Janie paints again

We've just come off of a three day weekend (four for me) spending each day getting ready for the Log Home Tour, a scant four days from now. Jane keeps coming up with more things to do, on top of the all ready long list of things to finish. I cleaned the screen porch, cut grass, fixed fence, split wood and more. Janie cleaned, arranged, modified, painted and decorated. One thing she painted was our mail box. she's wanted to paint it since we bought it. Here it is.




A close up view shows us, sitting at a camp fire amongst the trees.


I enjoy her ability to paint and am looking forward to a time when she can dedicate more time to it.




Two weekes ago, my sister and brother-in-law came to help with the flowerbed and to move the wood rack. They were a huge help and we were happy for the visit. JD did most of the heavy lifting while we held the rack from tipping.




The rack's finial resting place, behind the garage.


Mulch provides cover.


It's not a well established garden, but it's only our first year.


Ok, we're done with it. Janie has flowers and plants for other locations all arund the place. eg: in a coffee pot, an iron pot, baskets and an old Corned Beef box from Argentina.

A tree fell in the woods, ... and I heard it

Last time I said I’d have a finished picture of the bridge, here it is.


Not many days after, a storm passed through and brought down a large oak tree real close to the bridge. The tree’s roots turned up the dirt around it and looked like this.



The top of the oak tree hit our barn and bent down part of the metal roof.
Not very bad, but still, not the kind of mess we wanted, just a few days before
the Log Cabin Tour in June.



We, along with our brother-in-law set about cutting and cleaning the area.
It took a hour the day it happened, the whole next day and into the third a couple hours. I did most of the cutting while standing in the bucket of the JD, while Janie spend hours picking up branches, hauling them to the paddock to burn at some future date.

When we cut the trunk, it, and the dirt it was connected to flipped back to it’s
original position. (almost) It left a gapping hole to fill. We bought 3 tons of
dirt and to fill it in.

What a mess. Our place is easier to see from the road now. We don’t like it.

A bridge real close

We were wanting to have a bridge over the Eastern arm of our little pond. The barn is on the other side and it seemed the convenient thing to do. So, in the Summer of 2010, Kevin and his son came to help me lay-out the posts that would be the main weight bearing members.

We found two polls that were the same size and all. Got'em free too. We like free. I figured getting the polls to straddle the pond would be the thing that took the most effort but, with a little help from my friend John Deere, I had'em in place in 30 minutes. Wonderful!

Janie caught me acting up while crossing over on one poll. the bridge will run right out of where the porch door is.

If you read back in October, you'll see where we had a guy dig out part of the pond. He was able to work around it with little problem.

Sorry, this is a phone picture. Here I've got the "Trusses" started. They took a lot of the bounce out of the polls. There will be three sections to the bridge. the polls, of course, and an approach on each end. This is all flat and everything, but we're going for a gracefull, sweeping look, which is difficult when you've only got utility polls to work with. It stayed like this all of the Winter.

Come Spring of 2011, I got to work on the walking surface of 2x6's. This angle shows how the approachs spread out, preventing a square, streight look for the bridge.

So you can see how the log railings tie all three sections together and make it one bridge. Now I have to add all the little sticks and limbs to fill in the opening in the railings, and then nail on the wavy siding to hide the utility polls.

A finshed project picture will follow.

This man has an Island

From the begining, our kitchen was to have an island in the middle. It has taken a while but we have it now. Here's a shot during construction. No island. Since we did most everything ourselves and, couldn't do everything all at once, there had to be a priority. The island's number has come up!

We used this little antique table for these last two years while we were finishing other things. It's nice and all that but didn't funtion well as counter space.

We bought a couple more cabinets from Lowes, put them together and covered the sides and back with our favorite bead-board paneling, then built the top like the rest of the counter using red oak flooring. That leaves it up to Jane to paint, stain and water proof. She likes using Spar varnish, 3 - 5 coats.

So here it is, we like it. That's 13.5sqft of counter space we didn't have before. Now the project will be to finish the bar chairs in black like the cabinets.

SIGNS

We live in a rural area with lots of log houses, vacation homes, and rental get-a-way cabins. We hadn’t lived here long before noticing that many of the folks had named their homesteads and placed signs at their driveways. Of course, we wanted to be a part of the local trend and right away, began thinking of a name of our own. We tried most everything we could think of but didn’t like any of it for one reason or another. Here’s a few from around the county. Some of these signs are very nice and must have been expensive. We weren’t willing to spend big money on any sign we were to come up with. In fact, we spent $0.00. (That’s a big dollar sign right there!) We liked this one, ….. because of the rust. And what a hill it is, very steep. Some are simple and to the point like this one about 3 miles from our house. This one is huge!! Around the corner from us. This one’s for sale. Big house, nice pond. This house came with a long range view as the sign states. So I’m about to show you what we came up with after mulling it over for more than 2 years. It’s not much, and not very sophisticated, but until another idea comes along, here it is. Jane did the painting of course. I picked up a limb from out of the woods, a scrap of treated 1x4, and the trunk of a small tree I had cut down last year. And there you go. Welcome to Mossy Point Cabin.

Stuff used as other stuff

A guy I used to work with, I'll call him "Dave" because that's his name,
gave me two old storm windows he didn't want. (For those of you
located in the South, storm windows go on in the Fall and off in the
Spring, providing extra protection from Winter wind and snow)
I put one of them to work as a divider in Janie's art room.



The other one I made into a door for this built-in cabinet. I had some
glass shelves cut to fit, installed a couple old hinges and small handle
I had laying around and presto, a curio cabinet is born.



One of the shelves has this picture of my dad and his sisters back in the day.
Dad's been gone since 1993 but my Aunts are still getting around. The little
picture is of Janie's Dad and Mom. The log cabin behind them was in the family
somewhere.



A little toy horse, sheigh and a painting Janie's Great Grandmother
did many years ago. She painted it on a hand mirror.



I wouldn't necessarily call this items antiques but they do have personal
significants to us. That's what your house should look like anyway. Not
what it dictated on some TV show somewhere, but what you like.



This is Janie's Grandmother. I don't remember much about it except
that Janie liked this sort of thing and spent time with her looking at
old things in trunks when she was little. I think that's the way it is with folks,
a person developes a taste for antiques early and tends to stay with it
for life.



This is likely the best example. The butter churn to the left in this picture,
taken from over the refrigerator, was my Grandmothers on my Mother's side.
She died when I was very young, leaving me with only a couple of memories of her.

Mom kept this churn in the basement and never displaying it. For reasons
I may never know, I liked it, wanted it and asked for it when I was 20.
I know full well that behavior like that isn't very manly, but I didn't
seem to care about it then, and I curtainly don't care now. You've either got the
bug for antiques or not. I started early as did Janie.



So, do you have the antique bug? Do you find yourself collecting
rusty junk? What do you collect?

The last of the Saturday pond pictures

Everything is blaaa in Week 44

Week 45

Week 46

There's a little ice on the pond in week 47

We'll have a white Christmas, week 48

Week 49

Warmed up a bit for Week 50

An astounding 61 degs during Week 51