2005

For years Deb and I had been driving from our old family lake mobile home in Twin Oaks (On Cub Creek) about 4 miles west to Beech Grove near Jabez to launch our boat. There were just too many people, boats and drunks at Cub Creek to suit us. Plus the ramp is long and steep and parking is a pain. Beech Grove offered a less steep ramp and easy parking. The real bonus though was NO CROWDS! It was rare to see anyone there at all. Due to several factors (the family place was no longer available to us to use on a regular basis) we started looking for our own place. We drove down to Beech Grove to see if a place we had looked at last year was still for sale. It was not but the place directly across from it had a For Sale sign on it! We walked around and Deb just absolutely fell in love with the place. It sits on a hill overlooking a valley (Wolf Creek) with Lake Cumberland just visible below. National forest land on two sides and permanent dwellings (though not visible) on the other two. We called the number on the sign and sure enough it was for sale. We arranged a meeting with the owners in three weeks.

We met with the owners and looked over the mobile home. They had actually lived in it full time for two years but it had sat empty for the last 18 months. The smell of mildew and mold about knocked us down even though they had opened the windows and tried to air it out. The inspection revealed a lot wrong with it. Roof was leaking, every window was leaking, the back door was leaking but most troubling of all were the floors. MAJOR floor damage in the kitchen. Minor damage to the floors in EVERY other room. There was this horrible nasty green carpet in the living room and master bed room. These carpets were the most obvious source of odor. Also the bathroom and kitchen were, shall we say, NASTY! They looked like they had not been cleaned in 3 years...

Ok that was the bad news, the good news was it came with a brand new, never installed, metal roof kit, ALL furniture was included, ALL kitchen appliances including a working washer/dryer combo were included and it had brand new vented aluminum clad underpinning with 2" insulation! The owner had also installed locking doors in the underpinning to allow access to the plumbing on the front and full double doors on the end. Another good thing we noticed, NO ROACHS! Lots of spiders, ants, wasps, and some really weird looking crickets. Throw in a few mice and that was it.

We asked about the lots and were shown the plat map displayed on the main page. They had all 11 lots for sale but were willing to separate the parcel into 6 lots and mobile home and 5 separate lots. We told them we were very interested and would call them next week with an offer.

Called them back and said that if they were interested we would take it. I about dropped the phone when he said that it had sold! Seems that another person had made an offer a month before we had and was now trying to get financing. I thanked him for showing it to us and asked him to call me should their financing fall through. With a heavy heart I called Deb. Needless to say she was devastated and moped around the house for a week...

Got a call from the owner and the property is back for sale! The persons financing fell through! We'll take it! Turns out they were down there all week on vacation and we could meet them that Saturday with a check. We scrambled to arrange financing with our bank and by Friday we had a check!

Saturday morning we left for the lake with the check in hand. We thought they would be cleaning the place up all week and getting their personal stuff out. When we got there, they were in their camper, in the driveway? They had not touched the place at all. Oh well... Maybe they planned on doing it Sunday before they left? We gave them the check, took the deed and were able to find a notary in Jabez at, of all places, a grocery store! The deed was signed and notarized by all. I took it to Jamestown the following week and had it recorded. We said our goodbyes and took possession of the keys. It was ours!

We spent Saturday night with my sister at the old lake place and around 5:00 PM we figured the old owners had left and drove over to our new retreat. They indeed had left and not only had they not cleaned the place, they left a bunch of junk lying around in the yard like an old car battery and a bunch of trash! It really bothered me. I would never leave a mess like that for someone who had just bought my place. We went in and opened all the windows to air it out while I took a bunch of pictures for later reference. The wife and sister started making lists of things we would need for cleaning the place up. Seems like the bad things we had noticed on our first visit had somehow gotten worse. We left feeling a bit down.

We had planned and packed all week for our first trip. For outside work I had a rake, ladder, mower and weed eater. For inside I brought a drill and bits, electric repair stuff, and of course a full tool kit. Deb packed the truck FULL of cleaning supplies and other cleaning tools. Everything from Lysol and rubber gloves, to masks and hydrofluoric acid (just kidding). The point was she came prepared for serious cleaning! We left Saturday morning. On the way down we stopped at the family lake place and got our old Rainbow vacuum cleaner and my sister joined us.

There is really no way of describing our first day of cleaning. We worked out butts off. My sister and I tackled the smaller bedroom first so we would have a clean place to sleep that night. It also was the least junked up. The master bedroom had floor issues and had the metal roof in it. Debbie tackled the kitchen of course. There were constant comments like "Oh my God!" (when dead rodent bodies were found) or "Ewwwwww!" (when Deb opened the oven and saw it had not been cleaned in like, 10 years, or "That's disgusting" my sister when she looked in the bathroom which also looked to have never been cleaned. Somehow we survived the first day and by nightfall we had the small bedroom so it could be slept in and the kitchen could serve a meal without giving everyone some horrible disease. Our last task was to clean the tub out enough to take a shower without getting a fungal infection. A nice hot shower helped a lot. Our first night we did not get a lot of sleep. Every noise was some creature trying to come up through the holes in the floors and every itch was a huge spider about to bite! :-) Also the small, full size bed, though it was new, just did not offer a lot of back support. We were glad to see the sun come up!

My sister and I tackled the living room today. Deb continued the kitchen work. Our first task was to remove the old drapes from the windows to allow some light into the room. That small thing really helped! Next I helped wash down the walls and wood furniture with a Clorox solution. Every surface had a bit of mold and mildew on it due the moist environment and how dark it had been in the room. I then moved outside and tackled the living room windows which literally had MOSS growing on them! One of the major reasons the windows were leaking were the owners had never cleaned the window tracks out and the drain holes were all clogged. Cleaning the windows also made a huge difference in the amount of light entering the room. Now you could see and appreciate the view. After lunch my sister and I went outside to do some trash pickup and to start a burn pile. There was already a place where the previous owner had burned some stuff so we piled stuff in the same place.

We wrapped up the weekend by loading my small trailer with a bunch of garbage and taking a mattress and box springs to my brother.

Man we were loaded down again for this weekend! This time I had my pressure washer on the 4x8 trailer along with trash cans, mower, weed eater and a water shut off tool I welded up. Deb was again loaded down with cleaning supplies and the Hoover carpet cleaner with upholstery attachment for cleaning the living room furniture. Plus she had a bunch of 'things' we had accumulated for the old family mobile home. We got in a bit late, unloaded the truck, ate a snack and went to bed.

We got up early. While the girls worked inside lining kitchen cabinets and cleaning furniture I fired up the pressure washer. I started by cleaning the front 'deck'. Calling this thing a deck is not quite accurate, it's more like a strip of deck! Anyway it came very clean, looks like a new one now. I need to locate some Behr #81 red stain for it. In the meantime my sister started cutting the grass. I moved the washer around back to do the rear deck when I ran into a bit of a problem. The damn thing would not start! It has a Honda engine which had never given me one bit of trouble. All it would do was backfire when cranked. I worked on it for most of the late morning and early afternoon before I gave up on it. I'll take it home and work on it in the cool basement instead of the 100 degree 65% humidity at the lake!

I next tackled the water heater closet. The water heater closet is accessed from outside. I fixed a section of rotted floor, put some metal over a mouse hole into the kitchen, vacuumed up a few mouse bodies, and snake skins then looked at the lack of floor under the tub. (Future job...) The door to the closet needed re-caulking so I pulled all the screws, eased the frame out, scraped out the old caulk and re-caulked with 30 year caulk. That pretty much wrapped up Saturday. The wife and sister had gotten the kitchen mostly done and had started on the bathroom.

Spent most of the morning caulking around all the front windows and the kitchen fan vent plus the front door. Then I opened up the doors under the mobile home and started cleaning out all the junk the previous owner had left me. It about filled my small trailer! See here for what it looked like under there after I had most of it out. Deb and my sister spent the day decorating and cleaning the hallway walls and closet.

We had to skip a weekend as Deb had to work. In the meantime I had fixed my pressure washer. After literally tearing into the carb and valves trying to figure out the backfiring issue, I found a site with some very knowledgeable folks willing to share that knowledge with me. Of all things it turned out to be a sparkplug! When the plug was out of the engine and grounded it would spark just fine. Put it back in the engine and NO SPARK! Grrrrrr. I was about to buy a $80 ignition module when a fellow told me to replace the spark plug, don't ask why just DO IT he said! I did and the damn thing fired on the first pull! I was most grateful and a bit humbled!

So now it's Saturday and I'm back at the lake ready to clean the entire exterior of the mobile home. I just used plain water, no chemicals. The washer is a 2000 PSI unit so it stripped off the dirt, moss and tree sap with no problem. I also cleaned out the J-channel. See the main page for pics I took before and after. It really looks good now. After that I raked up 5 tons of leaves from the front and started a compost pile for a future garden. Deb finished cleaning the furniture and then had me put up mini blinds in the living room.

Late that evening I could not stand that nasty, dirty, ugly, smelly, green carpet any longer! Using a sharp utility knife I cut the carpet as close to the wall as possible all the way around the living room. This took a bit longer than I thought it would! I also pulled the divider strips between the kitchen and the bedrooms. Finally I was able to start rolling it up. This also proved to be fun as we had to move the furniture to one end, roll the carpet to that end then lift the furniture over the roll and place it at the other end. We then took it outside to haul off. Now we could see the two areas of floor damage. Neither was severe but one will require a 1/4 sheet of plywood to fix it. See here for pics. The difference in the room was unbelievable! The musty smell we had fought so hard to eliminate was already fading! Plus even though the floor was yellow particle board the room was so much brighter. When we get the off white vinyl flooring installed it will be a different room. That wrapped up Saturday. Deb cooked a wonderful dinner for us and we pigged out!

We have GOT to get a bigger bed with more back support! Neither of us slept well plus it was hotter then hell till about 3:00AM. Another thing we must have soon is central air or another AC window unit for the bedroom. We took a walk this morning down to the lake and around the shore. Deb found a shale outcrop that she wants me to get some slabs from to build something, maybe a flower garden border or something. When we got back I started caulking the back windows and door and my sister started working on the master bedroom which we had left till last. She finally came out and said, "That nasty, dirty, ugly, smelly, green carpet has got to go!" So I got the utility knife out and we proceeded to remove it. This took longer than the living room because we had to move the roof metal and cut it out of the closet. But finally it too was outside. Wow, two hidden major floor problems in the room. Looks like water damaged the particle board then the 'critters' decided to try to gnaw through it. Oh well we put the roof metal over the holes and went back to work.

We wrapped up the day by planning some future landscaping and taking some roof measurements. We are going to wait until cooler weather sets in to do the roof.

Deb had to have her hair done Saturday so elected not to come down this weekend. I decided it was a grand time to start ripping out floors so I packed up and went on down. When I got there and opened the doors there was no longer that intense mildew smell! Cool! Finally making progress in that department. I unpacked my tools from the trailer and went to bed. It was going to be a long day tomorrow.

Have I mentioned we needed a new bed? :-) My brother was supposed to come and help me with the floors today so I got an early start and tore into it. Check out the Floor Repair page for all the gory details. He finally did show up around 3:30 PM AFTER I had the floor opened, prepped, and the first repair sheet in place... We had a fun time cutting and fitting the second sheet. It was 'L' shaped. It had to slide under the wall on one side, around the hall corner on another then line up with 4 other seams. By the time we had that done it was about 7:30 PM. He said he would be back to help me tackle the hole under the refrigerator tomorrow. My sis had come by and decided to stay and have dinner with me. Good thing cause all I thought I had the energy to do was shower, grab a bag of chips and go to bed! We grilled pork chops, had baked potatoes and baked beans.

Ah, Sunday, a day of rest! Yeah right, what planet are you on? Ok so I got up early fixed coffee and bagels then had to make a command decision: Do I start in the hallway where the whole floor is to be replaced meaning the rear exterior door will need to come out of it's frame, the living room where there is just one minor hole to repair, or do I try to get the fridge out by myself and start on that floor? The true question was, "Is my brother really coming to help?" If so then the fridge is where to start, if not then do the living room so we can get the vinyl flooring laid in that room. I KNEW he would not show up so I started on the living room floor. Again see the Floor Repair page for a couple of pics of that. That went very quickly (about 2 hours) so I was able to start ripping out the carpet and vinyl flooring from the hallway. That done I realized that I could not tackle anymore floor work as I had a two hour drive home so I decided to install the new window AC unit I had bought. I spent about an hour reading the manual, attaching brackets and trying to figure out how I was going to support it since mobile homes have no outside window ledge for the AC to rest on. The back bedroom has a 'fire escape' window instead of a crank out one. I had looked at the disaster in the kitchen to see how not to mount it and knew that the side curtain on the AC case had to be OUTSIDE the window frame to prevent water from leaking inside. Turned out it was pretty easy to do. The side curtains fit in the track for the window perfectly! See Fig. 3 and 4 below. Notice the curtain is outside the window frame so water drains outside not inside. The window lowers down and catches the top bracket on the case perfectly. Turns out I did not need an outside support bracket. The fact that the curtains are snuggly in the track and the top window holds the unit firmly and at the correct angle to drain water saved me some work. I plugged it in and enjoyed the cold air.

Well our 3.5 day weekend was really only two days as Debbie had to work a 1/2 day Saturday :-( After filling out the bank loan papers to fill the truck up (Gas was $2.89 a gallon!) we headed down. On the way we stopped in Science Hill to see the house my sister is closing on Thursday the 8th. We did not get to the mobile home until about 6:30 PM. We had a trailer full of stuff including an almost new queen size bed that we got from Debbie's parents. Yes! Finally no more back aches. We unloaded everything except the bed then set about getting the full size bed broken down and moved into the master bed room. We then set up the new frame and headboard/footboard and were about to set the box springs in place when I noticed that the way the bed was set up (just like the old one) we could no longer open the closet door! Hmmm we replaced a FULL with a QUEEN. I guess size does matter! :-) We finally had to turn the bed 90 degrees which allowed the closet door to open but eliminated the ability to use the new night stands Debbie had bought! Boy was she steamed! We think we have a solution: The closet is an odd triangle shape. We plan on removing the front wall with the door frame and rebuilding it so the closet is a square. That will give is the room to use night stands. I'll post pics of that mod when we do it. (Update: We decided not to do that at all)

After that I mounted an under cabinet light for Deb in the kitchen and removed an old pic from the wall and put a new one in its place. Deb again fixed us a fine meal to top off the day.

Oh joy, more floor work in store for me today! See here for details of the floor repair under the refrigerator. That repair finished the kitchen floor repairs. We can now put down vinyl flooring in the living room and the kitchen. The hallway repair will have to wait for another weekend.

Next up was the staining of the decks. We bought a gallon of Behr #401 water based deck stain. I'll tell you now, that stuff is a lot harder to apply than their old #81 series stains! It just does not 'soak' into the wood as well. My sister and Debbie started this fun job while I was finishing up the floor repair and cleaning up the huge mess I had made. They were about 1/2 done when I relieved Deb so she could start supper. See below for pics. We started the back deck and got it 90% done. We had to leave about 4 boards at the door and the steps bare until we left Sunday. It's a slow drying stain and we didn't want to 'paint ourselves into a corner'! It didn't dry on the front enough to walk on it until Sunday around noon.

Labor Day! I elected to not start on the hall floor due to the fact I would have to remove the rear door and felt I just wouldn't have enough time. Plus I had promised my sister I would help her with mowing and trimming her yard. So Deb and I sat around drinking coffee and enjoying the quiet, cool and peaceful morning. We then walked around the edge of the 'yard' and driveway just looking at all the different kinds of trees. We found a small dogwood tree right at the edge of the back driveway. It has some bark damage from what looks like a truck bumper but appears healthy. It should bloom in the spring.

Around noon I headed over to help my sis while Debbie decided to tackle painting the bedroom ceiling. The ceilings throughout the home are stained, not with water leak stains, but a weird pattern of, well, spots. I need to take a few pics of this, maybe someone can identify what causes this. My sis thinks it's a combination of cigarette smoke and condensation?

Anyway Deb had bought ceiling paint from Kilz the same folks who make the excellent stain blocker. She assumed this paint had the stain blocker stuff built in so she did not bother to prime. Well needless to say the 'spots' bled right through. That was one mad woman! We are going to try two coats but the rest of the ceilings will get primed first, then painted!

Well the day was over way too fast so we packed up, shut off the power then spent a few minutes staining the final boards and steps on the back deck.

Well that wrapped up our weekend, here is a pic of our new pet, she lives outside of course!

Well no work on our place this weekend :-( We came down to help my sister move from our family retreat to her newly purchased home. We rented a 24' truck and spent all day Saturday and most of Saturday night moving her. We came back to our place collapsed and went to bed...

When we got up we could barely move! After coffee and breakfast I started raking the leaves off the gravel driveway. I noticed a 2' piece of wood on the hood of the Xterra and then I noticed this:

My insurance company has a no deductible policy for any glass so I can have this fixed quickly. This is one of the consequences of having the tall trees around the mobile home; falling branches and nuts. There are many hickory nut trees all around and when the nuts fall from 50 to 75 feet they make very loud bangs on the roof! When we get the metal roof on it will be full of dents in no time.

This fine specimen was on the lid of a garbage can at my younger brothers girlfriends house! I have seen many of these in eastern KY but this is the largest one I have ever seen. In the pic the spider is feeding on another spider my brother put in there. You can clearly see the red hour glass on her abdomen. While not deadly to a healthy adult, this spiders bite can kill a infant or pet! The bite does cause EXTREME pain in anyone it bites. Be aware that in Kentucky most hospitals do have the anti-venom.

We were supposed to come down to the lake Saturday, October 1st but our cat Little Bit had taken ill and was in the vet hospital. In just 4 days she went from being a loving, active cat to not recognizing us. We had her put to sleep today. After burying her in the back yard woods she so loved to 'hunt' in we elected to come on down to the lake for a change of scenery instead of moping about the now empty house. Little did we know what fate had in store to help us through our grief.

That night we were sitting out on the back steps when I heard a rustle in the leaves. After a couple of minutes two small gray and white cats came into view! We were able to coax one of them to come close enough to pet with a nibble of food but the other one refused to do so. Just being able to pet the one sort of lifted our spirits a bit.

The very next morning another solid white female cat came to visit and she was VERY friendly! She let us hold her and even came inside for a bit. Not an hour after that two small pups came along and Deb fed them a hotdog. They were very skittish leading me to believe they were strays. Deb had to go to the store and while she was out picked up some cat food and dog food. Of course by the end of our vacation the white cat had a name (Boo) and Deb was making plans to get her home. More on that and the pups later.

While Deb was at the store I started on the hall floor. This job took about 4 hours. See the floor repair section for a couple of pics of this.

I also worked on our washer, an old Kenmore Thin Twin stackable. The week before my sister said it had went through a wash cycle without spinning. I did some web research last week and knew what to check. Turned out to be the timer was acting a bit flaky. I'll eventually have to replace it.

We didn't do a whole lot of anything today. It was raining and just one of those days it was hard to get anything going. We did some minor things like replacing wall switch plates, replaced the lights in the bath and kitchen with more modern ones and Deb did a bit of painting.

About 9:00PM the white cat came back for a visit. Deb set out some cat food which she wolfed down and begged for more. Not wanting her to throw up, we refused her. Still not sure if she belongs to someone or not. She may have been abandoned. She let us pet her for a bit then left again. Again she raised our spirits a bit.

Friday, October 7th

Spent today getting a list of things needed to start the roof project. This involved getting on the roof and laying out some test pieces of furring strips and metal. We also took some careful measurements of the living room and kitchen/hall for the vinyl flooring project.

Today was go to Lowes day. Normally I love going to Lowes but it being Saturday and sort of a gloomy day, I knew it would be packed. As we hooked up the trailer it started spitting rain. Great ... Lord, shoot me now!

We spent almost 4 hours at Lowes. Nobody there knew anything about anything. Ever try to get three pieces of 12' wide vinyl flooring, 10 10' baseboards, 36 1x2" furring strips and all the other crap we had to get through Lowes without bending the flooring, breaking the baseboards or getting stuck? By the time we got out of there, recovered from the price, and figured out how to get 12' flooring securely loaded onto an 8' trailer for a 45 minute ride home I was ready to go postal! One of the few times in my life I considered stopping at a bar at 2:00 in the afternoon ... You might be wondering how I managed to get the flooring home without it bending and creasing? Well I used several of the 1x2 furring strips stuffed down inside each of the rolls to support it. It worked like a charm.

Of course it had to rain Sunday when I needed to get started on the roof project. It finally quit around noon so I was able to get several hours in the project. See The Roofing Project for the complete story.

On other matters Boo the white cat had come to visit each night and toward the end of the week had started spending the night asleep on the couch. I would leave the back window open so she could come and go as she needed. She would hang around long enough to get fed and get her ears scratched then she would leave for the day. I told Deb she was actually going home for the day! I'm still not convinced she doesn't belong to someone local and is just taking advantage of our love of cats. The pups I mentioned earlier also came by every morning for some puppy chow. They still would not let us near them.

Finally Thursday around 1:00 PM with Debs help I finished the roof. Boy that was a job I would be happy to never do again! It's not hard work but my knees are in bad shape from years of abuse and one surgery. So now is was on to the floors.

Well today we emptied out the living room of all furniture and proceeded to prep the room for laying the new vinyl floor. See the living room page for some pics of this easy job. You talking about brightening up a room! It just made the home feel so much 'cleaner'.

A funny story. After we were done with dinner tonight we had sat down to read and enjoy the evening. We suddenly heard this loud scratching sound from in the kitchen ... It sounded like a possum or coon was trapped in the bottom kitchen cabinets! I grabbed a flashlight and headed in there. Just when I got to the range I heard this pathetic meoooow :-) It sounded like a cat! I had the skirting doors open during the day to help dry out under the floor and each night to keep the critters from getting under there I would close them back up. I went out and opened the doors and it was Boo under there! She had only been trapped for a couple of hours but she was not happy! We fed her and loved on her to tell her we were sorry but she was still a bit pissed.

Today we did the same thing for the kitchen. My sister came over and gave us a hand doing this room. Being smaller than the living room we were able to use the living room floor to layout the vinyl flooring for trimming. This made the job a lot easier. We did not extend the flooring all the way under the fridge or the range. I just could not see the point. I used scraps to put in those areas and made seams. No one will ever know but me.

Deb finished up the day by painting the INSIDE of the small closet in the living room. We call it the broom closet as, well, that's what's in it! It really brightened it up.

Well, it's the last day of our vacation. We started the day by cleaning up the huge mess made from two weeks of working. Next Deb outlined the area where we want to do some landscaping and put in a small garden with sticks and rocks. We also took a walk down to the lake and I worked on a walking path through the forest land behind us. It's such a beautiful area.

I knew Deb had wanted to try to take Boo home, but alas, after spending the night she left and we did not see her again before we left. Strangely we also had not seen the pups or the little gray cats since Friday. I guess they all served their purpose. Deb was sad as we left as she had already grown attached to Boo.

Well we came down Friday night after work and of course it rained. We had the trailer loaded down with a riding mower I had fixed for my sis, a push mow I had fixed for my brother, and a tiller I had tried to fix for him but had not been able to get running. We also had a TV and an old entertainment center for my brother. It was 10:00 PM before we got there. Deb was all excited because she had worried about Boo all week. She had brought cat food, treats and toys. I think she expected Boo to be sitting on the steps waiting for us but she never showed.

Did I mention the very irritating thing about the new roof? Nope , guess I didn't. The mobile home is surrounded on ALL sides by either Oak trees or Hickory Nut trees. These trees of course have nuts on them that fall off in the fall. Before putting the new roof on when these rather large nuts would fall from 50-70 feet onto the roof they would make a dull but loud thump. With the new roof when a nut falls it is LOUD! Not only that but you get the pool table sound, you get the first WHACK then the nut bounces and rolls across the entire roof! It is loud enough to wake you from a dead sleep. Of course the wind was blowing as a cold front came through and all night long it was nuts and small branched hitting the roof. I did not sleep well at all. After the rain stopped we went for a walk along the lake shore this morning (See pic below)and though we were two to three hundred yards down the hill away from the home you could clearly hear the nuts hitting the roof! Our neighbors are not going to like us.

We had planned to do nothing all weekend but enjoy the fall colors, but that lasted about 2 hours, then we were bored silly. We decided to take the equipment over to my brothers and since we had nothing better to do I worked on another tiller he had there. I was able to get this one running so we loaded it on the trailer and took it back with us to start the garden plot.

Deb had laid out an area about 20' x 12' out from the east end of the mobile home for a garden plot.

Boy I had no idea how hard and poor the soil was until I tried to break it up with the tiller. This is an old, light weight, front tine tiller and it tried to pull me all over the place! I worked until it got dark (about 2 hours) and only got about 10 square feet done! I had to quit when the darn pull cord broke on the tiller and I had to fix it. Still no Boo :-( Also have not seen the pups or the gray cats!

We got up early this morning to a beautiful sunrise. I took a pic, but my camera for whatever reason was totally out of focus. Yes, it is auto focus, so I know it was not my eyes! After coffee I got started on the garden about 8:00 am. I could tell the sad tale of hours of labor tilling, removing rocks and roots, but why bore you? The pics tell it all, sort of. Pics can't show how sore I was! Yes, ALL of those rocks came out of that small 20' x 12' area. This soil is so poor and rocky it will take years to get it in good shape! It's nothing but clay and rocks. We had a huge pile of composted leaves and stuff that we tilled in but it will need sand, top soil and fertilizer to make it ever grow anything. Next weekend I am bringing my small metal trailer and we plan on going to the lake to get some rich dirt that has washed out of the hollows. I may even get some sand. We also plan to get another round of composted leaves into the soil before winter hits. Maybe by spring it will at least be brown soil not white powdered limestone colored!

Deb is now worried that something has happened to her, the pups and the gray cats. I was worried that I had trapped Boo under the mobile home like I did before but I had checked and she was not there.

Well the Beverly Hillbillies arrived tonight! At least that's what Debbie says we look like every time we come down with the trailer loaded to the max! I removed the side rails of the red trailer and put the little white trailer, wheels up, on top. We also had the wheel barrow, all the garden tools, weed eater, blower, trash cans and other stuff lashed and tied everywhere. Sorry no pic of that...

I decided to do the last floor repair job in the back master bedroom today. Boy was that a job! First you have to realize this: This is the room we have stored all the stuff in as we work on the rest of the home. You can imagine the amount of junk in here. Tools, wood, vinyl flooring two beds and a rubber raft! We first had to empty the room which took an hour. I then decided to rip out the floor all the way across the back wall and replace it. If you ever wanted to see how an old trailer floor is really put together see the Master Bedroom floor repair section ! That little job took me about 5 hours. While we were having lunch ONE of the two pups showed up. He was very skinny and not quite as shy as he was. Something must have happened to his twin. We fed him a large meal and tried to get him to come to us. I was finally able to get him to take a bit of food from my hand but he still very skittish.

After that was done Deb started painting the ceiling. She looks so cute in her painting outfit!

While she was doing that I went to my brothers to get my old Craftsman garden tractor. This will be used to pull the white trailer as we start the yard work.

My sis came by this evening with Rudy her boxer dog. He gets a little rambunctious when out of his pen! (He has to stay in the pen during the day while she works. It's a chain link pen 10' x 10'. ) When he finally calms down he thinks he's a cat and wants to get in your lap!

After supper I was sitting outside when I heard a cat. Thinking it was Boo, I called for it, but it turned out to be the smaller of the two gray cats. The shy one. I fed it some food but it still wouldn't let me near it.

While Deb was working in the master bedroom I decided to start the 'landscaping'. I first picked up the 1/2 ton of rocks from the garden spot and dumped them in the storm shelter hole. The what? The folks we bought the home from had started to build a storm shelter behind the mobile home. They dug this huge hole in the hill and started to lay out a building but never got past that point. We are going to slowly fill it in.

A couple of weeks ago Deb had marked where she wanted to do some landscaping. Feeling the need for more torture (manual labor) I started trying to till it up. This ground was harder than the garden plot! I ended up having to use a pick axe to break the ground up then used the tiller to bust up the clay clods and roots. Then we tilled three of the small white trailer loads of the 'lake mulch' into the bed. (Lake Mulch: leaves and soil that has washed down out of the creeks feeding into Lake Cumberland. This material lies in the bottom of the channels on the now exposed shore. The lake is currently lowered due to a crack in the dam so the mulch is easy to get to.) This raised the bed up about 6" and turned it from clay dust to good soil. Next trip down I'll do the other side. The back landscaping will have to wait till next year when we do the deck.

While we were packing up to come home, the one pup and the small gray cat came for a last meal. After feeding them I started loading the mower and tiller onto the trailer. It was getting dark at this time and I had went in to get something and had just stepped out on the porch when I saw another cat in the driveway.

It was Boo! She was SO glad to see us! Deb was just tickled pink that she was OK. We fed her a huge meal, loved on her a bunch then continued packing. After eating, she just flopped on the steps like she belonged there. It was hard to leave her again but we had no cat carrier to bring her home and I'm STILL not convinced she doesn't belong to someone. I'm also not sure if Boo would survive in the city. She has grown up with total freedom in the country and we would have to confine her to the house in Lexington. If she got out, she would roam, and get run over or lost.

Unknown to me my wife had taken the loss of our cat Little Bit harder than I thought. We both found ourselves seeing a shadow in the house or yard, or hearing a soft sound and for a fleeting instant thinking it was her. The house was lonely, quiet and well, empty. Walking in the yard we always seemed to end up at her grave...

So you can imagine my utter surprise when Deb shows up at my work on my birthday with a box, sits it on my desk and tells me to open it. Tumbling out in a flurry of paws, tails and meows were TWO small kittens! A chunky gray striped one and a skinny black and white one. Deb had gotten them at a local pet store where the Humane Society had a bunch up for adoption. She had noticed the striped one as soon as she walked by as he was the only one alert and playing. She spur of the moment decided to get him. His 'cell mate' was the black and white one and seeing as how they would be lonely without each other she got them both. The gray one was 10 weeks and the black one 6 weeks old. I got to cat sit with them at the office for the rest of the day as Deb had to go back to work. The ride home was fun, they got out of the box and the gray one ended up on my shoulder looking out the window while the black one just went from window to window meowing.

Since they were my present I got to name them. I settled on Albert Einstein for the gray one and Sir Isaac Newton for the black one. We call them Albert and Newt. The house is alive again. Thank you Debbie....

We came down for the final time this weekend to winterize the mobile home and enjoy the last of the nice weekends before it gets really cold. We brought our new cats Albert and Newt down for the weekend. They traveled well but were glad to get out of the truck!

We didn't do too much new work, just cleaned up the inside and outside. We are pleased with the progress we have made this year. There is still a lot to do but the end is in sight!

Our Mobile Home Blog

2005