Actually! Thats the name we gave our place, when, the day after the real-estate deal closed, we found that the 22-yr-old longhorn ox belonging to the previous owner had gotten tangled up in a piece of wire, and DIED right in front of our picture window! The owner then had someone come by and hack the head off, to have it mounted! Most likely the ONLY part of the animal worth anything, even when it was alive! He did have a 5' rack. It, actually, was a harbinger of the general condition of the entire place When we were in the bidding process, I went over to look closer at the house, and the gal living there came to the door with a CHICKEN under her arm. Musta made gathering the eggs easier or something!
-- Edited by the neighbor on Thursday 11th of November 2010 01:38:23 PM
Yeah, it CAN get perty cold around here, but its generally a toss-up between Baker City and Burns. Back in the '80's, we had a stretch of sub-zero days... 8 or 9, I think, where it never exceeded "0", and dropped to -35 at night. That was a test! I was working at the family ranch then, and I remember being glad we'd spent the previous two years installing a new freeze proof stock-water system. Our neighbors were spending all day trying to keep their stock tanks open, while we were able to spend our time repairing frozen equipment. LaGrande is a nice town. We're going there this afternoon. The pic is from a few yrs ago... taken from the hill overlooking our place.
-- Edited by the neighbor on Thursday 11th of November 2010 02:45:29 PM
burrrrrr,,,,,that cold is geezer cryptonite!!!makes me shiver just thinkin about it...-35????id be dead from just lookin out the window at it.
Welcome, nieghbor!
Remember guys, I am in Wisconsin. We had 5 days in a row last winter where minus 25 was the high. The real "killer" part was the accompanying 22 days of no sunlight.
In a while, Chet.
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Why is there never enough time to do it right once, but always time to do it a second time?
If I don't drive you to drinkin', it's because the gas tank is empty.....
Yeah, it CAN get perty cold around here, but its generally a toss-up between Baker City and Burns. Back in the '80's, we had a stretch of sub-zero days... 8 or 9, I think, where it never exceeded "0", and dropped to -35 at night. That was a test! I was working at the family ranch then, and I remember being glad we'd spent the previous two years installing a new freeze proof stock-water system. Our neighbors were spending all day trying to keep their stock tanks open, while we were able to spend our time repairing frozen equipment. LaGrande is a nice town. We're going there this afternoon. The pic is from a few yrs ago... taken from the hill overlooking our place.
-- Edited by the neighbor on Thursday 11th of November 2010 02:45:29 PM
.....must be a frozen lake somewheres we can swim in, eh?
-- Edited by Iwannagofast on Monday 15th of November 2010 10:47:16 PM
Every once in a while, something comes to me, that is so outrageous or amazing, that I just have to roll with it About 20 yrs ago, while working for the family ranch, here in Keating, the place down the road changed hands. The older gent who bought it would stand out in the middle of the barnlot for hours, just staring off at the mountains. I drove by there twice every day when feeding, and I saw this A LOT.
One day, I just stopped, and walked over to ask what he was staring at. He replied, I was just thinkin what itd look like if I cleared all these trees and buildings off of here. Do you know anyone who would like a building?
Can I have til Saturday? Which building? Oh how about that one over there? He said. This Saturday?
That Saturday, I showed up with a coupla friends, a 410 JD backhoe w/forklift forks, and my old reliable feed rig, a 4020 JD w/a Hesston stackfeeder on behind. The feeder is a self-loader, so all we had to do, since the building had been built as a grainery, and was on skids, was pick up one end with the hoe, block it, and back under it with the feeder. It took 45 minutes, including BSin with the old farmer.
The trip home was pretty uneventful. 3 miles of country gravel, with NO traffic. We got home to the Oxfarm just as Janie was leaving the house to come over and photograph the project
We pulled some lines, and parked the thing in the yard. It was to be center stage in our yard, and Janie took one look and said, You are in the doghouse NOW! I replied, Would you make a sign saying that? And Mikes DogHouse was born.
It only took us a few minutes to saw a 12 ft hole in one of the 16ft walls, lay it down, and frame it into a stage. Yardsale track lighting, and it ROCKS. The wood on the inside of the walls is incredibly colorful. No weather or sun. The building was built in the 1930s of recycled material, so there is some really old wood. To instill a little integrity back into the building, the outside has been totally sheeted with plywood. This was kind of a no-brainer, as it was the old exposed-stud style of construction.
This old wood IS a significant problem. The flickers simply MOW through it. Likewise for the rest of the buildings here. SO, Ive been busy patching holes with whatever I could scrounge up. My wife works at a preschool, and has been bring home a few large can lids, which work well.
My interest in vintage buildings has shown me a variety of building styles, and Ive always been interested in the metal facades, the tin ceilings, and the cut-shingle fish-scale treatment. I had one of those epiphany moments, and asked if they couls save ALL of the can lids. And thats what theyve done. For the last school year
Yesterday, I finally started my metal fish-scale gable treatment on the DogHouse.
So, as I was nailing can lids in an apparently random pattern all over my buildings, a plan hatched. And it takes A LOT of can lids. And a brad nailer. And patience. I kinda wish now, that Id sorted the lids for type, but theyre all pretty similar. Im gonna primer, caulk all the edges, and paint. THEN itll look a lot less like what it is.
The cans are the #10 size... a bit bigger than coffee cans... and it took over 160 to do that little job. The building is 12 feet wide, and the gable is about 4 1/2 feet tall. I flashed around the edges to kinda neaten it up. Here's a pic of it trimmed out, caulked and primed for paint. Today I'm gonna paint it grey to match the trim on the buildings. I love projects like this, cuz nobody can say "Oh, I've done THAT before, and if you had only done it THIS way... We were lookin' for a way to screw up the flickers, so I screwed 'em with class! Total expenditure? Jeeze. 3 tubes of Alex caulk, at $3, a quart of Zinser primer from Salvation Army, $2, the nails came with my "free with purchase of $69 mini-compressor" and about one full day of my time, $0. So probly in the $10-15 project department.
I just got the barge rafters installed and painted. What a difference a few details makes! We're getting ready to try to do our patio project this weekend (on the other end of the building you've been looking at). The next pic shows what we've got in store... The big square is done of 6"x16" treated timbers, set on 24" round piers, bedded in crushed rock, like a railroad tie. Since we wanted to do the quadrants of the compass, and nothing aimed north, I laid out the inner square out of cedar. The directions are in the triangles in each corner. This creates an octagon, within which I've laid out an old iron wagon tire. We'll do a yin/yang inside that. Some will be in white cement, some reg. We'll also be using glass and possibly bronze elements embedded in the concrete. Should be busy enough! If we can get a few pieces knocked out this weekend, it won't look so scary... meanwhile, I'm going back to painting the barn. Its the first paint its seen since probly the '50's. The past-previous owner bought a huge lot of military surplus camo paint way back then... and painted every building dark olive. I think he was pioneering a type of early "airless" technology, as in stand back and throw it on... judging from the incredible stalactites hanging off the bottom of the lap siding. I'm assuming his wife persuaded him to repaint the house white, but everything else stayed that color. Well, sorta. There were still 35 5-gallon buckets of that crap when we got the place. All of it was light khaki or desert beige. EEeew. Heavy on the lead. We coulda made bullets out of that stuff! Anyway, the barn is really soaking it up! its 25x40,and I'm ready to shoot my 4th 5-gallon bucket. I'm not racist, but I DO like white!
Did NOT get done w/the barn painting, but did spend the better portion of the day with Janie on the patio project. Probly as much an art project as a patio, it has been years in the making, and its damn well time to knock this one out! The yin/yang is poured of white and regular cement inside an iron wagontire. There will be more concrete and many more inclusions as we work our way out on this project...
I cleaned up the piece, and scrubbed it down to expose the aggregate, putting a bit of detail in while I was at it... and then put the 4th coat of paint on the barn. I hope its white enough, cuz thats all it gets...
Y'know, I think I mighta posted our rigs on Poncho's mechanics forum... We own what we not-so-jokingly refer to as "The Obsolete Fleet". Down from 14 (7 licensed and insured) to 4, we've even sold out, and own a "late-model" (03 TrailBlazer). That includes Janie's '69 442 ragtop, my '69 Vista-Cruiser, and "Ancient Orange", our trusty 330,000 mile '72 Suburban. The truck you mentioned was drug in here over 20 yrs ago, from across the Keating valley by a friend and I... Its a '34 (I think) Ford dumper. Notice it still bears the mark of the City of Baker on the door. Baker City changed its name to "Baker" before WW2, in the name of "modernization". Probly about the time they defaced all the Victorian buildings downtown. About the time we started to scrape off all the stupid tracks from the facades, someone decided we should go back to the earlier name. And did. Anyways, the truck is WAY down on my list of priorities, and makes a GREAT conversation piece! Does anyone know how to tell a '33 from a '34?
i cant tell but it wouldnt surprise me one bit if the rat knows. that old thing would make a heck of a hot rod.rat rod. im lookin around but its hard to find them old 30's cabs i can afford. hahahaits just fine rite where it is. it is a cool piece for the place.
The red one looks like the grille has that characteristic slant to it that '33 and '34 cars had, albeit not quite as pronounced; the rusty one has not.
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Rrumbler - Broken and grouchy, but not dead - yet.
Bangin' and twistin' on stuff for some sixty years or so.
A 33 grille leans a little and has a STAMPED bezel surround around the cap. a 34 grille leans like the 33, but has a CHROMED surround around the cap.
can't tell much about the grill on the red truck,, as it has most likely been changed some , it does have the lower skirt in front of grill , between the frame rails,, where that was only on cars,
can't ever tell what a hotrodder will do or change on a hotrod,, I would guess that the 33 ( rusty ) is pretty much origional,
also ,, these are the serial numbers stamped on the frame,
1933
V8
40
18- 203,127 to 18- 457,477
1934
V8
40
18- 457,478 to 18-1,234,356
Sorry Neighbor,, end of the Thread HIJACK ,, now back to the regularly scheduled program,,
-- Edited by Bad Rat on Friday 8th of June 2012 12:46:55 PM