Overdue Update

Thanksgiving and Christmas have long since passed and now the new year is a quarter over but it definitely doesn’t feel like that much time has passed. It’s easy to feel that way when I start every day the same, by asking myself “what can I get done in the time I have today” so downtime is almost non existent. I finally took down the Christmas tree during the last week of February, I didn’t think it would take me that long but it just kept moving lower and lower on the priority list.

The top of my priority list has been reserved for updating the electrical. Once we started the electrical the top of the priority list became “remodel the whole house”. Remodeling the house has been keeping me VERY busy. I really want to clean and organize and sort and give everything a home but I can’t until the remodeled rooms are more finished. That is a very powerful motivation for me to keep going even when I don’t want to.

What are we doing!?

I feel like we’re on the 12th revision of our farmstead plan since moving in last July. The phrase anything worth having is worth working for is something I really believe in. With all the work the farmstead needs it’s a phrase I say often. If we stick with it now it will pay off for years to come. The other phrase that’s keeping things going is “do it once, do it right” because ripping out things you spent a lot of time on is miserable.

Kevon and I are pushing hard to continue with the mantra that “2020 will be our year”. We had so much transition and change that we couldn’t really set goals in years past. This year we have certainly been making up for that though!! So far since January first we have completely relocated 4 rooms in the house. Totally unexpected but it has worked out well so far. Opening walls made updating the electrical much easier and with everything open we were also able to get some of the out dated plumbing up to current standards too.

January

The first week of January my amazing father in law came to stay with us to help with some of the projects on the to-do list to help get our farmstead going. The initial to-do list item we were trying to get done was: update the electrical. I was shaking in my boots at the idea of updating the electrical but my father in law was cool as a cucumber about it. I’d say 4 or so days after starting the electric I had a BRILLIANT idea (well, brilliant to me). “What if we moved all the rooms for better flow”. He still stayed cool as a cucumber. However I think he developed a permanent eye twitch, which got worse the more ideas I had.

One of the first things that changed was moving the location of the kitchen from the back of the house, to the heart of the home in the middle. The old kitchen I spent so much time trying to make pretty was such a waste of time looking back now. On the flip side I now have the makings of the kitchen of my dreams rather than the kitchen I could settle for. I enjoy cooking so much more now that I’m not sequestered to the back of the house in the closed off kitchen. It’s nice to feel like a part of the family again. The new kitchen is so close to being a finished space I can almost taste it. I’ve put some teaser pictures on Instagram highlighting some of the changes that I’m swooning over.

The house is much more open now and has a better farmhouse vibe and flow than before. Seeing how corroded the old water lines were made me feel a lot better about my decisions. Not to mention the new kitchen added a water line for the freezer and for the dishwasher because the old kitchen had neither.

February

After the kitchen reach the livable/functional stage we moved on to the living room dining room conversion. The old kitchen wall that closed the space off to the rest of the house was taken down and opened up to give the open concept house that we now have. We also worked on the upstairs master bedroom during this time and learned that we had zero insulation in the house. Well, we did find one abandoned bee nest but other than THAT we had no insulation. Adding insulation everywhere we can put it became the new priority. I can now say with honesty that my bedroom has become cozy. We also added a door (didn’t have one before), removed the Jack and Jill bathroom door for more privacy now, and closed off the giant 10 foot opening that was the entrance to our master suite.

We also cut down one of the dead trees on the property. This tree was chosen to be cut first because it was leaning towards the house. That made me really nervous when it got super windy. As an added bonus we have a ton of fire wood thanks to that tree for next winter.

March

The goal for March was to get as much wrapped up as we could because it would be a while before my father in law would be back. We wanted the house to feel a little less like a construction zone and more like a home. We also took down another dead tree (yay more firewood) and got the lawn mower put back together after a failed attempt at doing some mechanic stuff ourselves.

Inside, the laundry got moved upstairs where I wanted it. Now it’s on the same floor where most of the living takes place. The upstairs bathroom had a weird side room for something and now it has purpose. Having it there makes so much more sense and feels like it belongs better than it did where it was located downstairs. Plus I don’t have to lug laundry up and down the stairs anymore which is the real reason I am so excited about the move.

With the laundry out of the way downstairs, the space was divided into two rooms. Before the dividing wall was built we had to move the pellet stove, which was HEAVY! Or at least that’s what I am told because I 100% let the boys handle that job without me. Now one side of the space is a powder room and the other is the master bath for the downstairs master bedroom. The powder room is functional, the master bath is not. Once we got the powder room working (reused the previous toilet and vanity) we could demo the downstairs bathroom. Removing the bathroom made the living room bigger and gave the pellet stove its new home. Before the pellet stove didn’t really heat the house because of the layout. Now it heats the house great and even sends some heat upstairs which didn’t used to get heat before.

April

Everything still has a long ways to go. I’ve taken some video tours of the house during various stages of change and it has definitely changed a lot. I’m excited to have time to edit the video to show the updates. However that’s a project for another very distant day. I am still trying to get to a good place with the house, but that requires a lot more cleaning and organizing.

With my father in law gone I have spent so much time trying to clean up the construction debris. Mostly it is piled outside until we can get a dumpster but at least the house is coming together. Even with all of the chaos going on we have managed to make some time for outdoor projects too. Outside we managed to install about 25% of the T-posts we need for fencing in the future pasture. Our estimated post count for the pasture is about 200 so we still have plenty more posts to set.

We also added to our chicken flock to increase our egg laying chickens. Now we have 30 ladies giving us two dozen eggs per day or more! Our first batch of meat chickens consists of 8 Black Australorp chickens and 8 Brown Leghorn chickens. They wont be ready for the freezer until the end of summer because they take so long to grow but it is what was available at the time. We won’t do meat chickens again that take this long to raise, we will stick with a different breed in the future.

Our local agriculture store was advertising the spring livestock options for purchase. We bit the bullet and ordered some new egg layer chicks that will be getting here the last week of April. The store was also advertising bees so we ordered a package and they are already here and getting adjusted in their new hive. We think the queen arrived dead so we will be watching closely to see how the hive fairs while we wait for a replacement queen to ship.

What’s Next

I’m anxious to see where the progress is at for the 1 year milestone (2 months to go) but I feel proud of what we’ve accomplished so far. We know we’re being ambitious but it’s nice to have goals to keep working towards. My hope and prediction for the 1 year milestone:

• Pasture enclosed (finish t post installation, string fencing)
• Getting a pig for the pasture that we can raise for meat (my mothers day gift request)
• Planting a vegetable/fruit/herb/flower garden
• Fill the root cellar with as much home grown crops as possible
• Get the main floor of the house painted (walls still need some prepping)
• Demo the last 2 horsehair plaster walls on the main floor

That’s all in no particular order just based on whatever we’re able to do with the time and money available. Plus there is always side projects that pop up requiring immediate attention. We will keep documenting the progress and changes we make to get our farmstead functioning. Hope to see you along for this journey with us.