Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The Stalwart Red Barn

I am taking a for-real-live-and-in-person art class for the next few weeks.  It's my first ever.  It's a great class with great people and no pressure.   We started this composition exercise in class with a tonal painting of a scene and did not have to do a finished painting for homework, so I thought that was a good reason to buck up and do a finished painting.   It was a challenge on several levels.  I won't go into details, but I did want to post the painting I came up with.   Still some problems, but getting better. I keep reminding myself that it's OK to be a learner.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Garden Surprise


Last week we were surprised and happy to find a row of kale that has popped up.  I planted it last fall and am pleased to have it show up for a spring finish.   In my experience, kale does much better outside of a cold frame or hoop house.   At the end of the season last year, I dumped a whole lot of leaves on this garden.  The kale sheltered very well there during this mild winter. 

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Sunrise, Wet Morning #5

They say it takes 10,000 practice hours to master a skill.   I want to master watercolor, so I'm putting in my time. 

This is #5 of a series.   You can see the other attempts here on Craftsy.   It's a process.  I was supposed to be practicing doing 'blooms' on purpose as a way to add some cool texture to the woods.

#bloomfail

While I was #bloomfailing, I did turn out a great perspective and some cool trees though, so I'm calling this an afternoon well spent.  3 more hours down - 8,267 more hours to go.   You know.  Give or take a few.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Successful Start to Spring

We took advantage of the glorious weather yesterday and started working for real on our spring To Do list.  

After losing a couple of buckets of sap to an over-curious dog, we still were able to end up with 6 pints of syrup.   Yum!   To see how we boil, check out the links in the sidebar.   It's an all-day and very smoky affair.  We make an event out of it.

While we were outside, I planted some peas, favas, radishes and arugula. It's supposed to be warm and rain for the next 6 days, so the soil should be just right for early peas.

Lily prepped the milk jugs so I could plant the tomatoes, pepper, eggplant, huckleberries, leeks and onions so they can get a head start on the season.   I tucked everyone in a small cold frame with a glass top.

Lily and I also inspected The Bees That Lived.   It's a tiny colony.   1/4 the size of a medium box - about the size of a nuc.   I think the reason they lived is that we had a well ventilated quilt box on them.   They still had a deep full of honey below them, but we're switching to all mediums so I pulled the deep and set it aside and condensed the hive space.   We saw the queen - beautiful!, made sure they had enough honey [plenty in the medium], put a pollen patty on top and some extra sugar blocks.   The brood was a tiny patch the size of your fist in 2 places.   They are slow to build up.  At any rate, now they have less space to defend and plenty of stores.  Let's hope the queen gets her act in gear and starts cranking out eggs.

I had set an unused quilt box on a stack of empty mediums and covered it up completely for the winter.  When we opened it, it was completely saturated with moisture and molding like crazy, even though it was filled with cedar and over an unheated stack of supers.   Good to know!   These quilt boxes are great - as long as they are ventilated!  I used regular construction shims/wedges to prop up one end of the inner cover I put over the quilt box on the bees.   Must have been just right because I didn't see any moisture or mold over the bees.

Lily and I took our first pings of the season.   That deep of honey I set aside started a bout of robbing.  My girls were pretty defensive and while we were taking care of things, I got pinged on the arm and neck and Lily took one on the ear.   I had to wet blanket the hive and that took care of it.  The rain the rest of the week should dampen any pillagers' spirit and leave my hive to build up - I hope. 

Afternoon update:  I checked the girls this afternoon.   All quiet on the apian front.   Thank heaven.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Oak Floors

So, there's been an extended period of radio silence here.  Sorry about that.   We've been busy doing the upstairs floors.

The guest room floor is installed.  We used more of the salvaged maple that we used for the other bedrooms upstairs.

The common room is almost done.  We used salvaged oak - from the same house the maple came from.

On the back of the oak we found this stamp:

Henry Buchholz Hinsdale ILL

We did a bit of research and found that Hinsdale is up near Chicago.   Henry Buchholz was a builder and developer in the early 1900s.  He liked oak.   So do we.

The oak floor is going much faster than the maple.   We can't tell if that's just because we really know what we're doing or because it's drier this time of year and we're not fighting swollen wood or what.   At any rate, we're grateful.

This is what's left of the oak today.   Our boards ranged in length from 12 inches to 15 feet long.  One of the things we have to do to make the best use of the wood is to put it together like puzzle pieces so that we don't make cuts and can fit the existing pieces together.   So, we arrange the wood by length.   It's tedious, but worth it when it comes time to lay out the rows for installation.   Layout is my job.   Installation [running the Super Nailer] is Eric's.

Layout involves fitting the boards to the correct length and attempting to get 100 years of mystery gunk off the tongues so the boards fit together well.  Sometimes I can get it off.  Sometimes it's cement.  If it doesn't then Eric goes at it again with the box knife [pic below] before final placement and nailing.

Turns out we had enough oak to do most of the floor upstairs and in front of the stairs. Woo-hoo!  We have enough maple left over to do the rest of the big room upstairs.   We considered getting new oak and keeping it all the same, but neither of us really wants to use the rest of the maple anywhere else in the house and we don't want to toss it, so we decided that we'd have a 'mixed' floor and let that be part of the house's story.  

We probably could have done something fancy to show off both woods up there, but we didn't know exactly how much square footage we had to begin with or how much maple we'd have left over after the guestroom without doing a way more intensive count than anyone wanted to do, so we winged it.    When we started with the oak, we looked at the stack and said, 'If we can get from the bookshelves all the way over to the stairwell with oak, then we can do the other area in maple and at least the oak and maple areas will make sense.'   We'll have exactly enough oak.  The floor upstairs won't match, but it's a good story. 
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