Your POA Dollars at Work

When we returned to Ruger Ranch, we were happy to see that Brian Hampton had been working on one particularly troublesome stretch of road.

If people are going to get stuck, they do it here. I've gotten stuck here, and so has Kathleen Stowe.

It's also the point people have trouble getting past, getting stuck or not, when the weather is bad.

We thought he was done, but the next day as we were headed into Yarnell, we spotted this truck full of decomposed granite...

And Brian back at it.

On our way back, we saw him spreading DG at that 90 degree bend in the road before the Ranch entrance. It's also a tricky spot.

Brian wasn't the only one out. This is one of Rex Maughn's cowboys. He was riding the State Trust land outside the Ranch looking for bulls.

A Site to Behold

We arrived at our place to see the completed site work.

It didn't take long for it to be put to the test. It started raining early on Saturday morning and rained hard for a while.

The ditch on the south side of the house was collecting rain water, just as we hoped, and funneling it into our new culvert.

Here's how our driveway looked on the other side of the culvert, with the water all channeled into the ditch.

This is what used to happen.

The 'Mini Pond'

For some reason, the water collects naturally on the west side of the house, forming a little mini pond.

It's sometimes a nuisance. The cows plod through it and the moisture draws wasps in the summer.

So Gerald got the idea of filling it with some extra river rock we have. The only trouble with that, is that the water started running across the driveway.

So he had Brian Hampton bury a pipe in the ground that we hoped would act as a kind of culvert. Gerald attached this above-ground portion to keep things out of it until he could protect it. But with the rain starting, he had to finish it up.

First, he removed the above-ground portion of the pipe

Then he covered it with this screen, which was the mesh cover to an old fire pit.

Finally, he dug out a little trench to lead the water to the pipe.

It worked beautifully.

Another Snow Day

It didn't take long before the rain turned to snow, and it snowed for most of the next two days.

Most of the work we had planned to do involved tile, which involved mixing mortar and grout, and Gerald didn't want to do that outside in the weather.

So, instead he decided to try to hook up one of the vanities in the master bathroom.

He didn't get very far before finding out that the piece he's holding here needed to be a few inches longer.

Some time later in the afternoon, I heard cursing from the general area of the master bath, and Gerald yelled for a mop.

Once he got the water shut off, he decided to stick to something he's more comfortable with, and smoked a ham and a pork butt.

Finishing Touches

On Sunday, it continued to snow all day so we shelved our plans to go to Prescott.

So the day wouldn't be a total loss, Gerald decided to install the door moulding on the master bath.

We picked something a little more formal feeling than the rest of the house.

Here's how it looked when it was done.

A Graceful Exit

Even though it snowed all day Sunday, the temperature warmed up enough to melt it almost as soon as it fell, so the roads were fairly clear.

Our exit strategy involved getting up and leaving at the magic moment when the temperatures got just above freezing. That way, they wouldn't be icy, but they would also be fairly firm.

We saw these tracks just outside our entrance. They looked big for deer.

Though the hooves were in two distinct parts, so they couldn't be cows. We wondered if they could have been elk. We had heard that they had moved back into the area.

Out near the highway, we noticed a lot of horse poop on the roads. Finally, we saw them. There were 18 in all.

We always wondered what was in this bucket.

In Yarnell, we passed a snowman, but Gerald wouldn't slow down long enough for me to take a picture. "It wasn't a very nice one," he said.

But it was a heck of a lot nicer than this poor creature we saw on the corner of Tegner and Highway 60 in Wickenburg.

Folks were staring and pointing and walking over to see what the heck it was.

I must say it's about the ugliest snowman I've ever seen.

Takin' Care of Business

On our last visit to the land, J.C. came up and helped us get everything done we needed to do for our "final" final inspection.

He started with the handrail on our "access" door.

And soon that was welded into place.

From there, he moved onto installing GFI outlets in the garage.

Meanwhile, Gerald installed our house numbers at the road, covered some exposed plumbing upstairs and worked on corrections to the stairs leading up from the garage.

By lunchtime, we were pretty much inspection ready and able to move onto other things.

Closing the Barn Doors

One of our priorities was finishing and installing the barn doors so they would be out of the way when we put the finish on the floor.

When we built the doors, we intended to panel both sides and install the "X" crosspieces to give them the barn door look on both sides. But after we finished the first side and realized how heavy they were, we decided that adding more wood was a bad idea.

Gerald had the idea of making a collage out of old burlap sacks. So once we got the doors laid out on the floor, I dry fit the sacks while Gerald installed a track along the bottom.

That done, we glued the burlap sacks down using spray adhesive, and attached a wood border.

Then J.C. helped raise the doors...

and attach the hardware.

Here's how it looked from our "stealth" guest room, with one door closed.

Tending the Fire

We love having a fire in a chiminea on the porch, but so far, we'd had very bad luck with them here. We were on our third. The wind had blown off the first two and smashed them on the ground. So Gerald commissioned J.C. to weld one out of metal, and he brought it up on this trip.

It was just in the nick of time, as it turned out. When J.C. went to move the old chiminea out of the way, it fell to pieces.

J.C. started by tiling a piece of plywood for a base.

He constructed the main body of the chiminea out of a compressor tank mounted on a rusted wheel.

Gerald had said he wanted something more substantial than sheet metal for the flue, so J.C. used a section of light pole.

It weighed about 200 pounds, and had to be winched up. When he got it raised, it was too long, so he had to cut off a section before he could attach it.

Then he welded it in place. The sun was setting by the time he got it all together, which made a nice atmosphere for our first fire.

Hiding the TV

When we built our fireplace, Gerald recessed a box for the TV, which we covered with a beautiful gyclee called "Jack's Night to Win" that was a gift from our dear friend, artist Bonnie Marris.

But to make it work, we needed a mechanism to raise and lower it.

J.C. found us an old-fashioned block and tackle that he installed at the top of the chimney.

Next, he and Gerald attached a "single tree" or "whiffle bar" we had found at a local antiques store to the back of the artwork.

Once that was in place, they attached the whiffle bar to the block and tackle. Then they were able to raise and lower the painting by pulling on the rope.

J.C. had fabricated two brackets from horse shoes where the painting would rest.

The last step was to make a loop with the rope and install a star hook to hold the rope in place.

A Site for Sore Eyes

It took several weeks for the ground to dry out after all our rain and snow, but finally the conditions were right to finish up the site work.

Brian Hampton came out to do some of the initial work, including installing a culvert across the driveway where the rain was constantly wearing gullies the size of small canyons in the driveway.

Then Jeff Staley from Wilhoit came out to make it all look pretty.

Once he was done, everything looked smooth and finished. Now, we were ready for Brian Hampton to come back and spread the decomposed granite, which should help us control the erosion and keep everything from turning into a mud bog in the rain.

Brian was expected later in the day. Unfortunately, we wouldn't be here long enough to see it. But Brian felt confident it would all be done before the next rains were expected on Thursday.

Gerald found a nice spot to watch Jeff work...

That is, when he wasn't out with a rake helping spread the dirt in areas the tractor couldn't access.

Here, along the north side of the house, Jeff had to loosen the dirt with a pick, so Gerald could groom it.