Moving into Fall

Time is Running Out

Well, as Fall approaches, our time on the farm is slowly ending. With no furnace we can't work through the winter. Our goal at this point is to finish one last bedroom and prepare it for winter. Last weekend we had to go up on Saturday morning instead of Friday night because I was part of Art on the Plaza in West Allis. I also had to pay a bill in the morning and so we got a late start and did not actually arrive there until around 11:00 a.m.

Regardless, we still got a lot accomplished. While Greg tackled the electric in the bedroom, I sanded the walls and ceiling. I was able to prime everything except for the ceiling before we left. Greg was able to finish all of the electricity. The week before we found another great fan light for the room at the Restore and so we are looking forward to finishing the room and installing that.

It was also Cheese Days in Monroe and we wanted to check that out. We managed to make it to the festival on Sunday for about an hour and saw the parade. I got to try Limburger cheese for the first time. Which, I did not think had a horrible odor like I was told... and I enjoyed the flavor. After that, we drove home to West Allis.

While at the farm on Saturday night we had a visitor. Greg will introduce you to him.

Laurie

Yes, we had a visitor.  We were cooking a late dinner, and chatting about what we had accomplished, and Laurie saw a shadow fly by.  And then again......

Suddenly, she jumped up, grabbed her purse and ran out.  I followed.  She had seen a bat.  We had seen one in April, but have not seen any since.  I went in, turned on all the lights, and found our cute friend hanging in what was the dining room.

I decided to close off the room as much as I could, so his only exit was the front door, which Laurie (who was still outside with her purse) agreed to open as he came. No matter what kind of noise or action I took, he decided to just hang in there.  I finally nudged him with a long piece of drywall. He flew around and landed on a screen I had used to block off the kitchen.  After a moment, he (or she, I never got close enough to check) was off again, circled the room twice and found the space I was unable to block into the living room and parlor.  

He disappeared.

I looked in every place the bat could be hiding, and he could not be found.  Eventually, Laurie came in with her purse, we locked the door and went to bed, with our bedroom door firmly closed.

-Greg  

PS Good thing I had my purse! (Laurie).

A Productive Weekend

Goals Accomplished and More

It was a rough start to our visit to the farm this weekend due to a lost wallet. However, all turned out well and we were finally on our way.We arrived around 1:00 in the afternoon on Saturday. I mowed and it took about 2 hours. Greg worked on the electricity in the master bedroom hooking up the dimmer to the fan light.  When I was done mowing I also fixed some more cracks on our second bedroom and stripped the carpet in another bedroom. This was the "More" listed above.  The carpeting that was down left black rubbery padding on the wood floor that did not want to come up with the carpet. I sprayed it with water and scraped it off with a large scraper. This worked really well and to my amazement I got it all off and we got the carpet out of the house. It was a short weekend but very productive. After that Greg and I hung three pieces of drywall in the second bedroom. We decided that we did enough and cleaned up our mess before leaving on Sunday.

Our first sheet of drywall on the old chimney wall.

Hanging drywall is an art. We are learning. The use of two deadman devices works great after Greg and I lift it onto two ladders.

Cutting drywall.

Even screwing drywall is an art. You must make sure the screw sets into the drywall so that when you mud you can cover the screw completely.

Greg did a much better job of this in this room.

Discoveries

 Discoveries

The first 2 weekends spent at the house, and working on it were filled of new discoveries.  Some were fun, a few are expensive, and one or two were kind of scary.  In reality, none of them should have been too surprising, considering it was a farm house built in 1915 and it had been vacant for the last 6 years.

My first discovery was electrical.  I had assumed that there would only be one outlet per bedroom, since it was an old farm house, but discovered that there were no outlets upstairs at all.  The electric is also very old, with insulators in the wall.  We decided very quickly that all the electric would be replaced. 

Plumbing was also a bit of an eye opener.  We live in a very rocky area, with yellowish rock everywhere.  It was a bit of a surprise, though, to open up the bathroom sink drain and discover sediment, the same color as all the rocks, had filled the inch and ¼ pipe to the point it was only open 1/8 of an inch.  We decided, again, very quickly, that all the plumbing would be replaced, and we would put a few inline filters on the waterline.

One of the fun discoveries was the wildlife.  We have a mama bird on the porch sitting on eggs,

                      we saw a mama deer and her baby in the field across the road,

       and we had a bat fly past us when were upstairs at dusk (Sorry, no pics of that. We left quickly.)

          

We had been told that our farmhouse was a Montgomery Ward mail order house.  Our research, though, showed that Montgomery Ward was not sending out mail order houses in 1915.  We had also been told it was a Sears mail order house, but we were doubting that also.  The answer came when we took out some of the molding around the windows and discovered that it was a mail order Gordon Van Tine home.

Gordon Van Tine was a company in Iowa, which is not far from the house, and started by supplying the materials for the Sears mail order homes.  When Sears got their own mill, Gordon Van Tine started their own Catalog.  Later, when Montgomery Ward got into the mail order house business, they also used Gordon Van Tine. Now we are in the process of looking for the catalog which shows our home.

Well, our discoveries will continue, along with our rebuilding, and we invite you along for the ride.

-Greg.