Moving a bathroom light

The light over the bathroom sink was a problem.  First, the light was centered on the wall - not on the sink.  The sink is not centered on the wall as the sink vanity doesn't take up the entire wall.

The second problem was when we went to hang the mirror.  We found that the light hung down over the mirror.  This was a surprise as I had held up the mirror on the pre-sheet rocked wall so my uncle Larry could determine where to place the switches and light.  The light fixture base was a few inches above the mirror.  However the lights themselves hang down below the fixture's base and therefore hung over the mirror. 

Tammy was in tears and very unhappy.

So, after I got work completed on a few other items in the bathroom, I turned my attention on how to fix this light problem.

I couldn't just cut a new opening just for the light and move the light fixture was it was attached to a metal bar.  And the wire wasn't long enough to move the light fixture.  If I moved the light I would have to re-wire it.

The only solution was to cut out the wall.  I hated to do this on a new nice wall but I had no choice.


Here is how the wiring looked like before we had originally sheet rocked the wall.  I am glad my uncle Curt thought of taking photos of the electrical work before we sheet rocked the wall.  With the photo I knew what I was working with, and I had an idea where to cut the sheetrock.

Before my uncles and I had installed the sheet rock we had measured the location of the studs.  What we didn't measure was the location of the stringers.  I wanted to cut the sheet rock on the studs and stringers so I wouldn't have to build support for the cut sheet rock when I put it back on the wall.  But where was the stringer just above the switch box?

Notice the dark stud my uncles placed on the wall to make a stud every 16 inches?  Notice how the dark stud is broken up by the stringers that was used to frame the old medicine cabinet?  As I cut through the sheet rock with my utility knife I felt when the grain of the wood changed from vertical to horizontal.  That is how I found the lower stringer.  Bingo!

The switch and outlet.

Here is the light in the wrong location.  Notice... not over the sink.  And no room for my big mirror.

(Note the wall color change is because I stitched two photos together to make this one photo.)

Now that I made the opening it was time to remove the old wiring and install new longer wiring.  I had found that even after removing the staples holding the wire to the stud the old wire was three inches too short to reach the new light location.  Argh!

Then it was on to the next problems.   Study the following photo.  Notice:

1. Two wires - one hole.  Why not a hole for each wire?  I don't know.  Two wires in one hole made it harder to remove the old and install the new wire.


2. The hole is to the right side of the electrical box and not centered above the box.  That made moving the wires in and out harder.  Why the hole is on the side and not further out like in the stringer above this one, I don't know.


3. The box is plastic and the openings for the wires are push in tabs.  That is how the wires are held in place.  I would have preferred a metal box as it is sturdier and I wouldn't have to be careful not to break the plastic box.   Clamps to hold the wire would have been better than the push tabs as tabs made it hard to remove the wire.


4. Lastly, the biggest problem.  The wire on the left came from the circuit breaker.  The wire on the right goes to the light.  Ah... but in the box the left (circuit breaker) wire entered the box opening on the right.  The right (light) wire entered the box opening on the left.  Yup.  The wires crossed.  And the wire I needed to replace was bent as it went from the left side of the box to the hole in the stringer.

Why couldn't there be two holes through the stringer, else the hole be centered over the box, or the left wire go left and the right wire go right?  Anything to make it easier for me.  Nah.  Not gonna happen.

I couldn't pull the wire out of the box no mattered which direction (in or out of the box) I pulled.  Especially as the wire had a big kink in it.   I had to cut the hole larger.  Easier said than done.  I carefully used my poke saw to enlarge the hole while being careful not to cut the wire to the circuit breaker.

The cutting was very slow going which gave me plenty of time to curse this setup.

Finally, I had enlarged the hole enough to move the wire.  Because I had a stringer and sheet rock above the box I tied the new wire to the old wire so I could pull the new wire though the box and wall.  Having an outlet box with tabs didn't make this easy.

It took a long time but I finally got the light moved.

Then it was time to replace the sheet rock.

The fixed wall with the new light location.  Up and over.  Tammy is not happy as she felt I did a crappy job fixing the sheet rock.  After she painted the wall we found the paint magnified the mud imperfections and did not hide them.  The mud job to seal the sheet rock wasn't as smooth as I thought prior to painting.

Fortunately the mirror hides much of the cut.

As you can see the lights are now centered above the sink and are above the mirror.

What a pain.  No wonder I don't have my shower done yet.

With the mirror hung I was finally able to shave off my beard.  I had started the beard when we started the bathroom remodel in May.  Tammy didn't like my beard and couldn't wait for me to shave it off.

Tornado map

Here is an interesting map.  It shows the tornado activity in the U.S. over the past 56 years.

Here is a link to what appears to be the original web site: http://uxblog.idvsolutions.com/2012/05/tornado-tracks.html

Here is a link to the map where you can click and zoom in on the map.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7090/7157010997_2a92fa603c_o.jpg

Stump bonfire 2 for 2012

Last weekend Tammy and I had our second tree stump bonfire.  This tree stump was the hidden one I found this Spring near the corral.  With all the rain we had in June the decaying stump soaked up the moisture.  The recent warm weather started drying the stump out.  Once the top layer was dry we had our bonfire.  The hope was the fire would dry the lower layers of the stump so they would also burn.

The start of the fire was pretty intense.

Here is an 18 second video of the bonfire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpTgBvBM6xU&feature=youtu.be


I gave in to peer pressure and retired another one of my favorite pants from my "homeless collection".

Here is a 37 second video of the pants burning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCF6t99x-F4&feature=youtu.be


The stump the next day.  It was still smoldering.

The cattle trampled the dirt clods around the hole into nothingness.

Even after a week the stump continued to smolder.  Burn baby, burn.

Stump bonfire 1 for 2012

In May Tammy and I held our first tree stump bonfire for 2012.  We burned a stump I had dug around last Fall.  The stump was one that barely stuck above ground and I never noticed it until the grass was short.

Half of the crap I ripped out of my bathroom remodel was also burnt to get the fire going hot enough to burn the stump.

Tammy thought this tree root looked like a snake for part of the fire.

Later part of the bonfire.

It was late when we came back home after the bonfire.  After 2 am.

Everything burned except for one of the main stumps.  I took an ax to it.

Compare this photo to an earlier photo showing the stump.

Once I let the cattle into the middle pasture I had to fill the hole in for two reasons.  First I didn't want any of the cattle to accidentally fall in the hole.  Second is that cattle like to play in dirt and the nice tidy dirt pile next to the hole would be spread out all over once the cattle got to it.

After I filled in the hole the cattle came over to check out my work.

A video of several cattle checking out the filled in tree stump.  57 seconds long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-0TMkH1Ih4&feature=youtu.be


A 2:38 video of three parts of the bonfire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xerxayuZS-E&feature=youtu.be

Bathroom skylight

--- Later edit ---   Substitute "sun tube" where I wrote skylight.  What I actually installed is considered a sun tube.

For years I had been talking about putting a skylight in the ceiling for the dining room. Since the bathroom remodel was taking my "window" away I decided to put a skylight in the bathroom ceiling. Or more accurately - a sun tube.

A week ago Thursday I completed the installation of a sun tube in my new bathroom.

While my uncles were here and we worked on the bathroom I figured out where I wanted my sun tube. I cut a hole in the bathroom ceiling and  placed the bottom of the sun tube in the ceiling.

Now to complete the sun tube I had to cut through the house roof.  We had a very rainy June but come July it was starting to dry out and warm up.

The bathroom is located in the old original house and that meant the roof was 1" by 10" boards and not plywood.  I cut part of one board and then pounded a long nail through the felt up through the roof.  Or so I thought.  I couldn't find the nail when I went on top of the roof.  I then pounded a long sharp rod through the roof.  This I found when I went up to the roof. 

After removing the shingles around the rod I decided to not cut the roof from above and instead cut from below even though it was the harder thing to do due to the limited room in the attic.  It was a good thing I did as I discovered the roof I started to cut through was not the real roof.  When the bedroom addition was added to the house the addition's roof covered the original roof where it tied into the original house.

I had to enlarge the hole in the original roof to reach the real roof.  In addition to the roof boards, the original roof still had the wooden shingles nailed to it and they were a pain to cut through.

Below are photos of the two roofs.

Because the two roofs are at different slopes the spot where the rod went through the second roof was not where the hole ended up being cut.

The sun tube consists of three main pieces: an upper elbow, a lower elbow and a metal piece to connect the two.  The sun tube length was just long enough and I didn't have to buy an extension piece.

Here are photos of the finished work.

I am very happy I installed the sun tube.  The inside of the metal tube and elbows are very shiny and direct the light down the tube. The sun tube puts out over 100 watts of light - more than my ceiling light.  The sun tube light is plenty bright even on cloudy days and when the sun is not overhead.  For quite a few days when Tammy or I walked by the bathroom we thought we had left the bathroom light on.

I like my sun tube so much I had my brother in North Dakota buy me three more sun tubes.  Menards had these type of 10 inch sun tubes on sale for only $99 instead of the $179 I paid for the 10 inch bathroom sun tube.

Horses, jailbreak and love

Thursday morning as Tammy was getting ready for work she looked out the window at 6 am and noticed the horses were in the hayfield.

"Are the horses supposed to be in this pasture?"

No.  I got up out of bed and tried to get the horses back into the yard.  They had pushed against the fence's gate and bent the lock until the gate popped open.  Based on the tracks in the grass the horses had just entered the hayfield.  I tried to guide them back into the yard but as I guided one horse another horse would veer off.  When I went to guide that horse another horse veered off.  Then the horses had enough of my guiding and began to run.  "Cowgirl" (aka "The Bitch") even kicked up her back legs in my direction as she began to run.

I had to give up.

Even though our days have been hot this week the morning temperatures have been in the 50s and the dew was heavy.  My pants from the knees down were soaked from my short time in the tall wet grass.

The horses then went on a tear around the pasture.  They can run very fast.  Impressive, but for the fact I didn't want them in the hayfield.

When the horses settled down they ended up along the north fence that borders the corral and yard.  They were careful not to get too close to the open gate.

The cattle were not happy that the horses were in the hayfield.  They all bunched up to the hayfield fence and bellowed.  The horses didn't help matter by lingering on the hayfield side of the fence and eating.

A few hours later the horses came from the hayfield to the corral to drink water and I was able to close the hayfield gate and lock them out.  I added a chain to the gate and that problem has been solved.  Eventually the horses got over being locked out of the hayfield though they lingered along the fence for a long time.


Later when I was in the back yard the horses were in the front yard.  I noticed that "Stud" was trying to "service" either "Firefeather" or "Cowgirl" (aka "The Bitch") patiently standing there while Stud tried to balance while doing the deed.  Initially I thought the "lucky gal" was Firefeather but later in the day I noticed that Stud and the Bitch were getting along quite nicely.

Stud even was playfully biting The Bitch and she was fine with that.  She seems to like biting.  Maybe I should change her name from "Cowgirl" to "Kinkygirl".

"Love" must be in the air at the ranch now that the weather has warmed up.  While in the pasture I noticed that a handful of the heifers are in heat.  Steers... heifers... both sexes were trying to mount some of the heifers.  A few times it looked like a conga-line was going on.

Second yard tree

I've cut and cleaned up the second tree that fell in the yard.  This was the tree by the well that really took down the power lines when the top half of the tree broke off during the June 23 storm.
 

I left some of the branches where the fence was damaged until I could repair it.  That way the horses couldn't get out of the pasture.

Ta da!  The tree is cleaned up and the branches are gone.

Wednesday morning I had to fix the fence in a location on the other side of the garage.  I thought the top board was good but one of the horses (Firefeather) broke it and then hopped the fence to go from the yard to the pasture.  Usually the problem is the other way but I am currently keeping the horses in the yard to eat the grass down,

10 second video of working on the tree:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilo5BuTVkX8&feature=youtu.be

Broken hammer

When my uncles visit me they give me grief about the hammer I use.  The one I am talking about is the green hammer on the right.  The hammer is smaller than normal and my uncles call it a girl's hammer.

Well, the handle may be light but it is strong.  It has never broken on me all these years.  The same can't be said for the wooden hammer on the left - a hammer my uncles used when we worked on the bathroom.  The other day I used the hammer to pull some nails from a broken corral fence.  The nails were hard to pull and the next I knew the handle snapped easily.

So much for a "man's hammer".

Horses and Cattle

Today I let the cattle into the north pasture.  This is closest they have been to the horses.  Both species have been curious about one another for some time now. 

The male horse ("Glacier Cat" but we called him "Stud") seems to have been beaten down by "Cowgirl" (aka The Bitch).  The horses now tend to keep near each other.  However Cowgirl never seems to waste an opportunity to pick on "Stud".  Whenever she walks by him she will push him or bite him.  He seems resigned to being picked on by Cowgirl.

The other day I cleaned the wooden hay feeder.  Underneath the feeder's floor was the hay residue that slipped between the floor's cracks.   The horses seem to like this stuff. However when I came back from checking a pocket gopher trap Cowgirl and her buddy, "Firefeather" were eating the hay residue.  When "Stud" and "Lily" came over to eat Cowgirl lifted her head and gave "Stud" a look he backed off.

That didn't go over well with me so I chased Cowgirl away and let "Stud" and "Lily" join "Firefeather" eating the residue.  Cowgirl tried to slip back in.  However she wouldn't share and whenever she pushed or bit "Stud" I chased her away.  Cowgirl's attitude filtered down to "Lily" as she started chasing Firefeather away from the residue.

These horses act like they are high school girls.