Odds and ends

The following weekend, we did odds and ends. I worked on cleaning up the interior of the house so it would be nicer inside. The weather was getting hot and the house was the coolest place, but there were stacks of scrap lumber, pipes and wires, piles of wood chips and sawdust and just plain dust.

Meanwhile, Gerald made a new set of temporary stairs to replace the glulam beam we had been using as a ramp.



He also mounted a hose reel, and worked on getting us ready for the combo inspection with J.C. on Saturday.











Meanwhile, we found this nice mirror at the thrift store at the senior center at Yarnell, which we installed over our one working sink. The solar hot water had been turned on, so we now had a flush toilet and hot and cold running water!

Gerald also fashioned a "closet" out of a cabinet we bought to use as a pantry where we could store our cold-weather clothing without fear of mice shredding them for bedding. We were starting to feel downright civilized!




Bubba found a cool place to nap in the afternoons.













And so did Gerald.

We had said it was too bad we didn't have cots to put on the porch which, with the near-constant breeze, makes it the most pleasant place to spend the hottest part of the day. Then Gerald remembered we had these cots, which we used on a roundup in Montana. Life is good.

An anniversary, an emergency

We spent the anniversary of our building project the same way we began it--doing site work. We went with the low bidder, a local who was well recommended. He said he charged $65 an hour and estimated he'd finish in a day, for approx. $500.

He brought a helper, who brought his 16-year-old grandson Ryan. They began with general clean-up of all the little pieces of debris under the porch.



Then the earth moving began in earnest. There was deep ruts from the winter rains, made worse by the heavy equipment, and the grade needed to be changed so that rain would run away from the house.

We had invited our friends, Myron and Betsy Deibel from Wickenburg, up to see what we were up to. They called and said they were on their way to Prescott and planned to stop by. They had just finished lunch at the bakery.

When they arrived, they asked about a white pickup that had gone off the side of the road. They had stopped and yelled but no one answered. They assumed it was an old wreck, and the hillside was steep, so they didn't try to climb down. We didn't know of any old wreck, but Ryan had left maybe 20 minutes before in a white pickup to work his shift at the Skull Valley Cafe. We got into our truck and followed Myron and Betsy to where they saw the wreck.


Here are the tracks that caught Myron's attention. The road took a sharp turn, but the tracks when straight ahead.











You couldn't see much from the road. If you didn't know to look, it would be easy to miss the truck.











When we climbed down, here's what we found. Judging from the broken trees, the truck had started to roll as soon as it left the road. On the way down, we saw Ryan's cellphone, which was open, making Gerald suspect he was texting or on the phone. There was also a trail of CDs and an Oatman Hotel coffee mug. A pinyon pine had stopped the truck. Ryan was lying on the other side. If not for the tree, it would have rolled on top of him.

Besty called 911. She is a nurse, but was wearing only sandals. She found an easier way down and kept the boy and Myron company until help arrived. Gerald went back for the boy's grandfather and I returned to the top of the hill to direct the emergency vehicles.

When Myron and I reached the boy, he was conscious and complaining of pain in his head. He was airlifted to St. Joe's in Phoenix. Miraculously, he wasn't badly hurt. He had a head injury and possible spinal injury, but no broken bones. The accident occured on Friday. He was released on Sunday.

We all said how fortunate it was that Myron and Betsy came by when they did--it must have been just minutes after the accident--and how amazing it was that they saw the tracks. Had they not, he could have been there for hours or days before he was found and the outcome could have been much worse.

The other two workers came back to finish the job the next day. It took another full day, and still about a third of the work remained. Gerald agreed with the contractor that we should wait until the combo inspection to finish, so the trenches could get filled in.

Still, the low bid was more than we had expected. It took two days instead of one, and the contractor charged us for Ryan's labor, which he had not mentioned when giving us his estimate. Still, Gerald was happy with the work he did.

Progress on the site

Mario, from our framing crew was coming on Saturday. So we got to the land on Thursday afternoon so we could spend all of Friday getting ready. We spent most of the day cutting boards to length and made a trip to Prescott to pick up the boards we were missing. Then we trimmed out the windows and installed the low bats using scraps from the back of the house.






On Saturday, we got a fourth estimate on site work. The bids ranged from under $500 to more than $4,500, which struck us as astonishing. The high bidder left a flier on our property. He came with a young man who wanted to bid on staining the house. He wanted to know whether we had a sprayer. Then he asked if we had a ladder.











Mario arrived about 7:30 and got to work installing the high boards above the windows, then what bats he could. Unfortunately, we were about 70 bats short. So the siding on the north and east sides is complete, but the south (front) and west will have to wait until we can get more material. At least all the boards are up.







Having done as much siding as materials allowed, Gerald and Mario got to work on the deck. That was great for two reasons: one was that having a deck that consists of more than sheets of OSB will increase our enjoyment of the property substantially. More practically, we need to get all of the lumber up off the ground in preparation for the site work.

Meanwhile, in preparation for the site work, I picked up our "boardwalk" and as many of the nails as I could find lying on the ground. I had gathered a shopping bag full by the time I was done.


Here's how the house looked by the end of the weekend. A big improvement over the Lowe's Tyvek look, don't you think?

First fire

Gerald and I returned on Thursday and planned to finish all the low siding on Friday. But on Friday, we both decided we were tired of the rickety blocks and boards we had been using for makeshift stairs. Gerald set to work to build a temporary set of stairs. It was lunchtime before he was finished. I didn't mind, because I got caught up on my reading.






We spent the rest of the day on siding. Here's Gerald cutting out a circle to accommodate a porch light fixture.











On Friday night, we lit off the inaugural fire in our new fireplace. Our neighbor Kathleen was there for the event.











On Saturday, Steve Hampton, who runs cattle on phase 3 stopped by to bid on the site work. We were happy to finally meet him. He told us he planned to bring back the cows to our section of the ranch later this summer.









By the time we left on Saturday, we had installed all the boards except what goes on top of the windows.

April showers

We came up the following week on a Thursday. Gerald had bought a new fire pit, and we had what was probably our farewell fire in this one. Like our entrance sign, it was a victim of natural causes. Snow had gotten into it and frozen. When it thawed, the whole bottom fell out. A gift from Gerald's daughter, Christy, it served us well for probably hundreds of fires. We bid it a fond adieu.





J.C. came up on Friday with a helper to attach the exterior portion of the flue from our fireplace.











On Thursday, Gerald had painted it green in the hopes it would blend in with the roof. The color was a good match, but it was a little more prominent than we would have liked.










When that job was done, we asked Jeremy to install the corner pieces on the siding, which were too high for us.











Old Santa Fe Lumber delivered the rest of our siding. So with the corner pieces installed and the rest of the lumber on site, we could finally finish up the siding.

Unfortunately, I checked the rain forecast for the area. It called for a 90 percent chance of rain that evening and a 70 percent chance on Saturday, which foiled our plans.

Since we hadn't had any rain for more than a month, it was hard to regret the rain. But we decided we'd be more comfortable if we headed home, so that's what we did.

Natural causes

For the next two weeks, we were only able to make day trips up to the land. On the first visit, we found the high winds had dispatched the sign we so painstakingly had hung. We contemplated a remedy. Perhaps having a party in which we invited friends up for target practice to shoot some ventilation holes in the sign. Liquor to be served afterward, of course.






The next weekend, we took our friends Jim Carson and Marguerite Hankins, both artists, up for a visit so they could shoot some reference materials. We saw our first wildflowers.










Here's Marguerite shooting a pond in a different section of Ruger Ranch.

Making an entrance, part 2

By late-afternoon on Friday, Gerald and J.C. were ready to install our entrance sign. J.C. had to park his pick-up under the poles to make the extension ladder reach.










He attached one side first.













Then the other.













This is the back...













...and the front.