Written by karen on February 27th, 2012
It is finally spring here! There are lots of baby cows and poppies this spring. We have had several days of warm weather and are stucco’ing madly. Not too much fun in the 40 mph wind gusts we had today, but that is a part of spring here.
Each evening after stucco’ing, I’m working on finishing the big timbers that will go up around the doors and windows where there is adobe. The color is the hardest part to me — to stain or not to stain? I’m leaning toward leaving the vigas (round timbers that are already up) and the glulam with a natural finish and doing the rough timbers and ceiling boards with a light stain like we have for the ceiling in the guesthouse.
The first step was to trim the timbers. Then for the finish. I don’t have much experience with finishing rough wood, so any advice is welcomed.
Here’s my process so far.
- Belt sand the ends of the timbers.
- Wirebrush all the wood, removing as much dirt as possible. (There are some grey marks on some of the wood, but not everywhere. At the beginning, I didn’t know how much the varnish would cover that, but it seems to be covering fine.) It’s weird to be not to be doing round and rounds of sanding.
- Use compressed air to clean any miscellaneous dust, etc. off the surface.
This is the wood before any finish.
- Apply Minwax pre-stain wood conditioner. (These timbers are ponderosa pine, a soft wood. Conditioner is supposed to help the stain take better.)
- Apply Minwax stain. I used a 50/50 mix of oak and natural, the same as we used for the ceiling boards in the guest house.
This is after staining.
- Apply two coats of Waterlox Marine Sealer. (This is a pretty expensive tung oil finish system designed for extreme weather. Some of these beams will be outside, and the other finishes I’ve tried for outdoor wood haven’t lasted. I’m hoping to use this on the new outside doors as well.)
- Apply two coats of Waterlox Marine Finish.
With drying time and two sides for each board, the whole process takes about 14 days. This will take awhile, but so far, the results look good.
And with the final coats of sealer and finish
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Tags: construction, woodworking
Written by karen on February 23rd, 2012
I’m too exhausted to write any more right now.
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Tags: construction, stucco
Written by karen on February 17th, 2012
It’s been a busy week here.
We’ve made some progress on electrical in the new house, which necessitated making some decisions about where lights will go and in some cases, what kind of lights we will get. For me, that meant really thinking through interior design. I don’t really enjoy the beginning stages of this — too much “blank canvas” and not enough imagination on my part. Still, it has to be done so we took a trip into town and began making some choices.
Last weekend, we went to the 19th Annual Bootheel Cowboy Poetry Fiesta in Lordsburg. We enjoyed the poetry and music, and it was also a good chance to see the Lordsburg-Hidalgo County Museum, where the event was held.
On the left, is Hook Hill, the event organizer. He's 91 years old.
This week was also Portal Rescue’s annual “Soup Kitchen” fundraiser. For three days, community members make soup, bread, and desserts, and everyone gets together to eat. This year my soups were Smashed Potato Cheese, Creamy Roasted Garlic, and White Bean Green Chile stew. Brad and I were also the dishwashers. With hundreds attending, that’s a lot of dishes!
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Written by karen on February 5th, 2012
We’ve been working on the new arch over the main entrance to the new house.
As you might remember, this kind of “architectural detail” is added by nailing thick styrofoam down on the exterior wall before stucco.
Last time, Brad did a great job of basically freehanding the design. This time with a wider door, we were having a harder time with it, so we decided to apply technology.
First I found an arch we liked on the computer.
Then we projected it onto the stryrofoam piece. Lots of trick size matching to do here.
Then Brad did the tracing.
And here’s the final result. Well, not quite final, but you get the idea.
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Tags: arches, construction
Written by karen on February 3rd, 2012
On the adobe walls in the new house, we are going to have large timbers above the windows and doors to carry the weight of the adobe over them. And when I say large, I mean large.
Yesterday, we went to Silver City to pick up the timbers. It took an elaborate configuration of two forklifts to get them into the truck bed. Then because of the weight, the truck kind of tipped over on its back axle, and I think I heard it moaning a potentially dying cry, and we knew that wasn’t going to work. (We’d estimated the weight ahead, but you never really know what the moisture content of the wood will be.) So we arranged to have the timbers delivered by truck next week instead. (For a whopping fee of $20. Yeah. OK.)
The longest beam had already been put on the truck’s rack, so we went ahead and drove that one home. This morning we unloaded it. Man, was that thing heavy! We moved it in our normal heavily brain-assisted way with lots of leverage and small moves. Not exactly sure how we’re going to boost these things 8-12 feet in the air, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out. :)
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Tags: construction
Written by karen on January 28th, 2012
Maybe 6 weeks? Stay tuned for lots of tomatoes.
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Tags: garden
Written by karen on January 27th, 2012
So if you’re planning a visit and want to time it around one of the fun annual events in Bisbee, I thought I’d post info and some dates.
credit: Stephen Romero
The Bisbee Blues Festival is September 17, 2012.
And the Bisbee 1000 Great Stair Climb is October 12, 2012. (Let me know if you’re thinking about this one so I can train.)
These both seem a ways out, but summer and then fall (a nicer time to visit, really) will be here before we know it!
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Tags: bisbee
Written by karen on January 25th, 2012
So some of you are probably wondering what’s going on with the new house, and more to the point, when will the guest house be freed up to be a solitary sanctuary for visitors? :) Well, we have paper and lath done on the exterior now and are just waiting for a warm week to start on stucco. It’s been rather cold. The new scaffolding has been absolutely fantastic.
In the meantime, we are starting on electrical.
Also, gas lines have been in the new house for awhile now. Not sure if I mentioned that before or not.
Still lots, lots, lots to do, but it’s good to see visible progress.
The greenhouse has had four kinds of greens growing all winter, despite very cold temperatures. Amazing. Nice to know that we can grow all year round. I just got my new seeds for spring in and am getting ready to do some planting inside in the next week or so. I’m going to try several new kinds of tomatoes, as well as the lovely ones we grew last year.
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Written by karen on January 4th, 2012
The wildlife around here seem to love all the things we are building. It’s housing (temporary, we keep reminding them), as well as a place to play. We have flickers constantly trying to nest in the new house, and a colony of rabbits have taken up quarters under the adobe bricks. Every morning we lie in bed and watch them come out and play on what will someday be the patio.
The other day we were working in the afternoon, and I asked if he thought the bunnies stayed under the adobe during the day. “Probably,” he said, and so I bent down and stuck my face in one of the dark passageways between two skids of bricks. Imagine my surprise to see two big glowing eyes looking back out at me. I backed up quickly.
When I told Brad that I wished he’d seen those eyes, he said, “It was much more fun to see your reaction.”
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Tags: wildlife
Written by karen on December 29th, 2011
This week, it’s finally warmed up a bit so it’s back to work. We’ve begun wrapping and putting lath on the walls in anticipation of doing stucco. It’s good to see the house becoming more waterproof.
We also put the glass block in the exterior wall for the bathroom. When Brad did the glass block in the guest house, I was traveling so this was a new experience for me.
It starts out very messy…lots of gloppy mud.
Gradually starting to look like something from the outside.
These pretty light patterns are just what I was hoping for.
And here’s the finished product, from the outside…
and the inside.
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Tags: bathroom, construction
