Distillery part 8: painting stuff

This time it really has been too long! I've been looking for my photos on this computer for a half an hour trying to figure out if I have edited any yet or not! The last time I tried to do a post a few weeks ago, when I turned on the computer, it said it wasn't connected to any network, so I couldn't get on line. Vince wasn't here, and I don't have a clue! So I said a few choice swear words and watched a movie instead!
We have been having computer or internet issues lately (mom, too, her hard drive went in her laptop, we had it replaced and then the new one went also, so it is currently back at the repairman's - the Computer Man in Johnson city). The hard drive in Vince's work computer croaked last week, so he is working on fixing that as I write this. There is nothing more frustrating than these computers!
Our internet connection is so slow in the mornings that it takes forever for me to process orders and get the postage printed from my Stamps.com program, and God forbid it be a foreign order, that can take up to a 1/2 hour just to print a label out!! Needless to say that the last thing I want to do is go near a computer. I miss the good old days before all this technology ran our lives. I'm so glad to have the distillery project to get me away from the computer (for now anyway, wait till we open and have to all our reporting to the government online!)

Well. We have been very busy and have gotten a lot done in the last few months. I'm not sure when these pictures are from. I think it was in late March after Vince's first carpal tunnel surgery (he is doing great, by the way!) I hope to get caught up with our progress here on the blog in the next few days.

Lumber for trim, paint for walls, and 2 tables we got from the old Hunts Turkey Farm building in Killawog. We rented the building from 1996 to 1999 for Fancifuls. The legs were really rusty, so I painted those with some Rustoleum. They are super heavy duty with stainless steel tops.

This is what the floor looks like up close.

The rubber baseboard trim. It was a 120 foot roll and we used all but about 14". That is a floor drain to the left of the roll.

Wall Magic!! This is a 2 roller system where you can paint 2 colors at the same time and it gives a great effect. I have painted walls, floors and furniture with this roller. My mother-in-law gave it to me for Christmas one year after I saw an infomercial about it back in the 80's. Soon after that cheaper versions showed up in home improvement stores. I LOVE this thing! Thanks Donna!

I was too lazy to mask off the line we drew on the wall, so I just held a piece of cardboard on the wall.

Vince wanted a little something extra on the top half of the wall in the distillery side, so we thought this stone block stencil would give a castle effect.

 It only took me a day to stencil this! I love it when it takes less time than I think it is going to, because that hardly ever happens! It usually takes me 3 times longer than I think it should. I love the way it looks.

And on to the tasting room.....

I had a lot of the 2 colors of paint left over from the other side ( I am terrible at figuring out how much paint to buy ) so I decide to do the bottom half of the tasting room with it.

Vince was doing this with his hand all bandaged up from his surgery. I love putting trim up, it is like framing a picture!

Guess what? I still had the 2 colors of paint on the wall magic rollers, so I decided to do the bottom half of the bathroom!

The theme in here is going to be a fairy forest. That's the plan anyway!

We are going to put a wooden chair rail around here because we had to do a handicapped accessible bathroom, which means metal hand rails, so we wanted to attach those to something sturdy.

I decided to change it up a little by stamping these leaves on the bottom half of the wall to help with the forest theme.

That's it for this installment! I know you are staying tuned, and I appreciate your patience!

Distillery part 7: ceiling, priming, cleaning

It has been so long since I've done a post, I almost forgot how!  Between working at Fancifuls in the mornings and then working on the building interior in the afternoons and weekends, I'm just too tired to blog!
Vince is currently recovering from his second carpal tunnel surgery, so I have a few free minutes to give some updates.
We have been very busy working on the inside, this post is showing what we got done prior to Vince's first carpal tunnel surgery on March 16th. We were trying to get as much as we could done because he would only have the use of one hand for awhile. We didn't really know what to expect from the surgery, but all went well with his left hand, he had minimal pain and was able to do some minor tasks after a few days. The worst part about the whole thing was having to tape a plastic bag over his hand for 12 days while he showered.

sooo, anyhoo, here is what we got accomplished in February and early March....

 After the drywall was finished and we got the heat going, it was time to put up the ceiling in the tasting room so the insulation guys could come back and do the attic area.

This is the lumber for the ceiling in the tasting room, there are 8' and 10' lengths of wood in these piles. We bought all this last year and had it delivered the same time as the lumber and drywall.

I started staining these before Christmas. I wanted to get them all done so they would be ready when we needed them. I worked on them evenings and weekends. I put one coat of stain and 2 coats of polyurethane on them.

 

We loaded the back of the truck up and backed it into the building to unload it because it was really cold that weekend, it was below zero with the wind chill, and it is really windy up on that hill!

We set up the chop saw and got to work!

We had stapled plastic sheeting up to help keep the heat in since we had the radiant heating system finally going. We pulled it down as we went along with the ceiling boards. Vince is cutting out a hole so the boards will fit around the recessed lighting fixtures.

Vince is cutting the last few boards to finish off the end. The portable scaffold we bought at Harbor Freight is one of the best purchases we have ever made!!

Yea! The last piece! We got it done that weekend.

It looks great! Now what can I make out of those scraps?

Insulating the attic area. That should help keep things warmer!

That foam oozes through every tiny crack and hole. But is really easy to scrape off and it didn't take long to clean it up. Yes, I saved some of it because it looked cool! It is pretty fragile though and if you squish it it will compact.

Now that it is all insulated, it is time to get ready for paint. I had to wipe down all the walls and the ceiling in the distillery side with a damp rag ( well, many damp rags!). That dust was everywhere and on everything. That took me half a day. Vince pushed me around on the scaffold to do the ceiling, so that saved a lot of time.

Wiring in a smoke alarm.

Music! I have Josh Groban, Cold Play, Perry Como, Neil Diamond, Billy Idol, Queen, John Denver, the B-52's, the Lumineers and a bunch of other stuff on there. I like to listen to music when I'm working. I love my little green guy, he is the portable speaker for my i-pod.

We bought this paint sprayer at Harbor Freight (we love that place!), it was kind of messy but made up for it by being able to paint that whole room in a few hours. We put a coat of primer and 2 topcoats on.

Grand Central Mess

trying to decide what colors to use

We had to wash the floor before we could paint it, and we still didn't have any water, so we ran the hose up from the house. We lucked out with the weather, it was nice out when we wanted to do the floor, so we were able to have the doors open to help dry it out after washing it.

All clean and ready to paint!!! What a horrible job that was, spraying the floor and scrubbing it with a broom and rinsing, rinsing, rinsing. Then we had to use an etching compound and rinse that off. But it was wonderful to get all that plaster dust and paint overspray out of there.

Distillery part 6: Utilities and progress!

A lot has been accomplished the last few weeks. 

This is the transformer where the huge wire comes from the pole, then the secondary wire runs up to the building. They did this part first.

Then they connected it to the pole.

 Hooray, no more generator!

Next, it is the spray foam insulation guys!

It was cool to watch, it goes on wet and immediately puffs up, it dries right away. Then they scrape it down so that it is flush with the 2x4's. He was using a round metal curry comb! ( a comb to groom horses, usually).

 A glove we found on the floor the next day. This stuff sticks to everything except plastic! They wanted to do the walls before we put up the ceilings because we were putting a wooden ceiling in the tasting room. So they are going to come back and do the attic floor at a later date.

We decided to hire someone to hang and finish the drywall. It was the best decision we have made so far! We really suck at it. Well worth every penny. Jeff and his crew did a fabulous job, and they are fast! The drywall was hung in 2 days by 3 guys. The taping, mud, and sanding was done by 2 people in 4 days. It was done in less than a week. I don't know why his phone number is not on the van, but he is out of Cortland and you can google "the rock company" to get his contact info.

These guys had the distillery side almost complete on the first day. We were really impressed with the way they could measure and cut the hole for an outlet, and then put the drywall panel up and the hole was in the right spot (in a matter of minutes). Vince and I had done some drywall work in our old house in Killawog and in this house, and we would always screw this up somehow!

The ceiling is done!

 The tasting room.

Taping the seams.

They were walking around on these stilts!

While the drywallers were working, Vince was busy putting the finishing touches on the boiler for the radiant heat system. The propane tanks were delivered and the floor was warm that evening! I call that crazy looking pipe and hose thing "the pantookler", it looks like something from Dr. Suess! It does hum a little!

We had to get a working phone number so that we could put it on our TTB permit application. We didn't really want that expense right now, but what could we do? So, here is Frontier, putting the phone cable in. They have this cool little machine that digs a trench and puts the cable down in the ground at the same time.

They dragged the cable up to the building...

and worked their way down to the road...they left the cable on top of the ground where the creek is, they said they'll come back in the spring and bury it under the creek then.

The ground was really soft that day, they got it stuck a few times and had to pull it out with the truck.

"Hello, you have reached Dragonfyre Distillery! Call back in a year and maybe we'll have some moonshine to sell you!"

We now have electricity, heat and a phone! Yea! 

We now have an electric bill, a propane bill, and a phone bill! Blech!

thought for the day

so here is this great picture that needs a caption (or not, but I gave it one anyway), and that is the thought for the day, or your week, or your life! 

This my brother, Dave.

He is a great adventurer! He has been all over the world - Europe, Japan, South America, and all over the USA. I think he, and my other brother, Jeff, got all the adventure genes!

He took a kayaking trip to Bhutan in November of 2015  (If you want to see more, he has some videos of this trip on you-tube, MoabDaveRules). This picture was taken by Phil DeRiemer of Adventure Kayaking (if you are interested in taking a trip, go to www.adventurekayaking.com)


Dave is the person that took me on the two big travel adventures of my life. When I was home from college one Christmas, he stopped at the house to pick up some stuff for a trip he was taking to New Hampshire to spend a week with some friends at 'The Grant', a piece of wilderness belonging to Dartmouth College. They were going to stay at a cabin and do some cross country skiing.
He looked at me and said "do you want to go?" I still don't know what compelled me to say yes! I'm not crazy bout being cold or camping in any form. But I was 18 and I guess it sounded like fun at the time.
We grabbed some warm clothes and hopped in the car.

I had no skiing equipment, in fact, I had never cross country skied before. Dave said we could borrow some stuff from the college- skis, poles, boots and a backpack.
It was dark when we got there, and we had to ski a mile to get to the cabin. Remember, I have never done this before, and now I have a backpack on also. (never backpacked either!) I go about 4 feet and fall over sideways! They pick me up and I try again. I couldn't even make it out of the parking lot! So one of the guys skis in with his stuff, comes back out and gets my stuff and takes it for me. I don't remember how long it took to get to the cabin, but I got there!

The cabin was divided into 2 sections, the common area with a table, and (I think) a 'kitchen', and the sleeping quarters which consisted of bunks and a woodstove. There was an outhouse, but I have thankfully blocked that scenario out of my memory. It was COLD there, I think I shivered all night long!

The next day we skied to another cabin that was 100 miles away. Ok, it was only 5 or 8 or something like that. I did ok getting there, but I started getting blisters on my heals on the trip back. It was torture! Dave would ski ahead and come back to urge me on... he kept force feeding me cheese and gorp, his mantra was "EAT OR YOU'LL DIE"! And he kept saying "Not much farther, it's just around the next bend". NOT.
Well, I made it back to that cabin, but I wasn't in any shape to do any more skiing! I don't know what I did the rest of the week, but I remember being pretty ripe by the time we got back to civilization. My hair was really long then, almost to my knees, and I remember washing it 3 or 4 times before it felt clean again!

The next adventure was a motorcycle trip to Colorado. I had just graduated from college and didn't have any immediate plans, so Dave asked me to go west, young woman! Why not? Dave had bought a motorcycle from my other brother, Jeff. He went and got a motorcycle license just for this trip. We shipped a bunch of clothes via UPS to the house he was renting with some other people in Denver. And off we went.

The bike had only 1 muffler, it was very loud, and the chain had to be tightened every so often. We would ride about 8 hours a day, we stayed with college buddies of his on the way out. At the end of the 2nd day, we were at Bish Mumford's place in Indiana (I think) Dave said he lived on a pig farm. I pictured a farm like the one Wilbur lived on in Charlotte's Web. It was actually a commercial pig farm and it was huge. It was a beautiful place, big enough for Bish's mother to host horse jumping events. They were getting ready to host a wedding that upcoming weekend (we were there on a Wednesday), I would have loved to have stayed for it, the ceremony was going to be out in a field, with hay bales for seats. This was back in 1980 and I had never heard of anything like that!  Bish had a Rottweiler dog that was a real character, and he had his own place there with a pool and hot tub. We were there for 2 days, it broke the trip up nicely.

 The weather was good for the most part, but when we got to Kansas you could see the rain storm in the distance that you knew you were going to end up driving through. It was like those cartoon rain clouds!

I stayed in Denver for awhile (I really don't remember how long I was there, maybe a month?) had a sub-adventure of white water rafting, (I think it was a job that Dave was checking out, a rafting guide, which he did end up doing at a later date) which included camping in a tent and watching Dave get catapulted out of the raft when his paddle got stuck in between some rocks in the river, and he just waved and said "I'll catch up!" as the rest of us went merrily down the river, (while I was screaming "that's my brother!!!" and thinking I'd never see him again). He caught up and all ended well there.
He and his house mates did not have a lot of money, or stuff. They had a party one night and there were so few dishes and silverware that when one person got done eating, they would wash their dish and then pass it on to another person! It was quite an experience. He made guacamole for that party and actually got me to taste it! I'm glad I did, because I really like it. I'm surprised I tried it, because I am a really picky eater and guacamole is not the most appetizing looking food!
 
   I took a Greyhound bus back home which was WAY worse than the bike ride out!

I think those 2 trips got it all out of my system, because to this day, I am content to just hang out at home, no desire to go anywhere!

so, anyway, that's Dave. the most awesome brother there is.