Literal Road Farm

Some big news in the kitchen…the ceiling is done and the window is in, YES!

Here’s what the ceiling did look like:

The kitchen ceiling had been papered over and all that had to scraped off and the hundreds of nails pulled out, then the burned wood had to be sanded away. THEN the caulking and painting could start!

And here’s what it looks like now:

The tongue and groove kitchen ceiling, caulked, primed (twice) and painted (twice) and oh so pretty!!

Big difference, eh? And here’s what I looked like after sanding off the soot from the fire damage of years gone by:

That’s me covered in soot after sanding the kitchen ceiling and Bob covered in dust after sanding the sheetrock. Lovely couple!!

Not only is the ceiling done, but the window is in, woohoo!!! In a matter of weeks (I hope I hope I hope!!!) there will be a kitchen sink in front of that lovely window. Thank you, Bob, for making the window a priority!!

Oh, the lovely kitchen window is in, oh, I love it!

Although I have plenty of work right now as a freelance copywriter to keep me busy, and I should have been in the office much earlier than I was this morning, the chicken coop could…not…wait…another day. Bleh! I spent two hours cleaning all this old bedding out of the chicken coop and rethinking my approach to this. I had read this idea, to keep layering on clean bedding all winter, then cleaning out the coop in the spring. But we got to where we had 10 inches of bedding (matted down!), so much so that we had to make a makeshift ramp so the turkeys could get into the coop. (Yes, turkeys in the chicken coop. Don’t ask.)

So as part of our learning as we learn to start a farm, I tried it. Bob wasn’t convinced, and now neither am I. It was too much bedding and it got too stinky, and boy, was it a chore to clean out this morning! I was almost as stinky as the bedding when I was done, I worked up such a sweat! And that was only three months of bedding. No way could we have lasted until March! I think moving forward we’ll see if we can clean it once a week. Because I don’t want to spend another morning on a chore like this again.

Now, all that said, this is a pile of future fertilizer we’re looking at, with all the bedding on this side of the fence and the horse poop on the other side. So it’s not as if it will go to waste, no way. I just would rather do this in smaller increments, I think.

This is the pile of old bedding from the chicken coop when I was only three fourths of the way through cleaning it out.

Because we’ve had to rebuild the house, we are really far behind on the barn. All we’ve been able to do is clean it out (because it was full up with junk and crappy old hay). We did make room for our hay, at least. But it also floods because the way it was built, the water from outside runs into the barn. OK, we’ll get to that. Someday. For now, we have an OTTB who has lost a lot of weight with our record cold weather, and I kind of thought he wouldn’t do so well on our home-grown hay, and I was right. So he needs to be fed differently from the others, meaning we’ve at least got a start on a stall. We don’t go far when he’s in this little jerry-rigged setup but now we can at least give him the pricey good hay and have him eat on his own. In a few weeks, I hope to have him back to a decent weight again…and I hope we are living in the farmhouse and we can build out the rest of the stalls too. Oh, man, I can NOT WAIT!!!

Starting on a stall…say “hi,” Alvin!! On second thought, don’t. Just EAT. 

One thing I love about starting a farm is morning. I am so looking forward to the day when we are living in the farmhouse and I am not driving from town to the farm every morning for morning chores! When I wake up at the farm (rather than having to drive there), I like doing morning chores first thing, before showering or putting on lipstick. OK, but not before that first cup of coffee… Anyway, I really don’t mind doing the morning chores in our 20 degree weather because I slip on my nice warm PINK overalls with my rubber boots and I am good to go! I am warm and dry, and the animals are fed and cared for…without my real clothes getting dirty at all. Oh, did I mention I also love that my overalls are PINK?

My morning attire in winter: rubber boots and toasty warm overalls!

This is the faucet for our clawfoot tub which should be plumbed soon. We are getting closer to having a bathroom in the farmhouse!

Bob is working on the farmhouse this morning while I am in town working on making money. I’d rather be doing what he’s doing, but he is sweet enough to keep me up to date on his progress. Here’s a photo that’s a very big deal! We don’t have the bathtub plumbed yet, but he installed the faucet today!

Plus I should say we had a productive weekend. We got the water heater installed (now just await the electrician to hook it up). We got some sheetrock hung on the ceiling upstairs. (Very tall ceilings are wonderful…until you have to hang sheetrock on them!) We got a coat of paint on the kitchen ceiling (only one more to go and that ceiling is DONE). We hung the planks we had left on the kitchen wall (now to figure out how to make “old” planks to match what we have). Oh, and I backed my truck into my husband’s car, breaking the tail light and putting a nice dent into his trunk. That was so decidedly not fun. Or productive. At all.

On top of all that, we kept the animals watered despite 20 degree temperatures, and thawed out frozen pipes on the trailer we’re staying in. We kept busy for sure!

But it’s that farm foto of a faucet that’s making my heart pitter patter right now.

We are getting closer and closer to our real goal, being able to start a farm!!

We knew there was some rot in the bathroom floor. What we didn’t know was there was so much rot that the entire floor and subfloor had to be replaced, as well as the wall!

You know how you get so behind on something, you dread starting on it again? Like laundry, or bill paying, or scrapbooking, or exercising…it’s harder to get going again than it is to just keep up with whatever it is in the first place.

What we started with…the rot meant we got to move that wall in, however, and that made the mudroom bigger, so that was good!

That’s what has happened here with our blog, tracking our progress as we rebuild the farmhouse so we can finally get to what we really want to do: start a farm. I didn’t write about anything for a while because progress stopped with Bob’s new work schedule and my increased workload. Plus I sometimes feel like, you poor people, you keep wanting progress, progress, progress and we are letting you down with how slow this is going!

Surprise: Siding!! That used to be the back of the house way back before the house had a bathroom!

But it has now been a year (and nine days) since we were handed the skeleton key to the front door of the 1890 farmhouse, and it seems a good time for an update. Hold onto your hats, however, because it’s going to be quite an update, since it has been so long since I updated about anything! Actually, as I type that, I realize it won’t be one update…it will be a series of, and I will try really hard to get a few posts done to bring everyone up to speed.

First, we’ll tackle the bathroom update…

Just some of the rotted boards pulled from the bathroom. Turns out the addition was done wrong and the south side was rotted out.

The bathroom some of you have seen, if you see me on Facebook. I posted photos there as we installed the beadboard and laid the tile floor. All of that was so we could finally pick up our antique clawfoot tub from the tub dealer, who had been patiently waiting on us for many months to do so. (Thank you, Steve, for not charging us storage fees!!) There was no way I wanted us moving that four-hundred pound tub twice, so I wanted to make sure when we picked it up, we were ready to put it exactly where it would go. Forever. We had helping hands lined up Thanksgiving weekend with our helper Andrew home for the break and my son Evan down to make some cash. So they loaded in the truck for town, got the tub, got it up the steps that now lead to our front door, and into the bathroom it went! Aaaahhhh….

We did manage to salvage the toilet, here installed for GOOD, I hope!!!

The bathroom had so many issues, it was ridiculous how long it took us to even get to the point where we could do the tile! And of course, not having done tile before, I learned a lot of things by doing it wrong. Does that mean I want to tackle a renovation like this again in the future to put my newfound knowledge to work? Not on your life!! But we really wanted the old style tile on the floor. Vinyl just won’t cut it in a house as old as ours!

All that work so we could get the tub in finally! Yay!

The beadboard installation was, well, H-E-double toothpicks and the first time we bickered while working on the house. But I have to remind myself: This bathroom was so rotted out, it has to be gutted to the point where it didn’t even have a floor! You could see clear down to the ground under the house! So we have come a long ways, and crooked walls and slanted floors are just one small part of the battles we’ve fought.

We have lights in the bathroom which is wonderful but getting the heater in finally will be even more so! Brrrr….

This past weekend we installed the toilet for good! We have put the toilet in five times now. Don’t ask. We also got the water heater and put it in place. We are now at the mercy of the electrician to come back and get it hooked up and give us some more light. How many times are you allowed to call, text and email a subcontractor before it’s considered harassment??

Then there’s plumbing…or lack of. We had decided to use an old dresser we already had as the vanity, to save money, you know. I took it to a friend’s and he cut out the hole for the sink with his jigsaw. Months ago. In preparation for progress that didn’t happen. The dresser than sat in the “garage” and…warped. Turned out it was all veneer and it all peeled up. Thank goodness that happened in the garage and not in the bathroom once installed, warping from the moisture of the baths!

Water heater!! Just need electrician to come out and hook it up so Bob can plumb it.

So I found another old dresser and finally picked it up this weekend. Now it waits for a hole for the sink and then there will be the plumbing.

But the bathroom is key! Absolutely key, right now, and here is why: We have rented a friend’s trailer and it is parked at the farmhouse and our goal is to be living in it, not the house in town that’s a half hour away. Living in the trailer means saving hundreds of dollars on gas because right now we drive to the farmhouse and back twice a day in order to tend to the animals. It also means being able to get in an hour here and an hour there, where right now, we have to have at least half a day to make a trip out there worthwhile.

So still no hot water, still no sink or bathtub that works, but the toilet is in for good. I hope. And it’s painted and the new window is in and the lights and fan work and it’s going to be a beautiful bathroom!! Someday!!