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.

Have you ever??...

Have you ever been awaken in the middle of the night because you heard a sound that just wasn't right?

You hear a sound, but what is it? Was it a one time only thing or does it keep happening? 

Then you heart starts to beat faster....something is definitely wrong....where is the sound coming from????

Picture it if you will, 1:30 AM last night. I was having a lovely sleep (No people under 4 feet had yet joined us to practice kung-fu moves while they sleep. Why do they feel the urge to sleep with their feet on your face???) when I woke up suddenly to a hissing sound.

Now, I immediately thought SNAKE, but I remembered that we are on the 3rd floor and no snakes that live here can make that loud of a sound. Yes, I have checked this fact out.

Then I thought, "Oh my goodness a raccoon has gotten in and Rosabelle is about to be eaten!" I jumped out of bed and ran to the demoed bathroom/C's room/ our suite. No raccoon, instead:

A PIPE WAS GUSHING WATER ALL OVER THE SUB-FLOOR OF OUR OLD BATHROOM!

 Picture 3 inches of water.

I only have morning after photos.

I grabbed the burst area and tried to stop the leak, why I don't know, but it was 1:30 in the morning and I was a little alarmed.  Quickly, I realized that I needed Matt. We both joke that finally a disaster has actually occurred when he wasn't traveling. It is well known that freakish accidents happen in our home when he is across the country, ie the time a couple years ago when a squirrel attacked the transformer, got electrocuted, which caused a surge and fried out heater in January.

I ran into our bedroom and said "Matt, we've got a problem!" I thought about saying, "Matt, I need you to be really awake right now." I said those exact words 3 times before I told him I was in labor. I figured if I led with that, he would pretend he was dead.

Matt, thankfully, jumped right up. We both ran to the remnants of the old bathroom and flipped on the light. It looked like someone had turned on the hose and left it on for hours, which is basically what had happened. The exposed plaster and lathes were under 3 inches of water.

A few days before this, we had been watching a This Old House episode and they discussed the importance of knowing where your water shut off valve is located. I asked Matt if he knew and he asked me...both answers were no. Thankfully, I asked Moose where it was on Monday and he showed me. 

Matt directed me to turn off the water so I ran down the first flight of stairs. I hit the main floor and heard.....water running and dripping so showing great common sense...I ran back to Matt. He came flying down the stairs and we flipped on the light. Water was streaming out of the ceiling. Actually, some areas were just dripping heavily. The floor was covered with an inch of water. Matt reminded me to turn off the water. 

  Each of those circles is from a steady drip.

 Water came streaming out of the fixture.

I ran down to the garage and found it to be raining from the ceiling. Climbing over various construction debris I made it to the turn off valve. I turned it off and ran back upstairs as I grabbed every rag we had. We kept the lights off because that area of the house has the old knob and tube wiring. No need to add electrocution to the evenings events.

We sopped up the floor and moved my mom's beloved 1850's barrel desk which was not super wet. The same could not be said for the food in the pantry or anything else in the room. 

A portion of the rags needed to remove the standing water. 

Matt called Moose. We were kind of glad he didn't wake up because what was he going to do?  After the water began to slow we put a bucket under the biggest streams. We were like..."Well, we might as well go back to bed."

Matt is a good sleeper. I kept waking up thinking that the drop ceiling had tumbled to the floor since it was saturated with water. I am going to see if I can remove the water marks and we hope that the seams come back together again. Part of me wanted it to fall down because I hate them anyway.

Around 8 we roused Moose from bed and gave him a rundown on our nighttime adventures. He came over to fix the leak and let us turn the water back on. We were having flashbacks to septic alarms. 

Moose showed up quickly and was impressed by the destruction. C gave me a stern lecture that it was Saturday and Moose doesn't work on Saturdays. I explained that this was an emergency. I got no reprieve. She informed me that "This is not an emergency, Mama!" Glad she slept soundly through the flooding. 

Most things were saved. It is too early to know if the floors will live to see another day. 

So many blessings. Moose could not believe that the pipe didn't burst earlier since the solder was barely holding on. So grateful that it didn't  burst before we demoed the walls. So grateful that I hadn't refinished the floors already. So grateful we found the water turn off valve on Monday!!!!

So very grateful for Moose!!

Nothing but excitement all the time here!

The Dust Bowl, but with insulation, saw dust, and 100+ year old yuckies

It has been windy here on and off over the last few weeks. The house resembles more of a sieve than a weatherproof home. The wind blows --- the drop cloths over the door ways move in and out like the house is breathing. It is very good for eliminating any sort of stink.

I vacuum ALL-THE-TIME. I use our beloved Sebo and the Shop Vac, but it doesn't really matter. Once a breeze blows again, dust, sawdust, insulation, and general yuckies land everywhere.

Now, at first this made me a bit crazed, but now I just pretend that I am living in a current day Dust Bowl. This appeals to my inner History Major and makes me think that if my grandmother could do it, I can too. (The little voice in the back of my head says, "but for how long??? Didn't some ladies lose it because of the dust in The Dust Bowl???")

We are going through the shrinking stage right now. I have some before and "now" photos to share with you....

 The master bath/laundry room when we moved in and now.....

 We recommend not using this toilet. Privacy is doubtful.

 This was our bedroom when we moved in and now.....

This would also be where this lovely photo was taken a couple of weeks ago.

Look at those blue eyes! 

We also are saving every piece of 100 year old clear grade fir flooring we can get our hands on in the house.  We are saving trim, shingles, and siding. All of it we can't afford to get today and why not reuse it?? It is in good shape. All of this has caused our front porch to be turned into what I call 

"The Lumber Yard."

Soon we will be pulling the fir floors in the kitchen. I am not convinced that they can be saved as right now I think they are gross. Anything that touches them is immediately thrown away or burned. E is particularly annoyed by this because he likes to hide food away for later consumption. (He might be part squirrel.) Ohh, he gets so mad at me when I throw his food away, but really wouldn't you when you look at those floors?

Moose assures me that I just need to sand them and they will be fine. He also told me that this stage of a remodel is like being pregnant. "Everything gets really squished and then pop! You have more room." I don't remember giving birth going quite like that.

A nice surprise was that we found pretty fir tongue and grove sub floors in the master bath. We are going to save them and promote them to actual flooring.

They look all dirty here, but trust me, they will be great!

The chicks have left their fluffy little cute stage to the pullet teenager stage. I need to get them a bigger brooder. Every time we come into the bathroom 1 or 2 of them are perched on the edge of the bin. I am just waiting for them to decide to wander into the rest of the house.