I have not updated the blog for a few weeks because we had not done much on the build for a few weeks.  I had a business trip to Providence, Rhode Island for a week.  Then Tina’s sister came down to visit us and give us an excuse for a much needed break from construction.

So what does a married couple that have spent every free minute for the last year doing heavy construction, do with their time off?  The answer, of course, is we go punch cattle!

Our friend Eve owns a cattle ranch about 3 miles from M. T. Acres.  She invited us to help out with the spring round-up.  We were involved with her round-up last fall as well.  So now that I have both under my belt, I think the fall round-up is a lot more work.  But the spring round-up is harder physical work.

We were done this time in three days, whereas last fall took a week and a half.  Part of that was due to the fact that one of the “cowboys” (I use that term loosely in this case) last fall had a slightly difficult personality and caused a great deal more work than was necessary.  But that aside, there is quite a bit more to do in the fall than in the spring.

Rounding up cattle is really hard work.  But it is good work.  When the day was done, we really felt like we had accomplished something worthwhile.  Hopefully Eve will continue to invite us back for many round-ups to come.

We did get started back up on the house build yesterday.

Prior to our break, I had gotten two of the three sections for the built-in bookcase for my office glued up.  But I ran out of plywood so I could not get the third one done.  Tina also got the insides of them varnished.  (More on that in a few paragraphs.)

Yesterday, we started by getting the two completed carcasses moved into my office.  We had to take them in through a window because they will not fit through the door.

A problem quickly became evident.

Because Tina varnished the insides (but not the outsides) about 2 weeks ago, the plywood for the sides warped like crazy.  The one on the left of the photo above is the worst.  The sides in the middle are full inch narrower than they are on the top and bottom!

I had a few ideas on how I could fix the problem, but they more “work-arounds” than a good solution.  Sometimes it is better for me to just think on a problem for a while so I decided to spend the rest of the day building the third carcass.

I got the sides machined first.  As with the first two, I had to do all of the machining by hand because they are too big to handle accurately on a fixed machine.

I was very pleased with myself because I was able to get it sanded and glued the same day too.

Today, Tina needed to use my workshop to finish the inside of the third part of the bookcase.  So I could not start cutting the wood for the face frame as it would raise too much dust.  So I decided to get as much of the baseboard moulding installed in my office as I could.

There are still two more pieces of baseboard to install but those cannot be done until the bookcase is complete.

While I was doing the baseboards, I was hit with the inspiration to solve the problem of the warped sides on the bookcase.  I decided to make a cabinet jack.

Pictured above is just a prototype I cobbled together in 10 minutes just to prove the idea worked.  I drilled it with a hand drill so the holes are not straight and it was a bit of bugger to get it fit well enough to push out evenly.  But it worked!

So I set about building 3 more, this time taking my time to get everything straight.

These babies are going to work great!  They are still not perfect, but they are close enough that I will be able to glue the face frame on and make the final adjustments with clamps.

Tina has been busy the last few weeks getting her gardens started.

We do not have time to do anything permanent for a vegetable garden this year, so she is just using the cloth pots we bought for the rental house.  But the potatoes are doing well, as are the peppers and tomatoes.

The neighbor even gave her an old rusted out stock tank which will work perfectly as a planter!

So adios until next time Acre-Heads!

I got the last of the shelves made for the kitchen cabinets and Tina was able to get them finished.  So at least she was able to get things put away in the kitchen.  We do not have doors for the cabinets yet, but shelves are a HUGE improvement.

We also need to get some more shelf pins because we bought out all the stock that Homie Despot had and we still need about 14 more packages.

But hey, we can see the countertops for the first time in two weeks.  That is a big victory for both of us.

Then we discovered another cabinet needing a shelf that we had both forgotten about.  Oh well, we have plenty of material left.

For me, my plan was to cut the tile we wanted to use for the baseboard in the master bathroom and get it installed.  The tile is the same tile we used for the floor, but I wanted to cut it to be 4 inches wide rather than 6 and use a schluter to cover the unfinished edge.  Of course, I decided to do this on Easter Sunday and the very first piece I cut, I burned up the tile saw blade to the point it was red hot and throwing off pieces of liquid steel at me.  Bad plan.

Monday we went and picked up a new tile saw blade and also picked up the flooring for my office.  The guest bedroom will also be done with the same flooring as my office, but we did not get that as we have no place to store it until we get some of the other rooms completed.

The flooring had to “acclimate” for a couple days before I installed it, so I got the baseboard installed in the master bathroom.

Tina obliged to grout it in the next few days which I am eternally grateful for as I am about done in with tile and grout.

I started on the built-in bookshelves in my office.  These babies are going to be a full 8 feet high and almost 9 feet long, so I decided to built them in 3 sections.  I am building the carcasses in my workshop, but will have to build the face frame and assemble them completely in my office because they will not fit completely assembled, through the door.

Because they are so big, I am having to cut the panels and cut the dados for the top, bottoms and sides by hand.  That is not fun, to say the least.

Because they will be built-in and there is no way our kids will be able to get them out of the room when Tina and I have assumed room temperature, I decided to build them using cabinet style construction, with oak plywood and solid oak face frames rather than heirloom quality solid oak construction.  That saves me about $1500 and it will look okay, but not heirloom quality.  Oh well…

Note to kids: Any books behind glass or housed in an obvious heirloom quality bookcase should not be given away or sold for 25 cents each.  Anything in the cheap-o built-ins, just get rid of it.

I also got the “cookie drawer” done.

As you may recall from a previous post, the cookie drawer was an afterthought.  I had not planned on building it, but I found some space in a cabinet and needed to figure out what to do with it; hence the cookie drawer.  By the time I figured out that I needed to build the cookie drawer, I had already ordered all of the drawer glides that I needed for the kitchen and bathrooms.  But I had some cheap, crappy drawer glides from homie despot that I had bought (and not used for obvious reasons) for out kitchen in Minnesota.

As soon as I tried to install the drawer into the crappy drawer glides, the glides literally exploded.   They shot berings and crap everywhere.  So I bought some decent 100# drawer glides from the company I bought the rest of my drawer glides from, they worked perfect once I got past the holes I had drilled for the crappy glides.  It does not sound like much of a task, but it was a serious pain in the neck to install 24 inch drawer glides once the cabinet was (almost) completed.

Finally, the flooring for my office acclimated enough to install it.  The first step was to put in the vapor barrier and a thin foam pad.

Then the flooring.

The flooring is commercial grade.  It is about 1/2 inch thick and made from some kind of dense black material.  It is supposed to be waterproof for up to 30 hours.  I found out, after we bought it, it is the same flooring many of the Cabela’s stores have, so hopefully it will hold up.

Installing it was extremely easy.  I was able to get the entire floor in my office done in about 4 hours.

The downside (there is always a downside) was that it absolutely destroyed my saw blades.  I had a $90 blade in my mitre saw that was almost brand new and after I had cut the flooring, it will not even cut red oak without burning it.  I am going to try cleaning the blade and see if that helps, otherwise I will have it resharpened.  I really do not want to replace it.  I also used the rip blade in my tablesaw for a few pieces.  I have not tried it with wood yet, but I expect it is going to also need some work.

The lesson I took away from the whole exercise is that when I do the floor in the guest bedroom, I am going to get a cheap throw-away blade for my Skilsaw and cut them with that.