When we last posted almost three weeks ago, we had just finished the pump and laundry rooms and were waiting for the well guys to come out and get our water diverted to the house.  While we waited for the appointed day, we made those last couple of connections to the pressure tank and then focused on getting a couple of sinks operational.

Unfortunately, what followed led to a fair amount of aggravation and turned a couple of fairly minor tasks into much bigger jobs.  So, what’s new, right?  Way back in June, my first project was dismantling the kitchen; I tore out the cabinets, I took down the massive island, removed the disgusting range, and was left baffled by the plumbing mess I found under the sink.

I decided to disconnect the rubber coupler at the top (for the vent stack) and simply cut away the rest.  It was when we replaced and moved the water supply lines out from the baseboard that we discovered all of the freeze-split, copper pipes, but that problem was fixed already.  Our new focus was getting our new sink properly connected to the drain and vent in a way that made better sense, was more efficient, and maybe took up just a little less space in the cabinet.  For the sake of brevity, I’ll just say that I spent over an hour down at the Ace picking out all of the pieces and parts I thought I might need to get the job done.  It was a partial success.  A couple more trips down for extension tubes, joints, etc., and we had almost everything we needed.  I got the pvc parts all glued up, but when it came time to put the puzzle together, we were missing one critical piece.  And no, the Ace here in Cripple Creek doesn’t stock them.  Sandi made a quick run down to the hardware store in Woodland Park and bought several so we’d be able to get all of the sinks in the house working.

The well guy showed up as promised and took care of his end of things outside while I made the final electrical connections in the pump room.  I wasn’t confident that I had wired the relay properly, but I hoped that together, we’d be able to sort it all out.  Turns out that the plumbing connections that I was confident about all leaked, while the electrical connections that I doubted were all just fine.  He was able to get everything fixed and adjusted without too much trouble and at a pretty reasonable rate.  We charged the system and were very excited to hear water rushing through our new pipes and even more excited to find that there were no leaks anywhere.

The next day, the plumber came out to turn on the hot water heater, and Sandi jumped at the chance to use her own washer and dryer that had been sitting idle in the barn for the past several months.  The first load went great, but when the second load drained, water began backing up through the floor drains in both rooms.  We tried snaking it from both directions, called and talked with Digger Guy, and finally determined that there was a partial blockage somewhere under the house.  A couple of real nice guys from a local plumbing outfit came out on Saturday and did their magic with the right equipment and we’re good to go (no pun intended).

We endured a few days of frozen hoses, so water to the trailer was at a premium.  My quad decided it didn’t like the gas I put in it, so it went on strike until I drained out the fuel and put in some clean, non-ethanol gas.  Walking up and down the hill in the cold and snow got pretty old, pretty quick.

In the meantime, I got a call from an old friend that I hadn’t seen in nearly 30 years.  We’ve kept in touch off and on since we left Germany back in 1986, but I only saw him twice a couple of years later.  Turns out he was working on some oil rigs in the Texas panhandle for a couple of weeks, which put us as close together as we’d been since the late 80’s.  We got out the atlas and discovered Amarillo was a pretty straight shot, about 400 miles south.  Since it was time for a break, we drove down on Sunday and met up with him for lunch on Monday.  We only had a couple of hours to catch up, but it was well worth the trip.  I don’t share a lot of personal reflections, but I’ll put this out there for what it’s worth:

When I got to Germany, I was 19 years old and was just beginning to figure out that something had changed.  I was in a strange, in-between sort of place.  I wasn’t a kid anymore; living at home with mom and dad, going to school, hanging out with friends, or camping out in the woods.  I was technically an adult, a soldier, and I was entering a whole new phase of my life about which I knew absolutely nothing.  Joel and I quickly became fast friends, almost like brothers, and we spent hours at the base NCO club drinking far more Jack Daniels than I care to think about and pondering our futures.  In fact, we had our very own table back in the corner.  There were others that were part of our group, too, (a couple might even be reading this) but mostly, I remember the times that we were there together.  We would wonder about where life might take us; Would we have families?  Where would we settle?  What would we do for a living?  I often look back and realize that we were both essentially clean slates at that time.  We had no real responsibilities yet, we had no real obligations, no bills, no debts, no kids, no mortgages…..  nothing solid aside from a short time left on our enlistments.

In the past 30+ years, I’ve often reflected back to our nights at that table every time something significant has happened in my life.  We figured we’d both get married.  Turns out that between us, we’ve had a half a dozen wives.  It took us both a couple of tries before we actually figured out what we were doing and got it right.  Kids?  Yep.  Between us, more than a dozen kids and step-kids.  Heck, there’s even a few grand-kids now.  Financial challenges? Sure.  Career challenges?  Of course.  We’ve moved around.  We’ve changed our directions.  We’ve made new friends, and we’ve lost people we cared about.

I don’t really have an ending thought for this, just that life can take some very interesting and surprising turns along the way that neither of us could have ever imagined.  I wonder if others have such a clearly defined ‘starting point’ like our table in the corner that they reflect back upon.

So, anybody that knows me understands that if I’m going to travel, I want to stop and see “stuff”.  I get a huge thrill every time I see someplace on TV that we’ve visited.  The Alamo is featured on the Travel Channel….  we’ve been there.  The Golden Gate Bridge, Yellowstone, Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam….  been there, too.  So, since we were in Amarillo, we decided to visit a couple of old Route 66 icons.

First, we found the Cadillac Ranch, which is just some old Cadillacs buried nose-down in a cow pasture.

We braved the bone-chilling cold and wind to get a closer view and a couple of photos.  Graffiti is encouraged and the amount of spray paint is absolutely amazing!  Here’s a close-up of some of the many layers:

For years, I’ve seen the Big Texan Steak Ranch featured on various food and travel channel shows.  They’re famous for their eating challenge where you eat for free if you can devour a 72 ounce steak dinner with all of the sides in under an hour.

We opted to simply pay for a more reasonably sized meal, figuring such a renowned restaurant would surely know how to turn out a decent steak.  We were underwhelmed and a little disappointed, to say the least, but we can now say we’ve been there.  Besides, I got a chuckle out of the garnish on our plates.  I know Texans love their flag.  They wear it as clothing, upholster the seats at Dairy Queen with it’s likeness, and it’s often displayed more prominently than the American flag, which irritates me A LOT, but I digress…

Only in Texas!

I feel like we’re finally seeing some very real, very positive results to all the time and effort we’ve been putting in to our project.  We have some photos to share, but before I get to that, I want to try to answer a question we get fairly frequently.

Naturally, people are curious when we’ll be finished and when we’ll be ready to move in.  They are both fair, reasonable questions and believe me when I tell you that we’d like very much to get there sooner, rather than later.  In reality, these are actually two separate questions and neither is easy to answer.  To the first; ‘When will we be finished?”, I look around and realize that there are so many things we can do here.  The house, obviously, is where our attentions are focused right now, but eventually, we want to replace the deck and put new siding on the outside.  We’d like to work on the barn, both inside and out, we want to develop the lower garage into a workshop, and there is absolutely no landscaping anywhere.  I think it’s safe to say this place could keep us busy for many years to come.

The second question is a little easier to work through, though we still don’t have a specific date.  When I first arrived, I had my sights set on October, hoping to be in before the weather turned colder.  It quickly became clear that we wouldn’t make that goal, but December sort of felt like a possibility.  I think I was just overly hopeful, since both of these targets were totally arbitrary.  Instead of continuing to set meaningless dates as goals that we can’t attain, we sort of have a checklist that will let us know when it’s time.  Some of the things on that list are pretty obvious; we have to have power, we have to have a working septic system, and we have to have running water.  Some of those are already complete, and I’m pleased to report that the last one will be ticked off later this week.  The well guys will be here on Thursday morning to drop the pump and connect the house to the well.  Beyond that, we need a working kitchen, we need a working bathroom, we need someplace to sleep, and we don’t want to suffer through the ever-present dust that comes with the sheetrock work we’re still doing.  For now, the RV is still relatively comfortable, so we’d rather take our time, do the job right, and not rush through our project.

With that said, this past week has felt incredibly productive.  For months, we’ve been stockpiling things like bathroom towel bars, overhead light fixtures, sinks, faucets, toilet paper holders, vent covers, and a ton of other assorted items that have just been taking up space.  Now, we have a pretty substantial stack of cardboard and empty boxes since we’ve been busy assembling and installing all of this ‘stuff’.  I shared a couple of ‘Before’ pictures yesterday, so now I’d like to show you where we’re at now.

The main level bathroom.  You may recall that it began as a small, odd, ‘L’-shaped room with a toilet and pedestal sink.  Those old fixtures came out, we moved two walls, we patched some holes, and moved the toilet.  We replaced the shoddy, self-stick vinyl tiles with ceramic tiles, we installed a new fan/light combo, and put in a vanity with drawers for storage.  Here’s how it progressed:

And this is what it looks like now:

The pump room.  The pressure tank was simply in a small, dark, closet-like room in the basement.  The floor was bare concrete and the walls were just studs.

We insulated the walls and put up drywall, which we textured and painted, updated the electrical by adding an outlet, overhead light fixture, and wall switch, and put an epoxy coating down on the floor.  I still need to make the connections and add the wiring control panel to the wall, but it’s about an hour away from being finished; the last step before the water can be turned on.

The ‘crawl space’.  You might remember this space from our plumbing replacement adventure.  Since I needed a new electrical line to power the pump room light and outlet, I decided to install three lights and a dedicated outlet in the crawl space.  I think (I hope!) my time in this space is done for awhile, but it will make working under there a lot more convenient in the future.

 

And finally, the answer to being forced to spending time in laundromats.

The laundry room.  This began as a poorly lit room with a large, homemade wooden ‘pedestal’ for the washer and dryer.  The sheetrock that had been put up was barely fastened with just enough screws to keep it from falling down.  There was no insulation in the exterior walls, and the door was awkward and very short, leading down from the basement stairs.

We started by removing the massive pedestal and then moved the door to a different wall.  This meant new framing and the light switch and wiring had to be moved.  We added a second, overhead light and put in a few extra outlets.  The plumbing was updated, the fixtures were replaced, and, like the other rooms, the sheetrock was fixed, taped, textured, and painted.  We applied the same epoxy to the floor that we used in the pump room, and today, I installed the deep-sink and moved the washer and dryer into place.

We may add cabinets, a counter top, and clothes rod later, but as soon as we have water, this room will be fully functional.  It’s clean, bright, big, and well lit.

We’re now officially a week into the new year and it’s our sincere hope that 2018 is off to a good start for all of our friends and family.  Granted, we need to exclude football from the equation, since most people reading this are fans of either the Seattle Seahawks or the Denver Broncos, and we all know that both teams are officially done for the season.  Sandi has family in Minnesota rooting for the Vikings and I have a friend who adores the Patriots, so they haven’t experienced the heartache that comes with losing (yet!).  Any team but New England!!!  Oh, and I suppose we should exclude the weather, too.  For those living in the areas hit by sub-zero temperatures and snow this past week; try to stay warm and safe!

For the record, we’re absolutely stumped, weather-wise.  Aside from a very slight dusting this morning, we haven’t had any snow since just before Christmas.  It’s been cold, but nothing like much of the country is experiencing.  The mountains off to the north and west continue to get whiter, and the ski reports on the news seem pretty favorable, but we seem to be in some sort of ‘mild zone’.  It’s okay, we’ll take the reprieve this year, since living in an RV is challenging enough without adding severe weather to the mix.

Speaking of New Year’s and the mountains….  The local news channels ran daily stories about a local, annual tradition that sort of caught our interest.  Like most beyond a certain age, we’re generally in bed and asleep well before midnight on New Year’s Eve, but this year, we made an exception.  There is a local hiking / mountaineering club called AdAmAn (add a man) that hikes to the top of Pikes Peak, every year to set off fireworks at the stroke of midnight.  The tradition began with five friends in 1922 and has continued every year since, adding just one member for each climb.  Part of the extra media attention was due to the milestone addition of their 100th member.  Pikes Peak is a 14,115 foot high mountain that lies directly between our place and Colorado Springs.  It’s a local landmark from the east, and according to one website, more than half a million people travel to the top every year to enjoy the spectacular views.  When we started this adventure, we didn’t realize that we have a clear, unobstructed view of the ‘backside’ of the peak from the top of our property, just about ten miles away.

For us, this was a fantastic, unexpected bonus since we’ve actually been to the top and it’s so iconic.  So, just before midnight, we drove (yes, drove….  it was COLD!) the hundred yards or so to the top of our hill and sure enough, we were treated to a really wonderful fireworks show.  None of my pictures turned out since it was just too dark, but here’s a photo I found:

We had company for part of New Year’s Day.  Casey got to fire the new revolver she got for Christmas, and I imposed on Robert to help me hang the rest of the upper, kitchen cabinets.  We always do a prime rib for dinner, but this time, we tried something a little different.  Our roasting pan is in a box; somewhere in the barn, so instead of digging through that mountain of boxes, we put it on the smoker.  I’d do it just a little differently next time, but it turned out really good.  We’ll definitely do it again!

We have been making some pretty significant progress this week, and my aim is to share a few Before and After (finished) photos in my next post.  We have three rooms nearly done and another is getting pretty close, so I believe I can feature them in my next post, which I hope to have out tomorrow or Tuesday (two posts in two days).  Until then, let me remind you what we started with:

The main level half-bath:

The pump room in the basement:

And finally, the laundry room in the basement, both as we found it, and after we removed the “pedestal” and the sheetrock from the long, back wall:

 

I’m excited to share our progress, but if I’m going to have those ‘finished’ photos, I need to get to work.  We took yesterday off to make a Lowe’s run, so today, it’s back to our to-do list.