Rebuilding the Well House

The first crew i tried to hire was recommended by my friend. They were not listening to me. I kept saying i wanted a huge amount of insulation; insulate everything…but i didnt want the already tiny repair space to become even smaller, so i wanted to strip the tin down to the open wood frame, build a new outer frame a foot from the existing one, and put insulation between the two frames. That way i could have a foot of insulation and not lose a foot of space from the interior of the well house. It was this idea that ended things between myself and the first crew. I was the one paying for the project. I felt i should be able to decide what we were doing. The crew was a wife and husband couple and their family members. The wife said over and over that i was not going to be able to afford a new well house built overtop the old one, that that would be too expensive for me. She said they’d put an inch of insulation in the existing structure and they’d be done. She would give me instructions on what to get from home depot to seal up the openings in the tin. I was taken aback because the reason i was hiring her and her husband was to do that for me. If i wanted to seal the thing up myself i wouldnt need her. But i was working way more than i wanted to be and had no time to even cook or sleep. I asked her how much extra it would cost for they themselves to seal it up. She said fifty bucks. I said i would rather pay her the fifty bucks extra and have them seal it up but i no longer wanted tin on my well house. She and i were not on the same page from the beginning. She just kept saying i couldnt afford anything they would do. I dont know if she made an assumption because i was wearing scrubs, i lived in center point, i said i did not want to buy the property in fredericksburg they wanted to sell me because the cost and property taxes were too expensive, or what…. But i spoke the truth. They tried to sell me a property in fredericksburg, which was not why i had called on their services. I was not looking for a real estate agent. The reason i live in center point is so that i do have a chance to save some money in the account for necessary projects like the well house remodel. Just because im not a millionaire doesnt mean i dont have a few thousand saved up to put into a shed. Now, did it hurt to pull this money out of savings and use it on the well house, sure, but i had already assessed it was a very necessary thing that needed to be done, so i had made peace with how much i was going to spend. At a sixth of the allotted budget i had devised the lady said anything else was going to be way to expensive and i couldnt afford it. She pretty much talked herself out of a job. I gave it one last ditch effort because she was a friend of my friend and i didnt want to sour their relationship by rejecting her and her husband. I had asked them for both quotes, the rebuild and the insulation of the existing structure. The husband said, “we’ll get you both.” Apparently they argued about this for three days and the husband lost because the wife called me back and told me they had been talking and they had decided i only needed the one quote because i could not afford the other one. She announced that they would set up a time to come insulate the existing structure. I felt like she had ignored everything i had said and then driven over me with a car. She had this kind of bulldog mentality. She was kind of cold to deal with. You never really connected with her. She wore a cold expression and had annoyance in her voice and she was always walking and facing away from you when she talked. On the phone she sounded just as bossy and detached. I wasnt getting anywhere with this conversation. I hung up and spent three hours wording what i wanted to say in a nice and civil manner. I could not tell them exactly what my budget was because then they’d be tempted to change the price to use the whole thing, so i made it clear that i live frugally so that i can put away some money in savings for emergency projects such as this. I let her know that i had made a decision this project had been put off too long and i wanted to do it right this time and i had created a budget with which to do that. I let her know that we had not come close to the top of my budget for this project and i would like to get a quote for the project that would include stripping the metal off and building a frame over top the existing frame from wood. It was a lengthy, carefully worded, and respectful text. She took a day and then responded, “i understand. I will put you in touch with our contractor. He is the best there is. I hope he can help you with your project.” I felt she had washed her hands of me and was passing me off to this contractor guy. Originally she had said she would contact him. Now she was forwarding me his contact info and asking me to contact him. I tried to call him but he didnt answer and his voice message box was full. So i texted him. He called me back. I explained why i was calling. He asked me what i needed done so there may not have been much communication between the couple and the contractor before i called him. He seemed surprised to receive my call. He came out to look at the property and the well house and give me a quote. He drove past the place several times and i couldnt call him because he wasnt answering and his voice message box was full. Finally he called me and i answered telling him he’d driven past me and turned around three times. He argued with me stating he followed my instructions and there were no cow gates, no starlite sign, no green tiny house visible from the street, and no numbers for my address on the fence. I had to wonder about the competence of a grown man who had just missed all those things 3+ times. I argued back, “its my yard. I know what’s around it. Furthermore, im standing in it looking at the starlite sign, the two cow gates, and the green tiny house. Dont tell me the things arent there, im looking at them. He said, “well maybe im just in the wrong place.” I said, “no, you’re in the right place. Ive watched your truck drive in slow circles past me 3 times. Turn around and the gate will now be on your left. First one on your left.” He finally came to where i was now standing and followed me down the driveway. His excuse was that he didnt see a driveway because it was dirt and he was looking for a paved one and he didnt see my address because it was painted in white numbers on a dark board of wood stuck in the fence and he was looking for black numbers on cement on a curb in front of the house. I just stared at him. First of all we dont have curbs out here. Second of all, the numbers are not standard because they have to be painted by the home owner…the city doesnt come out here. And the house number is not in order, you cant follow the pattern until you see the one you’re looking for. My house number is simply the number of feet it took the city to walk from the road to my front door. That is your house number out here. So, that would be why i gave him the landmark specific instructions i did which i guess he threw out the window because he knew best. I was beginning to see a theme with this family and i didnt like it one bit. I was just about fed up. The nail in the coffin was coming. He kept coming up with these asinine ideas. When i would question him he would say, “oh yeah yeah, i know what im doing. I do it all the time.” He didnt want to explain anything to me. He wanted me to just take the answer that he was experienced, he knew what he was doing, and not question him amy further. I was not a contractor but i knew enough to know when someone was pushing me aside because they didnt want to deal with me and he was pushing me aside. He had a lot of hair brained ideas, like he wanted to take the spigot i used daily for watering all the plants and filtering the water for myself and all the animals, turn it around, and put it inside the well house instead of in the insulation bag outside. This meant i could no longer use it to bathe the dogs, wash my hands, wash dishes, and so on, because it would empty into the well house when you turned it on. It meant the floor of the well house would be perpetually wet. It meant i would have to contend with the wind threatening to rip the door off the hinges every time i wanted to get in there and fill the watering can. I wanted access to the spigot without having to go inside the cramped well house with the door open. He shook his head, “No no, its better inside. You need the spigot inside. Then it wont freeze this way because its inside.” I said, “well the pipes are inside. Its only the spigot thats outside. I dont care if the spigot freezes. I just put the insulation bag around it and leave it alone until warmer weather. But i do need it out there to wash things and to fill watering cans and filtration pitchers. I use it daily, i dont want it tucked inside the well house, understand?” He just repeated that it would be better to move the spigot inside. I seemed very iffy about this idea and he attributed that fact to my lack of knowledge about construction. I didnt feel that way. I felt my uneasiness was a direct result of him not listening to what i was valuing and needing out of the structure. I needed two things; insulation and access. We had thrown access out the window. Then, he decided it was a crime that the pex pipe was exposed and just wrapped in electrical tape where it came out of the ground and went into the well house. He stated that he intended to pour the new foundation around it and encase it in cement to get it inside the well house. I said no. I asked if we could put a tube around it when we poured the concrete and just leave a cylinder of space uncemented to allow the pex to continue to expand and contract around ice in the line because that’s what it was for. I didnt know enough about construction to know if this would compromise the foundation so i was asking. He first asked, “what is pex?” And then said, “no, no, you not need this anymore. Its not going to expand and contract because there will be no ice in the line once its in the well house.” I was furious now. What kind of question was “what is pex?” I thought his argument was he knew what he was doing. I said in frustration, “no, its not that simple. The pex was used because it doesnt break when theres ice in the line. The power cuts out frequently during winter storms and when it does so do the heat lamps plugged into the outlets. Then there is ice in the line. We cannot encase the pex in cement. He looked at me and smiled, almost winking. He waved a hand at me, “yes, we do that. It’ll be alright. I do this all the time. All the time.” On his drive home i called and he did not answer. His voicemail box was still full. So i fired him as politely as possible via text. He never answered. Two weeks later he sent me a text at 7 am on a saturday asking what kind of chickens i had because his wife wanted some. The whole family is just a bit much. Maybe others enjoy working with them. They are not for me. We would not be doing any business together. If im paying you, for anything, i expect you to listen to me. I dont care whether you’ve done something before. I care whether it should be done now on my property. That should have been a discussion, not a wave of the hand and a blow off of my concerns, which were founded. Before he left he unwrapped the top of the pex from the electrical tape to examine it so he could see what pex was. I immediately retaped it. I didnt appreciate this final parting act since pex will begin deteriorating like sand that has dried out and fallen off the sand castle the moment it is touched by sunlight. That is why it was so thoroughly wrapped. What on earth possessed him to unwrap my pex pipe, the **** ***?!

So this did not go well. I contacted the real estate agent the sellers had used. Mine was a 21 year old that financed her huge shiny truck by getting people to sign papers and disappearing to the next client, poof! But the sellers’ agent had been very kind and knowledgeable and remained a friend years later. She checked up on me and made sure i was settling in when my agent was gone in the wind and she also lived in the area as well. I asked her to recommend a contractor. She did. He seemed very professional and courteous. When he shook my hand it was a good shake, not a dead fish shake like the last contractor. You just cant have a dead fish hand shake when you’re trying to make a business transaction. It makes me wonder about you. I will say, i was kind of taken aback when he showed up and appeared to be about 19. But, he was very professional and his hand shake was good and the real estate agent recommended him, so i was going to give this the benefit of the doubt. After the plans of the last contractor i abandoned the idea of making the well house bigger. I was worried they’d do more damage than good trying to carry my plans to fruition. So i tried to keep it as simple as possible. I wanted to insulate the crap out of it and i wanted to take the tin off and replace it with wood. The young man began translating this to his father and i realized he did not speak english. What would unfold was that the son spoke english and the father and cousins were spanish only. So, the money went to the son’s name, the son’s account, and the son talked with all the customers and the father and cousins did the work. The son seemed knowledgeable and professional, so i didnt have a problem with this, but since everything had to go through google translate if i wanted to talk to them, the second option being call the son and tell him what i wanted his dad and cousins to know, and then he called his dad and told him what i had said….i really didnt do a lot of small talk. I only conversed with them when it was something important. So, i hadnt told them things like where on the property the septic tank was located. There was a laundry line blocking it and there was plenty of other wide open space so i didnt realize i would need to do that.

I hired them but i asked for a date they were available in a couple weeks pending the weather didn’t freeze because i didnt want the well house without a frame during a freeze, but i needed to ask work to put all my hours for a weekday on a Saturday two weeks in advance since i was covering for a full time employee and i might be able to be there one day to get them started and just have to meet them after work the second day to do a walk through and pay them. I would leave the doors and gates open the second day so they had access. Well, he said they could do the whole project with me absent if i just left the well house and electric box doors and gates open, they’d do the work while i was at work and stay in touch via phone and i could pay them when i came back. First i was going to need to go to home depot with them to buy the supplies. Then they said they’d buy them and just bill me with the receipt and i could include the cost of supplies in the final check. This sounded good to me so i hired them.

I left the well house door, the electric box, and the gates open and bottled waters out for them. I went to work. Hours later i got a text stating they werent coming today but would come tomorrow instead. It was going to freeze the latter of the two days he was now talking about being there working on the well house and it was a prolonged freeze in the wee hours of the morning to mid morning between the first and second day. I was concerned that if they needed two days to finish the project they would probably be stripping it apart day 1 and building it back up day 2 and i didnt want it stripped sitting out there at 28 degrees. So i requested he pick two other days the following week between monday and friday which all appeared to have warm weather. He did not answer for several hours. On my lunch break i called to make sure they werent going to show up the following day while i was at work and take it all apart. He was confused as to why i was calling. He read my message, decided they would come monday and tuesday, told the guys, and didnt realize i needed to be notified of the days they chose and that they had made a decision. Sigh. I have the worst luck with people. To be clear, this crew was very skilled and they built an amazingly well insulated well house. The peoblem with the first crew was incompetence and people skills. The problem with the second crew was just communication. They were quite skilled and i never worried about their ability to start or finish the job. Everything i saw in the way they worked together screamed “i’ve been doing this since i was in diapers”. For instance, both the father and one of the cousins could eyeball cutting a board of wood straight. They never marked it with a pencil and they held it still with just their hand. It wasnt clamped to anything. And yet, it was always straight and it always lined up just perfectly when they put it on the well house. They were also very neat and detailed painters. They never taped anything and the only drop of paint spilled went on the spigot insulation bag, a little brown dot. They were also great at estimating exactly how much material was needed for the job. When the project was finished they had two leftover long skinny slivers of plywood and some teeny tiny scraps. They had half a jar of paint. They gave me the supplies leftover since i bought them and i put them into the shed in one trip so there really wasnt any extra, and with the hardware store one city over it said a lot about their confidence that they did not intend to mess anything up or need to cut a second version of anything. I would use them again, but i need to be home throughout, because the language barrier means not a lot is discussed outside of the particulars and i need to damage control any problems that may arise that i did not think of ahead of time.

The son called me at work around mid day on that monday saying that there was a small leak and asking how to turn the water off at my house. When i left there were 3 heat lamps on in the well house and it was only 32 degrees. I couldnt figure why the pipes would have busted. I told him how to shut the power off to the well house and began making arrangements to run back to the house to see what they were doing, but the son assured me everything was fine and his father would fix the leak. I continued to work.

When i got home that afternoon i saw what had happened. I should have told them to leave the steel stix around the pvc pipe because the two had become one. It was my attempt at fixing something the softener company had rigged that had deteriorated and i knew it cost $100 just for the trip every time the softener employees came to my house and i didnt want to pay 100 dollars just for their time and then the repair on top of that because the pvc the spigot was attached to had become unanchored in the side of the well house so i used steel stix to anchor it back in place. You combine the two clay-like ingredients, a chemical reaction happens, and it basically becomes like steel when fully dry. So i molded it around the pvc and to the metal and fixed the problem myself, which the softener guys eventually found out about and were not happy with but hey, if you’re gonna charge me hundreds of dollars to glue something, expect me to self fix. Its insulting to owe you hundreds of dollars for a two second job. Anyways, the steel stix had done what steel stix does….stick. Had i been there i would have told them to cut the tin around the steel stix in order to free the pvc pipe and spigot and steel stix crescent shape. But i was at work two cities over so while trying to remove the steel stix from the pvc pipe they broke the pvc pipe and water was going everywhere as if the spigot was on. That’s where the problems began. I told them where the water shut off was but the words were written in english so they didnt know which one powered the well house so i had to tell them from memory which switch it was and luckily i was right, the fifth one from the top on the left side. When they turned the power off to the well house…somehow the power also went off to the front of the house (the kitchen and the outdoor outlet they were using for all their power tools). It could have been that they tried a few breakers before the one for the well house and it just did not switch back on when they flipped it back the other way. It also could have been that when they switched off the fifth breaker the other one just decided to go too. Both are things that have happened in the past and when this happens the only way to turn it back on is by going to the breaker box in the house and flipping the switch there. Im not an electrician so if im getting some of the vocabulary wrong here you’ll just have to forgive me, but you get the idea. There’s a box on a pole outside and a box in the house as well and when the box outside doesnt do the trick it means the switch in the box in the house has flipped to the middle and needs to be pushed to the side again do that both boxes have it in the “on” position. Well the house was locked and i was two cities away. So these men, points for work ethic and creative use of time, did the part that didnt require power tools. They stood all the insulation up in between the wood framing without plywood or siding on yet. They packed that stuff in there like giant light brown pillows. It looked very puffy when i arrived. I went in the house and flipped the switch and the electricity was back on. They could use their power tools. They stayed until after dark trying to finish getting the wood pieces on so that the pump would be protected against the night temperatures. I gave them my head lamp and camping lantern. I’ve skipped a part where the repeatedly parked the truck trailer directly on top of the septic tank, underneath the laundry line and i trying to remain calm each time had to either call the son and ask him to ask his father to get the truck trailer off the septic tank or type it in to google translate. They just seemed to keep forgetting that it was there behind the laundry line. They thought that was a perfect place to back the truck up, and i wanted nothing on top of my loosely buried in sand and limestone dust type soil septic tank.

It wasnt until they had left for the night that i began realizing how much trouble i was in. All the chords and hardware for the softener tanks were not where i left them. In fact the interior of the well house had been completely rearranged. There was a rats-nest of electrical cords and plastic boxes on the cement floor by one of the tanks. Nothing was plugged in. I repeat, all the tanks were unplugged for hours. I began to panic. Those tanks were not supposed to drain and dry out. I hadnt finished paying on the softeners. They would need to be reset by the softener company. I was somewhat worried about the pressure in the tanks because they had emptied before when icepocalypse happened and the well busted but the guys came out pretty immediately to deal with them. I remember the after hours customer help line lady saying it takes 45 minutes for a tank to completely drain. I dont understand anything about them. By design they dont show me how to service and program my own softener tanks because then they couldnt make money every time the power goes out. All i know is that i dont touch them. I dont unplug them, and whenever the power goes out when it comes back online its blinking and i call the softener guys and they come back and program it. Everyone tells me any plumber could have installed my softener and i shouldnt have gone with the softener company but i have off the charts sulfur in my well, so much that we couldnt measure it, and home depot did not have a softener tank that could have remedied that. I had to go with the softener company and i did have to buy the most expensive softener they make because technically, this well is not drinkable. Even with the softener, it renders the water usable for showers and laundry. For drinking, i still have to filter it further in half gallon increments with a hand held pitcher that contains $50 interchangeable filters that last about 3 or 4 months depending on my usage level. What im trying to say is that the softeners are important and we dont touch those unless we absolutely have to. I called the softener company but of course it was after hours. She wanted to know if it was an emergency. I wasnt sure. I knew that one of the two tanks made noises and spewed a mist of water when i tried plugging it back in. It also rattled and vibrated a bit where it stood. It made me uneasy and i wanted to remedy whatever was going wrong but i didnt know what was going wrong. Thats why i was calling her. She asked me what i had done. Well, i didnt entirely know because i wasnt there when it was done. All i could tell her was that everything had been offline and unplugged for an extended amount of hours. It was at this moment that she decided to share she knew nothing about softeners and was just supposed to wake people up and get them out to me if there was a geyser in the yard and tell me to call back tomorrow if there wasnt. I had restored electricity to the well house to turn on the heat lamp and when i did this i plugged the softener tanks back in trying to get them to the stage where they were just blinking the time and a error message telling me to have them serviced. The screen just had a bunch of lines on it that were going around in a circle. The left tank sprayed water and made noises and the drainage hose from the tanks began spitting water out the back of the well house. I asked the lady if i should unplug it again. She said yes. She said unplug it and let it drain what its filled the tank with. I unplugged it. A steady stream of water continued to come out the back of the well house and make a small pond back there. I told her it was not stopping. She said it might take 45 minutes to an hour to drain the tank and to just leave it and go back inside and maybe cut the power off to the well house if it was still going in an hour. I did as i was told. In an hour it was still going so i called back. She said maybe it was just draining slowly. 15 minutes later i decided she didnt know a lick of what she was talking about, i had listened to faulty advice, and i was done. I turned the power off to the well house. The softener was just draining my well into a pond. The following day when the crew showed up they would confirm my suspicions. When the well house lost electricity the tank was in drainage mode. Normally this would take a few minutes but when it loses electricity in the middle of a function it gets stuck in that function indefinitely until overridden by the crew. So, it was in indefinite drainage mode. At least thats what they said. The crew that showed up appeared to be hispanic so i thought oh good, they will speak spanish and can introduce themselves to the construction crew. No, they didnt speak fluent spanish, so google translate and my broken spanish it was. They probably knew as much spanish as i did but ive learned those who arent fluent and look hispanic wont speak a lick of it because they’re worried people will think they are fluent and begin talking fast in spanish and expect them to comprehend. So annoyingly, though they refused to speak spanish to the construction crew, they had no problem correcting my attempts at communicating with them in broken spanish. Dude either handle this or dont. I held my tongue and let them correct me because i knew it would help them better understand whag i was trying to say which was “this area is about to fill with water, we should move your tools so they dont get wet.” The softener guys fixed the tanks. The left tank indeed was about to explode due to pressure and the guy in the well house wanted out. The second guy went in in his place because his partner was too chicken about the tank exploding and he just manually released the pressure and then reset it while it was hopping around and making hissing noises and spraying water everywhere. Then they both turned to me and with very serious expressions on their faces said, “Now, dont touch this, any more.” The one guy showed me where the knob to cut off each tank now was becuase the construction crew had moved them. The guys screwed the plastic box into the newly plywooded interior wall. They untangled and tacked the cords back up and moved the tanks and barrel back where they had been before the feng shui object rearrangement in there. Once everything was fixed i noted wetness on the ground where it had not been before. I was told to keep an eye on it to make sure there was no underground leak that was happening. It really worried me. It took me two weeks to realize that they had just put the two drainage pipes back together in such a way that there was an inch overlap when actually there was supposed to be about a foot and a half overlap so that the tube was still angled down and the water ran through the second tube to the back field, but because there was so little overlap the connection of the two tubes was now flat instead of angled and the water was just coming out at the connection and running back towards the house, killing the grass because the discharge was salt water. This was good news. No underground leak.

When the softener crew left they wouldnt tell me how much i was going to owe them. They said they would calculate it up and oscar would call me. I called the son and said i wasnt going to charge them or take anything off their fee, i just wanted his word that now that the softeners and the well pump were back online and functional that neither of them would touch anything in or even enter the well house. Just work on the outside. It was the feng shui rearrangement of things that really scared me. When trying to piece together what was missing or broken i didnt know because everything was in a different spot than it had been and all the wires and plastic bits were just in a pile on the floor and the tanks were turned so that i couldnt see or reach the shut off knobs. Anyways, he said that was completely reasonable and he would tell them. They put a ladder in front of the door as a good faith gesture that they understood they were not to go inside the well house anymore. That satisfied my fears and i breathed again. To their credit they did not ever go inside the well house again. They finished building a beautiful well house. They forgot to paint one wood piece under the door but i have the paint and can do that myself one day when the weather is warm and i can prop the door open to let it dry. The door originally did not line up with the frame but i caught it and they fixed it. I stopped them parking on the septic tank a couple more times. Monday night i called my boss and notified her of what i was looking at and that i needed to switch tuesday out for saturday because this needed my supervision and presence. She agreed that i could switch the work days and i stayed home tuesday and supervised the heck out of everything. It made my endometriosis 4 times worse and i was probably working on a good stomach ulcer as well but once i was there to supervise everything got addressed, everything got done, and people stopped parking on the septic tank and feng shui-ing the tanks in the well house. I didnt even know those could move. They must have been incredibly strong to rearrange them and the softener crew had a time of putting them back, but they did it for me. In the end oscar called and said they weren’t going to charge me. They felt i had enough on my plate that day. However, he did reiterate the idea “dont touch or unplug anything” in a stern voice five or six times before we ended the conversation. Thats basically my policy with those tanks. I dont understand them so i just make sure they have access to electricity and dont touch them, ever. Its just, sometimes stuff like this happens. I did notice that they ran the newly arranged pipes right across the only outlet in the well house before they finished the job and i did not mention it. I told them i did not want them touching anything in the well house. To reroute the interior piping they would have to both be inside the well house touching things, and the water would definitely have to be temporarily turned off. So i decided we no longer needed an outlet. I had them screw the heat lamp into the socket near the ceiling and then i stood up on a ladder to see if the lamp was close enough to heat the plywood walls and ceiling to dangerous temperatures. It was not. The plywood was only slightly warm. When they were finished i did a walk through, paid them, googled how to say it was beautiful and i appreciated their work in spanish, said that, and then shook their hands and helped them clean up. They temporarily lost the spigot cover that went to the spigot lock which worried me because it costs fifty dollars for two of them and you have to order them to your house because the store doesnt stock them but they wont deliver to a po box so i have to order them to a coworkers house and address the package “care of” and then go pick it up….but they spent a lot of dedicated time combing the grass with head lamps and they found it, at which point i was very happy. I called the son and told him they did a great job and i gave the check to his father. He thanked me, i thanked him, and then i locked the shed up, closed the well house, and went inside to sit on the floor and live through the endometriosis aftermath of having through the roof blood pressure all day. The dogs kept me company. The following day i returned to work. My boss commented on how she was impressed that i was able to handle all these things like when something needs done on the homestead i can supervise and get it done. I felt like this wasnt a surprise to me. I dont know everything there is to know. Theres a lot i dont know. Thats why i hire people who do know. But, i know when things are going wrong and im good at running damage control. Its stressful as heck but im not one that throws the towel in and checks myself into a hotel to soak in a nice hot bath while the property goes to **** because the problems are too hard. If there is a problem, im not done working at it, im not done running damage control, im not done researching, brainstorming, and trying things until there is not a problem. Its why i asked the real estate agent for the contractor she recommended. I figured she would have to work with contractors regularly for her job and so she would know who did good work. Nobody taught me that. I just try ****. If you are going to homestead you have to be willing to try stuff that might not work. There is not going to be an instruction manual for half of what you want to do and often times when there is, there’s no time to study it before the weather arrives. I didnt go get blueprints for the plant boxes i built to hang the heat lamps on during year one. I just had a vision and made it. And i was done directly before the first hard freeze because i procrastinated because i was busy doing something else. I like it out here because nobody can tell me what to do or not do. And failure isnt necessarily a tragedy or shame-filled thing. It just means im not done. (I mean in most cases…with the well failure to keep it from emptying was absolutely a tragedy…wasted water is death). I took the chicken coop wall apart to put in a door on a different side than it came with one. When i put it back together it fell apart. So i got some wood glue and screws and fixed it. The sliding door went straight down the track and on through. I needed a ledge at the bottom to stop it, so i got some scrap wood and made one. Homesteading is brainstorming and problem solving. What most people dont understand is that its not that this is difficult for me…its just i dont have the time to do it during daylight hours, because this world runs on money, and homesteading doesnt generate money…not like the bank wants, so you have to have a day job. Basically i work in healthcare during the day, i homestead during the evening, at night, and on the weekends. I get everything done eventually but when i work a lot of hours things like mowing the grass on two acres go in the bin of (i’ll do that another day) because they are lengthy extensive jobs that i cant fit in here or there so i leave them on the back burner for a bit…but i invested in a weed eater for times just as this so that when the grass gets too long for the mower i have a method of taking it down to a manageable height. I also have used materials other than the string it came with to rethread it when its original string was spent, i wasnt done when it broke and i didnt feel like going to town. I would not recommend doing that because it can certainly go wrong seeing as plastic coated craft wire is the same size as the string that came with it but probably not the material that was supposed to go in there, and could probably do more damage if it came loose, but it did finish the job and i just went to town and got more string on a weekday the following week when i was already there for work. To recap, i can homestead fine when im in the same town as my homestead. But, without money my homestead becomes the bank’s homestead, so i have to go to work and just trust that everything here is fine in my absence. Also i enjoy my career and want to take care of my patients. I just have two lives crammed into one and i need both for multiple reasons, so i wouldnt have it any other way.