Fireplace Rock and Paint!

June 2018
     So we hired a guy to rock our fireplace!!

     

 

 

I love it!!  And then Perry added his little(?)  touch!

And look at this cute little antique cupboard I found!!  

AND NOW we were ready to paint.....

     I bought 5 different samples before I got the color I wanted.  I found Classic Taupe that I really loved but it was too dark.  So I tried 2 other couples and they were too yellow and pink.  Then I went back and got a one that was two shades lighter on the color card and it was too light.  Finally I got a young kid in Home Depot that knew what he was doing.  I explained that I liked the Classic Taupe but it was too dark.  He said oh well, I can just have the computer do one that is 25% less in color than that.  Wonders of technology!  It was perfect.  Also I needed a white for the trim that would match my kitchen cabinets so that it didn't look too different right next to each other in the kitchen.   Yes white has different shades too.  He scanned the sample cabinet piece and matched it exactly!!  And we were off!

We painted the shiplap on the wall and ceiling and my office in white and everything else Classic Taupe 25% less color.  

We are now looking like we are getting somewhere!!  So excited for floors and cabinets next!!!

SAD DAY!!

May 2018

     So part of the charm of our little yellow house has been the trees.  However, they were 100 yrs old and every time the wind blew we lost a lot of branches.  The front tree had a whole in it about 5 feet up on the trunk that I could stick my hand in and not feel a bottom to it.  We worried every time the wind blew that they would fall on the house.  There were three of them.  All withing in about 6 feet or less of the house.  They were also half dead from lack of water.  There was 2 ash and 1 elm.
    So we called for a tree trimmer/remover to give us a bid!   Holy Moly!!  EXPENSIVE!  But he was pretty sure that at least two were hollow and the third was headed there.   SO out they came!! 
                       😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Trees before:

 

 

Trees coming down:

You can see how rotten there were inside. We actually had him cut a couple of thin rings for us.  We will make something fun out of them.  Maybe a picture frame or wreath.  We did not cut these centers out.  They were that way.

We also had him remove another dead tree on the west side and trim two more that weren't beyond saving.

 

😞😞😞😞  It seems so bare and has definitely lost some of its charm.  We will plant new trees next spring but.... I don't have 100 years to grow them!! 

New Window!

May 2018

     So the window over where my kitchen sink goes was one that the bottom half raised up.  As I stood there the center line was exactly at my eye level.  I want to see out without seeing a line..

You can see it in this old picture.  So I requested a new window!!  And this month I got one!  A new casement window with no line.  And the window is set in the old double brick walls so it has a big window sill I can grow some herbs on.  

The little mouse in the corner is actually a door stop but he likes the view!

Yard Work and a New Window

May 2018
     So with spring came one of my favorite things!!  Yard Work!!!  I love to be outside working in my yard and I have a whole acre to work on.  I was so excited to see that 17 raspberry plants were alive and growing.  I had transplanted them from the Cedar Hills Garden the first spring after we bought the house.  That would have been the spring of 2017.  I wasn't sure how well they would do.  Mom kept them water for me the first summer and this was the second spring for them here.  And most of them had survived. 
           

I then added some other vegetables:  tomatoes, onions, peppers, squash.  Everything froze except the onions the next week, despite covering them.  We are at almost 6000 ft in elevation.  That makes for a pretty short growing season.  June 1 to October 1 on average.  So I planted them again.  They still haven't done well.  Except the onions, they seem to be going great guns.  The tomato plants were eaten down to about 2 inches by the deer.  I finally covered in the end of the tomato cages with another cage so they couldn't get their head in the end to eat them.  It is a whole new ball game to grow a garden here.  It will take a while to get it down.

The field had grown really tall last fall because we had nothing to mow it with when it did get that tall.  It was about 3-4 feet tall.  Last summer I had tried to keep a few paths mowed so we could get to the irrigation faucet and move the sprinkler for it but that was about it.  It was hard to keep up when we didn't live here yet.  This spring I had been cutting back the weeds by hand breaking them off on my hands and knees and then raking them.  It finally was just too much to handle.  So off we go to the local Tractor Supply Store and came home with these:

This is like a DR trimmer.  Heavy duty weed whacker that you walk behind.

Needless to say, Perry was in heaven.  It sure made the job much easier.  It went from looking like this:

TO THIS:

Happy Man!!

At the beginning of the first summer after we bought the house, my Mom saw a local ad for 1.5 irrigation water shares for Fountain Green.  We quickly bought them up!  Expensive but a necessity with an acre.  This makes it so we can water about 9 hours a day at no further cost.  City water is too expensive to water the whole acre with.  Everyone here told me we would never be able to buy water shares.  They are limited and very hard to get.  People are still amazed that we found some.  They say they have lived here for 25 - 35 years and never been able to get some.  Guess the Lord was watching out for us again.  (Him and Mom!!)

I have also been working on reclaiming some of the flower beds.  Originally there were flower beds around the whole perimeter of the yard and house. Now, I like to week but not that much!!  The yard is just weeds at this point and a defunct sprinkler systerm.  It needs to be redone but that is on next summer's project list.  However, I can't resist a few flower beds.  There used to be an English garden with a paved area and big planter and lots of rose and other bushes.  All dead!!  So I am pulling the pavers out to make borders for the flower beds I am keeping.  

This one used to have a half circle type raised flower bed constructed of poorly cemented together bricks with this rose bush next to it.  I pulled the raised one out and will transplant a few more of the rose bushes around the yard into it.

Well, that is about all I have done this year.  Just have to maintain those for now!  

Shiplap and Sheetrock

APRIL 2018

 Part of our preparation for sheet rock was to finish the plumbing to the kitchen and bath.  We had to have it all roughed in.  This involved climbing in crawl spaces for Perry.  Under the additions the crawl space is 3-4 feet.  Our kitchen is in the old part of the house and has about  2 ft. of space.  Some of the plumbing is located in the storage room under the kitchen and it is about 7 feet tall.  Perry is not a fan of these confined spaces especially the one under the old house.
     The main line for the water comes in about 4 feet under the ground into the kitchen sink area.  This is where it's only about 2 feet tall.  Perry had to connect the water line from there into the house.  After doing so, it leaked at a turn off valve in the middle of a metal pipe.  He went down one day to remove the valve so he would know what kind to buy to replace it.  In the process of trying to remove it, he discovered that it just needed tightened.  While he was down there he decided to snug up that pipe to its connection underground because he was afraid he had loosened it.   So snug he did,  except it snapped the pipe off underground.  He had to get in that small space and dig down to the connection about 2 feet down in the dirt.  The metal pipe was connected to PVC and you can't tighten that kind of connection.  He had to lay down there and try to dig out dirt.  There was no room to move the dirt so we vacuumed it out with the shop vac.   It was a miserable job.   After digging down, he had to fix the connection.  Just getting to the connection, digging enough room to work on it and figuring out what was needed to fix it took one whole Saturday.   He got it done and guess what?   It leaked. 
    The next weekend he prayed and climbed in the whole again.  He took it all apart and  jerry-rigged a long pipe with a pipe threader on it to re-thread the connection.  It worked and this time didn't leak.  It only took about an hour that Saturday.  Needless to say he was so thankful it did.  He didn't want to get down there again.

While he was working on this they had started the sheet rock.  We hired this and the taping and texturing done.  They delivered the sheetrock and we had them come into the back field and up to the back of the house so they could use the boom to unload it and bring it in the house.

Two guys came in to put it up.  In a day and a half they had completely sheet rocked the walls and ceiling in the 1700 square feet of  space.  They were so fast!

 While we waited for the texturing guy, Perry and I ship lapped the ceiling in the kitchen and the peak of the vault in the family/dining room.

The kitchen is in an area of the house that was originally a lean-to added on to the back of the old house.  It had been redone when the addition was added to it.  A new roof  line was put on and a room added above it.  We wish they would have continued the vaulted ceiling over it but they didn't.  The ceiling in the kitchen is 7 foot 3 inches tall.  They left the ceiling joists open and tongue and grooved the floor above.  Pretty but dark and hard to put nice lights in.  Not to mention the exposed wiring.  We went back and forth about what to do with it.  Whitewash the ceiling and leave it open or close it in and put lots of can lights.  Opinions from family and friends were 50/50.  We finally decided to close it in with a ship lap board.  (I discovered over the weeks of living here that it was a magnet for cobwebs.  Plus trying to find a pretty light that fit between the joists and didn't hang down lower than them was almost impossible.)

Before





                   After



The Peak     

And then the tape and texture.

Hey it's starting to look like we are getting somewhere!!