Finishing Bedroom #2

Holding Back

I have to hold back, I feel, and be patient.  We are on our second bedroom and things are going well. This weekend I finished priming the ceiling, painted the ceiling, and painted the walls. I had to touch up the baseboards, clean the windows, and sweep the floor. I wanted to hang the drapes I bought; I'm so excited to see them up because they will look great with the wall color. However, I don't want them getting dirty and Greg and I have decided to look for some carpet remnants so we can truly finish the room. Once we get carpet in the room, I will hang the drapes. We still have to put up the baseboards on one half of the room.  All in all, it was another productive weekend. Oh, we also have a bed in our room now and it was so nice to sleep on a real bed. Still looking for a head board and foot board though. We are getting most things from Craigslist or restores, auctions, Estate sales etc.

On our trip up on Friday night we saw the most amazing sunset.

Simply amazing!

Doing some last minute touch-ups!

We found this great ceiling light/fan at the Habitat for Humanity Restore.

Oh, I also worked on my garden. I transplanted some peonies, planted spring bulbs, and transplanted Day Lilies and Mums.  I'm all set for fall and spring.

I'm so excited to look for carpet, head and foot boards, and hang the drapes. Hopefully, we will have some luck locating some of these items this week. I'm also very excited about next spring so I can see the results of my work in the garden.

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

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.