We finished papering the kitchen, it looks pretty good. I bought a brighter wallpaper than I normally would have. The kitchen, although it has four windows is pretty dark. Two of the windows open onto the porch, the other two are in the alcove so the main part of the room doesn't get too bright from them. I also got new counter tops, choosing a brownish red ceramic tile. It really warms the place up. All that is left is curtains, I chose a lime green gingham check and will make curtains for all of the windows as soon as it arrives. I will post pictures once I finish setting everything up. Kevin also finished the kitchen wardrobe, although I got the red milk paint I haven't started painting it yet. I chose the milk paint because the cabinet is a reproduction and during that period that was the paint people used. The paint comes dry and you mix it will water. I am going to try it out on some scraps of wood today.
It is raining today, the rain started last evening, knocking out the satellite internet, not a good sign for winter use. We didn't have a storm or anything, just a medium rain. The puppies are stir crazy and are running around pouncing on each other. It's kind of funny because Sleepy is about three times the size of Lady now, but Lady is the one who starts the rough play. She makes this little ninja sound and pounces at Sleepy. It can get pretty wild and normally we put them out in the yard, neither is staying out long in this rain.
Jay has a doctor's appointment today. I lost my appointment book so I can't remember what time it is. I am waiting for the medical center to open at 8:30 so I can call to check the time. I think it is either at 9:30 or 10. I bought a white board to log our appointments so this doesn't happen again.
The guys have been working on the pad for my barn. It should be here sometime in September. i have decided to wait until next Spring to get my milk cow. Waiting will give us time to set up the barn, get the pasture seeded, and the fences up.
The Farm
This is the farmhouse
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Thursday afternoon
This week has flown past. Adam has been busy scraping the old paint off the outside of the house. He has made pretty good progress on the front. Ran into some wood bees on the second floor. We will attack them this evening. Apparently, you spray them, soak a cotton ball with nail polish remover and shove it in their hole. Sounds kind of mean. I guess after living here unmolested for four to five years they probably think the house is theirs.
Kevin has been working on my kitchen wardrobe, when Restoration Hardware says "assembly required", you better listen. It looks awesome though. I ordered Salem Red milk paint to paint it with. We covered one wall with the new paper. It looks good, except the wall still looks a little lumpy. I guess I am going to prime over the paper for the rest of the walls. I like the paper it's bright, but looks really great with my orange mixing bowls, and red stand mixer! I'll post pictures soon.
We took the Herman, Scout and Sleepy to the vet today. The boys needed rabies shots and Sleepy her second set of puppy shots. My old much loved vet in Saint Peters had a dachshund, and my new one does too. Dr. P , the new vet, admired Herman's Puppia harness, since I recently found the three harnesses I misplaced on the move, so I gifted her Herman's orange one. One thing I have found is that locally there aren't the number of pet boutiques that we had in my old town. I bet Kevin is glad, my dogs have just about everything.Speaking of dogs, Sleepy figured out how to escape from the fenced in yard. We thought she jumped the fence until we caught her crawling back under it.
We ordered wood today. There is a family up the road from us who deliver wood, so we ordered three cords from them. This time we are getting them split and cut since it is late in the season. Adam and Kevin are hoping to harvest another cord from our property. Hopefully the downed trees aren't rotten although we can always order more if they are. I have learned that not everything I am concerned about is worth mentioning to the guys. Keeps the arguments down and things generally work out anyhow.
My Uncle Robert and his family are visiting next week. They live in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Robert is five years younger than me, my grandfather's youngest child. I guess they have never been this far north since Robert told me he thought they could make it up here in five hours. We live seven hours and some minutes from them.
I am roasting a chicken, making some of that great acorn squash I bought from a neighboring farm, and baking potatoes also local. It's kind of great knowing where your food comes from.
Kevin has been working on my kitchen wardrobe, when Restoration Hardware says "assembly required", you better listen. It looks awesome though. I ordered Salem Red milk paint to paint it with. We covered one wall with the new paper. It looks good, except the wall still looks a little lumpy. I guess I am going to prime over the paper for the rest of the walls. I like the paper it's bright, but looks really great with my orange mixing bowls, and red stand mixer! I'll post pictures soon.
We took the Herman, Scout and Sleepy to the vet today. The boys needed rabies shots and Sleepy her second set of puppy shots. My old much loved vet in Saint Peters had a dachshund, and my new one does too. Dr. P , the new vet, admired Herman's Puppia harness, since I recently found the three harnesses I misplaced on the move, so I gifted her Herman's orange one. One thing I have found is that locally there aren't the number of pet boutiques that we had in my old town. I bet Kevin is glad, my dogs have just about everything.Speaking of dogs, Sleepy figured out how to escape from the fenced in yard. We thought she jumped the fence until we caught her crawling back under it.
We ordered wood today. There is a family up the road from us who deliver wood, so we ordered three cords from them. This time we are getting them split and cut since it is late in the season. Adam and Kevin are hoping to harvest another cord from our property. Hopefully the downed trees aren't rotten although we can always order more if they are. I have learned that not everything I am concerned about is worth mentioning to the guys. Keeps the arguments down and things generally work out anyhow.
My Uncle Robert and his family are visiting next week. They live in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Robert is five years younger than me, my grandfather's youngest child. I guess they have never been this far north since Robert told me he thought they could make it up here in five hours. We live seven hours and some minutes from them.
I am roasting a chicken, making some of that great acorn squash I bought from a neighboring farm, and baking potatoes also local. It's kind of great knowing where your food comes from.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Saturday 8/14/10
Friday, August 13, 2010
Living the dream....
We have been in the house for three weeks today! I am over the feeling like I am doing something wrong by not being at work phase. So far, we have unpacked and or moved half of the boxes from the front room. We have a rather large attic, so I will admit, many of Kevin's books are up there. We have plans for built in bookcases, we have hundreds of books, but right now, I need to figure out how to find the items that would be really useful at this time.
The house is over one hundred and thirty years old, the last few years, it has been abandoned. We are trying to prioritize the things that need to be dealt with immediately. The first is the huge hole in the threshold of the front door. Kevin cut out all of the decayed wood, and bought pressure treated wood to rebuild it. Stairs for that door would be great too, but not a necessity since more than likely any visitors we may have will come in through the porch. I bought paint for the house, it is currently white, with black doors. The doors need to be stripped and repainted. I got a shade of green for the doors. The back of the woodshed has yellow siding, so we will paint the rest of the house yellow, the trim will stay white. There are a few clapboards that have to be replaced, and the rest will be patched and painted before Winter sets in. Other things that we don't necessarily agree with is my desire to tear down all of the dirty, peeling wallpaper. I would rather look at the plaster walls than the paper. The sloping floors would be a priority for me as well, but there are other things that need immediate attention. We have to bury the water pipe running from the Spring, prepare the pads for the two out buildings coming next month, bury the cable. We also have soil testing, I have ordered the kits, testing the water from the Spring, picking a cover crop once the garden is plowed, and planting pasture seed. We will probably consult the county extension on the cover crop and the pasture seed. I know that we have timothy, common vetch, purple clover and lots of wildflowers in the pasture. Next Spring, I will have a milk cow, probably a calf, and a steer in the pasture. The guys are picking up a tractor today, a 1954 Farmall cub, with a cultivator, a mow board plow, sickle bar mower, and a snow plow. This will definitely make the field work a whole lot easier. We need to purchase a wood stove and some wood for Winter heating.
So far, we have had our electric updated, phase one, we have electric, we don't have many outlets, but are learning to make do. I bought a bunch of adapters and power strips and the power has been updated from 60 amp to 100. We have hot and cold running water. We got a new water heater, and Kevin finally ran a new water line from the spring and the pump problem has been fixed. We have a temporary fenced in yard for the dogs, it is made of chicken wire, definitely helpful with all the logging trucks running up and down Route One. We have also scraped and primed the storm windows, we broke the glass in two of them, so they will have to be replaced before Winter.
Kevin is building me a kitchen wardrobe from a kit from Restoration Hardware. Once that is built, I can begin organizing the kitchen. We made a compost bin near the garden area. We have trapped some mice using sticky traps. I have moved everything a mouse could possibly want to eat into plastic and glass containers. They will eat anything! I bought a bag of popcorn and found it completely empty four days later. They also ate confectioners sugar, a box of cereal, bag of marshmallows, and a few other things that escape my mind. It looks like they are giving up now that they can only "window shop" my vast array of glass and heavy plastic containers. Wallpaper has been purchased for the kitchen and living room, I have peeled up all of the paper in the living room and will plaster some cracks in the plaster today as well as cover the walls with wallpaper siding. I would like to get the wallpaper up by the beginning of next week, it would be good to actually have one finished room to relax in.
The weather is nice, crisp in the morning and comfortably warm, but not hot in the afternoon. The area is still breathtakingly beautiful, and we are living the dream....
The house is over one hundred and thirty years old, the last few years, it has been abandoned. We are trying to prioritize the things that need to be dealt with immediately. The first is the huge hole in the threshold of the front door. Kevin cut out all of the decayed wood, and bought pressure treated wood to rebuild it. Stairs for that door would be great too, but not a necessity since more than likely any visitors we may have will come in through the porch. I bought paint for the house, it is currently white, with black doors. The doors need to be stripped and repainted. I got a shade of green for the doors. The back of the woodshed has yellow siding, so we will paint the rest of the house yellow, the trim will stay white. There are a few clapboards that have to be replaced, and the rest will be patched and painted before Winter sets in. Other things that we don't necessarily agree with is my desire to tear down all of the dirty, peeling wallpaper. I would rather look at the plaster walls than the paper. The sloping floors would be a priority for me as well, but there are other things that need immediate attention. We have to bury the water pipe running from the Spring, prepare the pads for the two out buildings coming next month, bury the cable. We also have soil testing, I have ordered the kits, testing the water from the Spring, picking a cover crop once the garden is plowed, and planting pasture seed. We will probably consult the county extension on the cover crop and the pasture seed. I know that we have timothy, common vetch, purple clover and lots of wildflowers in the pasture. Next Spring, I will have a milk cow, probably a calf, and a steer in the pasture. The guys are picking up a tractor today, a 1954 Farmall cub, with a cultivator, a mow board plow, sickle bar mower, and a snow plow. This will definitely make the field work a whole lot easier. We need to purchase a wood stove and some wood for Winter heating.
So far, we have had our electric updated, phase one, we have electric, we don't have many outlets, but are learning to make do. I bought a bunch of adapters and power strips and the power has been updated from 60 amp to 100. We have hot and cold running water. We got a new water heater, and Kevin finally ran a new water line from the spring and the pump problem has been fixed. We have a temporary fenced in yard for the dogs, it is made of chicken wire, definitely helpful with all the logging trucks running up and down Route One. We have also scraped and primed the storm windows, we broke the glass in two of them, so they will have to be replaced before Winter.
Kevin is building me a kitchen wardrobe from a kit from Restoration Hardware. Once that is built, I can begin organizing the kitchen. We made a compost bin near the garden area. We have trapped some mice using sticky traps. I have moved everything a mouse could possibly want to eat into plastic and glass containers. They will eat anything! I bought a bag of popcorn and found it completely empty four days later. They also ate confectioners sugar, a box of cereal, bag of marshmallows, and a few other things that escape my mind. It looks like they are giving up now that they can only "window shop" my vast array of glass and heavy plastic containers. Wallpaper has been purchased for the kitchen and living room, I have peeled up all of the paper in the living room and will plaster some cracks in the plaster today as well as cover the walls with wallpaper siding. I would like to get the wallpaper up by the beginning of next week, it would be good to actually have one finished room to relax in.
The weather is nice, crisp in the morning and comfortably warm, but not hot in the afternoon. The area is still breathtakingly beautiful, and we are living the dream....
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