Homestead Handyman

The day began without a plan, hoping for one of those sunny days like we have been having for some time now - but to no avail. Off the job for a week, so been planning on painting the goat shed. Today was not to be that day! Forecast was for rain and it came. In between though I did finish cutting the last two panels for the goat shed and screwed them in place. Came back up to the house and decided to take care of another problem on the list. When we added onto the old place, I was very green and following the ways of a couple of old timers who were teaching me the ropes. I know now what I did not know then - the importance of OVERHANG on a roof. Not sure as to why that was left out when we built the roof, but none the less it didn't take long for us to notice a problem. Water had been creeping down the inside of the exterior wall and soaking the floor and interior wall. So I grabbed the old sledge hammer and pry bar and proceeded to rip off all the wood on the exterior wall. Then came the scraping of the old insulation, then chipping out of the floor and general cleansing. Had the boy giving me a hand in that process. Continued moving along and reinsulated it, then replaced the exterior wall with fresh new boards. So that moves the interior wall closer to the top of the list. Tomorrow's plan is to go and retrieve as much timber as possible to side the lower half of the addition, grab a few sheets of plywood siding for the top half, and also recover a ton of cement blocks from a friend's scrapped construction project. Figure on rolling the older ones out of bed bright and earlier so they can assist! They do love helping out though, and are learning a lot. Not a project goes by that they don't help in some way. Teamwork! Makes it go by faster too.

We also built a milking stand for the goats, as we want to start training the doelings on the routine. I found a few plans online and kind of adapted them as best I could. Ended up only needing two brackets to reinforce it, was able to find everything else I needed around the ole homestead.