Burn Pile

It's been raining here. And although we have had flooding in our house (which is oh so very annoying) the good news is the ground is very wet - and this is the perfect condition for attacking one of our many burn piles.


See it? It's the brown pile of brush behind the tree in the foreground....about 25 feet wide, 6 ft high.

So we prepared the area, got out water buckets and shovels, prayed before we lit the match, and burned this bad boy. Fire in the hole.

It was a little exciting, and alot scary. Whatahusband was cool as a cucumber. But me - I had an internal panic attack when one of the very dry cedar trees with dead leaves all over it burst into a fire ball and shot flames 20 feet into the air. 

We sat in our lawn chairs and watched it burn. It was really quite amazing how much heat it produced, and how the pile went from something to nothing.

We briefly thought about getting some really long sticks and trying to roast weenies...but then we wanted to keep our eyebrows so we decided not to.

It burned and burned all day long. In the evening, after the flames had long since gone out, we raked the embers and found the ground was still very hot. We pulled out the stumps that were left and took them up to our firepit near the house and burned them until they were ash. And now we are experienced burn pile people! And we only caught a teensie weenise part of our field on fire. All in a days work, eh?

Thirty Thirty One Ya'll

Getting older is not so bad really. Especially when you have the weekend I did!  My wonderful hubby welded me an awesome birthday present (I call it the fire chalise, I LOVE sitting out by the fire) and my sister and bro-in-law came to visit.  We had so much fun! There were go kart rides. There was "fishing" at the pond. (throwing the pole in the water repeatedly with left-over fajita meat without a single bite doesn't really count as fishing, but we were drinking cocktails, so I'm going to count it.)  There was s'mores. And Grammy's Strawberry cake.  There was laughing and talking, and lots of relaxing. We even planted wild flower seeds in my front flower beds!

31 is so much fun. :)

A rare Texas May cold front blew in just for me (thank you God!) which made sitting out at the fire even more enjoyable.

My little helper, helping us plant.

Speaking of Norman - he has only grown more joyful as the days pass. We were out walking the fields enjoying the warm weather, and I turned around to this little man sitting under a tree, smiling away.

This is not happiness - it's bliss. :)

Time lately

We have   s l o w l y   been getting ourselves back into our normal routine...with a few adjustments. Since we can't hook up the TV in the living room just yet - it only make sense to go ahead and put it in the only other room that has the TV connection...our room.  I must say - I am not a big fan of TV's in bedrooms. I just don't like it. But I have to admit, it's VERY relaxing to watch Law & Order and sip a Shiner Ruby Redbird* laying in your own bed.  :)

*hey texans, this beer is fantastic. how have you not tried it? It's seasonal, and only here for a limited time. So if you like grapefruit, you HAVE to try this beer!

After what seemed like an eternity of doing dishes outside, camp-style, we got the plumbing finished in the kitchen so we can wash dishes at the sink. Who know this would be such a luxury?!?!

And finally, the norms.  For those of you who don't know, he was chasing 3 large deer and ran into a barbed wire fence the first day we moved out here. HUGE gashes in his fur. 2 of them were  super-glued back together. (In case you think this sounds cruel, I superglue whatahusband back together all the time!) 1 of them...the gash near his tail...split open every time he moved or wagged his tail. So, this dog, who has more room to run around than he ever had before...had to spend the entire first week inside on his bed. All day every day. Poor guy! He would look outside and sigh, or go stand next to the door just begging to be let out. He was hating his life. Especially when I started putting large band-aids on his butt.

Thankfully, he is all healed up! The gash finally closed up (thank you Lord, I was getting worried!), and we haven't seen him on his bed since.  Just a curly brown tail bobbing in and out of the hay field...just where a country dog should be.

The Master

Imagine white walls...unfinished, dated, brown wooden closet doors. Soooo boring it made my eyes hurt. Hmmmm…blank slate.  This seems like a dare.  

I was feeling bold when I picked out the colors...and when I splashed it onto the walls for the first time, I was scared. It was SO dark!! I thought maybe I made a mistake.  But, now that it's finished, I love how it turned out. It's pretty and dark, kind of like a cave.  Not too feminine, after all it's his room too. It's Artsy and Comfy... love!

And no room make over is complete without a little DIY...

Da Floors

So I obviously couldn't wait the whole 5 days to post some after pics...frankly I'm surprised I lasted 3.

Can you believe it started out as this?!?!

Read the whole before post here.

And.... here they are!

I'm very eager to walk around on them...2 days and a waxing to go, then they'll be aaaaaaaaaall mine :)

I have to give whatahusband most of the credit - this project would not have been possible without him. He did all of the prep work himself - a huge job - and he did it with a smile on his face. I am amazed at the things he can accomplish. The love muscle rocks!

I was the lead worker for spraying the stain and laying down the epoxy. I was incredibly nervous about it...would I be able to do it right, and what if I do it wrong and it looks awful...but it all worked out, and I really like it. I also get credit for getting stain all over the walls. And the cabinets. Oops. I'm going to paint them anyway, so no biggie. We'll just be sporting the sprayed wall and no base board look for a while. The floors are SUPER shiny, which is kinda fun, but I'm worried about shoe/footprints showing. Wait - I guess when I think about it, who really cares. Why would I want to live in a house that appears as if no one lives there? I like a good lived-in space.

It's starting to look like home :)

Lord beer me strength

Here I am staining.  In my orange striped shirt and gas mask. hot hot hot.

I should mention that it is around 11pm when this picture was taken. I was thinking we would be staining around 5 that evening...wrong.  It took us all day friday to get the floors ready to stain.  And when they were done, we were committed to coming back in 6 hours to neutralize the staining chemicals....

That's right, people...we had to be back at 5am the next morning.  And it's a 30 minute drive out to the ranch from our current home.  I tried not to complain, but when the alarm clock went off that morning, I offered whatahusband $1,000 to finish the job himself.  Just my luck it's a 2 person job.

Here's whatahusband around 6am.  After we neutralized, we had to mop the floor 3 times to pick up the residue. (The dark wet spots are a close to what it will look like when it's finished. It's much darker than we were expecting, but we both really like how it turned out.)

After the mopping, we had to wait for the floors to dry out again in order to lay down the 1st layer of epoxy.  We GROSSLY underestimated the epoxy step and how hard it would be.  We opted for industrial grade commercial epoxy that will last up to 20 years without needing to be stripped or re-sealed. You might be thinking...maybe that's a little bit overboard for a residence?  Yes, you'd be right...and let me tell you why...because my hubby likes things to "to stand the test of time" which means this: if we were to buy a new piece of furniture...say a bookshelf...he has to be able to bang it, wiggle it, press on it, and generally imagine any type of situation where it might be bumped or knocked over, and if he thinks it will pass these tests without breaking,  he thinks it is a good piece of furniture for our house.  Solid wood entertainment center, oil field pipe end tables, welded steel garage shelves, these are the ugly  practical things he likes.  He doesn't care if it's pretty. If it weighs 1,000 lbs and  is super bulky and not stylish or dainty in any way, I bet he would love it.  Bless his heart - he comes by it honestly. His dad likes things even more sturdy. If you were in a hurricane in Texas, you'd want to be at my in-laws house.  It's a steel frame house, walls made of concrete, with rock layered on top of that. We could be sipping margarita's and the world would be ending outside and you'd never know it.  

Anyway, I digress. We opted for commercial grade epoxy.  This is the stuff you find on grocery store and warehouse floors. Once you start the process, you can't stop and you're bound by the drying times of each layer. The first layer goes on - it took both of us working together about 5 hours to do this layer - then we waited 14 hours.  If it is not fully cured (which was the case with us) you come back at 24 hours and the clock starts again with a 2nd layer of epoxy. It was rough.  I epoxied my hair to the pole attached to the roller. We couldn't walk on it with shoes or socks because it was tacky, so we taped plastic bags over our feet.  On the morning we did the second layer, I forgot to bring shoes.  I criticized whatahusband for "sub-par paint brush technique".  He criticized me for having a bad attitude and being cranky.  Guilty as charged. I tried to keep it upbeat, I really did. But, I had bags for shoes, I ripped out my hair, and I was SO ready to be done.

Well, we survived and we are one step away from being completely finished.  We wait 5 days for the epoxy to fully cure, then we wax it. After the wax layer dries, we can FINALLY walk on it and move our stuff into the house...and LIVE there. Can't wait! :) 

Pics to come in 5 days...

The Big Stain

Today is a special day! We are finally ready to stain the floors. Whatahusband has been working his tail off, on hands and knees, getting all that nasty tile up. For the next 4 days, we'll be mopping, scrubbing, rolling, spraying, epoxying...and then waiting for almost a week for it to cure.  Man, will it feel good to be done with this project. I love DIY, don't get me wrong, but this project was not for sissies. I can't believe how much work it turned out to be. But - on the flip side, we'll have these for the rest of our lives  - - and we made each other swear on a stack of bibles decided that we'll never do anything floor related again.