More floor

Spent most of June putting in adobe floors. Requires little thought and a lot of hustle. Shoveling the dirt from down on the desert floor into a truck, mixing it with water in a wheelbarrow, placing it on the floor, leveling and trowling. Then letting it dry and applying coats of linseed oil. I allow it to dry quickly and crack. Then I go back and fill the cracks. Not much else going on. I bought Jerry Brewster's VW dune buggy. And worked on it some. Got to visit with friends some. Returned for the big "Opening" that my "Girls" had in a "Dallas" art gallery. I will try and add some pictures. The opening was great and everyone had a good time. Ayrton's  Meattroplis has been in the works for amost two years. And I really am in love with one of  Bailey's new paintings. I am heading back in a week to try and get the water system going. There is water in the tanks, now to get it in the house. Seeya.........R

Floors and ceiling

May, 2013  Just returned to visit with my sisters who came to Kilgore to see our mom. I also needed to go see our youngest up in Denton and help her with some welding that will be part of the long anticipated unveiling of the "Meatropolis" sculpture. The last two trips have been all about the ceiling. Using metal scrounged from a building in Stonewall, (just outside of Fredricksburg) some 2x6s from an old deck John Spradlin kindly gave us and more wood from the old Wylie farmhouse generously donated by the lovely Lisa. The building in Stonewall was hit by a tornado in 2001 and lost its roof. Mr. Alton Klein alowed Karol and I to take anything we could use from the old house for 150 bucks. Thank you Mr. Klein. I installed a 2 inch adobe floor in the bath and worked on the front room ceiling for a few weeks before Karol arrived and helped me finish the install. We began caulking the gaps (and there were many) and did some painting with some flat white given to us by Tessa Wingfield, thanks T.W. When we ran out of paint and caulk we transitioned to the master bedroom, emptied it of all the materials stored there and started another adobe floor. Karol is what we call here in the oilfield "a hand." She was matching me shovel for shovel and hung tough for what I affectionately call an old school "thrash." Three days of  brutal labor that would, in the end , give us another beautiful floor. After it dries we will oil it with linseed oil. I did this in the adobe house and was really pleased. Hope to finish this house by Christmas and some day have one Hell of a double house warming!  Heading out tomorrow for more abuse. Maybe it will have warmed up a little by the time I get back.................R

Happy Birthday Bailey. No post since Oct. A lot has happened since then. First of all let me thank Karol, Alex, Ayrton,Space,and Bailey for the tremendous help. With that team there, we just steamrolled through the problems. Strong backs and strong minds...."hey fugiddaboutit" First problem, move a 16 ft. conference table from the auction site where I got it, into the rock house. That was a gargantuan effort in itself! Ask me about it someday. Second, figure out where to put the monster so it looks right in the rock house. (You would not believe the arguing that ensued over that.) You see, the poles I put in the room to hold up the roof were in the way. I was going to have the poles go right through the table. Then I realized that I had six 2x12s just laying there from a carport I wrecked out. I decided to use those to support the gluelams instead of the poles and move the poles over to support the 2x12s. I could also incorporate them into the bar. I was riding high and strutting all around when we got that in. It worked perfectly! As we built up the bar I didn't like the look of the poles in front and decided to build huge brackets and bolt the two main support beams togeather and remove two of the poles. Now most of the weight of the roof is focused on the remaining two poles. It looked so much better that I began to strut again. (no kiddin) The ideas were coming and the execution of said ideas was implemented with extreme prejudice. Not stopping there, Karol and I applied white cement to the outside of the adobe to reflect the blistering sun and keep the walls from heating up so much this year. As if that were not enough(and believe me I'm trying to keep this short) Karol started finding all sorts of artifacts. Metates, manos, scrapers and to top it off on the last day we were there, late in the afternoon when we were loading up, she started finding petroglyphs! She looked in a book and discovered that one represented a comet and one a snake. We knew about the stacked rocks by the driveway but never took pictures. I found another large rock that must have been placed there. These are all right at the adobe house. There is a lot more but I have been trying to keep my entries short and pictures few so as not to bore everyone to death. (too late) I have been home less than a week and am ready to return asap. Maybe next week! Karol will come out later. She cleaned out much of the bus and is ready for me to knock the axles out and turn it into a shop/storage bldg. Maybe I will surprise her when she gets back out. adios......R

I have not updated this blog from the last trip, I suppose, because I have blocked out much if it from my already feeble memory. Karol, once again, was an incredible asset to the project. Painting the roof and picking up the giant mess I have left behind in the building process. Although before we got started in earnest we did quite a bit of rock hunting. Well now, that is to say Karol was hunting for the terrestrial kind while I was on the hunt for meteorites. I am pretty sure I have found one at least. You would not believe how many rocks will stick to a magnet. I also found an incredible scraper/ knife. It is very old (maybe 8,000 years) according to Ring. Karol found an awsome flint hand axe! We mounted a meter can and disconnect, ran conduit, pulled wire and hooked up the breaker box inside the rock house. When the electric co. came out to hook us up we were then told to rip the boxes out so they could install their meter and disconnect. That is the short version. We did more reinforcing to the metal bldg. to keep it from blowing away. Did more experiments with white cement as a reflective coating for the adobe. Looks like we are just going to use white latex paint. The image to the right that looks like it might be the surface of some alien moon orbiting jupiter is in fact my butt..........with shingles. Note to self...don't get so stressed out over what people think about you. You might just break out with something! The other picture is of the national weather service background reflectivity radar. If you watch it you will see wierd stuff that does not make any sense. I think it is from the spraying. I have a computer full of images of the chemtrails. The "haze" is everywhere. Check at commercials now, sky is almost always hazy in them. ...look into it.  I'm heading back in a few days to continue the work. Don't know if I can get the rock house on line by the end of the year. When you bite off more than you can chew.....all you can do is chew!

Karol and I have returned from a month in the desert.....alone....together....we are still married. Now that my lovely wife has retired from Kilgore, she has time to spend with me on the project. We made a lot of headway at the adobe which I have been neglecting since I started on the rock house. During one rather spirited storm out of the south, I discovered the metal building's roof moving like a drum head. My plans changed quickly to reinforcing the metal building. We were able to add on to it, which stabilized the building and gave me a place to put solar panels that would power the freezer so I could move it out of the adobe and into the trailer. It won't heat up the house now. The shade it provides is wonderful. I had an idea to whitewash the adobe to keep the walls from absorbing so much direct sunlight and heat. It really makes the walls much cooler. Karol, who only weeks ago was a powerful administrator at a junior college was reduced to grinding lime that had hardened, into powder that I mixed into whitewash and applied to the walls that had been catching the sun. We built a solar oven from some glass that was left at the rock house, some 2X12 some old v crimp roofing and fiberglass insulation that had been left behind. I did not want to deal with reflectors so I went with a design I cooked up to make use of the stuff I had laying around. It worked better than I had hoped for. Easily topping 300 degrees with no fuss. Just pop the food in the side door and get it out sometime in the afternoon!  I had to use the swamp cooler in the mornings to add cool air to the adobe and keep the walls cooler. Even with all we were doing the temps still crept from the high 70's to the mid 80's inside the house. Over all the cooler weather made it quite pleasent to work all month. Hope to return soon.....we are on a roll !..... The trip with Bailey coupled with the trip with Karol have jumped the whole project ahead by leaps and bounds.  Am happy. .............R

Bailey and the old man

My luck is holding. Bailey, the oldest, came with me to help. And what a help she was! Despite my chronic  lethargy and general aches and pains, she was able to get a tremendous amount of  wood on the walls all the while prodding dad to try and get to work before noon. Her job in the wood shop at college prepared her to work with the wood like a pro. A master cylinder replace on the 75 beetle solved the brake problem. We also attended Jerry and Eva's going away party. Lots of people were there. Followed by a great party at Phil and Regina's. Other than that it was mostly measuring, cutting and nailing. We used some of the cedar scrap from framing the windows to make a viga style support below the upper windows...a kind of catwalk to get to the roof windows on the inside above the kitchen. I, of course, forgot to take a picture. Bailey did a movie walk around with her camera that turned out great. Wish I could figure out how to put it on this site. Karol has officially retired and will probably come out to work with me, and prove once and for all that I indeed do have a wife!   We hung one of the doors that were given to me by Jo and Larry. Bailey's boyfriend Ryan let me have a fantastic front door latch that is so unusual and perfect for this house. I have to continue wrecking out the Wylie house for more material. Hope to return in a month. It will be on Karol's calender now so we will go when both can go.  Seeya .....R .