Making Curtains and Other Random Thoughts

I know it's unusual for a shed to have curtains, but I thought it would help it look pretty from the outside. I didn't do as careful of work as I would have if I were to put them up inside, but I think they look cute. Normally I wouldn't hang up such wrinkled curtains either, but I wanted to get a lot done today so I admit I may have cut some corners.



If I had the money I probably would have went out and bought some fabric that matches the curtains hanging in my house's windows. Since I don't though, I raided my fabric stash. I thought this powder blue looked rather striking with the siding color.



I didn't have any curtain rods either, so I used thumb tacks instead. DO you think that's strange?



Now all that's left is finishing the landscaping around the shed, staining the ramp, and building the planter box and shutters. Those projects may end up waiting for next spring. The staining will definately have to since the wood is still so wet and I don't want to be staining again anytime soon. I have put up some decorations on the railing, can you see them? I suppose I should have waited until after this winter and after staining, but I just couldn't wait to see what it looks like!



I have refinished a wood bench that we rescued from our other house. I will place it under the window on the shed's ramp once the poly is dry and my side yard grass has finished growing in. I will also paint a plant stand that I have black and put it in one of the corners. SO many plans, so little time!

I got two doors for our basement stained today too. 3 down, 6 to go. I can't wait until we can put an end to the basement finishing. They can be put up once all of the flooring is finally installed. I am hoping that it will be done in the next week or so. Is that too optomistic?



Also got some banana bread, banana cake, applesauce, baked beans, and potato salad made today before we headed off to football practice and Cheesehead visiting. I want to relax, but should be doing laundry and dishes since I'm Chaperoning Peanut's field trip to the outdoor classroom tomorrow. I should also be taking a shower before our hot water goes out again, but I'm just going to hope that we still have hot water tomorrow morning. I'm exhausted!

We had another showing today for our house in MN. Just over 2 months left until the final foreclosure. I don't know if I should be relieved or worried. I wish it would just sell already, then I could stop with my hand wringing and worrying. I desperately keep trying to give my worries up to the Lord, but somehow I just can't keep them given away. Somehow I just keep taking back the yoke and I can't lay it down. What's wrong with me? Is this normal? How can I give my worries over to God for good?

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Exploring the State Fair with Your Senses

Skeeter asked if I was taking time to smell the roses. Why, YES I am! Okay, maybe there aren't very many roses to be seen at the MN State Fair, but there are plenty of things to smell there (if you dare).



There are the adorable baby animals. I chose to show you the fluffy yellow chicks. Peanut sure was upset that she missed seeing these little cuties. As an additional assault on your senses you can also pet some of them. There were other babies too including horses, cattle, pigs, ducks, and lambs. They were so small and soft! I think their barn wasn't quite as smelly as their parent's barns were, but maybe I was just blinded by the baby animals.

Not so into stopping to smell things? Okay, we'll go for the taste test instead! (Actually you can also smell these too so I suppose that little intro was a bit misleading) What would you prefer?



Deep fried candy bars? (As if candy bars alone aren't fattening enough? I'll have to pass on this one!)

Maybe you'd prefer something on a stick?



Hotdish on a stick?



Fried fruit?

Seriously, you can pretty much get anything on a stick here. Or fried. I tried to avoid most of that stuff though. I'm already having enough weight problems so I went light on the food.

We did buy a large bucket of chocolate chip cookies. The kids were happy that we got them some yummy souveniers. They didn't last long though!



There are also huge blocks of butter there. They carve all of the dairy princesses and Princess Kay of the Milky Way too. It is done inside a cooler to keep the carvings fresh for all of the fair goers to see. If it stayed outside it would probably melt from the heat anyway.



Listen carefully. I can almost hear the bell tolling. These topiaries are just divine, aren't they? There were many musical acts to listen to. As well as droning politicians, news shows, and screams from the midway to name a few. I'm not sure who was playing at the grandstand this year but luckily no one visits here looking for any real information anyway. Actually this trip was a bit unplanned since we were only going to go if we got enough of MIL's projects done to take the time off, so at least I have an excuse for knowing nothing this time! LOL.



There are also a great many things to see. Elvis was there! I guess they don't call it Minnesota's great get together for nothing!



Our first stop was the horticulture building. Beautiful collections of floral arrangements, assorted flower collections, honey, corn, you name it it was there. This was one of my favorite arrangements. Don't those look like fireworks?



Even crop art! Peanut would have liked to do this too. They had a station for the kids to create their own.



Lots of things to look at for shopping too! This was my favorite collection place. What a wonderful variety. I saw at least 10 things that I really wanted to buy in here!

I just adore looking at all of the prize winning art work, foods, crafts, plants, animals, people, parades, news shows, and souveniers from all over the world. There are endless things to see and do.

We had a great visit to the fair this year. The kids opted not to go since (heaven forbid) there was a lot of walking involoved. We parked about 6 blocks from the fairgrounds at one of Cheesehead's friend's son's houses. We thought it would be weel worth it to avoid the fair traffic and exorbitant parking prices. It was also good excercise. Well, at least it was until we walked the whole fair two or three times. My feet were killing me by the time we were done! I guess that will teach me not to wear sandals for all day walking around the fair, won't it?

Goodness me, look how I've been prattling on! I suppose I'd better get going to bed if I want to be able to help Cheesehead with the shed's deck tommorrow.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Updates

Geez, things have been SO crazy around here. I'll try to get a few more details up about these events later, but it seems that many of you are worried about me. HOW SWEET! I'm super tired from the whirlwind of activities once again. Since it's 11:15pm I think I'm becoming a pumpkin as we speak! Just a few scant details now.

First of all, the bee sting is almost completely gone. I looked up some info online and treated it as if it were an allegry. I took benadryl and rubbed allergy creme and hydrocortizone on it. Now it's almost completely gone, it just itches a bit. Must have been a localized allergic reaction.

Tomorrow we're planning on trying to get the shed painted. All 4 of us so we can hopefully make a trip to the UP Thursday. Wish us luck! Friday and Saturday we'll be building a deck for the shed, Sunday there's a picnic we're invited to. No specific plans for Monday yet, but I'm sure we'll find something to keep us busy. God forbid we sit down and rest for a day or something!

Just got back from helping out MIL and helping her with her household projects. It's been hard for her without FIL this last year. The projects weren't really time consuming, there were just a lot of them!

My son won his first football game, it was a blowout. Score was 26-0 at 1/2 time so they weren't allowed to score any more points in the second 1/2. What a fiasco getting ready for the game too. Got a sunburn.

Went to the MN State Fair yesterday too. Got another sunburn.

Lots of berries to pick. It's been awfully dry so quite a few of them started to dry up. (BOO HOO)

Hmm, is this the vacation we really WANTED to have?

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Where in the World Have I Been?

Sorry, I haven't been frequenting blogs as much as usual in the last week or so, but I've been off doing some family research. You see, I was a free member of ancestry.com for about a year or so. It drove me crazy not being able to see the parent's names and surnames when all of those wonderful records came up. There was this wonderful treasure trove of information out there and I could see it, touch it, but learn little from it. I was getting nowhere fast. I didn't really have the money, I know I really shouldn't have subscribed to it without considering how I was going to pay the fee. Finally though it just didn't matter to me anymore. I just had to break down the barriers that were keeping me from learning things that have been easily found for me this last week. I've been on the site almost every moment that I have been awake.

This post is for you Brenda. I want to give you hope that you can do it too. I wouldn't really consider myself particularly smart or really very talented of a researcher. Anyone can do what I have done. I just got lucky to have so many recent family members born in a state with easily accessible information. I'm not very experienced, but if I can attempt to answer any questions you may have about starting your research process. I wish you much luck, I've had much so far.

It's been too hot to get the painting done, it would simply dry too fast and create a more brittle finish than I'd care to tend to. If I painted in this weather I'd be painting again next summer for sure. No thanks! I have every intention to visit my friends when I turned on the computer. I check my email, but the temptation was too great. I couldn't resist the call of my ancestors.

When I got started with my ancestry research, I didn't have a whole lot to go on. The names of my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. A few great grandparents too, but I didn't know much about them. About any of them really. I may have given up if infomation didn't start falling into my lap so easily.

I was fortunate that many of my relatives were born in MN so I could access their birth certificates with their first and last name, birth year, and parent's names. Then I could use that information to find them in the census records. I like the ones that include all of the household's names on them. You'd be amazed how many family members I discovered that way.

I added 99 people to my tree yesterday alone. If only some of them were online maybe I could make contact with my 5th cousins or whatever they'd be to me. Only a few are researching the same people as I am. I have attempted to contact some of them, but so far I've only heard back from one of them. I'll keep working at it, but I'm sure the going is going to start being much less easy soon.

I suppose it will be cooling down too. Cheesehead is on vacation next week, so after we help his mom get some stuff done this weekend, we'll be heading home to attempt to finish our shed. I hope we can spend at least one day doing something fun though. We're thinking about going to the MN state fair, but those trips can end up being a bit costly...

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Land of Plenty

Well, I looked while I attempted to paint the shed for my gardening olympics entry. Our friend the Idaho Gardener is hosting an event for us gardeners to go along with the other olympics. I found that I've got plenty of nothing. If you're an eternal optomist like me though, I've got plenty of...



work left of the shed. Apparently it is too hot and humid today to finish painting it, so I guess the rest will have to wait. I've got plenty of good tips to share about painting too, but I'll save that for another post.



Plenty of wild blackberries. Yum. We picked the ripe ones and boy are they good. At least with these I know when they're ready to be picked, unlike the cherries we just missed out on. Hopefully I'll end up with plenty of blackberry jam too!



Also plenty of wildflowers,



wild life (who like to breed around here it seems),



and football practices, games, and scrimmages. My son is excited to be in football. Soon they will be getting their uniforms. Next weekend is their first game which also means plenty of driving too.

I also have plenty of things I don't have a picture to share with you. This plenty includes scrap lumber, ancestry research, craft ideas, days til school starts, and miles to drive to the cemetary to see FIL's grave (and do yet more ancestry research) today since it's too hot to follow through on our shed painting plans.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Shed Building 101... part 5

I guess this step really wouldn't be neccessary for a shed, but no one ever accused us of being usual people (or even sane for that matter!). What am I talking about? I'm SO glad you asked. We decided to put a porch on our shed to dress it up a bit. You may think this is a bit eccentric, but we wanted to give it a bit of a cottage-y look. What better way than adding a deck and a window box?

No, we did not finish the deck today. I was too cheap to spring for the quick setting cement so our activites are limited by both Cheesehead's availability and the curing time required for regular cement. I'll have to limit today's post to how to set the footings for a deck.



You will need a header board for your deck in order to meet with most local building codes. These gives you something to support the weight of the deck along with a place to anchor it to. This is not a hard step to accomplish. Simply put the header board at the height you would like to place your deck. Pre drill your holes for the substantially sized bolts that you will us. We used galvanized lag bolts to attatch our header board. It is also avvisable to use a washer to keep the head of your screw from being sunk too far into the wood.



Once your header board is in place, you need to dig a hole to set your support posts into. If you live in the frozen north it is an excellent idea to dig below the 4 foot frost line. If you do this, you won't get the heave that seems to cause so many of our roads to buckle, break, and/or form potholes. Cutting thick tree roots with some gardening scissors of some sort is the easiest way to get through the tangle of roots. I sure hope we didn't damage the roots too badly doing this.



You may want to place a frame in place to keep the cement level. We did this by using more of our scrap lumber and forming a square box. All sides were cut to the same length and was assembled in a chase pattern.



Next you measure and cut your supports. (Argh! I'm caught red-handed. We MAY have forgotten to do the previous step first, that just means we did yet another thing twice.) The length you need to cut varies depending on the depth of the hole you dig. For supports, we used green treated 4x4's. After they are cut to your desired length, you will need to check your supports to make sure they are level, square, and evenly spaced.



Then, simply secure it in place. We had some extra timber screws from a previous project that worked perfectly for this step.

It is a wise idea to dig both of your holes before mixing your cement so you don't have too much waste.



We put some water into a bucket so we could more easily contorl the amount of water that we added to our cement. That way it was simple to pour in small amounts of water at a time so we could make the mixture evenly moist without being overly wet. Kind of like what we do when we bake our favorite desserts.



Carol may frown on the use of a hole for this task, but it did a good job of moving the rocks around in our wheel barrow. I don't know when this poor hoe has last had such a good workout!



Tamp the cement down once you have the hole partially filled, this removes any air bubbles that may later cause problems. We did this several times as we scooped the cement into the hole. Once the hole is filled to the top of your form, use a trowel to level the cement.



Our final step was to back fill the edges around the cement we poured into the hole. Okay, I guess we had to wash our equipment too. I'm sure you don't want to see that though, so I'll just cut the lesson off there....

We're moving right along. Hurray! I think we may actually reach our goal of finishing by the end of summer at this rate. We are hoping to finish the rest of the shed over his upcoming vacation. In the meantime, the kids and I will be painting and organizing the shed. Who knows? I may even attempt to build a window box myself. Wish me luck.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Shed Building 101... part 4

The next lesson in our shed building mission is putting up the trim. While this may seem like a minor task, it takes much patience. We used a bit of trim to cover up the exposed edges of the wood.

Apparently I misplaced some of the pictures I took to illustrate the steps we followed. Sorry, I hope this doesn't cause much confusion.

Once the siding and roof are installed, is the best time to do this step. That way things won't get moved accidentally to make your trim look bad. How do I know? Um, look closely at the pictures and you'll see what I mean. We didn't do this and Cheesehead is pretty unhappy with the results.



We used a couple of nails in each piece of framing. The best way to attatch these pieces is to attatch them to the structure. We didn't have enough foresight to measure this properly, we were forced to improvise.



What did we use to do this? I'm glad you asked. There was quite a bit of scrap 2x4 pieces laying around after all of our construction work, so we had several that were the perfect size. We simply nailed these scrap pieces to the end of the piece we just hung up.



We also put wood up over the seams on the front where our siding pieces met. Had we made the peak of our shed shorter than 8 feet, this step wouldn't be required. We wanted the extra storage space so we made the walls taller. Make sure to measure these carefully to ensure a proper fit.



You need to have a place to attach the trim to on both of the underside of your soffits. These should be solid pieces of wood, we used furring strips for this job. We nailed them to the siding and used the framing nailer that one of Cheesehead's friends kindly loaned us. It takes at least two people to do this to make sure the wood is flush on both ends. Once the wood is properly in place, it simply needs to be nailed on all ends and sides to keep the wood securely in place.

Keep in mind that this should also be vented so either leave some space on the inside edge or cut some vent holes in the solid wood boards.



We also added the trim around the window. This is best done using a miter saw. Keep in mind if you don't get the angle exactly correct, your job will look sloppy. Take your time, make the measurements exactly and don't forget to secure the saw on the proper angle. It's a bit like putting a puzzle together. The easiest way to measure is using the inside measurements.

Not bad for a day's work. We could have gotten more work done, but Cheesehead is working for a friend tonight. I guess we'll have more time tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Family Fun

Peanut and I have been playing games this evening since it started raining again.

I don't think we're ever going to get done with this painting at this rate! We're almost half-way done with our shed priming now. Grr. It didn't even rain all that much either, just enough so we couldn't finish today. There was only a small chance of rain today too with more rain tomorrow. Since our job is impossible to do, we retired indoors for some fun.



I really shouldn't call it "family" fun since only 1/2 of the family is really here for the fun. Son is at grandma's and Cheesehead is working, but the cats decided to join in on the fun. Looks like Speedy wants a turn to spin the spinner. "Right hand blue."

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Filling in the Gaps

While this post is technically about our shed, it wouldn't have been needed if I hadn't made my mistake the other day. Therefore, it is not part of my series of shed building lessons. I just thought I would share this since some of you seemed interested in how I was going to fix my mishap.

Great Stuff is just that, great stuff. I knew it could help me to fix my problem as I have used it before for other projects. The problem was that these holes were so tremendously large I just knew I needed to do something more. Did I really want to use a couple of cases of foam? Nope, WAY too expensive for a cheapskate like me. It expands quickly and clings to just about any surface, but if there is too large of a gap there is nothing for it to cling to. What did I do? Well, take a look for yourself!



I had lots of scrap wood laying around, it seems that our projects have been endless. Endless projects produce and endless supply of scrap lumber. If I needed these wood scraps to not rot I would have had to use green treated wood, but since I just needed space fillers I just put whatever I could fit into the hole. Stacking these blocks of wood up reminded me of the days when I used to build things as a child. I could make anything out of whatever junk was laying around the house.

I stacked the wood pieces until the 6 inch deep hole was almost full. I didn't want to over fill it though as I wanted the foam layer to be even with the bottom of the plywood flooring pieces. I leaned the wood scraps against the underlaying 4x4support pieces and hoped that they wouldn't topple over before I sprayed the foam in the hole.



Thankfully everything held out and I got all of the holes filled.

The foam can be trimmed down to the wood, but it was way too much work! It also has a much more solid looking appearance if it is left intact. I'm sure it holds up just as well either way, but it is a shed after all. Do I really care about appearances in here?



We also sealed the small gaps around the window, but we used the window and door formula. I decided to use it in order to stop insect invasion and water leakage more than insulating value. Don't get me wrong it does insulate, I just don't feel the need to insulate and heat the shed.

This oozes out of any available opening and expands rather quickly. It is best to follow the directions on the can (even if you don't think it's expanding enough). Some of it even escaped to the front of the shed's window.

I did remove the excess foam after it cured for 8 hours since it was so largely expanded. Some of it hung over the edges of the window when the glass was opened. I quit after I got the obvious foam around the windows removed though.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Some advice is meant to be followed!

Have you ever heard people say measure twice, cut once? Well, they obviously came up with that slogan for a reason!



Here I was thinking I was going to help Cheesehead SO much by doing the rest of the floor of the shed. I don't think MY brand of help was really all that helpful this time. Well, unless you want a mouse invasion in the shed. Now I need to figure out how to seal up my goof.

Apparently I measured once and cut twice instead. Silly me!

I kicked myself off of this project after installing just one sheet of flooring. I think my skills will be better if saved for painting and priming. If it would stop raining long enough I could get going on that.

He asked me last night if I included this in my shed building post. He laughed when I told him I simply forgot. (Well, it could happen, I do forget a lot of stuff. So what if I forgot to mention this flub accidentally on purpose?)



If I had done my cuts properly it would have looked like this. Just add a little spray foam and we'd be all set. Now I'm going to be forced to be creative with my mistake.

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Shed Building 101... part 3

Installing the front wall, the siding, and adding a window were the objectives for today's lesson. Cheesehead was trying to tell me that classes were cancelled. He likes to tease though, so I don't think I annoyed him too terribly much with my incessant picture taking.

We decided to wait to install the front wall until after the front flooring was installed. We felt this would make the building more secure and also created less cutting when putting in the flooring. That would make 6 pieces of flooring fit onto the floor perfectly.



Cheesehead secured the 2x4's to the flooring. He left an opening on the floor for where we would install the door. He framed in the top of the wall 8 feet above the bottom to give us something to secure the siding to.

When making holes in any stud wall, it is wise to reinforce the wood you're using. We put a double header beam over the door opening. We also used cross braces above and below the window.



It is a wise move to make sure the windows and doors you purchase fit before attempting to install them. This will save many headaches if it doesn't fit when you bring it back to exchange it for the proper size. We were glad to see that the window fit like a glove!

I know you are probably thinking we are a bit cazy for putting a window in our shed, but it will het in a nice amount of light. We also wanted a window that could stand up to the abuse of children and one that could also open if we wanted to spend some time working in the shed.



Once we had finished framing the wall, it was time to install the siding. While this may sound like an easy task, you need to be careful to properly align the edges and make sure it is level. If you don't do this any subsequent boards will also be out of line and there will be gaps in your shed's siding.



We just added a couple of temporary screws so we could trace out the openings. We breifly debated trying to cut the opening while the siding was installed, but our saw blades weren't long enough. We were also a bit nervous about accidentally cutting into the support structure.

Once we drilled out the four corners of the window, we took the siding down and cut the opening. It is very important not to have any siding hanging into the opening, especially not the door.



We nailed the siding securely into place. Then it was time to put in the window. We decided to use screws to install the window just in case we ever need to replace the window, they're easier to take out than nails. You know how kids can be when they play ball!

Once we finished the bottom of the shed's siding, it was time to tackle the peak. Finishing the bottom gave us a guideline of where to put the tops. We just made sure the grooves in the T 1-11 siding were in line with the grooves on the bottom. One sheet was enough to cover the high portions of the shed without leaving large amounts of wasted scraps.



Since the sheets are fairly heavy and we had to lift them pretty high up, we measured where the tallest potion of the siding would come to and cut the siding into square pieces.



We then could use the wood frame as a template for angling the siding appropriately. We used the same temporary system as we used for cutting the openings down below.



Since we couldn't reach where we were supposed to cut to wood pieces, we measured the frame and added that measurement onto the traced template. Then each piece was cut and installed.

Oops, I didn't take a picture of the finished product. You'll have to wait until next time as it is raining out and I don't want to take two soggy pictures in the same week.


Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy

Shed Building 101... part 2

In this installment we will discuss the floor of our shed.



We wanted to make sure that the floor was throughly secured to the frame, so Cheesehead chose these rafter ties to attatch it to the base we installed to raise it off of the ground. Cheesehead's coworkers teased and laughed a bit, but this shed is going to be built to last!



It is a rather big shed at 12x16, so before installing the 3/4 inch plywood floor, Cheesehead went through and added an extra support in the floor between each of the pre-built frames. We will be having some heavier equipment sitting on this floor and we didn't want the floor to warp. He centered each green treated piece of plywood in between each of the frames which he then proceeded to nail into place.



Once that was finished, it was time to install the plywood. It comes in full 4x8sheets. We took it and placed in on the floor. Then we traced out the supports from the frame which we would need to cut out in order to have flooring all the way throughout the shed. If we hadn't done that, there would be a large gap all the way around the edge and there would be nothing for the ends of the floor to be attatched to either.

After the template was drawn, we used a drill on the corners of the squares to create turning points for the jig saw. The jigsaw took out the extra pieces of wood to make the floor fit into place.



Once it was completely seated into the correct position it was time to secure it into place.



Cheesehead did this with a framing nailer a friend generously loaned us for use on this project. Five more sheets to go and this floor will be done! At least the middle pieces don't have to be cut. Sorry, I don't have a picture of the finished product just yet as we only got 1/2 of the floor done the other day before moving to the final wall. You might say we're a little ADD when it comes to completeing a project. Although to be completely fair it DID start to rain....

Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cindy