I think this is actually true.

It is April 2nd and the snow is still here. I am beginning to think that the 10" of snow we got yesterday was actually not an April fools joke! Just when the road was starting to dry up and the ground was getting exposed. I actually thought winter was over . Bad news is the code enforcement officer couldn't come up to inspect because of the weather so we are not in the house yet. She is going to stop by Monday and take care of it then. Meanwhile Paulette and I had the day off because of the weather so we were able to get a jump on the weak ends projects. Today the Sun is very bright and the it sounds like it is raining from all the melt off from the roof. It is not all bad, I don't have to worry about checking the dogs for ticks :-).

Kitchen Cabinets

This weekend we focused on getting the kitchen in. I was able to install most of the cabinets and make the counter top. I still need to do some more sanding as well as put several coats of tung oil on the top but the hard part of making it is done.

Paulette milk painted and polyurethaned the upstairs bathroom floor. It looks really nice. We kind of think we would have liked to have painted more of the floors, oh well to late now.

The first cabinets to go in.

Gluing the pine boards for the counter top.

The plywood back board for the pine counter top drilled and ready to go. I glue and screw the plywood back board to the pine boards to give it strength

After a lot of measuring and re-measuring I made the final cuts to the sink opening. I ended up using a skill saw to make the final cuts so it was a fairly tense few minutes until I had it done -- the potential to mess a days work up was pretty great i.e. "measure twice cut once, not "I cut it three times and it's still to short" :-).

I used cut nails and glue to hold the edging on.

A couple late night pictures of the finished counter top. I am going to make a back splash and glue it to the wall. I will finish installing the rest of the cabinets during the week and Paulette will put the doors back on.

Making progress

Here are some pictures of the work we have been doing. If all goes well we should be moving in by April 1st, no joke :-).


Here is the wide pine boards ready to be distressed.


Emma working on making the floor look 200 years old, kids are good at this. She is using a mace like tool that has pieces of metal tied to the stick so marks can be put in the floor before finishing it. The final product looks like a floor with many years of use on it.

Here is part way though the staining process. Paulette came up with a layered staining method that really looks nice when it is done. Here she is putting the second coat of stain on the floor. She will wipe this off and let it dry for a couple days before coating it with 2 coats of satin polyurethane.



Here is a bad picture of one of the finished floors. I will take some more pictures that do them justice.





Some of the kitchen cabinets Paulette is in the process of milk painting.



The window in the entryway. This is the first window we have finished and it came out great!! We are very happy with how all the pieces have come together and the look is just what we were going for.




Mud season is here really bad. The road is a mess and the weather has not been making it much better. It may be spring in some places of the country but we are still enjoying winter up here. Yes that was sarcasm.


The ewes are getting big and are due to start lambing in the beginning of May. I will need to give shots and shear them in about 3 weeks.

Ice storm!!

We had a little ice storm up here Monday and Tuesday. It was very isolated to the hills so we could drive 2 minutes down the road (~200’ elevation) and there was no ice. Lots of branches and some trees came down. But the Foster farm never lost power!!! Good old P&B light and power.

The house is coming along great. We should have hot water today (3-9-11) and all three bathrooms should be done by the end of the week. Paulette and I picked up the new kitchen cabinets at the cabinet makers yesterday and this weekend Paulette will start milk painting them. They are going to fit in very nice with the “old house”. I finished installing all the floors on the second floor and have started in the first; Paulette has been painting and finishing floors. It won’t be long now. The goal is to move in by the end of the month.

update

Here are some pictures we have taken over the last couple weeks.



The view out our master bath window!! (very cool)





The boards came for the wide board flooring, I am using rough sawn lumber planed on three sides and face nailing it with cut nails. This is exactly the same way it had been done in the 17 and 18 hundreds. Here it is being stacked inside to let it acclimate to the temperature before laying it down and nailing it.




This is about half the load, all total we got enough to do 2000sq ft (the entire house). I am going to use some for wainscoting in the dinning room and entryway as well.




P&B light and power is on-line!!!!! We made the final connections to the system and we now have power. The first picture is of the inverter which is the piece of equipment that converts the 48VDC power stored in the batteries to 24oVAC power that we use to run the house. The second picture is of the battery bank. The third picture is the screen on the charge controller. The charge controller is the device that regulates the dc voltage coming in from the PV panels. This screen shot is telling me that at that time we were charging at 10.7 amps at 56volts or 600 watts (remember ohms law, volt x amps = watts). The screen is also telling me that at that time we have stored 1700 watts of power in the batteries.

Quick Update

Here are some pictures just to keep everyone up to date.

The house has some siding on it and if all goes well the insulation will be up by the weekend.

Mack and his friends up on the hill playing with Dante

Meet Midge. She is a sweet girl that I got from my new friend Justin, A sheep farmer from Pennsylvania. We traded Mable the Llama for Midge.

She and Dante are new best buds :-)

My favorite ewe lamb. She is so well built. I can't wait so see what her mom produces this year. This is that surprise lamb born last March.

back to work!!

power

My good friend Jeff helping me install the panels.

I have started to install the photovoltaics. The array is mounted on a 6" well casing that was installed by the the well drillers when they were here drilling the well. The 6" pipe is sunk deep into the granite ledge so I am sure it is not going to budge. On top of the pipe is the array rack and panels. I was really impressed with the ruggedness of the rack. It was made by DP&W Power-fab. All the welds were clean and even the paint job was nice. I have no questions about the sturdiness of it. The panels are Evergreen ES-A 210 panels. I installed 8 panels for a total of 1680 watts. That means for every hour the sun hits the panels 1680 watts of electricity are stored in the batteries. To understand watts just think of a light bulb. A 100 watt lights bulb uses 100 watts in one hour. if you use it for 5 hours then you have consumed 500 watts. So in Mainer we have about 5 hours of peak sunlight, that means for five hours we will be generating 1680 watts. the rest of the time the efficiency is reduced. That means on a sunny day we will be storing over 8400 watts in the batteries.

Progress is steady, but slow, at this point. I am afraid the weather has not been cooperating. At this point the plummers and the electrician are doing their thing, I am installing the solar and the builder is starting to install the siding. If all goes well we should be able to have the insulating and some heat by new years.