Moving Along

The first and third walls here will be replaced (too many repairs needed). The center wall is one I was able to save.

Finally...

Finally we have been able to start moving onto another room in the house. We are tackling the bedroom next ours which is a room I love because it is so bright. It had charming yellow flowered wallpaper in it. However, it still needed to come down due to it being old and worn. The color yellow really did this room justice though and so we have plans to stay with that color when we paint. I patched one of the walls that had a big gouge in the plaster. To my amazement, I did a pretty good job. We will now need to replace only two walls and the ceiling. This was decided of course after I took down the wallpaper. While I was stripping wallpaper, I decided to go ahead and do the next room as well. Greg had started to tear this room apart in the very beginning and used it to access the pipes for the bathroom which is right next door.  This room had paneling, wallpaper and acoustic ceiling tiles in it. Now, it too is almost ready for repairing the walls or adding new ones.

Piles of stripped wallpaper.

This wall will be replaced.

Scraping off wallpaper.

Greg's bathroom pipes.

Almost ready to do wall repairs in room #3.

Stay tuned for how these rooms clean up.

Water, Electric, and More.

Took Friday off of work so we had a three day weekend on the farm.  In the past, that meant just an extra day struggling in the bathroom.  But with the bathroom done, it seems like things are moving along more quickly.

On Friday morning, after a good nights sleep in the teardrop, I started with the water.  As you can see from many pictures of the farm, we have yellow rock everywhere.

No surprise, it is also in the water. The drain pipes I removed were FILLED with the yellow rock, and water left sitting in a bucket leaves the yellow sediment at the bottom.

*Normally, I would insert a picture here of the bathtub filled with yellow water, but the only one we have is one with a person bathing.  If it is Laurie, she wouldn't want me to post it here, and if it is me, you wouldn't want to see it*

So I bought, and inserted this weekend, an inline filter.  It actually went well, and I finished quickly.

Well, with that task done, I quickly moved on to the next.  A few weeks ago, in a storm, wind took off about 7 shingles from a ridge on the roof.  I know enough about roofing to make the repair, but the steepness of the roof, and the height of our home did make me pause.  Added to this, is Laurie's constant belief that I will hurt myself in ordinary tasks, and cannot be trusted (Okay, there was the incident with the circular saw, and well, lets just move on).

The actual work did not take long, and I was done in about an hour, but It was high, and steep, and well, it is done.

The rest of the weekend was spent mowing the lawn, watering trees, working on the garden and.....

The master bedroom has been completed.  That means that working a few weekends a month, for 3 months, has given us updated plumbing, a new bathroom, 6 outlets upstairs when there were none, and two roomsx completed and rewired.

In any job of this size, it is REALLY easy to get frustrated with how long things are taking.  Laurie and I both have dreams of the house done, a few dogs, chickens, and sheep.  A horse or two, and a pony for the grand kids.  Steers grazing.

And Artists.

Artists everywhere, painting, sculpting, exchanging ideas, and community.

But I digress.

When the dreams run deep, it is hard to see all the steps needed to reach those dreams, and to take them patiently.

But we will.

-Greg

Back to Work

Making Progress

Well, once the question about the birds was answered it was time to get back to work on the farm. I always have certain goals in mind of what I want to accomplish. If I can accomplish most of those goals than I know we are making progress. With that said, I would have to say it was a productive weekend. 

My goals

1.) Finish preparing the rock wall garden.

2.) Texture paint the bedroom ceiling.

3.) Mow the lawn.

4.) Water the trees.

5.) Put the baseboards up in the bedroom.

Well, I accomplished all of these goals except the ceiling is not done. I ran out of paint. I guess I did not learn the lesson I passed onto my readers last time (always buy more than you think you need and then take the extra back).  

In addition to completing my goals I also accomplished a few more tasks that were not goals.

Take a look!

A homemade Christmas gift is now hanging on the inside of the bathroom door for robes, towels etc.

After hours of sponge painting a textured ceiling I felt compelled to be creative. I added a wall painting in the bathroom above the tub.

The base boards are now up in the bedroom.

As you can see, some outlets have been completed too, thanks to Greg.

 

Completed rock wall garden; ready for planting. The end dirt will be filled in with grass.

The last highlight of this trip was that Greg finally got the bathtub fixed; no leaks.  We actually took a bath! 

Getting Started

Getting Started

So, we now own the old farm house and 15 acres of land. When we closed on the house we stayed the weekend in a hotel. We spent some time looking around the house trying to decide what to start with first. We decided the most important place for us to start was the bathroom.  We dove right in and started ripping it apart. We also ended up ripping up some other ceilings and ugly old paneling on some other walls.  As we did this we thought about how much we had done and started getting the notion that we could get the bathroom done in another visit or two.  Well... we quickly realized that everything takes much longer to do than you think.  Once we took a look at the plumbing of the bathroom, Greg realized everything needed to be redone.  Thank goodness, Rocky (Greg's brother), had recently told us about a new type of plumbing that would save us a lot of time and money. While Greg got started working on the plumbing after we stripped the bathroom, I refinished the old bear claw tub and tackled cleaning up cracks on the walls in our bedroom. The inside of the tub was in great shape so I just had to clean it, sand it down (I used a wire brush attachment to a drill), primed it and painted it with Rustoleum gray paint.  I spray painted the claw feet white and then used the gray in a dry brush technique on top. 

       





            Getting started in the bathroom

Greg installing Pex plumbing

We used the bedroom next to the bathroom to put the torn down bathroom in as we dismantled it.

Greg had to rip up selected floor boards for the plumbing.

Our stripped bathroom (minus the floor).

The refinished bear claw tub.

We have spent every weekend on the farm after that which took us to the end of the teaching school year for me. This is where the teardrop becomes a huge help.  We can't afford to stay in a hotel when visiting the farm so we park our teardrop in the little barn and live out of there.  We also brought a griddle, coffee pot and a small refrigerator that partially works for the house.  We do have electricity.  So, it is basically like camping in our own yard.  Showering gets tricky and so does going to the bathroom.  However, remember, people didn't always have these modern conveniences and so we make do. We do have water we get from the basement.

Our mornings are pleasant. We get up at sunrise around 6:00 am.  Greg usually gets up first and then I follow about a half an hour later.  I wait for him to make the coffee.  We sit around and chat about the day ahead of us and what we think we will get accomplished.  Next, comes breakfast which I cook on the griddle.  Sometimes dishes after that but many times the breakfast dishes don't get done until after dinner. 

Greg joined the Arbor Day Foundation and bought many trees.  They also give you free trees with your purchase and so we got a lot of trees.   We have now planted 22 new trees on our property.  Some fruit trees so we can have a nice orchard and some red maples, sugar maples, oaks, birch and more.  We wanted to start these trees now so that if they survive, in five years they will be established when the house is finished and we begin our farm life at retirement age.  This is our big plan!

Watering the trees is usually done in the morning when we are there.  When we are not there, we have to rely on God to send the rain.  We use 5 gallon buckets with lids and put them on a small garden cart that we attach to our riding mower.  Greg usually sits on the back with the buckets while I drive the mower.  We travel our mowed paths and stop when we get to the orchard.  Here we usually both hop out and grab a bucket and walk to various trees to douse them with water.  Then we move on to the next set of trees.  We go from one side of our property to the other side.  We only have two buckets so this takes about a good hour because we have to keep going back to refill them.  I must say though that during this time I am really enjoying myself.  I imagine I am a real farmer plowing his field in the early morning hours as the sun rises.  I now understand why farmers love what they do.  I am also amazed at the beauty of our land.  We bought it in winter and I had no idea.  I see a multitude of greens in the rolling hills and fields. I see scattered blossoming wild flowers in various colors. Red winged Black birds, brightly colored orange, yellow and blue birds dart around our property. Monarchs and other various butterflies are plentiful as are the deer. What will it look like in the fall?  I can't believe that we own this land. 

Heading out to the orchard

Getting ready to water the trees

Big mistake - remember the sunscreen before trying this.

Beautiful wildflowers which now adorn the toilet we removed from the bathroom.

Mama deer and baby - Greg spotted them out our parlor window.

I can't believe we own this land!

Laurie