The Week of Tweak

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm now to the tweaking stage. So the first thing that got tweaked this week was the straw skirt. I bought 8 more bales (again all they had out...it is a "self-service" straw pile in somebody's yard along the road) and almost finished the skirt. Still need three more bales. In order to put the skirt around the south side of the house, I dismantled the greenhouse, put all of the contents under the front porch, and took the frame apart. I discovered a nice little warm sunny spot to sit on sunny days. I will have the straw two bales high next to the wheel wells and only one bale high everywhere else. On the south side between the wheel well and the shed is a lovely little sitting place. 

The next tweaked item was the shower curtain. I've been fighting with it every time I take a shower. So my solution isn't pretty but it is way better than before. Took a 10 ft piece of pex, four corner supports and a straight coupling. And made a square curtain rod. So much easier to use! 

And the graywater tweak...I had put a piece of screen on the end of the drain pipes, mainly to keep critters from crawling in, with the intention of changing the screens every couple of weeks since I was sure it would get clogged up.  Well, then we have had very cold weather.  So, before I could even change out the screen one time I had ice building up behind the slowly clogging screens until both the kitchen and the shower pipes were clogged with ice.  Luckily the weather warmed up just in time for me to be able to clear the clogs easily.  Whew!  And I didn't replace the screens.  In the spring when the critters are active again I'll need to re-evaluate the situation.

A tweak in process...my seating arrangement. The moon chair that I have been using just isn't cutting the mustard.  It is too wide and not close enough to the floor to be able to sit and scratch Nellie.  I'm currently sitting in a beach chair which works for scratching Nellie a little better, but I'm still not completely happy with it.  I've ordered a bean bag, so we'll see how that works. I think it will be good, because I can lounge and snuggle Nellie too.  We'll see...stay tuned.   

Washed the windows this morning only took me about 1 1/2 hours to wash all my windows inside and out...well, except one of the loft windows...but still.  This is the first official window wash and a couple of windows still had stickers and sticker goo on them.  Also washed the dog door.  Just one more perk of having a tiny house, tiny cleaning times. :D

I'm continuing to work on the picture scanning/downsizing project and I feel like it is coming along pretty well.  I've scanned about 400 more pictures and I'm about half-way finished with another box.  Part of the renewed excitement about the project is that I bought a new scanner.  It is a Doxie scanner and it is as big as 10 plastic rulers stacked on top of each other.  It fits in a drawer in the table, or I can take it with me in my backpack because it has an internal rechargeable battery and built-in memory.  Don't even need my computer to scan stuff, just feed it through and download it later.  I'm really loving it so far!  I'm very excited to be on the homestretch with this 6-year project.  

Just an FYI, I made bacon AND popcorn and the smoke alarm didn't go off. The secret is to open the kitchen window and the bathroom window and put a fan next to the stove blowing in the direction opposite the alarm.