The Chicken Coup: A Saga In The Making

I am not winning. After missing a golden chance to build the new chicken coup, when the weather guys swore up and god damned down that it was going to rain and then it totally didn't, we realized that there was another string of nice days coming up.

All of my pent up frustration over the sunshine and warmth when there was supposed to rain and cold led us to decide to rebuild the coup during this supposed stretch of nice weather.* This, in retrospect, was a bad idea.

We have been working on this god damned thing for 4 fucking days and we haven't even got the plywood on the roof yet, let alone the metal roofing. It might rain tomorrow and that would be bad, also Scott has a doctors appointment at 2:30, meaning we are going to be stopping working at about 1pm. Meaning that I think we are fucked. Can you put metal roofing on in the rain? You know it's going to rain for two freaking days and then be balls fucking cold? Here is a breakdown of how our days went so far.

Day 1. Lots of optimism. Went to Lowes and got shafted on on a bunch of lumber for the framing. Got back and assembled the front wall (the hardest wall) before it got too cold. The sun sets at 4pm, so that is when we stop working. And by set we mean goes behind the god damned ridge and the temperature immediately drops by about 5 degrees like someone flipped a god damned switch.

Day 2. Wait for frost to kinda melt off before we start. Finish framing. Slightly less optimism, a lot of 'wait did I measure that right?' Decide we should pick up the OSB and sheathing for the walls. Off to Lowes again for some more price raping. Come back and it's dark.

Day 3. Decided lack of optimism. Realize we need an 8ft A frame ladder to reach the highest point on the roof. We no not have a 8ft A frame ladder. All we have are 2 sketchy as hell hand me down ladders that my father had. We put OSB on. Got the back wall completely sheathed inside and out, as well as most of the outside done. Congratulations are in order. Drive to town to buy food and ladder. Can't find a an 8ft ladder. Eat cheese cake.

Day 4. Everything goes to hell and optimism is buried at the crossroads in a shallow grave. Framed all the windows and the door. I can tell you right now, strait up, that cutting windows out of the motherfucking sonofabitch sheathing is harder than fuck all. There are not enough curse words in the whole of the English language to convey how much this sucked. Got all of the windows cut out, and one of the two vents done, but now we get to do it all over again with the OSB, which was not been fully done on the inside of the walls yet. Got the roof rafters up.

So tomorrow we have to:

Install plywood on roof, add roofing paper/tar paper/whatever the fuck it's called.

Place on the metal roofing.

Place and cut the OSB.

Sand down the areas around the doors and windows because our cuts are not perfect.

Install windows.

Paint Structure inside and out.

I think were fucked. Straight up fucked and we will be lucky to finish the roof plywood before he has to leave for the doctors. I don't think we are getting all that done in 4 hours. I think we are going to be putting the metal roofing on in 36 degree weather.

Yay.

* Nice weather meaning above 50 Degrees.

Looking for more Chicken Coup Adventures? Here's Part Two.

Mold Is Trying To Murder Me.

I found in mold in both my closets. Leading me to a massive throwing out of stuff.

I have no idea what to do about that. Hardest hit were all the things I can't just throw in the washer, like my wedding dress, and Halloween costumes, and my art portfolio.

I don't really know how to fix this problem. I'm going to move some stuff over to the other mobile home, but I know that has had mold problems in the past too. The only thing I can think to do is put everything into plastic bins in the new trailer make sure that there is a good gap between the bins and the walls in order to maintain air flow. Air out the clothes in the cold winter air, and then use a good home dry cleaning kit.

This winter has been unusually warm and wet, and I think that was the problem. We would normally be running the wood stove by now, and the hot dry air would kill off the mold, but this year, it's been so warm we have hardly even needed the oil furnace.

So here we are.

I want to start taking stuff over and organizing it, but the problem is that in order to put things into the new closet, I have to take a whole bunch of crap out of the new closet. You know, the crap I was planning on storing in this mobile home. That I can't move over here until I've removed things like, you know, my desk. It's a closed loop system here people.

Also, I'm not sure how crazy I should be getting with this? Should I bleach every container before taking it over? As far as I know these mold spores are everywhere anyways, that's why shit in the fridge will mold when it goes bad. Should I bleach everything? The Internet makes it sound like this is some sort of mold apocalypse where I have to put up plastic sheeting and wear a respirator and drown things in a mountain of bleach and sprinkle baking soda everywhere and then vacuum like there is no god damned tomorrow and possibly burn the vacuum afterwards.

Scott's solution was to make me fudge, possibly to make up for he fact that he had no idea what to do, and also that none of his things got destroyed. Mmmm fudge. Fudge makes everything better.

I guess my day is going to be comprised of washing things and eating fudge and bleaching stuff.

Fun. Fuck. Fudge?