Day 24 Homestead

I didn’t write Day 23 as we were buying a small smokehouse and running errands. DRANK COFFEE. Removed the old commode in the bathroom. Summer swept the floor three times as to make sure there was nothing to elevate the plywood. Put down 1/2″ plywood in the bathroom so as to avoid ripping up glued down linoleum. $65 worth of plywood as opposed to several hours scraping that crap off the floor on my hands and knees. Seemed like a fair trade to me. Installed the new commode and found that we have a clogged drain pipe.
Tried to get the stove pipe problems solved. Mainly getting the proper connection to the stove, also, the rain collar and cap need to be installed. All outside on the metal roof work was stopped by incessant drizzling rain. I’m crazy, not stupid. I wasn’t about to try crawling around on that wet metal slanted about 30 degrees towards disability or death. Anyway Summer came back from town with the correct stove connection. It’s supposed to be a pretty day tomorrow so maybe we’ll, finally, get some heat in the house.
The next project and it had to be done rain or not was to get the outside wall of the bathroom sheathed. This meant wet, cold and trekking through ankle deep mud for several hours. Nailing up four sheets of 4×8 sheathing should take a couple of hours, at most. We spent four miserable hours fitting the damned stuff up as anyone that has ever done any remodeling knows, NOTHING FITS. Wanted some heat but the rain wouldn’t let us start a fire and the stove wasn’t working so we just “endeavored to persevere”. Couldn’t go into the trailer with all of that mud. What a mess!
When that was finished Summer went in, cleaned up the kitchen and started dinner.
Me, I had to arrange to give the plumbing a ballon angioplasty. I bought on of those devices that you connect a garden hose onto and shove it down the piping a couple of feet. You turn on the water and it inflates. This causes the water pressure to build against the clog and, hopefully clear it. A sewage ballon angioplasty, no less. I spent about a 1/2 hour wading through the mud, yet again. At long last, I got the device ready and shoved it down the drain turned on the water and went to the other end off the house where the sewage pipe exits. There I waited in anticipation of hearing the water drain. Instead a heard a PALOOMP!! noise. Ran around the house and turned off the water after I realized I could hear water running in the house. Inside to find the source of the water leak and found nothing, at first. THEN, there was the source in an open wall in the foyer. Another drain pipe into the line had blown off under the pressure and spewed soggy toilet tissue and debris onto the foyer floor. Some good news. There was a dime and a penny in the mess. The dime might be silver and worth a couple of bucks. Went back out to the clean out and shoved the hose past the vomiting pipe and turned on the water again. This time all I head at the opposite end of the house was running water. Success. Whoopee!! Flushed commode and the water went down normally. As the commode tank was filling it started making a hissing noise. Then is when I discovered that we were out of water. No shower tonight.
Summer brought me some non-mud covered clothes and I changed in our newly enclosed bathroom before going to the trailer for Summer’s ‘Alaska Thrown Together Chili’. It was pretty good and we had crusty bread instead of crackers with it.
This was not a bad day as we accomplished a lot in spite of the road blocks and detours. Hopefully tomorrow will be another successful and dry, pretty day.
Note: I didn’t write Day 23 as we were buying and transporting a small smokehouse and running errands. Only exciting thing that day was that the smokehouse slid off the back of the truck and down the street for a hundred feet or so. No damage.