Well this is kind of a mish mash of things that have happened allweek. I was busy and didn't feel like I had enough for an entire blog entry then by today I had too much, go figure. I was gone last week so I am on a time crunch to get the hay loaded and setup here. It chose this week to rain for three days. We have had nothing but fire for two solid months. It never fails that when I want to do outside work the weather does not cooperate.
I decided to do some painting as outside work was not possible. We had picked the colors and purchased the paint a while ago. We used a palette designed for turn of the century homes. We decided to go with some real color this time. I am painting the walls with doors in them and surprisingly the paint matched the doors amazingly well. This was a happy accident! It does take two coats to prevent the white color from bleeding through.
We had a good turn this week! We were given an old safe from the late 1880's. There are only three small issues regarding the safe. First, we had to figure out how to load it ourselves. Secondly, it weighs a lot, over 600#! Thirdly, there is no combination with it and the door is shut. The smart wife engineer came up with the idea of using a come-a-long. We hooked it into the fifth wheel attachment base. I had stopped and gotten two 2x10 boards cut into 6 feet lengths. We used those as a ramp but our handcart had flat tires. The two of us managed to get it in the back of the pickup in under 30 minutes. It is amazing. When we got home I had to get it out of the pickup the next day. I thought I could just lift it out with the small tractor. Nope, not enough lifting height. I finally just had to grab it from the tailgate end and jerk it out while raising the tractor bucket. This left a divot in the ground a few inches deep. I did check the ground first to make sure there were no hard objects. I had to put it on the short side of the front porch for the same reason, not enough lift. We are still working on the combination issue. Surely there has to be a way to "crack" the safe by discovering the combination. We want to be able to use the safe. It will become an end table in the living room.
We have a raccoon. Annmarie woke me up two nights running and the second night we had to get out of bed at 0330 and go hunt for whatever it was. I saw the raccoon but forgot to turn off safety on my trusty Walther. It's obviously time for more target shooting. I placed a trap baited with marshmallows but all the raccoon did was pull it down and toss the tasty treat into the dirt. Sarah came up with the idea of smearing peanut butter on the trigger plate of the trap. I am going to try that next.
After all the work on the pickup it still needed tires. We tried to get used but nobody had four matching so we got cheap tires instead. They are still 10 ply sidewall so they can handle the trailer and load weight. I had to get a new front tire for the old tractor. The side facing South had rotted from sun exposure. Unsurprisingly, the lug nuts for each front tire were different sizes. I guess I should be grateful that they were the same size on each side. So mixing and matching cannot occur.
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