Category Home Improvements

So last night it didn’t feel like we got as much done as we had been.  Part of the reason was I got home later as I leave work an hour early when I have the dogs.  I also wasted time struggling to figure out how I wanted to attach hardware cloth to the side of the run.  Because I had the roof beam on the inside of the 4×4 supports I had an uneven area to try to attach the wire to.  I messed around with several attempts that involved trying to cut/bend the hardware cloth to accommodate the  area but none of them were satisfactory.

Cindy and I came up with the idea of attaching lumber along the roof line which would give us a level surface to attach the wire to, making life much simpler.  I was originally going to use a 4×4 for the piece, Cindy was the one that suggested just using a 2×4 which worked just as well and actually fit better.  I also had to attach some additional lumber to the frame in the back by the shed.  This time it was needed to make the gap between the posts small enough that the 4 foot wide hardware cloth could attach easily.

Cindy was going around with the stain/waterproofing covering the new pieces I put in place.  I wound up only getting one section in the rear middle covered in hardware cloth before we called it a night.  I am hoping that somehow we manage to find some time this weekend to at least get the run totally enclosed.

Today is a big day for Cindy.  It is her last day working at a conventional full time job.  Although her current job offered her better hours and less wear and tear on her body, there were other aspects of it that just were not a good fit.  The plan is for Cindy to leave the conventional work force as of today to work hard on getting her personal trainer certification, a career that is much more suited for Cindy’s strengths and personality.  She may also supplement with a part time job but luckily for her, her monthly bills are very minimal and don’t require a lot to cover.

The timing of this actually works out very well since the tile portion of our flooring project is scheduled to start on Tuesday.  Cindy will be able to be at the house to handle things, freeing me from consuming a ton of PTO unnecessarily.  Of course there will be a number of other benefits for me by having Cindy home a lot more.  She is very eager to dig into various home projects, cranking up her fitness routine as well as working on her PT cert.  I am excited for her.

This weekend we have a race on Saturday to handle.  The event is small and not chip timed so it relieves a lot of overhead for us.  I am however consider trying to time the race unofficially using an iPad and a platform called Webscorer.  Basically you preload the participant list into the system and then as runners cross the line you touch their bib number on the iPad app.  Obviously this would only work with small events so I figured this would be a good test.

After the race Cindy and I get to dive headfirst into moving all of the furniture in the great room and dining room somewhere else and then tearing up the old carpet.  It should be tons of fun.

Once again last night Cindy and I spent most of the evening working on the chicken run.  We now have the run completely under roof thanks to mostly Cindy’s efforts.  I was annoyed that after buying 100 more panel screws at Home Depot after work that we are exactly ONE short of what we need to finish completely.  Yet another HD stop will be on the agenda for today.

I also put the hardware cloth on the door to the run.  It went ok except for the three or four puncture wounds on my shins where the cut wire banged into them.  After they started bleeding I had swarms of gnats feeding on my wounds, it was lovely. I also sealed up the gaps on the front and back of the run where it meets the shed.  I did so with a combination of scrap wood wedged together Tetris style, secured by 3 inch screws.

The chicken run is really starting to come together, if I could get a solid four hours I think I could get the run itself done.  Once that happens there is additional construction that has to be done to turn the interior of the shed into a chicken friendly area.

So anyone that has played WoW has probably heard of “chinese gold farmers”.  For almost as long as the game has been around, gold farmers have as well.  At first gold farmers used “bots” to have their virtual selves repetitively and incessantly kill high profit virtual targets in the game to generate gold, the game currency.  They would then in turn sell this virtual currency for real world dollars to individuals that did not want to invest the time to make the gold, they just wanted to pay for it.  This has always been against Blizzard’s terms of service and they have waged a never ending battle against these farmers.

As time progressed the methods used to gain gold by farmers became much more devious and criminal.  They started hijacking accounts using malicious web sites and malware to capture a player’s game password.  Once they got access to the account they would strip every character the player had of all of their items and gold, shipping it off to be sold to someone else.  This problem was rampant and forced Blizzard to develop and implement much more secure authentication to the game, including using separate authenticator devices to prevent hijackers from simply stealing passwords.

Well this week Blizzard may have put the final knife in the back of Chinese gold farmers with the introduction of the WoW token which is basically a way for players to buy gold legally in game, something they never have been able to do before.  A WoW token is a virtual brass ring that if bought by players in game on the virtual auction house is worth 30 days of game time, something that normally costs, roughly $15 a month.  It allows hardcore players to pay their monthly fee totally with virtual currency.

The people looking to buy gold (me), purchase a WoW token with real money ($20).  When they do so you are shown how much gold that $20 will get you in game, the amount changes based on supply and demand in game.  Once somebody buys your token in game you are sent the amount of gold shown when you bought the token.  When the token was released on Tuesday I immediately bought one.  I was curious how it would work and I also could use some extra in game currency.  When I bought the token I locked in a value of 30,600 gold for it, which I got in the mail the next day.

As I mentioned the amount of gold you get for that 20 dollars will fluctuate, possibly greatly.  When I checked on Wednesday how much gold it was worth it had dipped significantly, down to 23,000.  I felt fortunate to jump in when the getting was good.  Regardless I think the WoW token is a good thing on several levels.  Anything that squeezes out the farmers/criminals that literally stole from people to fund their business is a good thing.  Being able to buy gold instead of having to spend hours upon hours earning it in game is a nice luxury as well.

I think from Blizzard’s business perspective this is pretty brilliant.  Basically what they are doing is getting $20 for a 30 day subscription instead of $15 from every WoW token transaction that takes place.  Somebody deserves a raise.

I saw the video of the Charleston police officer putting 8 bullets in the back of the black man that was running away from him.  Just like everybody else  I found the video disgusting.  The officer deserves whatever punishment is handed down, no matter how severe.  Surely this incident will put more momentum behind the body camera push for law enforcement where literally every second of their interaction with the public is caught on tape.  Although I can understand the value in recording all police interactions, it’s still sad to me that this is what society has come to.

Last night on the way home I made another stop at Home Depot, a near daily ritual recently.  I needed to grab a 2 x 10 to fill in the gap between the shed and the run on the far side.  The skies looked rather threatening in the backyard but that did not deter me from getting more work done on the chicken run.  The focus of the evening was the roof. As soon as Cindy got home she jumped in to help.

Attaching the roof panels was a multistage process.  First the roof panel support pieces were connected together and attached to the support beams.  The middle section was unreachable from a ladder so Cindy was enlisted to climb up top due to her significantly lower body weight.  The structure didn’t budge a millimeter with her on top so I am pretty sure I could have climbed around up there too if need be.

After getting the supports in place we started laying out the panels and securing them.  For maximum strength we sunk a two inch panel screw through every channel, meaning each one would be secured with over 20 fasteners.  At first we were drilling the pilot hole and then cranking down the screw with a socket inserted into a screwdriver.  This quickly proved to be a forearm destroyer so I grabbed my old Black and Decker cordless drill to insert the socket into.  Things moved along much quicker afterward. Cindy was having fun being an amateur roofer, she was drilling holes and driving screws like a pro in no time.

We had the dogs and the chickens hanging out in the yard while we worked.  Even though we were working it felt peaceful and serene.  I got some good pictures of Cindy working on the roof as the sun was setting. We only got two of the seven panels installed before we ran out of daylight but I am confident that by tonight we will have the entire run under roof since we have the kinks worked out.

Yesterday I was feeling pretty beat up from my weekend of work so instead of going to the gym at lunch I went to Home Depot.  I wanted to get the roof panels that we will use to cover the chicken run.  I bought 7 SunTuf panels (made in Kutztown, Pa) and some special screws with rubber washers and thought I was good to go.  Well later in the afternoon I looked up the installation instructions for the panels and discovered I was missing a key component.

I assumed I would just be drilling a hole through the panel and securing it to the roof supports.  It turns out you are supposed to use these special strips under the panels which offer additional support.  You should attach the screws through the high channels of the corrugated platform, not the low ones like I originally assumed.  So on the way home I stopped once again at HD to grab enough of these supports for the three attaching points we will be using for each panel.

Last night Cindy and I worked more on the run.  My goal for the night was to get the rest of the roof wired in.  Each successive strip of hardware cloth I put on went on smoother than the prior thanks to experience.  I used a couple hundred staples in the process which I went back and tapped flush with a hammer to snug everything as much as possible.  The combo of the wire topped off with the corrugated roof panels should make top access to the chicken run close to impossible for the type of predators that visit our backyard.

Cindy also got some more staining/waterproofing done.  We are trying to get the structure stained before we lay wire across an area of it.  We worked right up until sunset.  I’d love to be able to get the basic run construction done this week with evening work sessions but the odds of that happening are not strong.  There are just a lot of things to do still.

Two out of the three last weekends Cindy and I have worked ourselves silly on construction of the new chicken coop(shed) and the attached chicken run.  When I first envisioned upgrading the chicken living quarters I grossly underestimated the amount of time, effort and money it would consume.   It’s getting to the point of near lunacy but there is no turning back now.

The chicken lady was supposed to meet us Friday after work to do the rooster exchange.  When Cindy called her to set up the time she got a call back saying Friday night was no longer going to work, neither would the rest of the weekend.  In addition the chicken lady actually was skeptical that we had roosters as she said she has not seen Nona, the rooster we already gave back, crow yet.  Well this just further aggravated us and made us decide we were done dealing with this woman.  Her sloppy sexing of her chickens had caused  Cindy and I enough stress.  We hated the idea of giving back Curly and Kathy, a situation we would not have had to be in if Anna was more careful with her chicken sexing.

On Saturday morning I placed an ad on Craigslist saying we had two free roosters available to a good home where they would be used for breeding or free ranging.  I had exactly one person respond who I could tell from his texting was probably hispanic.  Of course this raised a red flag as rooster fighting is a mostly hispanic hobby.  When we were driving back from picking up lumber at Home Depot I had Cindy call him to vet him a bit.  Her spanish speaking ability would help. Ernesto seemed to be on the level.  He said he has a bunch of hens and he wanted to start breeding them.  Both Cindy and I got a decent vibe from the guy so we made arrangements for him to stop by later in the morning to get Curly and Kathy.

We had all the chickens out all morning.  Just as they normally do, the two roosters were the most interested in following us around the yard.  I felt very guilty that they had no idea this was going to be the last time they were going to be able to roam the wide open spaces of our back yard.  When Ernesto showed up he was carrying something that almost looked like a briefcase.  The holes on the side clued me in that it was for animal transport.  It looked too small for even one bird, let alone two.  I told him he could have one of my unused Rubbermaid containers for the birds but he said it should be fine, he has transported a couple birds in it before.

We first got Kathy to come over as Cindy sprinkled corm into the chicken run.  Ernesto, who obviously had experience catching chickens, crawled in and was able to grab Kathy’s leg and then was able to get him under control.  Kathy was carrying on the entire time but did not try to peck or attack Ernesto.  Cindy and I tried to reassure Kathy as we got him in the small box and closed the lid.  Of course we both felt terrible.

We used the same tactic for Curly and felt the same guilt and sadness as he got stuffed into the small box more or less on top of Kathy.  Ernesto could tell that Cindy and I were attached to the chickens and asked us if we were sure we wanted to give them away.  We told him we were and we just hoped he would take good care of them which he said he would.  The rest of the day  it felt weird and sad being out in the yard without the two roosters hanging near by.

On Saturday the chicken run construction was slow and steady.  I got a total of nine 4×4’s cemented into the ground as well as getting the automatic chicken door mounted into the side wall.  I was worried that getting the chicken door installed in a plastic shed would not go very well as it is designed for conventional construction buildings.

My rigged mounting system worked out pretty well.  I have to admit I felt some hesitation as I used the drill to punch a hole in the wall of our brand new shed and then hack out the rectangular template with my sawzall.  Cindy and I were quite pleased with the end result.  The door install looked clean and worked well as documented in this video.  We worked until after 5 on Saturday before calling it a day.  We were both beat.

Saturday night we watched Million Dollar Arm, a movie based on a true story, which I had no idea about until Cindy told me afterward.  It was just a feel good, high quality movie all the way around.  It’s story revolving around baseball, the sport I thought I would make my career in my youth added to my enjoyment of my film.  It’s a high quality A- rental all day long.

Sunday morning Cindy and I got busy early.  Going into the weekend I had ideas that by the time Sunday night rolled around we would be completely done with the chicken run.  I still had that pipe dream in my sights early on Sunday.

I made a poor decision early on when after removing the support braces I had in place near the base of the 4×4’s while the cement set, I decided to dig a trench in front of the front edge to attach a 2×6 and bury some hardware cloth.  I did not fully fill the post holes for 4×4’s with cement on Saturday, I planned to top them off later Sunday.  Well digging the trench actually made a couple of the posts loose so I had to replumb and secure them.  I was annoyed by my stupidity.

Cindy and I had a couple sticking points throughout the day Sunday while we made adjustments to my mental blueprint on the fly.  It took some thought to come up with how we wanted to lay out the roof beams in a way that will allow support of the corrugated pvc panels we are going to cover it with.  We also had to come up with ways to fill the small gap that exists between the shed and the run due to the small platform offset.

It felt weird just having the two hens, Lola and Lucy running around the yard on Sunday. I thought about Kathy and Curly quite a bit and hoped they were doing ok in their new home.  I actually texted Ernesto this morning, he said they are doing fine and were happy.  I can only hope he is telling me the truth.

I got a decent amount of work done solo when Cindy ran out to get coffee, some brackets from Home Depot as well as pick up the dogs whom we are watching through Wednesday.  By the time she got back I had the front and rear roof line supports in place.  We continued to work right up until Cindy’s mom showed up for our casual Easter celebration.  The stopping point for Sunday left the frame for the run pretty much complete with 2/3 of the front wired in as well as the left roof section.  There is still a painful amount of work to be done which I hope to chip away at somewhat after work this week.

Cindy’s mom, brother, niece, and her boyfriend all were over.  Only her mom was there the entire time with the others stopping by a little later.  Cindy’s daughter was a no show which was disappointing as I knew how much Cindy was looking forward to seeing her.  I was very frustrated by it but this has been a pattern that has gone on for as long as I have known Cindy, so sadly, I wasn’t that surprised.  I can only hope sooner or later she will understand how much she hurts her mom when she breaks promises again and again.  I know at twenty one my biggest concern was not how my actions affected my parents. Hopefully as time passes she can gain some more appreciation and awareness of a circle bigger than what is directly in front of her at that moment.

Sunday night Cindy and I were pooped from another weekend of mostly non-stop work.  In addition to helping me Cindy found a way to put together a nice little Easter celebration for her family as well.  As I mentioned at the start of this entry,  the chicken coop project has mushroomed into something much bigger than I originally expected.  I am confident the end result will be a pretty awesome living space for however many chickens we house.

With my Easter weekend being so busy I hardly had any time to dwell on it being the first time the holiday was not shared with my mom.  At this point there have quite a few “mom isn’t here any more” moments that still seem foreign and impossible.  They are slowly becoming more realistic each time it happens.

If you want to see the video of the run construction so far, look no further.

So getting the two roosters, Curly and Kathy (yes I still call him Kathy) re-homed has been something I have been working on this week.  The longer we have the roosters the more difficult it is going to be when we have to give them away.

In addition to leaving a message for the chicken lady I also was in contact with a big chicken farm in North Fort Myers, asking them if they would want a couple roosters to just live instead of becoming a meal.  They said they can’t guarantee anything as it depends on how the roosters act.  If they become overly aggressive they are a problem, and problems need to be “corrected”.

I even called Jack and Ann’s feed store in Immokalee, asking if they knew of anyone that would adopt roosters without the intention of eating them.  The guy on the phone chuckled a little bit.  He said he can pretty much guarantee me that if we would give the roosters to anyone that lives in Immokalee the roosters would either be involved in chicken fighting or chicken stew, neither of which were viable options.

I was getting depressed about our options and was thinking our best choice was to take them to the chicken farm, letting the chickens roll the dice that they integrate well into the flock.  Well late yesterday afternoon the chicken lady finally called me back.  She said somehow she missed the message I left earlier in the week.  I talked to her about the birds.  She said she definitely could use one more buff orpington rooster to help service her 30 hens.  The other one she doesn’t necessarily need but she could take it as well to hang in the flock with the possibility of adopting it back out to someone else since she does a lot of chicken transactions.  Obviously she has a lot more opportunity to re-home a chicken than we do.

So the new plan is to try to meet up with Anna after work tonight so we can give her the two roosters and she was going to give us one more hen.  Curly and Kathy are quite content with their current living conditions and both Cindy and I are fond of them as well. Both birds are the first two to come charging across the yard to see if Cindy or I have a treat for them.  Trying to catch both roosters to get them in the cat carriers is going to be quite the chore as well.  I just want it to be behind us so we can have a total female chicken population from here on out.

This weekend there is going to be a lot of work on phase 2 of the the chicken coop project.  I am hoping to get the automatic chicken door installed as well as a good portion of the attached chicken run finished up as well.  It shouldn’t be quite as grueling as the original platform/shed build but I am sure it will offer up it’s own set of hurdles to overcome.

We need to try to get as much done coop-wise as possible this weekend since starting next weekend we will have almost two weeks of flooring project to fill our days.

This may be the most exciting blog post in history.  Last night after work I mowed the grass.  I shit you not.

Now that your pulse has been elevated, let’s see what else I can come up with…… um yea, that’s what I thought…. nothing.

Last night after work I tried to get some more work done on the shed/coop.  On the way home I grabbed some hardware cloth with smaller, 1/2″ squares, instead of the 1 inch stuff we got at Rural King.  The 1/2″ stuff is more secure and actually easier to bend to fit.

I stapled the top of the wire to the platform.  I pushed the bottom of the fencing into the trench in such a way that it folded with the excess extending forward.  This layout makes digging under the fencing next to impossible for predators that can dig. Cindy and I then back filled the trench, giving the chickens what will be a secure safe haven under the coop.  I had enough fencing to do two of the three sides.

Yesterday my automatic chicken door showed up.  Getting the door assembly mounted into the side wall of the shed will require some of my construction improvisation skills since it is designed to be mounted in conventional wood construction.  I already have a rough outline of how I can do it in my head.  I shot a quick video demonstrating the coolness of the robo-chicken door.

Last night we watched the Walking Dead season finale.  The 90 minutes passed by very quickly.  The people we wanted to die were not on the hit list unfortunately.  As any good season finale, it left Cindy and I wishing the next episodes weren’t going to be 6 months away.

Saturday Cindy and I were up at 4AM for the race.  We set the alarm around 15 minutes earlier because we didn’t load the truck the night before.  We got on site a little after 5:15 and got busy.

This race has the nicest registration area accommodations of any of our events as it takes place inside of Artis-Naples, the home of Naples Philharmonic orchestra.  The area that we normally use for registration had some other stuff stuck there so Cindy and I had to do quite a bit of rearranging.

As I mentioned last week, this was the first race where I had Cindy run a split timing point for me.  She handled the task well, we captured a split time for everyone we had chip finish time for.  She added a nice touch by writing some words of encouragement for the runners on the street ahead of the split in sidewalk chalk.  The winner of the race crushed the field, finishing almost four full minutes ahead of the second place runner.

Cindy and I got home between 10 and 10:30 and got busy.  I worked on the post race processing and Cindy started on some of the chores.  Mid-afternoon we had some errands to run, at the tail end of them we picked up Nicki and Sadie for a two night visit.  Originally we had loose ideas about going to the movies Saturday night but those plans were abandoned later in the day when we both admitted that sitting in a theater would surely result in both of us dozing off, regardless of the quality of the movie. Instead we watched The Game Stands Tall, my latest Netflix rental, a movie about a high school football team that held an incredible 150 game win streak.  The movie was solid and inspiring, a good B+ rental.

Sunday was a really good day.  The weather was beautiful with cool temps and low humidity.  It was almost perfect conditions for a run so that is what Cindy and I did, logging the 5.5 mile track and back course.  The last mile and a half was pretty grueling as it was right into the face of a strong headwind.  I can only imagine how it would have felt to ride bike into it.

We decided we would do something we always do at a time we never do it, go to a 1:05 matinee, making up for our missed Saturday movie.  We took the SSR with the top down, taking advantage of what may be the last of the truly awesome weather of the spring.  We went to see Insurgent, the second part of the Divergent series.  I wasn’t all that thrilled with the first film.  I found Insurgent more entertaining for sure but still nothing that would approach A quality.  I will give this one a solid B+.

It was odd and a bit disorienting getting out of a movie at 3:15 in the afternoon.  We got home and had plenty of time to get more stuff done.  I was outside for awhile, first burying the extension cord that will provide power to the new shed/chicken coop.  I then grabbed a shovel and dug a trench around three sides of the shed platform.  The reason for doing so is to bury the fencing which will be used to keep digging predators out of the area.  The chickens seem to really like hanging out under the platform so we are leaving the chicken run side open so they can do so if they want to. Cindy was cooking/baking like mad in the kitchen making an awesome dinner and cake.  I was the lucky benefactor of her efforts.

I wound down my Sunday playing a couple hours of WoW which was a nice way to decompress.  It was the end to a Sunday that had almost the perfect balance of exercise, work, and play.

We still have not addressed our rooster situation.  Both of us feel very guilty about the prospect of removing the birds from our backyard which they have certainly come to enjoy.  We need to make sure that they are going to a new home where they will be free to breed and live their lives instead of becoming chicken nuggets.

Last night after work I got home a little late since I needed to drop off race materials at the running store for early packet pick up today.  After getting changed I immediately let the chickens out so they could get in an hour or two of free ranging time which they have come to love.

My task at hand was getting power to the new shed.  It will be needed for the automatic chicken door I have en route to my house.  In addition power in the shed will be helpful if we want to throw things like a fan or even a web cam inside the structure.

To accomplish this my plan was to tap into the power line I already have buried and run to the small shed.  My low tech method of cutting the ends off of buried extension cord surely is not up to code but has held up fine for the 6 or 7 years it has been in place.

I dug up the connection point at the small shed and wired in the cut end of the new 100 foot cord I bought after work.  A quick test confirmed juice was now flowing to the new shed.  I drilled a small hole in the corner of the floor to get the power inside.  I still need to get the new cord buried which will require a hand edger tool to accomplish.  Basically I make a slit in the ground, rock the tool back and forth and stuff the cord into it.  The grass quickly will create a green stitch over the line I cut.

Before I get to start enjoying my weekend we have a 10K race to time tomorrow morning.  Cindy always helps me out with both pre-race prep as well as whatever I need her to do on race day.  Tomorrow I am having her do something new, set up and run the half way split timing point.  Basically she will be taking one of the timing boxes to the halfway point and set up the equipment. After the last runner crosses the mats she captures the data to a USB drive and brings it back to me.  We aren’t advertising the split as part of the race so if something goes wrong it isn’t the end of the world.

After the race is out of the way we have lots of stuff to keep us busy, lots….