Finished the kitchen stove ventilation Sunday, 11-Dec-22 22:14:46 CET

Repaired the stove Wednesday, 28-Dec-22 15:59:23 CET

Sunday, 18-Dec-22 21:52:21 CET

Started preparing to plaster the hall

This week I started preparing to plaster the hall on the ground floor.

Monday 12 December

It was cold today. DW and I went to work as we usually do on Mondays. At work, I was confronted with a mishap with the cleaning company of my employer. This was not good; they had used the wrong cleaning detergent and used it without diluting it. It was really intense stuff. I opened the windows, and after one hour, I decided to go home and continue working from home.

What DW would do to get home I did not bother so much about at that point. That was something I had to solve later. It did not pan out as a success.

I could concentrate well on my work; it was beautiful sunny weather. DD was at home as well. She worked on her school project at the University, an architecture project where she designed a museum. Perhaps it stays as a school project and will not become an actual building; just my thought.

Keeping our sheep's drinking water liquid is challenging with freezing temperatures.

I am listening to a Swedish blog Lilltorp, and in their blog from 19 November 2022, they gave a tip: If you keep the water bucket in a tire, then fill it with hay or straw, and I must say that it helps!

Why would one keep the water bucket in a tire? Well, our sheep play around with the bucket, and it falls over if there is nothing to support it. The tire makes the water bucket stay upright. Now we filled the tire with straw to isolate the bucket.

 

 

Tuesday 13 December

Today I worked from home. Then I brought DD to the train station after lunch and continued to work from the office.

Wednesday 14 December

DW worked today. Usually, she is off on Wednesdays, but she switched that to Thursday this week.

For me, this was a half day working from home, and after lunch, I started to clear the hall. That is so that I can start plastering the area from the kitchen to the front door. I disassembled the temporary stairs and moved them to our sea container. When taken apart, the packages become compact. I have no idea what I will use the stairs for, but it is okay wood so let's store it. It was satisfying to see the hall become empty.

While I was working, this guy hung around chirping and doing his things. We have many seeds in the grass, and our sheep got lovely wool. I have seen birds picking wool from our sheep. It is okay when birds pick their wool, but we have also seen that mice have wool in their nests. Anyhow, we treat animals well around here. The robin bird is a quick busy animal; the photo I took did not become entirely sharp.

It is not so that the entire wall is emptied; on the other side of the door to the workshop, heaps of boxes are still standing. I will continue to work on them another time.

Next, I discarded empty boxes. It was freezing, so I created a heap outside the door in a first step. Then I moved the heap in the final step to the small trailer with the blue hood. It feels excellent to remove clutter.

After the cleaning action, I decided to make Kanelbullar. I must say it was great fun to use the kitchen. I found several recipes, but I just picked one of them. I am not sure I liked how the recipe described how I should do it. I ended up using more buckets than necessary. In the end, the cinnamon buns became perfect, which was great. DS was especially delighted with this treat.

It would be nice to figure out how to make the buns in a way that suits me and blog about that one day.

Thursday 15 December

Today I worked from the office. The car had to be brought to the garage for maintenance this morning. The garage is in the city center near the office, so I could walk to the office from the garage. I had severe problems remembering it was Thursday and not Monday the previous two Thursdays. This Thursday, I had no such problems.

DW worked from home. Young men were walking around in the area, selling subscriptions for charity. They were hesitant to approach our house. One of them was brave and came to our door, and DW opened it. He asked DW if the sheep were dangerous! She thought it was so funny to ask that she first said they were really dangerous. Perhaps he had seen YouTube videos of the Angry Ram; who knows? Unfortunately for him, he could not convince DW to take a subscription.

We discussed the incident and concluded that we should give our sheep new names: Beasty Bea, Savage Selma, and Heinous Hanna.

It was raining and around freezing temperature when I came home, an exciting combination. I was glad I reached home without any issues.

Friday 16 December

It is Friday, and not much has happened in the house this week unless clearing half of the hall is counted as a massive achievement. I am afraid it is not a remarkable achievement. Today DW and I went to our offices, but the car was covered in ice because of yesterday's rain. I had to crawl into the car via the trunk; all the other doors were stuck. I could start the car and let the heater do its job while I cleaned the windows.

When we drove to work, we took a detour to avoid traffic jams.

Today we had a Christmas lunch at work. That was great.

In the evening, we ate Pizza as we often do on Friday evenings.

Saturday 17 December

This morning we had decided to pick up more hay from the farmer nearby. Our sheep were eating at a good pace, so our previous load of hay was almost finished.

This time we loaded the trailer with 19 hay bales. I cannot predict how long our sheep will take to eat these hay bales. I do hope it will take longer than last time.

We could load 12 bales into the small hay shed. The rest went into the sea container.

After the hay bale project, I wanted to make progress in clearing the hall in preparation for plastering the hall. Some of the boxes DW agreed on receiving in the hobby room on the first floor. That was not all of the things, though. The workshop has been in a mess for a long time now, and I figured it would be possible to fit more into the workshop if I put up a shelf. To do that, I also had to clear out the workshop floor. Obviously, putting up a shelf is also something I will need to take down again when I plaster the workshop, but that is a challenge for another time.

It panned out really well. Some of the stuff could be moved to the sea container, and some fit on the shelf. I even placed the hall furniture here to store more shoes and coats. Those things had been standing in the living room, so now that gave more space in the living room.

There are just a couple of things left in the hallway. I must say this is a decent outcome for this clearing project. It is near that I can start plastering. It would be nice if I could tidy up the rest of the workshop before Christmas starts, but we will see how that goes.

Sunday 18 December

This morning, it was a beautiful sunrise at -7°C. The plan for today was to move the sheep's fence area.

I was thinking about what to do next with the hall. Technically, it is more or less clear, so I could start plastering, but I thought I should tidy up the workshop a little more instead. On 26 December, we will get visitors again, and it could be nice to have the workshop just a little tidier when people arrive.

Before moving the fence, I took the opportunity to upgrade the fence collection rack I built on 15 October. In the original design, you could hand a fence on one side, and now I have made it so that you can also collect a fence on both sides of the rack. The base of the gadget also got more steadiness, with two planks, but I also put two tiles on the wagon to make it sturdier. I was pleased with myself. It is good to have self-confidence, but usually, too much backfire in one way or another. That happened in this situation because when I wanted to start using the improved fence rack, it turned out to be so that all fence poles were stuck into the frozen ground. They were not going anywhere, let alone allowing me to make new holes for the poles. Frozen clay is not something you challenge unless you are a jackhammer.

I abandoned the fence-moving plan altogether. The rest of the day, I worked on tidying up the workshop. That was nice as well. Somehow ordered tools take up more space than if they are all lying on a pile. There are more challenges ahead of making this work properly. I will have some tool walls, but that is after I plaster the workshop walls.

This concludes this week's progress in the house. This week I started preparing to plaster the hall by clearing the hall of boxes. It feels great to keep going with finishing the house.