drain (with our pipe in the foreground)

pipe laid out

trying out the new tub

The great news is that we've now been inspected and our very kindly neighbor came over and filled in our trench, so now we can get to work on finishing up the insulation and putting up some Sheetrock!

Wild thing, I think you move me

I promised more information about potential scorpion denizens earlier, so I thought I'd do some clarifying now, in addition to noting some of the other creatures around here.




Hank is the first scorpion we saw out here (for me, the first I'd seen anywhere, other than in photos). He was already as you see him here, fairly two dimensional, having been unintentionally squashed under a board. He's now part of our shower, mostly as a surprise for first-time users. It wasn't long after we found Hank that Tres found a live scorpion and, after examining and photographing it, made sure that it wouldn't turn up in our tent when we least expected it. After a number of conversations about scorpions and relentless teasing, our friend Dave, who had come to help put up the shop, went so far as to "scorpion-proof" his van, by sealing all of the windows and doors with tape at night. One night, he was awakened by a persistent rustling on the floor near his bed. When he became aware enough to locate the sound, he found a plastic grocery bag slowly making its way across the floor of the van. Upon closer inspection, what did he find? Yup, a scorpion. In his van. While he was sleeping. Suffice to say, he had a hard time getting back to sleep, even after Smitty (yes, we have a thing for naming scorpions around here) had been dispatched. I've yet to see a live scorpion out here myself, but I'm ok with that.

burrowing bug

There are a lot of living things out in the yard - a few steps into the sand generally send several well-camouflaged grasshoppers jumping and little lizards scurrying on their way. I noticed the bug above one day while I was reading. In less than a minute, it went from starting the small hole you see to having disappeared entirely into a tunnel in the sand. The little guy you see below was inadvertently responsible for the death of our camera (yes, it's official; I had to buy a new one, but at least now I can add new photos again!). It was the first lizard I'd seen out here and so perfectly posed on our sleeping bag, that I couldn't resist getting its photo. What I did not realize, however, was that there was a cat hiding under said sleeping bag. Upon starting to kneel on her (and her rather pointed response), I was so surprised that I dropped the camera, zoom fully extended. Still, all in all, I'd rather have broken the camera than the cat.

sweet lizard

My favorite animals out here (which I have yet to be fast/prepared enough to photograph) are the jackrabbits. They are super quick and super cute. I'm amazed at how big they are too. Here's more info (and a photo), if you're curious: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/printable/jackrabbit.html We also have coyotes, which we've not seen but certainly heard. I find it a bit eerie, but neat (the cats aren't big fans, although that doesn't seem to motivate them when it's time to come in at night).

Some of the creatures we've brought out here ourselves. When Tres moved out to get started on the shop, we were watching his sister's black lab puppy. Booker is almost a year old and the best behaved puppy I have ever met, not to mention (of course) cute and sweet as can be. He is still very much a puppy - and a lab at that - and he was in heaven on a building site, with more "sticks" than he could ever possibly retrieve and lots of room to run around and explore (not to mention jackrabbits to chase!). We were sad to see him go.

Booker is a big help

But, we couldn't very well keep a dog around here with these two and we had no way to keep them separated. Moving the cats out here has been an interesting transition , a week at the warehouse at Tres' office, then into the hot and often noisy shop, but they're adjusting. They're particularly fond of all the small wildlife around.

look out lizards!

adapting to a new environment

Really love your peaches

We had a lovely weekend a week ago (this past weekend was fun too, but not particularly blog-worthy), welcoming my sister, my father-in-law and some friends for a visit. While Tres and his dad put up insulation in the shop (thank you!), my sister and I headed out to our neighborhood orchard to pick nectarines and peaches.


It started out (unbelievably, as in this so rarely happens here) raining that morning, so it was both cooler and quieter than I'd expected. It didn't take long to pick our 6 pounds of nectarines, but we dawdled a bit, taking some pretty photos - all of the photo credits from this post go to my wonderful sister, who graciously brought her camera and photo-documented the proceedings, as my camera remains to be fixed/replaced - and enjoying the lovely morning.

Next, we were off to find a food mill/strainer, so that we could get to making some nectarine butter! It took a few stops (apparently, the myriad food mills I had seen in antique/junk shops around here had since sold), but we found an appropriate item and then settled in to work.

testing its efficacy (could it fit more perfectly?)

First, we prepared the fruit (halving, pitting, and removing any bruised flesh)


Next, we cooked them with water and spices until they liquefied.



Here's where the strainer came in. Now that the nectarines were cooked, we needed to puree them and remove their skins.

After that, we cooked the puree down to a "butter-y" (as in fruit spread, not dairy) consistency. This is, I wholeheartedly admit, my least favorite step. It always takes forever and you have to be really vigilant about stirring, so as not to burn anything. That said, I am proud to say (sorry to divulge this to any of you who've been gifted jam by me in the past) that this is the first time I've not burned anything onto the bottom of a pot of jam!

me, doing my favorite job

Finally, it was into sterilized jars and a water bath, before cooling.

the jars are sterilized


in the water bath

sealing

Wowee - the butter turned out so deliciously! If any of you are interested in trying it out yourself, here's where I got it http://www.insanitytheory.net/kitchenwench/butter-me-up-nectarine-butter/. The only change we made (and it's a weird one) is substituting 1/2 teaspoon ground garam masala for the cloves. It was a substitution of necessity (credit for the quick-thinking goes to Tres), but I'm so happy with the way it turned out, that I think I'll keep the change. I made a double batch again this past weekend.

(My Mama told me) You better shop around

It hardly feels right that I should write this post, as I was not actually present for the entire process, but I will do my best (with some outside assistance). Getting the shop up was our second priority out here (after having water, having a place to put all of our stuff, have the cats, and keep ourselves warm, sheltered, etc. while the house is built is pretty imperative), but it was a big job and took much more than expected to get it done.

We got the plans from the building fabricator and took them to the city. Everything seemed to be fine with that, until we found out that we couldn't build a shop without a house being present on the site. What the planner did not tell us was that we COULD use the exact same plans to build a "agricultural building." But not a "shop." Bureaucrats. Permit in hand, we set out to build a concrete slab.

Now, this was a rather precise procedure, as the bolts (to which the rest of the building is attached) needed to be set in just the right spots in the concrete. The concrete contractor assured us that he had built these buildings before. Ten days later (and two visits from the city inspector), we started to doubt his assertion. When we asked about the placement of the bolts and he said "what bolts?" that clinched it. Eventually, the slab was poured, although we weren't sure if the building would work with the bolts, as Tres and his father had to do the placement themselves.

Now, we just needed the building. Tres had arranged for a local business to send a guy over with a forklift to get the building off of the truck. As the day in question arrived, however, the truck driver informed us that it would be arriving after business hours. So, with three hours until the building arrived, we had no way to get it off of the truck. After a lot of running around, we walked up to a neighbor we'd never met and asked to borrow his forklift. Also, would he be available to drive it (take Tres' word that an 8000 pound forklift is a scary thing to drive for the uninitiated)? Needless to say, our neighbor saved our sorry selves. The next day, we started to work on the metal frame for the building. While it was a bit scary getting the metal arches in place, the job went pretty quickly with three guys, a materials lift, and some scaffolding.

After that, it was several days of wood framing.

Next, came the siding.

first wall sided

Then, the roof: insulation, then sheeting.

insulating the roof

putting on the roof

The finishing touches, which I did not photograph independently, were the metal framing on the edges and doors and the installation of the doors themselves.

The hard-working folks you see in the photos above include my father-in-law, a good friend, my sister-in-law's boyfriend, and my father (in addition to Tres, of course). They worked very long days in extremely warm weather to get this done quickly and, while this is hardly adequate, I want to again express my profound thanks and admiration for their work. This was, at times (all the time?), a very unpleasant (Tres adds that it seemed to be unpleasant only when he wasn't there) job and you did it so well. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Particular note should go to the two pictured below, who lived out here and worked every day on this throughout the entire process, despite what could easily have become a very claustrophobic situation and scorpion denizens (to be discussed further in another post).

our intrepid builders in front of the finished product