19 in 19

Happy New Year! Welcome aboard the biggest, bestest blog post of 2019! GET IT? As you may know, I’m a Resolutionary. I churn a lot of resolve at the start of every year, and indeed – here we are. Day1 – 2019 – 10 Things I intend to do this year, starting now:

Get the Black Sheep Farmhouse to fully functional standards.

• Every time I say or write “finish Black Sheep Farm” I realize that probably not a realistic goal. Projects like this are never finished, really. Obv – I have more to report on this subject, keep reading…

Less ferry commuting/more staying over at Black Sheep Farm.

• See above. I’m really close, but not there yet for staying over on the weekends.

Get all personal digital assets organized and backed up in a non-cloud situation.

• I don’t fully trust the cloud in these wackadoodle times. I’m increasingly wary of all my life’s work and images being basically in the hands of technology titans. What if Google changes their minds? Poof – life gone.

Be better about saving and being real about my onerous tax burdens.

• Every freaking year, every freaking Jan. 01, every freaking time – the crippling anxiety starts and just grows and grows until somehow I’ve managed to pay the blood money to the evil empire. I just need to have the blood money in place before the end of the year and give myself back 4 months of my life.

Zero financially and otherwise devastating pet injuries or mishaps.

• I acknowledge this is most likely beyond my control but if I have to put these two hapless dork dogs in padded, Kevlar suits and monitor them every minute of every day to avoid another year of vet bills in the multiple thousands, I’ll do it. I swear to the lawd I will. 

Live and in-person people interaction via planes, trains or automobiles.

• I’m going to go places and see people outside a 200-mile radius. I swear to the lawd I am.

Oh sure – less sugar.

• If I do this, I lose weight. It’s mind-bogglingly, frustratingly simple.

Ride bike more and successfully recruit like-minded, bike-riding cohorts.

• This is an extended remix of a good thing I started in 2018. Call it building-on-my-successes. Cohort recruiting not to include the peeps I know that have gone fully, mountain bike/trail/marathon racing whatever bike riding crazy. More power to those psychos, but that is not my jam.

Oh sure – less clutter.

• Clutter is in my genes. I probably have extra, unnecessary genes kicking around because I thought they were cool or I found them in a free pile. I will do better about breaking the vicious cycle.

Write more in the name of contributing to society, honing my craft, using my words and other fancy ideals.

• So, here’s the thing – every week I write about 10,000 give or take words professionally. It’s a fine gig, I write about people doing good things and making positive changes in their lives. It’s story-telling and journalism-y and I love those things. I’m not selling fossil fuels or hook-up apps or video games or junk food and I’m infinitely grateful, trust me. But, it’s work. There are strict parameters. I don’t get to be funny or snarky or fierce. I have to be on someone else’s message. All of which is fine – that’s what paychecks are usually about. I’m pretty word worn out by the end of any given week and that is the downside. I need to find the energy to write for the reasons I started writing. To wit – share life lessons, inspire insight, make people laugh, show gratitude – ALL THE LOFTY THINGS!

And, away we go…

The Black Sheep Farm & Farmhouse restoration started when I bought the neglected property in fall of 2016. Undertaking the restoration of the farmhouse was, ahem, ambitious. Others would say insane. At the end analysis, we will all be correct.

2017 was about taking it apart and rebuilding all the core infrastructure, which was brutal and involved. There was a partner and then there wasn’t. 2018 was about putting it back together, there was a contractor and after probably far too long, I realized there really wasn’t. Two years into it, it was undeniable that I was on my own with this. I basically wasted the first half of the year waiting for a white-horse knight to ride in and put my humpty-dumpty house back together again, which didn’t happen.

I do intellectually understand what needs to happen. I can construction project-manage the shit out of this, but there’s two rather large resource gaps – skilled labor and money. Whoops. 2018 was kinda my Whoops year.

So, with a big bag of DIY intentions, I just accepted my fate as the acting general contractor and forced some forward momentum. In July and August, by hook and by crook (thinly veiled condemnation of the insulation contractors), I got the bare necessity framing and a kadzillion dollars worth of spray foam insulation done. At which point anyone anywhere wants to discuss insulation, I’m your girl.

August was an incredibly rough month, actually. The PacNw was choked out by wild-fire smoke, BSF was choked out by foam insulation off-gassing and other related fallout, it was just plain misery with a huge price tag. Definitely going on my top-10 worst months ever list.

Sheer force of my will, plus stalwart supporter Kerry (Aka “Hot Bothell Kerry”, another sidebar feel free to ask me about), pushed me through terrible month and into the next stage: Drywall. Labor Day weekend was our launch. As some of you may know, getting drywall done breaks out into hanging, taping & mudding, then sanding. Parts one and three, pretty much DIY-able. Part two – usually takes a pro.

But, heck, we had to start somewhere, so Part one was go! Kerry and I packed up our sleeping bags, some foodstuffs, our tools and the first 20-some sheets of drywall generously provided by noneotherthan Kerry (I will never see another birthday or Christmas gift from Kerry and I’m still overwhelmingly grateful) and we just…did it. Two days – back/neck breaking labor – viola! 75% of one small room had drywall hung on it! Proud, humbled, exhausted and absolutely clear on what I was dealing with (Only 6 more rooms, 70+ sheets of drywall, 3 cathedral ceilings and 3 closets to go!) – it was the most fabulous disaster ever!

October 14^th will go down in history as a monumental day in Black Sheep Farm’s history – that is the day my long-timer bestie Cindy and her drywall genius and unparalleled work-driven husband Aaron put boots on the ground. Originally intended as just a coaching/teaching day and of course the emotional support, that’s not what happened. Not even close. Tasmanian Aaron took one look at our work and…well…took over. I imagine it might have had something to do with our good intentions not equalling Aaron’s standards but it also had a lot to do with how sorry they felt for me. It was such a big relief and such a lucky break. From that day forward, this was Aaron’s mission and we just had to try and keep up with his seemingly tireless efforts. We were often exhausted just thinking about it all. In the immortal words of Black Sheep Farm’s young caretaker Zach – “Aaron has no chill”.

[Visually chaotic collage meant to illustrate the first few frenzied days of Aaron]

Over the course of then until now – Tasmanian Aaron HANDLED IT. Could I BE more grateful? Um…No. Are Aaron & Cindy going to be building a house in Cle’Elum in the near future and am I on the hook for at least 100 hours of hard labor out there? Um…Yes. Worth it? Hell Yes.

[Optically overwhelming collage #2 intended to really evoke the lack of chill]

DRYWALL LIFE LESSONS by Julianne

Any idiot with some upper body strength, a drill gun, a big t-square, a utility knife and some basic intelligence can hang drywall. It’s not fun and there are drywall-specific tools that will help. Primarily, a drywall hoist which is not prohibitively expensive but big, heavy and cumbersome.

Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you should. Also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. It just doesn’t mean as much as you might think it does.

Drywall is heavy. 5/8 inch drywall is shockingly heavier than 1/2 inch. Somehow, .25’s of an inch is a massive difference. Be prepared.

There will be waste. Try as you might to do the math and make the very best use out of every sheet of drywall, there will be a ton of scrap. If you hate waste, this will bug you. In other lessons-learned, keep the scraps DRY before figuring out what to do with it all. If your drywall scraps get wet sitting in the driveway or whatever, it’s a gawd-awful and infuriating mess to deal with once you get around to it.

Mudding & taping is REALLY best left to professionals or at least someone with some experience. I have no doubt Kerry could’ve managed it, I would’ve helped, it would’ve been fine, and we would’ve finished it by 2020. Maybe.

Mud is incredibly WET. Drywalling in the depths of winter in a structure with no heat isn’t, ahem, ideal. There will be space heaters, industrial dehumidifiers and fans involved. In a related note – to know something intellectually and to walk into a house that’s got literally dripping wet windows are two different things.

There will be a mess. Constantly. If you’re a tidy, everything in it’s place kinda person – forgetabboutit. Seriously. It’s going to be a mess from every surface to every shoe to every place within a 10-mile radius of the drywall & mud. The mud is one monster, the drywall dust is another, arguably more formidable. It’s just a mess. Be prepared to accept the things you can not change.

GET THIS from the Dept. of “Who Knew?” – You have to get primer paint on a freshly mudded wall once the mud is good and dry. Dry mud is soft and easily dinged and damaged. Primer protects it. So, sure – drywalling your entire house start to finish is impressive, but not actually “finished” until the primer’s on.

Are you still with me? That’s impressive. Did you learn stuff? Great. Do you want Aaron’s number? I won’t be surprised, dude is a Ninja.

“19 in 19” is a reference to a thing some snarky rocker-type people called me in a different lifetime. It’s a thing maybe 6 people will remember and invariably they will be snarky rockers. I’ve adopted 19 as a lucky number and believe it or not, I only recently noticed that the new year is, duh, 2019. Which clearly means that ’19 is going to be my year.

I’m going to nail this Black Sheep Farmhouse project, have it “habitable” by summer, and I’m going to spend some weekends out there. I’m going to attempt to stay on my own message and do it for $19K, which is both a laughably small amount and also money I don’t technically have. I’m going to clean up the financial mess I’ve made of it all. I’m going to let the people that have pitched-in, helped, visited, supported, whatever – I’m going to let them spend a week or whatever out there with their families and vacation. I’m going to do something else, write about something else, figure out what’s next and in general – do a better job of it all. 19 in 19 is my game-face rally-cry.

Beginning of the end of the beginning. Happy New Year…Let’s do this thing.

Requisite Before and Afters – Because: Love them!

Postscript: Yes – Hyper-janky floors are next. Please, stay tuned.