Progress, Plans, and Ponderings

A bit more than a week ago, a surgeon redesigned the layout of my internal organs.  He removed some original equipment, so there is a fear my resale value has fallen.

But I hired him for the remodel, and agreed with the plan.  I do not plan to sell myself anytime soon anyway.

But sitting at home, giving my body time to heal, gives me time to look at some of the progress we have made recently, look at the plans for the rest of the year, and just let my mind wander about this farm house, the land, and our responsibilities as current owners.  This most likely will stretch out over a few posts (not sure how many yet), so stay tuned!

                                                                    My Biggest Issue

When we first toured the house before purchase, as we looked at all the water damage, the destroyed walls and ceilings, and the old plumbing and heating system, there was one item that really bothered me.  The whole house was original wood work, except for a doorway added to the top of the stairs.

 

I hated that door.  And after thinking about it for a bit, I also realized that the plywood above the stairs was out of place. I needed to take it out.  So as we are fixing up the upper hallway, I was finally able to get rid of that evil door.

Yes, that is the original post where the banister used to end.  It is now missing about 6 inches, and is also missing the top.  But we can deal with this.  The whole stairway has a less cramped feeling now that we have opened it up.  This should increase a bit as we take out the old plaster, which as you can all see, has a few problems, and replace it with thinner drywall. 

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.

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! 

In the Beginning

In the Beginning

It all started in 2007 when I (Laurie Pledl) met Greg.  We met online through Yahoo Personals. Greg had a hobby farm before and he was dreaming of having one again.  I love animals and have always enjoyed farms but I never really thought about owning one.  As our relationships grew, so did this dream.  Greg quickly found out that he met someone whose dreams become realities, if at all possible. We married in 2008.

 Greg's other dream was to build a teardrop trailer.  I heard him talk about it for years and saw him research it many times.  Finally, with my encouragement, we started building.  I bought him some plans online for his birthday.  Greg found out that it was not that difficult to do and we discovered that we work well together. Our teardrop has been done for about 8 years now and we have traveled many places with it.  Some of our longer vacations in the teardrop include: the Outer Banks, NC, Maryland, Utah, California, Virginia, and Florida.  The teardrop has also played a huge role in our farm dream.  In fact, I would have to say that our farm dream could not have become a reality without our teardrop.

For five years Greg and I searched First Weber Realty online for farms.  We found a few we liked and went to look at several properties.  It was simply remaining a dream. It was getting tiring and frustrating for me. I believe Greg enjoyed the looking and dreaming more than me.  All of a sudden, a property we had looked at before showed up again.  The price was down a bit but probably still a little more expensive than we could afford.  What intrigued us was that it was listed as an old Montgomery Ward house, it had 15 acres and it was in the drift less area of Wisconsin (a part of Wisconsin in the western part of the State that was not covered by glaciers in the ice age).  We made an appointment to see it.  We looked at the house in February, 2018.  There was snow on the ground and it was cold.  The house clearly needed a lot of work. It had stood vacant for over 8 years.  However, the potential for this house was plentiful. What sold me on this property was not only the house but also the area.  In researching the nearby city of Monroe, I discovered it was quite a quaint with an artistic flare.  It has a great town square and some really fun shops and places to eat. It is also not far from Madison, WI.  As a graduate from U.W. Madison, I was thrilled.  Greg can live out in isolation and have no one else to talk to but I, however, would go stir crazy.  This place was looking better to me all of the time. We started to think about it more seriously. 

Before we even put in an offer, we had the well tested.  The current owner did not want to deal with any contingencies due to a few previous deals falling through.  The water tested fine and we put in our offer.  It was considerably lower than the asking price but Greg had figured out that we would have to put about $55,000 into it.  We decided to leave it to fate and put in a low bid based on what we could afford.  To our amazement and surprise, the offer was accepted.  Then we had to start jumping through some hoops; loan companies have a lot of them.  Our credit was really good though and so we were able to make the jumps like thoroughbreds. The expenses began to multiply.  Even before closing we discovered we had to put in a septic system.  We decided that this was not a bad expense to get out of the way. We closed on our farm on April 27th, 2018.

This blog will be the making of our farm dream come true.  We will share our progress of fixing up this old 1915 house and making it great once again. Stay tuned for our struggles and excitement as Greg and I create our dream farm.