Well, we don’t have any cotton in our garden, so I can’t make any comment as to whether it is high or not, but our garden is doing well, and I have definitely been enjoying summer this week. On Wednesday, I took some time in the afternoon to do some work, which included getting the flat tire off the riding lawn mower so I could take it in to the tire store. It turns out I needed a socket to get it off, so I had to take a trip to Pell’s first. I got the needed socket, and picked up some 2x2s at the lumber yard to make the remaining 6 tomato stakes, and some 6″ corrugated pipe for my ditch project. After I cut and pounded in the remaining tomato stakes, I savored the first ripe cherry tomato of the season. There appear to be many more waiting. Then I picked the first ripe hot peppers — we planted anaheims and yellow banana peppers. I used those in the burritos I made for dinner, which were very tasty. But before that, I decided to finally take a swim in the pond. I never got around to it last summer, and I decided that I ought to do it before this summer is over as well. It was very refreshing on a hot summer day. It was also quite cold, as my in-laws had promised. I didn’t venture too far out, but I did put my head under water.
On Thursday I got a tube put in the flat tire for $15, and did some mowing after work. It felt really great to leave work at 5, since I have been working late the last several weeks. And Friday, I went to the see the new Batman movie at the drive-in. I had never been to a drive-in before, and I never got around to it last summer, even though it is only a few miles from our house. And for once in a blue moon, they were playing a movie that interested me. And speaking of blue moons, not long after enjoying a marvelous sunset at the drive-in, which drenched the corn-filled horizon in dark red light, there appeared a big, beautiful full moon.
This past weekend we finally finished the vanity installation. We worked on it a bit almost every night of the week.
Monday night we got home around 6:15, and brought pizza with us, so we could get working on the tile pretty quickly. I started mixing up the mortar, and ended up getting really lucky and mixed the last part of one 25lb bag, which ended up being just about enough for the countertop. While the mortar was slaking, we started laying out the tile on the countertop to determine where we wanted to make our cuts. We decided to make cuts on the side next to the half-wall, since it would be less visible when you walk in the room. Then I marked the cuts for the sink-hole, and Clare set off making those cuts with the tile nippers while I started laying tile. Liz also helped cut some of the tile for the edge pieces using the tile cutter. The tile went on quite easily, though after it cured, I realized that they weren’t completely level. Hopefully I will be able to get them a bit more level when we do the floor tile. The actual laying of the tile only took a couple hours.
Tuesday Clare and I worked from home, so in the morning I started off by putting on the backsplash. We used 4×4 bullnose tile for the backsplash, and put it on with pre-mixed mastic, just like we used for the tub tile. That only took a half-hour or so. Then I worked until dinner-time, and after dinner I put on the grout. While I was putting on the grout, Clare and Liz worked on getting the old faucet off the sink. This proved to be trickier that one would think. The faucet part came off pretty easily, but the drain simply would not come off. The ring that fits in the sink would not come unscrewed from the rest of the drain. After I was done with the grout I took a look at it, and tried using some WD-40, but it didn’t help much. So I decided to let it soak in for a day.
Wednesday evening I set about trying to get the drain off again, hoping that the WD-40 would have helped overnight. It didn’t. So finally I got out the hacksaw and simply cut off the drain. Then I spent close to an hour removing the old caulk from the sink with a razorblade, and getting as much rust off the bottom of the sink where the old bolts had been as I could. Once again, I decided to call it a night.
Thursday evening I finally installed the new faucet and put the sink in the hole. I attached the flexible hoses that were connecting the old faucet to the new faucet, and connected the first half of the drain assembly, putting a little silicone sealant under the metal rim that sits in the sink bowl, per the instructions. Then I put some more silicone under the rim of the sink, and set the sink in place. Finally, I put a little silicone between the edge of the sink and the tile. I finished connecting the supply pipes and the drain assembly, but did not turn the water on, because I wanted the silicone to cure.
Friday evening I tried out the sink. I followed the instructions and took out the aerator to flush out any debris that might have gotten into the pipes while ripping out the old vanity. I had to tighten the supply pipes a bit more, but then it seemed to stop leaking. I was initially disappointed when I tried to put the aerator back in though. A small stream of water was obviously not flowing through the aerator, but spraying around. I tried tightening it down with a plier (and a rag to prevent gouging the aerator ring), but it didn’t help. Then I took it off, thinking it might be misthreaded, and tried again. Still no luck. Then I happened to notice some black thing peaking out of the sink drain hole, from under the stopper. It was a washer! It must have fallen out when I took the aerator out, or when I turned the water on. Once I put the washer on, the aerator worked fine. Then I spent a good 20 minutes or more working on adjusting the stopper. It seemed to be the appropriate height, but when I pulled it up, it fell right back down. I decided to call it a night and work on it over the weekend. I did caulk between the countertop and the backsplash though, using the Polyseam Seal caulk my dad recommends. This time I tried using masking tape to avoid getting the caulk where I didn’t want it. I was not that impressed with this method, as it seemed like I had to smooth out the caulk a second time after removing the tape.
Saturday was a nice day, and I ended up spending most of the day doing other stuff besides the bathroom. On Sunday I went back to working on the stopper and checking for leaks. It turns out that the drain was leaking just a bit. I ended up just undoing some of the PVC connections and then re-tightening them, which seems to have done the trick. I also discovered that the reason that the stopper was falling down was because I had not tightened the nut that holds the ball in the drain pipe enough. Once I did that it worked fine.
So, phase 2 is complete. This next weekend we hope to work on Phase 3 – the floor tile.
The remaining steps after putting the tile on the wall are grouting and caulking. Tuesday night I spent about 4 hours grouting. It turned out to be one of the hardest parts of the project in my opinion. As we have learned, grout is specially colored mortar, which you put between the tiles to help keep them in place and keep out water.
The first step in grouting is to mix it up, which I did using a margin trowel. The Hometime Tile video which we learned much from said it is better to mix it a bit dry, so I erred on the dry side. Then I let the grout “slake” for 10 minutes, which is just to let it sit and let the powder and water mix on their own a bit. Then I stirred one more time, and used the margin trowel to put some grout onto my grout float and smear it onto the tile and into the cracks. This was much more difficult than it looked in the video. Probably 80% of the grout was just falling off into the tub instead of getting into the cracks. I decided that maybe it was still too wet, so I added a bit more powder. That was even worse. I resorted to shoving it in with my fingers (with gloves) instead of with the grout float. After tiring of that, I decided to try adding more water, and it got a bit better. Then I decided to look at the bag of grout again, and it said to mix with water or a latex additive for “enhanced performance”. I was beginning to suspect that I really needed the additive. Clare was in town at the YMCA, so I called her and asked her to look for latex additive at Walmart. No luck. So, I kept chugging along, slowly getting better at it such that I was only slopping about 40-50% of the grout into the tub. I let Clare try for awhile, and she started off about the same as me, so I promptly took over simply in the name of time-saving.
We haven’t posted anything in a couple weeks not for lack of home improvement projects, but rather because we have been spending most of our free time doing them. In the last couple weeks we really started getting serious about finishing the tile around the bathtub.
In the last entry, I estimated that it would only take a few more hours to finish hanging the cementboard. Well, that was an underestimate. It took most of a day, largely because of some minor setbacks, such as having to redo the cut-outs for the pipes in the supporting 2x4s. I had them all done, then when trying to toeshoe one of them in, I simply could not get the nail in, and finally decided to pull it out and screw in the board. However, the board broke while I was trying to get the nail out. Argh! But, I eventually got all the cementboard hung. The next step was to mud and tape the cementboard, which involves putting thinset mortar on the joints, then embedding fiberglass tape made especially for cementboard. This was quite tricky, as the mortar kept falling off my putty knife. I also made the mistake of not doing it all in one step (dinner intervened). I ended up letting half of it dry, then doing the rest another night. Using this method I ended up going over some joints twice (because of the inside corners), which caused some humps. I also put a bit too much mortar on I think, but hopefully the tile won’t fall off the wall.
This past weekend, we finally got to put the tile on the wall. Clare and I spent most of the day Saturday chalking lines on the cementboard, measuring, and cutting tile. Our neighbors, the Greenwell’s, lent us their tile cutter, which was very nice of them. It basically is just a cutting wheel on some rods. You score the tile with the cutting wheel, then snap the tile. Clare started off cutting triagular pieces from the 4″x4″ tile for the fancy pattern we did. Then I started making some of the cuts with the 6″x5″ tile we had measured. I was initially very worried, because the first 2 tiles I attempted broke in the wrong place. Then Clare passed on the advice from her mother to snap the big tiles near the edge of the tile, which worked very well. Besides the tile cutter, we also had tile nippers and a rod saw in our arsenal. The tile nippers are a bit like pliers with a sharp edge, and are good for cutting off rounded pieces. But, after learning the hard way, they do not work very well for inside cuts. That is, if you want to leave all the corners intact, but cut out part of the middle of the tile, the only options are the rod saw or a router (and we did not buy a router just for this project). They make rod saws that fit into hacksaw frames, but we could only find a small one that came in its own frame. It is a small rod which is very rough, almost like sandpaper, but metal and rougher. It works pretty well, but requires a lot of effort. More on that later.
On Sunday, we finally got to putting up the tile. I would say that this was probably the easiest part of the job so far. We bought pre-mixed mastic to stick the tiles to the wall. You spread the mastic on with a triangular notched trowel, then simply stick the tiles in. The mastic is very sticky, so the tiles stick almost immediately. The tiles we bought had lugs on them, which are basically little pieces on the side that space the tiles automatically. There were some pieces that we had cut where we needed to use 1/16″ plastic spacers instead. We started with the longest wall of the tub, ensuring that the inside corners would not be as visible as if we had done it the other way around. I got several feet up the wall done while Clare had her weekly chat with her parents. Then she finished off the rest of the wall, and I worked on making a few more cuts we hadn’t gotten to the day before. The trickiest cut by far was the cut for the spout, because it consisted of a circle in the middle of a tile. For this I had to use the special drill bit that came with the rod saw. It probably took me about 10 minutes to drill through the tile, and then another 15 minutes to saw out the hole.
So, Clare being the trooper that she is, drove all the way to Bloomington to get about 10 more tiles so we could finish that day. I stayed home and did a few more cuts, cleaned up some, and started laying more tile.
Another tricky cut was around the shower handle, which was a 4″x4″ hole spanning the middle of two tiles. I thought I had both done, but when I went to put them on the wall, I realized that I had accidentally cut the two tiles upside down, so I had to do them over again. I wanted to continue tiling before the mastic dried out, so I asked Clare to do the last one. Clare, being the ingenius one, decided to use a combination of the rod saw and tile clippers (which I advised against). Sure enough, the tile broke. I was of course a bit upset, and decided to do it myself. I got about 90% done with the cut using the rod saw, and then for some crazy reason, I decided to try to use the clippers for the last bit, and it broke again. So, I gave it one more try using just the rod saw, and it worked, but we wasted another 2 tiles and a good 30 minutes. So, the lesson of the day is: don’t take shortcuts.
The last few pieces included the edge pieces to go on the outside corner of the wet wall. We ended up using countertop edge pieces here, which fit very well. I had to cut 2 of them to fit up against the tub, and I ended up cutting the top one a little bit as well, which was another tricky cut with the rod saw. Clare helped me cut the last set of tiles for the top to fit against the sloped ceiling. Then we cleaned up a bit and called it a day.
It seems that every time we decide to focus on a particular part of the bathroom model at a time, it turns out that other parts must be done first. We are trying to keep as much of the bathroom functional possible for when we have guests, which has been relatively frequent. So, we are trying to do the tile around the bathtub while keeping the sink and the toilet functional. It seems that this will be possible, but not easy. A month or two ago, we thought we were about ready to put up the cement board to do the tile. Then we realized we should install new fixtures in the tub before putting up the cement board (see previous post). Once that was done we seemed ready to put up the cement board. As I began thinking about it though, I realized that we would have to put up new drywall where it butts up against the cement board before putting the tile up, since we have been told that the tile should overlap onto the drywall a bit. Fine. Then I started thinking about it a bit more, and realized that if I put up a small piece of drywall between the tub and the existing vanity, then we would have to put a seal there. That is no good. So maybe we do have to take the vanity out! Wait. I have an idea. Why not just cut off a few inches of the vanity? That is what I decided to do.
While visiting my friend Sean last week in St. Louis, we were talking about home improvement, and I inquired if he had a reciprocating saw, otherwise known as a Saws-all. It turns out he does, and he let me borrow it. I put it to good work. I got to work about 8:00 in the morning, after having started fires in both the woodstove and the cookstove (high of about 15 yesterday and today). I started off removing remaining bits of nails from the old drywall from the studs, cleaned the plastic moisture barrier with some 409, and got ready to hang the first piece of cement board. The cement board we bought comes in 3′ x 5′ sheets, very convenient, since standard bathtubs are 5′ long. However, as I keep learning over and over again, sometimes things don’t quite fit. The cement board was too long. I had to cut about an inch off. And that of course is a real pain, but I cut it off, and then I hung it with the fancy cement board screws that we had bought. Fairly easy. At this point I decided to re-measure how high up the cement board would go. 3′ times 2 is 6 feet or 72 inches. I had cut the old drywall about 71 inches high. So, instead of taking 1 inch off the cement board, I took another inch off the drywall. I decided to try out the saws-all for this task, and it performed very nicely.
Once I had gotten going with the saws-all, I decided to try to take off some of the vanity. I started cutting through the countertop along one of the grout lines in the tile. This worked somewhat, but not very well, and I quickly dulled the heck out of the blade. I discovered it was much easier to chip off the mosaic tile with a chisel and hammer. Then I used the circular saw to cut through the plywood counter top. After a bunch of fiddling around, I finally figured out how to remove the drawers from the cabinet, and was able to salvage them and the metal tracks as well. Maybe we will use those elsewhere in the bathroom. I then continued for several hours sawing and hammering and chiseling, until I slowly started to get to the bottom of the cabinet. At that point I was getting hungry, so I had a little lunch, and talked with Dave and Ellen a while, who gave me some more tips on the bathroom project, including the fact that the PVC pipe in the cabinet that seemed to go to nothing did in fact go to nothing, so I cut it off (with the Saws-all). Shortly after lunch I was trying to cut through the bottom of the cabinet, and the second saw blade broke. I headed out to Pell’s, where they once again had everything I needed. I got five blades in total, including a pair of “demolition” blades. The demolition blade had no problem going through the metal of the floor heater under the old vanity which no longer works. I finally got through all the cabinet and removed all the nails from the studs, so I was about ready to hang the drywall.
The tool of the day — The saws-all. Thanks Sean!
Before hanging the drywall though, I had to put in a few more 2″x4″s as backing pieces for the drywall and cement board. The cement board was going to come out 30″ from the back of the tub, but the nearest stud was about 33″, so I cut a stud to about 84″ (since the ceiling is sloped), stuck it in, then attached it to the other stud with a few short pieces of 2″x4″. I also put in some cross pieces around the tub for the top of the backerboard / bottom of the drywall.
Extra stud attached with several small blocks.
By the time I had gotten all the 2″x4″s cut to the desired length, I was hungry again, so I had a little dinner. After dinner I decided to keep working for a couple hours more. I cut the drywall to the desired length, and then discovered 2 more slight differences when going to hang it — (1) I needed to cut out about 1/2″ more of the old drywall, and (2) I was going to have to remove a couple rows of the mosaic tile on the floor to get the drywall to fit right. After doing these 2 tasks, I was able to successfully hang the drywall (though I will have to save a couple screws for while the old vanity is out). And, around 8:30 p.m. I decided to see if all of my work with the vanity and drywall in order to correctly put up the cement board actually worked. Much to my delight, it did. I still have a good 2-3 hours left to finish hanging the cementboard. Then I’ll need a couple hours to tape and mud it, and then we can finally start tiling!
Project at the end of day one. Not finished, but no leaks.
Well, we have been working on the downstairs bathroom nearly since we moved in, but it has been going very slowly. Since we have a bathroom off our bedroom, we haven’t had much pressure to work on it. But now that there is no grass to mow, we have gotten more serious about finishing the bathroom. We ripped out the drywall and tub surround quite some time ago, making the bathtub dysfunctional, but we have left the sink and toilet in a functional state, which has been handy when we have had guests. Now we are concentrating on finishing the tub, then tackling the sink and finally the toilet.
We bought most of the materials to tile around the tub several months ago, as well as a new vanity. We took Ellen’s advice and rented the “Hometime Tile” video from Netflix, which wa very handy. We learned that we should get cement backerboard instead of drywall to put around the tub, because it is more moisture-resistant. As we got closer to installing the backerboard, we started to realize that we should really install the new plumbing fixtures before the backerboard. So a couple weeks before Christmas I started taking off the old fixtures. I could not take them off all the way though, because that would create a leak, and the only way to stop the water to the bathtub is to shut off the water to the whole house. So, with that in mind, I wanted to make sure to start the project early in the day so I could make several trips to the hardware store.
So, with the holidays behind us, this weekend seemed like a good time to do the project. Saturday morning we got up around 7:30, had some breakfast, went to the bathroom, then turned off the water. As I started getting ready to take out the old fixtures, I realized more parameters I had not previously considered. For one thing I noticed that we would have to put it in a 2×4 as a backer for the fixture, and that we would want to make sure that we got it centered, at a good height, and at the correct depth from the wall. So I ended up cutting the backerboard and testing it in place to see how deep the 2×4 should be. Clare was of course very helpful in this as well. Once we had done all this, it was time to finally cut off the pipe to the old fixture. Unfortunately, we could not find the pipe cutter. On top of this, I had to go to the bathroom, and it was almost noon. So I went into town, got some lunch at Taco Bell and used their bathroom, then headed off to Pell’s hardware. I had a list of all the fittings and pipe I needed, and one of the guys helped me find everything. I also ended up buying a pipe cutter. I’m sure the old one will turn up someday.
Close up of the sweat by the where the tub faucet comes out.
Once I got home, I cut off the old pipe, and Clare helped me start measuring and cutting the new pipe, and cleaning the fittings. We were very fortunate to get a lesson in sweating pipe from Clare’s uncle Rich over the holidays. It really was a great exchange of information. We gave Rich and his family some advice on computers and digital cameras, and they gave us some advice (and tools) for gardening and home improvement. The main thing we learned from Rich is that the key to sweating pipe is that the pipe must be very clean. Cleaning it involves a special wire brush for the fittings, and some special sand paper for the pipe. After cleaning it well, apply some flux (soldering paste), and then start the soldering. We also learned that the area to be soldered must be completely dry, and that is where the bread trick comes in. There is bound to be some water in the pipes, and heating part of the pipe will cause that water to create steam, which lowers the temperature of the metal, meaning that it will never get hot enough to melt the solder. So, the trick is to shove some bread into the pipe where the water or steam would be coming in. The bread will act as a barrier for the water, but once the water is back on, the pressure of the water will easily flush out the bread.
So before doing any actual soldering, we cut all the pipe and stuck it together, to make sure it would all fit nicely. Once we had had shortened a few pieces, and made some slightly longer short pieces to go right by the fixture, we took the pipe into the kitchen to start soldering. It is kind of hard to sweat pipe in place and not burn the 2x4s, so we wanted to do as many of the connections as possible in the free and open. We successfully got 2 sweats done fairly easily, but then we started having problems for some reason. We were having difficulty getting the pipe hot enough for the solder to melt, even though the pipe itself felt very hot. One difference in our sweating from the test session with uncle Rich was that we were using propane gas instead of MAPP gas. Around this point, we also realized that there were a few more fittings that we needed, and that we might need to redo some of the connections that we tried but could not get right.
So, we took another trip in town. This time we bought some gas and used their restrooms, then we went back to Pell’s. We bought some MAPP gas (it was about $8 instead of $4 for propane), and the other fittings we needed, then got back to work. The MAPP gas definitely made a big difference. Now things were really rolling. We got all the sweats done we could in the kitchen, then moved into the bathroom. The first two sweats there were also easy. Clare used the torch to heat up the coupling joints near the top of the tub, and I came in from behind and below the tub with the solder.
Then I made a mistake. Clare went into the kitchen for something, and I was eager to see how good our sweats were, so I turned on the water. The sweats were good, but now I had just filled up the pipes with water, and we still had several more sweats to go. Rob!!!!
So, we decided to take a coffee break, and mull it over. Clare suggested trying to drain the water out somehow. There is a drain to the house which goes out near where the pipes go in. We tried that, but it didn’t work. Then Clare remembered her dad saying that if we turned the water on upstairs with the drain open, then any water on the first floor would drain out because of the pressure differential. Sure enough, it worked. We had a little dinner while the pipes were (hopefully) drying out. When we got back to work though, the pipe still would not get hot enough. Then we tried the bread trick. This seemed to help, but there was still water in the pipe. We could hear it sizzling. Eventually, we decided just to keep heating it until the water was all gone, which only took a few minutes. Then finally the solder melted.
After all this, I decided that I wanted to work a little bit more, but that Clare could do some other things if she wanted. I was almost about ready to finish off the project when Clare informed me that it was almost 10:00. So, instead I capped off the parts that go to the faucet and shower, and we called it a night.
Outlet where the shower head will go in. Notice I ended up using screws instead of nails.
On Sunday, Sam and Charlie came over for brunch. Naturally we spent the morning cleaning. We had some tasty vegan biscuits and gravy, played with Benjamin, and took a stroll through the woods on the unseasonably warm day (about 65ºF). Almost as soon as they left, I got back to the plumbing. It took a bit more fenagling to get the blocks to hold the shower and faucet in the right place, (and I ended up breaking one trying to hammer the shower pipe in place – nails stink). After another couple hours work though, all the pipe was in place, and there were no leaks!
Now we can finally start putting up the rest of the backerboard and start tiling. More adventures await.
I just fixed the lamp in the kitchen. When I say fixed, I mean that a month ago, changing the bulb didn’t work to restore the light that should come on when a switch is flipped. This was not surprising because the fixture had a long, slow death, taking tens of minutes to come on in the morning at the end. We had an electrician out to fix the wire that I ran over with a lawn mower this summer (oops). He also looked at the light and said the ballast was probably dead. I got a new fixture last week and tonight I wired it up. The kitchen is much brighter now. And Rob seems impressed that light comes immediately on when he flips the switch.
Rob has been enjoying heating with wood. Unlike when I was growing up, the house now has an HVAC system, so if he decided it wasn’t so fun, we could flip a switch and be warm. But the heat from the furnace isn’t as good as wood heat somehow. It’s too dry and doesn’t smell as good and makes weird noises in the middle of the night. Rob gets up early Saturday morning to go collect and chop wood. He sometimes literally can’t wait to get out of the house. He claims it is in the name of exercise, but I’m pretty sure he enjoys it.
According to him, we keep the house in the mid-60’s. He monitors the temperature in each room several times a day. I seem to like it slightly colder than he does. The upstairs is warmer than the downstairs. The living room heats up quite a bit on sunny days (due to the parents eco-friendly design), but Indiana has plenty of cloudy days as well. That’s when it helps to have wood heat.
Last weekend Dave came out to visit. We made a long list of projects, and accomplished quite a few of them. The main project that I was really hoping he could work on was installing some new ducts to the wood stove. When Clare was growing up, they heated solely with wood, and had ducts from the wood stove going to most of the rooms in the house. When they decided to move and rent the house, Dave and Ellen figured that most renters would not want to heat with wood, so they hired their good friend and neighbor Louis Fender to install a furnace and air conditioner. When Louis put in the new furnace, he disconnected some of the ducts to the wood stove, since they weren’t being used. Now that Clare and I are trying our hand at homesteading, we decided that we would like to try to heat with wood as well. Thus we asked Dave to put in some new ducts.
Actually, Dave wanted to do this in June when we were moving in, but I told him at the time that it wasn’t a top priority, which it didn’t seem like it was in June. I also thought it would be a pretty big project, and the house was pretty crowded in June with all of us (Clare, Rob, Dave, Ellen, Harold, and Fran) working on various projects. Needless to say I was surprised when I came home from work on the Thursday of Dave’s visit to find that he had already completed the duct project, and a few other projects as well. But, it can always go the other way too. Clare and Dave spent about 6 hours on Saturday trying to install an outside light that we could switch on and off from inside, which at first seemed like it was going to be easy, but unfortunately did not get accomplished. They still haven’t figured out exactly what is going on with some of those wires. Dave was successful in installing a new motion detector light on the side of the garage which is working very nicely now, and a new light above the stove. Both are highly appreciated.
While Dave and Clare were working on the outside light project, I decided to work some more on the wood pile project. I had been cutting up a fallen oak back in the woods over the summer, but I had not carried the pieces down yet. The more I thought about doing this, the harder it seemed. My original plan was to carry the wheelbarrow over the creek, carry the wood down to one side of the creek in the wheelbarrow, pile it up, then eventually carry the wood over the creek, and put it back into the wheelbarrow. As I thought about this more, I decided I should just go ahead and build a bridge, which I did awhile ago. Now that the bridge was built, getting the wood from the forest was much easier (though still quite a bit of work). Dave took down a couple loads on Friday and split some. He then suggested throwing out some of the old rotten wood, to avoid attracting termites. That project also took longer than expected. I worked on it for most of the day Saturday. Now it is looking much better. So my plan now is to continue cutting wood in the forest and bring it down to the wood rack, stacking it in the left third, then put it into the right third as I split it, which according to Dave gets easier when the temperature falls below freezing.