Progress, progress, progress!

Lots has been happening around here!!  Recently, Moose and I went to the cabinet dude to pick our kitchen and bathroom cabinets. This was a very exciting event for me.

The last time Moose did my kitchen he asked me what type of cabinets I wanted and I had no idea. He basically picked them out for me and did a nice job too. I think the only thing I said was that I wanted the drawers to come all the way out.

I have a lot more opinions now (surprise, surprise)

Here is the current kitchen...

Progress is something to be excited about!

The siding is on and, yes, those are windows! I love that the old corbels were put back on the house.

The underside of the north window was covered in some ratty plywood. I suggested that we cover it in the same bead board (I love that stuff and think that you really can't have enough of it.) that Moose matched what they had originally used under the eves. It looks so pretty!!!!

There was no insulation in this. During the winter I was painting the room above and I removed the plate on the electrical socket. The draft that came out literally blew my hair back.

Moose has been working on rewiring the house. We are trading out the playroom chandelier for the one we used to have in the dining room. C pulled up a chair and "was ready to watch the movie." I think that meant watching Moose work. 

My Dad didn't have anywhere to put the chandelier that we had on our house growing up so he sent it to me. It was pretty beat-up after many moves and being shoved into garages/storage units over the last 20 years.

With Moose's guidance on wiring and a lot of Brasso (brass polish), plus hours rubbing off the tarnish; it is finally shinning again!

While we were working on it, we discovered that it was originally made for candles. Dad wasn't sure how old it was, but he said he had a vague memory of it be retrofitted for electricity when he and my mom bought it in the 70's.  Seems like it has found a good place to land. This house didn't have electricity when it was first built.  A little crooked, but kinda fits the house...it is crooked too.

Michael put down the tile in the powder bathroom. We are going to put down a dark gray grout. Not too bad for $2.70 a square foot!  Michael is truly a craftsman for so many reasons, but he is so skilled at tile work. Wow!

Moose is working on another job when he isn't here and he pulled up to my house with a dump truck full of cabinets that they pulled out of the other job. He asked Matt if we wanted any for our garage since they were in pretty good condition. It is almost impossible to imagine our garage as anything but stuffed right now. 

I started thinking..... 

Everyone brace yourself. 

I couldn't find a laundry sink that I liked so I figured we would get one of those plastic tubs that they sell at Home Depot for $100. Not what I want, but it would do for now. Could I use one of those base cabinets for a laundry room sink cabinet????

Moose agreed. I can't remember who thought of it, but we both started thinking... could we use these for the kids' bathroom vanity?  Could I use one to replace the horrid down, downstairs vanity and use the old master sink?  The possibilities are endless... especially when they are free!!!!!

Not as nice as the cabinets we are buying, but a good sanding and a coat of white paint---- I think we are onto something!  I'll let you know what we figure out.

In other news. it has been a bit warm around here. We broke out the pool. C and N thought it was great. They thought of so many games and scenarios. This is them trying to bounce the other off the boat into the sea.

E wasn't into this pool business. Instead he resumed his place as my personal "Chicle."  Dora calls him this because he sticks like glue. So sweet.

 Summer is so wonderful.

My pretties + excess pipe and wires!

I love, love, love School House lights! It seems only fitting. I was a bit aghast at the price of  them when I began to look into getting some for The Farm House. Not to be deterred, I checked my favorite salvage yard, but they had the shades only for $89. Too rich for my blood.  Time for eBay!

When we first bought the house, I bid on 3 really beat up fixtures with globes and won (I sorta forgot I bid on them so it was a surprise - there is a theme here).  Moose helped me to rewire them and I spray painted them. I so love the way they turned out in the boys' room.

I could just see all of the tacky 80's gold ceiling mount fixtures in the down, downstairs being replaced by fabulous School House fixtures.

To summarize the next few weeks: I found a lot of vintage fixtures (they are much harder to find than the globes); there was a bidding war; Matt was not loving the ending bid; I was super stoked.

They are a bit rough and rusty, but have no fear....spray paint fixes all sins!!! (Not to mention a bit of rewiring.)

Ahh, so much better.

I had to get creative on how to spray the ceiling mount as it kept moving around.

Matt dubbed this The Most Expensive Wind Chime- EVER.  

I have also been collecting old enamel lamp shades that were on old gas stations or barns. Moose said that we could easily bend a piece of pipe to make the barn light. My job was to find the shades and get the innards.  

 

Doesn't look like much right now, but hold on.... I sorta forgot that I put a bid on a couple so it turns out I have 4 shades total. (Deep breath, Matt.) Have you heard that before?

 Good news because I need 4. It is possible that Moose found 4 places to put these lights to get me out of the dog house, but let's just think about how cool they will look.

Yeah!!!

In other exciting news, the plumbers came!  This might not seem that exciting, but the plumbing in this house rivals a maze. Moose spent 2 days trying to make sense of the pipes just to prep the plumbers. 

Moose and Michael usually feel comfortable doing the plumbing on their jobs, but our house was just too much of a mess. To give you an idea, I have knocked off the drain from under the kitchen sink because it wasn't glued in. The down, downstairs bathroom used to smell like a bad public bathroom until Moose discovered that sewer gas was coming back up the pipes because the pipes were not sealed properly. AKKK!

Back to the plumbers. Michael had a friend who squeezed us into his schedule (he is booked until next year) to fix our plumbing. The guys who showed up were stoic. Very stoic. My compliments to their hard work and gratefulness for them coming to work here was met with pressed lips and a nod. Tough crowd. Thankfully Michael was here to make sure all was well. (They mainly spoke Ukrainian.)

I left for a bit to get C from the bus and when I got back I checked in with them. I found one very stoic plumber, sweating profusely, while trying to use a sawzall to cut out chunks of copper pipes out of the wall. He looked up at me and said "There are too many pipes!!!!!" I tried to explain that the former owner said he was a contractor and might have done the work himself.  To this he exclaimed, "NO PLUMBER DID THIS!!!!!"

Oh-kay. I will let them work their magic. 

They stayed until 7:45 PM on the last night. They didn't say good-bye. Matt and I only knew they left by the huge dust cloud they created as they raced down the gravel drive. Was this house a plumber's nightmare???

Let me show you the piles of pipes:

This is the pile right now, but more is to come.

All this pipe is money to me. We will take it to the scrap yard and sell it. It is a gold mine! This has brought out a bit of crazy in me. I dug through a trash can to get a little piece. Every little bit counts....

A similar story could be told about the electrical wire. 

Extra wire.

Look at this mess. Moose had already worked on removing the excess.

I really want him to get rid of the old Knob and Tube. I feel a fire coming on and we have already gotten to know the fire department better than we should.

This is my personal favorite. When replacing old wiring, just stick it back into an ancient circuit breaker and sheet rock over it. Awesome. 

I am so thankful that these things are being fixed!

New skills, new confidence, rinse & repeat

This is my first post on Beth’s great blog.  I’m going to talk about concrete today, but 

let me first make a confession.  I wasn’t all that enamored with this farmhouse idea to start.  It was 

going to be a TON of work, a huge disruption (not to mention expense) vs. staying where we were.

But Beth is used to this behavior from me by now.  I was opposed to getting 

chickens.  Turns out that was a great idea.   I was opposed to having a third kid at first.  

Turns out that was also a great idea.

The idea of buying and renovating a farmhouse was at minimum intimidating.  

Expensive, even if we’re doing a lot of the work ourselves.  Draining.  With three kids 

and a growing business, would the investment of blood, sweat and money be worth 

it?

We have a long way to go, but it’s already clear this was a great decision.  Beth is a 

visionary, seriously.  She could see in this house what I couldn’t, what our contractor 

couldn’t initially, what his crew couldn’t initially.  But as it starts to really now take 

shape, not to mention the land and options outside of the structure, I think we 

struck gold.

I have a ton of plans for the outside of the house.  A smokehouse.  Tons of new raised 

beds for Beth.  A mini-orchard for her fruit trees where a previous graveled 

driveway was.  A back patio with a fire pit.

But first, we concrete.

Yet another project neither of us had ever done, didn’t know how to do, and 

approached with trepidation.  Actually, it was me (as usual) who approached with 

trepidation.  Beth approached with vigor, YouTube videos and her amazing can-do 

attitude.

Moose let us borrow his electric cement mixer, his flatbed truck for the day to pick 

up a pallet (yes, an entire PALLET of concrete mix), and also walked us through the 

process.

Making concrete, if you haven’t ever done it, is pretty simple.  Not too different than 

mixing a cake.  If you get the balance between concrete mix and water right, you’re 

basically done.

On a warm Saturday morning this past weekend, we got to work.  It went relatively 

quickly.  I manned the concrete mixer, Beth manned the trowel and 2x4 to smooth 

everything out.  

Only a couple minor dips of E’s feet into the wet concrete while we laid everything 

out.

And of course, once it was done, it was time to put the kids’ handprints in as a 

signature.

All told, it was less than three hours of work.  And less than $160 in materials.

We have a ton of work ahead (inside and outside) but every time we try something 

new, we get a little more confident about what’s next.