Yes, yes, I'm well aware that the year started about 3 months ago... But the gardening season is just starting here, so it seems an appropriate time to talk about my goals.
First of all, our garden will be considerably smaller than the past two years. Really small. Baby #2 is set to make an appearance in mid-July, and I just don't want to be inundated with tomatoes while trying to adjust to having two littles. I am still planning on making my own sauce and juice and canning fresh tomatoes, but I'd like to do it on my schedule. So I will buy my tomatoes at the market in order to have some leeway with timing. I'd hate to let tomatoes rot because I'm exhausted from a colicky baby or something. I think I'm just going to grow dry beans, squash, carrots, onions, potatoes, and watermelon this year. Everything should store well, so even if I'm a little slow to harvest, there shouldn't be any issues.
My hens are going absolutely crazy laying eggs. I've read in numerous places that a hen needs many hours of daylight to continue to lay, but my girls laid all through winter. Production did slow down, but I never got less than 3 eggs per day once everyone started laying. Now with the slightly longer days and warmer temps, I'm getting 5-6 eggs per day. I love being able to feed them our kitchen scraps and leftovers that are going bad (though we've been really good about having less of those!). No changes are planned for the girls, barring any catastrophes.
But we are going to get more chickens. I have a friend with a barn and fenced horse pasture (out of use) who has offered to raise chicks with me! We're going to get Freedom Rangers, as I have some ethical objections to the cornish cross hybrid (namely, I believe it is cruel to breed a bird to grow and gain weight so quickly that its legs and heart cannot support it. I realize that sometimes this can be mitigated by withholding feed for some of the day, but I just don't feel it is responsible to breed a bird that is predisposed to so many health issues). Our 25 chicks will arrive in late May or early June, and we will plan on butchering at about 12 weeks. I would like to do the butchering ourselves, and another friend may have a chicken plucker built by then that we could borrow to speed things along.
I'm slowly but surely adding to my cooking repertoire. Recently, I've made homemade Lara bars from dried dates, dried cherries, and walnuts (recipe). Mine turned out a bit less sticky than they needed to be, but I about blew the motor on my mini food chopper, so I just left it instead of adding more dates and cherries. I've also made broccoli cheddar soup (yum!) from this recipe. I halved it and used all cheddar instead of "processed cheese". I also added onion when I was melting my butter. I had to cook it WAY longer than 30 minutes to make the broccoli less crunchy, but it was very good. And... I got brave and made my own pie crust to use for my chicken pot pie after learning that Pillsbury refrigerated crusts have awful ingredients and artificial colors. Yuck. I've always been scared of pie crusts, but decided to give it a go. I found a recipe using 5 ingredients: flour, butter, salt, sugar, and water. The first one was a dud (though edible), but version 2.0 was quite good. I only used 2 1/4 cups of flour, so it wasn't so dry. I'm impressed with myself. If you decide to try your hand at crusts, I strongly suggest rolling it out onto a piece of parchment paper or waxed paper. It makes transferring the crust to the dish so much easier and allows you to use much less flour. I'm planning on making up a couple and freezing them so that they're on-hand in a pinch.
Foods I want to learn to make are yogurt, a good wheat sandwich bread, more soups, and homemade pasta.
But really, things here will just be business as usual this year. As always, we're taking baby-steps to increase our self-sufficiency, eat healthier, support our local economy, and live more mindfully. Some days I feel like I'm not accomplishing anything, but every time I take my lunch to work in a mason jar, I'm reminded of how far I've come.
Showing posts with label planning ahead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planning ahead. Show all posts
3/09/2012
10/24/2011
What I Want
In no particular order...
- To become even more self-sufficient. I like growing my own veggies, but I wish I had space to raise cattle for beef. And pigs. And maybe a goat for milk, if I could just milk her in the morning. I want to make my own soaps, herbal remedies, and cleaning supplies.
- To finish our house. I'm sick unto death of living in a construction zone. I'm sick of our ugly bathroom and kitchen. And if the dining room had plaster walls and a pine floor instead of paneling and pergo, I think I'd swoon.
- To be comfortable financially. I don't need much, really. I lived in my first apartment on $800 a month, and the rent was $400. I can be frugal, and I'm a homebody. But our car will eventually need to be replaced, and things go wrong. So "comfortable" means having enough to save a bit every month.
- To homeschool my kids. I'm not sure how long I want to do this for, but I already hate the idea of sending Ethan off to kindergarten. I hate how education has become so centered on standardized testing that it's more a matter of how much you can memorize instead of how much you actually learn. I'm also not too keen on exposing him to all of the sex/drugs/profanity that it seems like even the littlest kids now know about. I was sheltered, with the added bonus that I was completely oblivious to pop culture. I didn't have a clue what all the other kids were talking about, and I didn't care. I was perfectly happy to read my books about magic and dragons and ignore the world. But I'm not sure that is completely normal, and I don't expect my kids to be the same way. So, I want to give them a good foundation at home before allowing the rest of the world in. I also want them to have the freedom to explore topics in greater depth than what happens in most schools, to really learn about topics instead of just skimming over them.
- To buy a house and land further away from town. I want to have room to roam away from pavement, cars, and other people. We've toyed with the idea of building our own home, possibly from strawbales, and I think that would be the ultimate accomplishment.
- To stay home from work to raise my kids. I'm fortunate enough to have family who can watch Ethan, so I don't worry about leaving him. And I have a job that I love. But I don't want to do this forever. Being home feels like something I'm being called to do.
- To have another child, so that the "kids" and "children" I've mentioned in the past two posts are real instead of imagined.
- To take an exotic vacation. Just one would be fine. I'm happy going to the Smoky Mountains and to Sleeping Bear Dunes for vacation. But I think it would be awesome to go to Scotland. Or Italy. Or Egypt.
Our life, in a nutshell
If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know that I have lots of ideas that often pull me in different directions. We are still trying to sort out the specifics, but our ultimate goal has always been to live a more healthy, sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. Secondary has been to fix up our house. We vacillate between staying here and moving. We also talk often about whether or not I will continue to work full-time.
I know a lot of this has been gone over before in previous posts, but I need to clear my head, and writing is usually the best way for me to do it. Bear with me.
I still feel very strongly that our country is headed for disaster. I don't mean this in a conspiracy-theory kind of way; I just mean that we (as a country) have had our priorities jacked up for about as long as is sustainable. Our goal has been progress. Progress at any cost, and progress for its own sake. As machines and computers started to do the work of people, it was thought that people would work less and have more time for leisure. The opposite has been true. We work more. We spend less time as a family. We value entertainment over relationships. We value convenience over authenticity. Newer, Better, and Faster have become the gods that America worships, and we serve them at an extremely high cost to ourselves and our future.
And I DO NOT want this for myself or my family. In many ways, we have opted out.
Our only television lives in the basement. I will not raise a child who is a mindless consumer. We avoid toys and clothing that are feature popular characters. He has no idea who Dora and Diego are, has never seen Blue of Blue's Clues, and identifies Cars characters by the type of vehicle they are instead of by name. I intend on keeping it this way for as long as possible, as I feel very strongly that kids are exposed to too much advertising too early. Mommy and Daddy should be the central figures and examples in the lives of our children, not characters. Too many people rely on "educational" television to teach their children. Shayne and I will rely on ourselves. We strive to set an example of behavior for our children to mimic, instead of telling them to do as we say and not as we do. We are our children's best teachers, and as a result, we are becoming better people. We are far from perfect, but it's important for our kids to see that too. We make mistakes. We are human. But we can always strive to be better.
We spend lots of time outside. Ethan has never once become bored or cranky outside. It's the ultimate entertainment, and it moves at the speed of the child. All it takes is a parent or caretaker willing to supervise instead of getting something done. It's not realistic to spend all day, every day outside. Meals still need to be cooked, showers need to be taken, and the laundry doesn't put itself away. But it's been an important lesson for me to organize my time around my little guy's need to play and explore - not the other way around. Babies accommodate the parent's routine. Toddlers need accommodation, otherwise they become cranky and confused. Having a loosely structured day, with the child's needs foremost, make for a much happier home. Please don't confuse this with accommodating a toddler's every want and whim. There is a difference. Children need to play. They also need boundaries. They do not need to be allowed to tyrannize their parents.
We grow and raise some of our own food - more every year. And we are working on cooking more and more from scratch. In addition to being healthier for us than conventionally grown food, our organically frown veggies are healthier for the earth. And the less food that is shipped across the country, the lower our country's gas consumption. We also have the peace of mind from knowing our eggs were laid by happy, free-ranging hens, that our home-canned food is additive free, and that we are raising our child to think about where his food comes from.
We live within our means. We could afford a larger house, with a larger payment. We could afford a new car. We could afford to take a cruise. Well, none of this right now, since I was paycheck-less for a while and our house and car both decided to fall apart at the same time we had big vet bills for our poor old kitty, but our household income is higher than that of the average American family. But we don't live like the average American family. We choose to save money in our own retirement fund instead of relying on Social Security or pensions from our jobs.
We try to live small. Less stuff means less to clean, less to take care of, and less to weigh us down. It's a work in progress, and we aren't true minimalists or ascetics. We just try not to have anything that isn't useful, beautiful, or that we don't love. It's hard. Especially with the constant bombardment of media and internet images. Even though I have all the ads blocked on my browser, I still visit blogs and message boards, and I see houses and property that I wish I had. I have to constantly remind myself that we are where we are supposed to be right now, and there is always a lot behind the pictures that I don't know. Maybe the people are swimming in debt. Maybe they received an inheritance. Maybe they scrimped and saved every penny for many, many years to be where they are. There are so many variables that it's an exercise in futility to try to compare yourself to anyone else.
These are the main tenants of our existence right now... But where are we going?
And the truth is, I don't know.
I'm trying so very hard to figure that out right now, but I'm not making any realistic headway. I just feel pulled in six different directions... Over the next few days, maybe weeks, I'll be trying to work through my options and feelings. Stay tuned...
I know a lot of this has been gone over before in previous posts, but I need to clear my head, and writing is usually the best way for me to do it. Bear with me.
I still feel very strongly that our country is headed for disaster. I don't mean this in a conspiracy-theory kind of way; I just mean that we (as a country) have had our priorities jacked up for about as long as is sustainable. Our goal has been progress. Progress at any cost, and progress for its own sake. As machines and computers started to do the work of people, it was thought that people would work less and have more time for leisure. The opposite has been true. We work more. We spend less time as a family. We value entertainment over relationships. We value convenience over authenticity. Newer, Better, and Faster have become the gods that America worships, and we serve them at an extremely high cost to ourselves and our future.
And I DO NOT want this for myself or my family. In many ways, we have opted out.
Our only television lives in the basement. I will not raise a child who is a mindless consumer. We avoid toys and clothing that are feature popular characters. He has no idea who Dora and Diego are, has never seen Blue of Blue's Clues, and identifies Cars characters by the type of vehicle they are instead of by name. I intend on keeping it this way for as long as possible, as I feel very strongly that kids are exposed to too much advertising too early. Mommy and Daddy should be the central figures and examples in the lives of our children, not characters. Too many people rely on "educational" television to teach their children. Shayne and I will rely on ourselves. We strive to set an example of behavior for our children to mimic, instead of telling them to do as we say and not as we do. We are our children's best teachers, and as a result, we are becoming better people. We are far from perfect, but it's important for our kids to see that too. We make mistakes. We are human. But we can always strive to be better.
We spend lots of time outside. Ethan has never once become bored or cranky outside. It's the ultimate entertainment, and it moves at the speed of the child. All it takes is a parent or caretaker willing to supervise instead of getting something done. It's not realistic to spend all day, every day outside. Meals still need to be cooked, showers need to be taken, and the laundry doesn't put itself away. But it's been an important lesson for me to organize my time around my little guy's need to play and explore - not the other way around. Babies accommodate the parent's routine. Toddlers need accommodation, otherwise they become cranky and confused. Having a loosely structured day, with the child's needs foremost, make for a much happier home. Please don't confuse this with accommodating a toddler's every want and whim. There is a difference. Children need to play. They also need boundaries. They do not need to be allowed to tyrannize their parents.
We grow and raise some of our own food - more every year. And we are working on cooking more and more from scratch. In addition to being healthier for us than conventionally grown food, our organically frown veggies are healthier for the earth. And the less food that is shipped across the country, the lower our country's gas consumption. We also have the peace of mind from knowing our eggs were laid by happy, free-ranging hens, that our home-canned food is additive free, and that we are raising our child to think about where his food comes from.
We live within our means. We could afford a larger house, with a larger payment. We could afford a new car. We could afford to take a cruise. Well, none of this right now, since I was paycheck-less for a while and our house and car both decided to fall apart at the same time we had big vet bills for our poor old kitty, but our household income is higher than that of the average American family. But we don't live like the average American family. We choose to save money in our own retirement fund instead of relying on Social Security or pensions from our jobs.
We try to live small. Less stuff means less to clean, less to take care of, and less to weigh us down. It's a work in progress, and we aren't true minimalists or ascetics. We just try not to have anything that isn't useful, beautiful, or that we don't love. It's hard. Especially with the constant bombardment of media and internet images. Even though I have all the ads blocked on my browser, I still visit blogs and message boards, and I see houses and property that I wish I had. I have to constantly remind myself that we are where we are supposed to be right now, and there is always a lot behind the pictures that I don't know. Maybe the people are swimming in debt. Maybe they received an inheritance. Maybe they scrimped and saved every penny for many, many years to be where they are. There are so many variables that it's an exercise in futility to try to compare yourself to anyone else.
These are the main tenants of our existence right now... But where are we going?
And the truth is, I don't know.
I'm trying so very hard to figure that out right now, but I'm not making any realistic headway. I just feel pulled in six different directions... Over the next few days, maybe weeks, I'll be trying to work through my options and feelings. Stay tuned...
10/11/2011
More organizational ramblings
I so wish that there was some kind of magic wand I could wave and just have all the surplus junk leave my life instead of having to sort through it bit by bit. Still, we're making progress. We've tossed, donated, recycled, or otherwise rehomed 972 items. Yeah, it's not even halfway there, but we're still plugging along.
Also, the appliance garage is dead! I got a bug up my butt (where did that saying come from, anyways?) right before Ethan's 2nd b-day party, and I finally ripped the dang thing out. And I'm soooo glad I did it. Our kitchen suddenly looks a lot bigger.
Here's a pic of how the kitchen looked when we bought the house:
And now that he appliance garage is gone (please excuse the not-so-great cellphone photo and sink full of dishes...):
Okay, so the pictures don't really do it justice, since the "after" shot is too close. But trust me when I say it changed the whole character of the kitchen. There's a lot of counter space that was freed up on the other side of the sink, since the toaster oven is now living where the appliance garage was. And it just doesn't look as dated. I can't quite convince myself I'm happy with our kitchen, but it's getting better.
We still have a big hole in the kitchen ceiling. It's amazing, but I really don't even notice it anymore. We're very close to securing the financing necessary for the bathroom remodel, so I'll be planning that with a vengeance soon. Can't wait!
Also, the appliance garage is dead! I got a bug up my butt (where did that saying come from, anyways?) right before Ethan's 2nd b-day party, and I finally ripped the dang thing out. And I'm soooo glad I did it. Our kitchen suddenly looks a lot bigger.
Here's a pic of how the kitchen looked when we bought the house:
We still have a big hole in the kitchen ceiling. It's amazing, but I really don't even notice it anymore. We're very close to securing the financing necessary for the bathroom remodel, so I'll be planning that with a vengeance soon. Can't wait!
3/07/2011
Improving the kitchen
I think today we're going to go spend some money! Our dishwasher has a chronic flooding problem, plus it never did a great job of cleaning dishes. I think its day has finally come, and we're going to replace it. While we're at it, I'm feeling like we should ditch our existing fridge as well. It doesn't match either of the black/stainless appliances in the room, plus it's just a bit too big for the space and covers over the back porch/mudroom trim. I figure we can sell it on craigslist for $100 rather than have the Big Box store haul it away. Then when we go to sell the house, all the appliances will match. I think we're also going to get some laminate "tile" flooring, since the flood ruined the el cheapo laminate "wood". Since we don't anticipate any more water issues, the new floor will go a long way towards sprucing up the room.
Once it's warm enough outside, I'll remove the wallpaper and paint the walls sage green. The ceiling tile will be removed and replaced with drywall (the plaster is beyond saving :( ) once we replumb the bathroom. And we'll get new countertops and sink. It will be more modern looking than the rest of the house, but I think if I'm careful, I can incorporate some arts and crafts touches that will tie it in nicely. It's far from the my dream kitchen, but I think the results will appeal to more buyers without clashing with the rest of the house.
It's a hard line to walk. I had so many ideas and dreams of how I wanted this house to look. Part of me cringes at the idea of a "stylish" kitchen, and I feel guilty for doing something not quite in keeping with the house's character. But honestly? Most of me is glad to be doing something, anything, that will help this house sell. I'm also excited to have a kitchen that doesn't look like crap, even if it's not precisely what I had dreamed of. It will be clean, the floor won't be wavy and bumpy, and I won't be ashamed to have people over.
I'm so tired of living in a half-finished work zone, and I'm ready to get this done. Even if we live here for another 5 years (please God, I hope not!), it will be ready to sell. It won't look like a construction zone. I can get rid of my endless cans of shellac, denatured alcohol, and paint thinner and start really living here.
Once it's warm enough outside, I'll remove the wallpaper and paint the walls sage green. The ceiling tile will be removed and replaced with drywall (the plaster is beyond saving :( ) once we replumb the bathroom. And we'll get new countertops and sink. It will be more modern looking than the rest of the house, but I think if I'm careful, I can incorporate some arts and crafts touches that will tie it in nicely. It's far from the my dream kitchen, but I think the results will appeal to more buyers without clashing with the rest of the house.
It's a hard line to walk. I had so many ideas and dreams of how I wanted this house to look. Part of me cringes at the idea of a "stylish" kitchen, and I feel guilty for doing something not quite in keeping with the house's character. But honestly? Most of me is glad to be doing something, anything, that will help this house sell. I'm also excited to have a kitchen that doesn't look like crap, even if it's not precisely what I had dreamed of. It will be clean, the floor won't be wavy and bumpy, and I won't be ashamed to have people over.
I'm so tired of living in a half-finished work zone, and I'm ready to get this done. Even if we live here for another 5 years (please God, I hope not!), it will be ready to sell. It won't look like a construction zone. I can get rid of my endless cans of shellac, denatured alcohol, and paint thinner and start really living here.
2/13/2011
My future homestead: the passive solar home
I've been thinking a lot about building our own home. Not having it built, but literally building it ourselves. Granted, Shayne's only building experience is a massively over-engineered chicken coop and shed, but both of us are capable of following directions and putting together a kit. We've been considering Shelter-Kit, out of New Hampshire, to help us realize our dream of a cabin-type home.
The kits are post-and-beam, which allows you to customize the interior floorplan any way that you'd like. The only restriction is the beams, which are 8' OC. I designed the house to leave the beams in their original locations, though Shelter-Kit can move some of them around a bit. I'm interested in passive solar heating and cooling, so I've worked to incorporate solar gain into the floorplans. Here's what I've come up with so far:
The top wall faces south, and this orientation is perfect for our tentatively chosen home site. The "front", on the right, will face west and the road. The stove is situated in the stairwell, which is open to the roof, to allow heat to move upwards into the bedrooms. The downstairs bedroom would be for guests and used as an office. My mother may come live with us at some time in the future, and I think a main floor bedroom would allow her some privacy. It would also serve as our bedroom if/when we are too old and infirm to climb the stairs frequently.
The garage would be sited to the north of the house, and the utility room would serve as our day-to-day entrance. Being close to the kitchen and basement stairs, bringing in groceries would be a short trip.
The "main" entrance on the west side of the house would be covered by a porch, possibly wrapping around to the north side. The south windows would be shaded by 18" shed awnings to keep out the summer sun. The kitchen, being on the north side, would help heat the house in the winter and be cooler in the summer. Upstairs, the rooms would have skylights to help vent the heat in summer as well as bring in sun in the winter. If finances allow, nearly the entire south upstairs wall may have a shed-roofed dormer, increasing solar gain. I think it would add about $6000 to the cost. The exterior would look something like this with the dormers:
 |
| from RRennerArchitects.com |
Obviously, our home would be around half the size of this 3200 sq ft behemoth, but you get the idea. Without the dormer, it would look something like this (view from the northwest):
 |
| From Shelter-Kit.com |
We're going for a craftsman/cottage look (surprise, surprise).
Let me know if you see any major design flaws!
2/12/2011
More thoughts on selling
We decided to cancel the third realtor's appointment since we liked #2 so much. He came in and spent 45 minutes looking at the house and discussing our plans. He also brought a fairly detailed market analysis. And, he spelled Shayne's name correctly. Major bonus points.
The jist of the conversation is that we can't sell for much more than we owe. We can put money into the house, but we probably won't get a great return on it. Housing prices in our area aren't too depressed from the real estate bubble fallout, but we do have high-ish unemployment, and it's definitely a buyer's market. Bottom line is that he advised not to put more than $5K into the house, unless we're doing it to make our lives here more enjoyable.
While that's not what I was hoping to hear, it also wasn't the worst news we could have gotten. Thankfully, we aren't underwater, but after realtor fees and closing costs, we'd be lucky to clear what we owe. After another year of payments (plus the extra principal we pay), we'll be in a bit better shape. And since that's what we were tentatively planning anyways... I guess it works out.
My only real concern is that I've read in a few places that the market is going to take another dip in 2011. But since there's nothing at all I can do about that, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. At worst, we'll continue living here another few years. While that's not what we want, it's obviously no worse off than we are now!
We are continuing with our plans to buy a chunk of property. After examining the numbers and a probable selling price, I've found that we can swing it while still making our current house payment. I plan on saving the amount we'd be spending on our land payment for the next year. This will serve two purposes: 1) we'll make sure that we can make the payment in reality, not just on paper, and 2) it will help us save an even larger down payment. And extra money in the bank never hurt anyone.
The rest of the plan is to buy the land next spring, fix up the pole barn that is already there, and store any salvaged items (windows, cabinets, flooring, etc) until we are ready to build. We may be able to rent out the land to the current owner, or we can start planting pasture forage on the south part and a wildflower meadow to the west. I want to give the land a chance to heal from all the not-so-natural fertilizers and such that the previous farmers have used for who-knows-how long. Once we get settled out there I'd like to raise grass-fed beef, maybe Dexters or Galloways. And chickens, of course. :)
But for now, we're just going to keep on keepin-on. We'll finish the two bedroom closets, get rid of the paneling in the dining room, and remodel the bathroom. Hurry up, spring! I want to get started!
The jist of the conversation is that we can't sell for much more than we owe. We can put money into the house, but we probably won't get a great return on it. Housing prices in our area aren't too depressed from the real estate bubble fallout, but we do have high-ish unemployment, and it's definitely a buyer's market. Bottom line is that he advised not to put more than $5K into the house, unless we're doing it to make our lives here more enjoyable.
While that's not what I was hoping to hear, it also wasn't the worst news we could have gotten. Thankfully, we aren't underwater, but after realtor fees and closing costs, we'd be lucky to clear what we owe. After another year of payments (plus the extra principal we pay), we'll be in a bit better shape. And since that's what we were tentatively planning anyways... I guess it works out.
My only real concern is that I've read in a few places that the market is going to take another dip in 2011. But since there's nothing at all I can do about that, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. At worst, we'll continue living here another few years. While that's not what we want, it's obviously no worse off than we are now!
We are continuing with our plans to buy a chunk of property. After examining the numbers and a probable selling price, I've found that we can swing it while still making our current house payment. I plan on saving the amount we'd be spending on our land payment for the next year. This will serve two purposes: 1) we'll make sure that we can make the payment in reality, not just on paper, and 2) it will help us save an even larger down payment. And extra money in the bank never hurt anyone.
The rest of the plan is to buy the land next spring, fix up the pole barn that is already there, and store any salvaged items (windows, cabinets, flooring, etc) until we are ready to build. We may be able to rent out the land to the current owner, or we can start planting pasture forage on the south part and a wildflower meadow to the west. I want to give the land a chance to heal from all the not-so-natural fertilizers and such that the previous farmers have used for who-knows-how long. Once we get settled out there I'd like to raise grass-fed beef, maybe Dexters or Galloways. And chickens, of course. :)
But for now, we're just going to keep on keepin-on. We'll finish the two bedroom closets, get rid of the paneling in the dining room, and remodel the bathroom. Hurry up, spring! I want to get started!
1/09/2011
It seems to have snowed...
...about 3 feet! The South Bend Airport reported a total snowfall of 38" since Friday night. Since I work out in the rural areas, I was given a four-wheel drive TrailBlazer to drive at work yesterday. It was great to just cruise around the county looking at all the beautiful snow. I only had 3 calls, all crashes, but nobody was hurt. Well, except a deer, but a friend of mine is turning her into steaks, roasts, and burger, which he offered to share with us. Sweet!
Our house projects have come to a bit of a standstill this winter. The "new" door is at the carpenter's house getting plugged and redrilled for its hardware. I'm hoping it will be returning home by the end of the month. We also plan to entirely empty the utility side of the basement, build new shelves for my food storage, and examine and organize every bin and box. I think we'll end up getting rid of quite a bit, and the utility area should be much neater.
Also ahead on the radar is that the aforementioned carpenter is going to recreate our missing door and window headers. We need new ones for the closets we re-made in the two bedrooms, plus we have doors that need to be hung. I was going to have Shayne do it, but since door hanging is more of an art than a science, I think I'll leave it to a pro.
I know I've been saying it since we bought this house, but I really think we're going to get to the bathroom this year. We've had too many water issues, and I'm worried about letting them go any longer. Since by March we will be totally debt-free except for the house (joy!), we're going to really concentrate on saving our money. Toss in our tax refund money, and we will hopefully be good to go around May. I'm so nervous about this project that even writing about it gives me the jitters. I want it to be perfect, and I'm worried about being unhappy with the final outcome. I have good people lined up for everything but the plumbing, which will be fairly minor since we're only moving the sink. We might take the opportunity to run PEX upstairs as well. Still thinking on that one... At least we have a bit of time to try to hash it all out. For the thousandth time.
8/21/2010
Attitude problem
I know that patience is a virtue... It's just not one of mine.
But I think I'm finally coming to grips with the idea that we're not going to be moving for another few years. I want to. I really, REALLY want to. But we have a few factors in our personal and professional lives that make waiting a much wiser idea. I've known this for a while, but I'm actually starting to believe it, if you understand the difference.
So, in order to make our time here more bearable, I've been working on my attitude. Towards the eternally unfinished house, the neighborhood, and the neighbors. It was either that or go crazy making myself miserable. What started it was taking an acquaintence on a little mini-tour of my "neighborhood". I use the term loosely, since we live in the county and we have the same number of people in a square mile as cities might have in a 3-block radius. But showing the area to someone who had never seen it kind of let me see it the way I did when we first moved here. And what I saw surprised me.
Although there are some hilbillies around, we really do live in a nice neighborhood. Not subdivision nice, but rural-ish nice. Almost all of the houses are well-cared-for, and the people are friendly. Our house, with flowers blooming all around and a messy veggie garden (and in spite of the 80s facade), looks cute from the street. We're surrounded by woods and hills instead of the flat cornfields that make up most of the rural areas here. And by the roads, our house is less than 3/4 mile from the lake.
Speaking of the lake... When we first moved out here, I wanted to get a membership to the conservation club so that I could use the beach there. We'd also taked about getting kayaks and paddling around. I used to walk down to the boat launch, just to look at the water. After all, what good is living by a nice lake if you never use it? And so, 5 years after moving in, I finally got a membership to the conservation club. I don't plan on hanging out at their bar with the locals, but they have nice grounds and a sandy beach. A few days ago I walked down and took Ethan for a swim in the morning before work. We had the whole place to ourselves, and he had a blast.
Tonight Shayne and I got home at around 8 pm, and the bar was in full swing. But in an oddly appropriate twist, they had a rockin blues band, so it was actually nice to be able to hear the show from our backyard. I sat out for a while to listen until the bugs got too bad.
Living in the here-and-now is not my strong point. I can't help but be thinking about what I'd like to do, planning ahead, and dreaming about the future. But now that I've taken time to really look at what is... It's not so bad.
In fact, I kind of like it.
But I think I'm finally coming to grips with the idea that we're not going to be moving for another few years. I want to. I really, REALLY want to. But we have a few factors in our personal and professional lives that make waiting a much wiser idea. I've known this for a while, but I'm actually starting to believe it, if you understand the difference.
So, in order to make our time here more bearable, I've been working on my attitude. Towards the eternally unfinished house, the neighborhood, and the neighbors. It was either that or go crazy making myself miserable. What started it was taking an acquaintence on a little mini-tour of my "neighborhood". I use the term loosely, since we live in the county and we have the same number of people in a square mile as cities might have in a 3-block radius. But showing the area to someone who had never seen it kind of let me see it the way I did when we first moved here. And what I saw surprised me.
Although there are some hilbillies around, we really do live in a nice neighborhood. Not subdivision nice, but rural-ish nice. Almost all of the houses are well-cared-for, and the people are friendly. Our house, with flowers blooming all around and a messy veggie garden (and in spite of the 80s facade), looks cute from the street. We're surrounded by woods and hills instead of the flat cornfields that make up most of the rural areas here. And by the roads, our house is less than 3/4 mile from the lake.
Speaking of the lake... When we first moved out here, I wanted to get a membership to the conservation club so that I could use the beach there. We'd also taked about getting kayaks and paddling around. I used to walk down to the boat launch, just to look at the water. After all, what good is living by a nice lake if you never use it? And so, 5 years after moving in, I finally got a membership to the conservation club. I don't plan on hanging out at their bar with the locals, but they have nice grounds and a sandy beach. A few days ago I walked down and took Ethan for a swim in the morning before work. We had the whole place to ourselves, and he had a blast.
Tonight Shayne and I got home at around 8 pm, and the bar was in full swing. But in an oddly appropriate twist, they had a rockin blues band, so it was actually nice to be able to hear the show from our backyard. I sat out for a while to listen until the bugs got too bad.
Living in the here-and-now is not my strong point. I can't help but be thinking about what I'd like to do, planning ahead, and dreaming about the future. But now that I've taken time to really look at what is... It's not so bad.
In fact, I kind of like it.
1/25/2010
Happy (belated) New Year...
I don't even know where to start. So much has changed since Ethan came into the world that I'm still just trying to find my footing.
I went back to work about 3 weeks ago. Since then, I've switched shifts once and my mom went back to work (meaning that we lost our baby-sitter). Luckily I have a wonderful "second family" who offered to watch Ethan for a few hours whenever we need it. And the guys at work have been great. Still, it's been a big adjustment, and we're still trying to get into a routine. I'm very blessed to have such wonderful friends and family. I don't know what I'd do without them.
Ethan is growing and changing so quickly I can hardly keep up. He's grabbing everything (and shoving it into his mouth), starting to roll, babbling a little, and smiling up a storm. Yesterday he laughed for the first time. I know all babies do these things, but it's so much more exciting when it's your own!
I went back to work about 3 weeks ago. Since then, I've switched shifts once and my mom went back to work (meaning that we lost our baby-sitter). Luckily I have a wonderful "second family" who offered to watch Ethan for a few hours whenever we need it. And the guys at work have been great. Still, it's been a big adjustment, and we're still trying to get into a routine. I'm very blessed to have such wonderful friends and family. I don't know what I'd do without them.
Ethan is growing and changing so quickly I can hardly keep up. He's grabbing everything (and shoving it into his mouth), starting to roll, babbling a little, and smiling up a storm. Yesterday he laughed for the first time. I know all babies do these things, but it's so much more exciting when it's your own!
Being entirely responsible for this new life has made me want to work even harder towards my "homesteading" goals. Shayne and I are planning out a bigger garden for this year, 4 or 5 raised beds instead of just 1. I've been thinking that the entire northern third of our property would be ideal to give over to gardening and chickens. It gets great sun all day and is currently just grass and an apple tree. Adding a fenced garden area with flowers and herbs around it would really add some much-needed interest to that side of the yard. I'm thinking something along these lines:
We have a 40' wide by 218' long area to work within. The garden will be about 24' wide and about 28' long. That gives us plenty of room for our 4 planned beds, plus room to expand to 8 beds later if we want. For this year, I'm hoping to plant potatoes, onions, tomatoes, peppers, peas, spinach, broccoli, and carrots.
Behind the veggie garden will be the chicken coop. I bought plans for the "Playhouse Coop" and am going to ask our handyman John to build it for us. I really wanted to build it ourselves, but I just don't think we have the time. Maybe we can get it done in time to order chicks this spring (yeah, right!).
But the one thing that absolutely HAS to get done this year is the bathroom remodel. We have the insurance money sitting in the bank, and that plus our tax return should cover all the costs. I can't wait. I'm so sick of our nasty, tiny, plastic tub. And our too-low shower arm. And the peeling wallpaper. Ick.
Other things on our to-do list are shellacking the stairway, replacing the missing woodwork in the living room and upstairs bedrooms, refinishing the upstairs floors, and reconfiguring the new-old hallway closet.
I have no idea how we'll ever find time for all this. I see lots of hiring-out in the year ahead...
11/25/2009
This year's harvest and next year's plans
Since I started my journey last year to become more self-sufficient, I've learned a lot about how to process and store various foods. Learning almost completely from internet sources, I froze beans, peas, corn, carrots, peppers, and broccoli and canned peaches, applesauce, and spaghetti sauce. The produce put up in the summer and fall lasted nearly til the next growing season, and I had to buy very few veggies from Meijer or other stores.
This year I did even more. While I am in no way close to being as food self-sufficient as I eventually want to be, I've made a lot of progress (especially considering that I was pregnant). Starting in the spring, I planted a small 4x8' garden with broccoli, two types of tomatoes, and yellow peppers. Some of the broccoli I started from seeds, but the rest were started plants from a local nursery. I've never had a vegetable garden before, and I am amazed at how well everything grew with very little care. I had a decent broccoli harvest, LOADS of tomatoes, and a few peppers.
I also learned how to make jam. I bought strawberries from the farmers market, but harvested my own mulberries (from my backyard, no less) and raspberries. All of the jams turned out well, but raspberry was everyone's favorite. That one was made kind of spur of the moment, after a friend mentioned that he had a bunch of wild black raspberry bushes on his property. He let my mom and I pick (and brought me a big container that he had picked himself), and I made the jam with the last berries of the season.
I picked blueberries for the first time, which is loads of fun when you're gigantically pregnant...! I ended up with almost 10 lbs. I dehydrated some and they turned out like little blueberry rocks, but they softened up after being in storage for a little while. The rest are in the freezer for pancakes, muffins, bread, and maybe pie.
I dehydrated cherries from the market to use in my homemade granola bars or in salad.
I froze the same veggies as last year, minus carrots which are always available locally, but refined my technique a bit. I've learned to let broccoli dry a bit so that it doesn't get soggy, plus I steamed it instead of blanching. Last year's was only suitable for stir-fry since it was so mushy. I bought a Reynolds Handi-Vac system, which is basically a cheap vacuum sealer, and used it for all my freezer veggies. Hopefully it will work to prevent freezer burn, since last year's veggies ended up very frosty after a few months.
I canned corn and peaches. Peaches are a major pain in the butt to can, but they taste like a little bit of summer when you open a jar in the middle of winter. The corn was because the frozen corn starts to taste like the freezer after about 6 months... So hopefully that canned corn will get us through once the frozen runs out.
I learned how to make basil pesto and froze some of that for later.
My spaghetti sauce turned out WAY better this year than last year's. I found a great recipe online, then tweaked it to my taste. Even my mom likes it. :) Most of the tomatoes were bought from the market, but I got about 5-7 lbs off my plants that were tossed in as well. There's really nothing better than making something edible from something you grew!
Then came applesauce... I bought mixed seconds from the market instead of using just golden delicious and fuji. I don't know that it tastes any better, but it was loads cheaper. I also bought an apple peeler/corer/slicer which sped things up a lot.
On Saturday I bought another half-bushel of seconds and made apple butter. It turned out well, but not seasoned enough, so this morning I dumped out my jars, added more spices, and cooked it more. I ended up with 8 oz less than I had, but the flavor is much improved. Thankfully apples don't require a long processing time, otherwise I would have just had to live with it.
As an experiment I boiled a chicken, froze the stock, and canned the meat. I haven't yet tried the canned chicken, but it'll be very convenient to have on hand for stir-fry and other recipes.
In addition to learning to store more foods, I also learned how to cook more. I've found awesome recipes for beef stew, chicken pot pie, roasted red pepper cream sauce, basil cream sauce, no-knead bread, and quite a few others. It may not sound like much, but until a few years ago I never really bothered with cooking from scratch. I had a few staples that I'd make (sloppy joes, some crockpot meals, steak, stir-fry), but wasn't interested in learning more. I still don't have as much time to cook as I would like, but I'm getting there.
Next year we are definitely going to have a bigger garden. Shayne is going to make me more raised beds, and we'll remake the existing one so that it's deeper (and nicer looking!). I'm going to stick to the 4x8' size, since it makes organization easy and I can reach across the beds without having to step onto the soil. I'm going to plant a full bed of roma tomatoes (16 plants), red and yellow peppers, broccoli, potatoes, onions, and maybe some corn, squash, and carrots.
We're also going to build more shelves in the basement for more storage space. As I learn more about canning and storing food, I'm finding that our existing pantry and shelving just aren't cutting it. Plus, most ready-made shelving has a large area between shelves. If I'm storing canned goods, I only need a 12 to 16" between shelves. So I'm wasting a lot of space.
And, I'd really like to get those chickens. We've been taking about it for 2 years. I bought coop plans last spring. Maybe next spring or summer we can get 2 or 3 hens and see how it goes.
This year I did even more. While I am in no way close to being as food self-sufficient as I eventually want to be, I've made a lot of progress (especially considering that I was pregnant). Starting in the spring, I planted a small 4x8' garden with broccoli, two types of tomatoes, and yellow peppers. Some of the broccoli I started from seeds, but the rest were started plants from a local nursery. I've never had a vegetable garden before, and I am amazed at how well everything grew with very little care. I had a decent broccoli harvest, LOADS of tomatoes, and a few peppers.
I also learned how to make jam. I bought strawberries from the farmers market, but harvested my own mulberries (from my backyard, no less) and raspberries. All of the jams turned out well, but raspberry was everyone's favorite. That one was made kind of spur of the moment, after a friend mentioned that he had a bunch of wild black raspberry bushes on his property. He let my mom and I pick (and brought me a big container that he had picked himself), and I made the jam with the last berries of the season.
I picked blueberries for the first time, which is loads of fun when you're gigantically pregnant...! I ended up with almost 10 lbs. I dehydrated some and they turned out like little blueberry rocks, but they softened up after being in storage for a little while. The rest are in the freezer for pancakes, muffins, bread, and maybe pie.
I dehydrated cherries from the market to use in my homemade granola bars or in salad.
I froze the same veggies as last year, minus carrots which are always available locally, but refined my technique a bit. I've learned to let broccoli dry a bit so that it doesn't get soggy, plus I steamed it instead of blanching. Last year's was only suitable for stir-fry since it was so mushy. I bought a Reynolds Handi-Vac system, which is basically a cheap vacuum sealer, and used it for all my freezer veggies. Hopefully it will work to prevent freezer burn, since last year's veggies ended up very frosty after a few months.
I canned corn and peaches. Peaches are a major pain in the butt to can, but they taste like a little bit of summer when you open a jar in the middle of winter. The corn was because the frozen corn starts to taste like the freezer after about 6 months... So hopefully that canned corn will get us through once the frozen runs out.
I learned how to make basil pesto and froze some of that for later.
My spaghetti sauce turned out WAY better this year than last year's. I found a great recipe online, then tweaked it to my taste. Even my mom likes it. :) Most of the tomatoes were bought from the market, but I got about 5-7 lbs off my plants that were tossed in as well. There's really nothing better than making something edible from something you grew!
Then came applesauce... I bought mixed seconds from the market instead of using just golden delicious and fuji. I don't know that it tastes any better, but it was loads cheaper. I also bought an apple peeler/corer/slicer which sped things up a lot.
On Saturday I bought another half-bushel of seconds and made apple butter. It turned out well, but not seasoned enough, so this morning I dumped out my jars, added more spices, and cooked it more. I ended up with 8 oz less than I had, but the flavor is much improved. Thankfully apples don't require a long processing time, otherwise I would have just had to live with it.
As an experiment I boiled a chicken, froze the stock, and canned the meat. I haven't yet tried the canned chicken, but it'll be very convenient to have on hand for stir-fry and other recipes.
In addition to learning to store more foods, I also learned how to cook more. I've found awesome recipes for beef stew, chicken pot pie, roasted red pepper cream sauce, basil cream sauce, no-knead bread, and quite a few others. It may not sound like much, but until a few years ago I never really bothered with cooking from scratch. I had a few staples that I'd make (sloppy joes, some crockpot meals, steak, stir-fry), but wasn't interested in learning more. I still don't have as much time to cook as I would like, but I'm getting there.
Next year we are definitely going to have a bigger garden. Shayne is going to make me more raised beds, and we'll remake the existing one so that it's deeper (and nicer looking!). I'm going to stick to the 4x8' size, since it makes organization easy and I can reach across the beds without having to step onto the soil. I'm going to plant a full bed of roma tomatoes (16 plants), red and yellow peppers, broccoli, potatoes, onions, and maybe some corn, squash, and carrots.
We're also going to build more shelves in the basement for more storage space. As I learn more about canning and storing food, I'm finding that our existing pantry and shelving just aren't cutting it. Plus, most ready-made shelving has a large area between shelves. If I'm storing canned goods, I only need a 12 to 16" between shelves. So I'm wasting a lot of space.
And, I'd really like to get those chickens. We've been taking about it for 2 years. I bought coop plans last spring. Maybe next spring or summer we can get 2 or 3 hens and see how it goes.
7/26/2009
Wasting time...
I'm waiting for Shayne to get up so I can work on the stairway. Unfortunately I'm also looking at vintage-ish kitchen remodels. *sigh*
Since we've realize we're not going to live in this house forever, we've been having some huge renovation dilemmas. Like, how far do we take our dreams for this house? We've pretty much scrapped the bathroom ideas since any bathtub I want would mean moving plumbing around. I'm fine with that. But the kitchen... is ugly. And we absoloutely have to do something to it before we sell the house. But how much "something"??
The el-cheapo laminate floor we installed last summer really should be replaced before we sell. $125 was a great temporary fix, but it's really cheap. And looks it. I've dinged up a few spots by dropping large items, and I don't think a crappy floor would be a great selling point. So the floor is kind of non-negotiable. But what do we do? Lay a subfloor over the scary linoleum, then some kind of linoleum? Take out the base cabinets, get rid of the scary linoleum, and refinish the original hardwood?
And if we take out the cabinets, do we "replace" them with the originals out in the garage? Paint the current dark wood to brighten up the room? Just buy new hardware to spruce them up?
What about my beautiful Chambers stove? At 37" wide, it's not going to fit a standard opening. And I so want to start cooking on it...
Ugh. I'd probably feel better about it if I didn't cook quite so much. For the past 2 or 3 months, it almost feels like I've been living in the kitchen. And the more I'm in there, the more I hate it!
Oh well... At least now it's super-clean and organized. Yay for nesting! I have at least 6 months before I have to even start thinking about what to do to improve that God-awful room.
Since we've realize we're not going to live in this house forever, we've been having some huge renovation dilemmas. Like, how far do we take our dreams for this house? We've pretty much scrapped the bathroom ideas since any bathtub I want would mean moving plumbing around. I'm fine with that. But the kitchen... is ugly. And we absoloutely have to do something to it before we sell the house. But how much "something"??
The el-cheapo laminate floor we installed last summer really should be replaced before we sell. $125 was a great temporary fix, but it's really cheap. And looks it. I've dinged up a few spots by dropping large items, and I don't think a crappy floor would be a great selling point. So the floor is kind of non-negotiable. But what do we do? Lay a subfloor over the scary linoleum, then some kind of linoleum? Take out the base cabinets, get rid of the scary linoleum, and refinish the original hardwood?
And if we take out the cabinets, do we "replace" them with the originals out in the garage? Paint the current dark wood to brighten up the room? Just buy new hardware to spruce them up?
What about my beautiful Chambers stove? At 37" wide, it's not going to fit a standard opening. And I so want to start cooking on it...
Ugh. I'd probably feel better about it if I didn't cook quite so much. For the past 2 or 3 months, it almost feels like I've been living in the kitchen. And the more I'm in there, the more I hate it!
Oh well... At least now it's super-clean and organized. Yay for nesting! I have at least 6 months before I have to even start thinking about what to do to improve that God-awful room.
5/03/2009
Thinking spring, and about all the work we need to do...
It seems as though it's been a long time coming, but spring is really, truly, finally here. Trees are budding, lilacs are blooming, and the grass just had its first trim. I love how fresh and clean everything always looks during spring. Even the now-empty lot that used to be our woods doesn't look so bad now that the grass is green again. I'd still much rather have trees than a view of the neighbors, but I guess I'm learning to live with it. Like I have a choice...
One of the reasons I'm so excited about spring this year is because of food. When I started eating/buying local, seasonal produce last yearI didn't think it would change our diet much. Since I stocked away lots of veggies in the freezer, I figured we'd pretty much eat the same stuff during the winter as we do during the summer. And, that mostly proved correct. It's been very easy to live off our freezer stash, and I'm definitely going to do it again this year. I have bought a few bunches of lettuce, a bag of onions, and one head of broccoli at the store, but other than that, I've cooked from the frozen broccoli, beans, peas, peppers, and corn in the freezer. The potatoes I bought at the market stayed fresh living in the produce bin at the bottom of the fridge, and we devoured our canned applesauce and peaches.
And that right there is why I'm so very glad it's spring.
Fruit.
I never was one to buy fruit out of season anyways, but this winter I really missed it. Last summer at the market, I devoured the strawberries, blueberries, plums (4 different kinds!), nectarines, peaches, melons, pears, and apples. And they were just so much better than anything I'd ever bought from Meijer. I probably ate more fruit last summer than I had in the 5 years before combined. I would wake up early every Saturday morning and couldn't wait to go get more fruit.
And the problem with fruit is that there's no good way to preserve that just-picked taste. My frozen corn still tastes fresh 8 months later. But a canned peach just isn't the same as biting into a fresh, juicy one. And the home frozen ones kinda turn to mush. I need to get a commercial flash freezer...!
Fruit cravings aside, we've gotten quite a bit accomplished here in the past 2 weeks. The office walls are nearing completion, and I'm beginning to have hope that the upstairs really will be finished before the end of summer. Our drywall buddy knows an electrician who will help us with our knob and tube debacle and put a ceiling fan into the office. I have a feeling the closet walls and ceiling will be so shot that we'll just end up completely replacing with drywall, so that whould be a relatively quick project (especially since we won't be doing the work!), and then we'll just have to paint the walls and refinish the floors. It's getting there...
The only problem with this house is that the projects kind of create more projects. Like the Great Closet Recreation Project. Sure, it's wonderful that we're taking 2 dysfunctional closets and creating 3 usable ones. It'll imrpove resale value, and we'll be able to store more items in a more organized fashion. But, by putting the closets back where they belong, we have to remove a screwed up heat duct installed by the PPOs that "feeds" off of the duct to the master bedroom and effectively cuts airflow in half. Which is all well and good, until we find that the wall that the old, original heat duct ran through no longer exists. When they opened up the wall between the kitchen and dining rooms, they took the duct with it. So now, in order to really, truly do this project right, we need to build 16" of wall between the dining room and kitchen.
Did I mention that the dining room still has its lovely paneling and ceiling tiles? And don't forget the window opening that is hidden beneath that paneling. And the beautiful, unrefinished pine floors lurking under the Pergo. Oh, wait! And if we build a wall between the kitchen and dining room, we can't very well leave all the nasty wallpaper in the kitchen up; we'll need to remove it and paint. And since the kitchen doesn't have any heat ducts of its own, we should probably fix that while we are running ductwork, right?
This is where I start wondering why the hell I ever thought we needed to fix the closets...
One of the reasons I'm so excited about spring this year is because of food. When I started eating/buying local, seasonal produce last yearI didn't think it would change our diet much. Since I stocked away lots of veggies in the freezer, I figured we'd pretty much eat the same stuff during the winter as we do during the summer. And, that mostly proved correct. It's been very easy to live off our freezer stash, and I'm definitely going to do it again this year. I have bought a few bunches of lettuce, a bag of onions, and one head of broccoli at the store, but other than that, I've cooked from the frozen broccoli, beans, peas, peppers, and corn in the freezer. The potatoes I bought at the market stayed fresh living in the produce bin at the bottom of the fridge, and we devoured our canned applesauce and peaches.
And that right there is why I'm so very glad it's spring.
Fruit.
I never was one to buy fruit out of season anyways, but this winter I really missed it. Last summer at the market, I devoured the strawberries, blueberries, plums (4 different kinds!), nectarines, peaches, melons, pears, and apples. And they were just so much better than anything I'd ever bought from Meijer. I probably ate more fruit last summer than I had in the 5 years before combined. I would wake up early every Saturday morning and couldn't wait to go get more fruit.
And the problem with fruit is that there's no good way to preserve that just-picked taste. My frozen corn still tastes fresh 8 months later. But a canned peach just isn't the same as biting into a fresh, juicy one. And the home frozen ones kinda turn to mush. I need to get a commercial flash freezer...!
Fruit cravings aside, we've gotten quite a bit accomplished here in the past 2 weeks. The office walls are nearing completion, and I'm beginning to have hope that the upstairs really will be finished before the end of summer. Our drywall buddy knows an electrician who will help us with our knob and tube debacle and put a ceiling fan into the office. I have a feeling the closet walls and ceiling will be so shot that we'll just end up completely replacing with drywall, so that whould be a relatively quick project (especially since we won't be doing the work!), and then we'll just have to paint the walls and refinish the floors. It's getting there...
The only problem with this house is that the projects kind of create more projects. Like the Great Closet Recreation Project. Sure, it's wonderful that we're taking 2 dysfunctional closets and creating 3 usable ones. It'll imrpove resale value, and we'll be able to store more items in a more organized fashion. But, by putting the closets back where they belong, we have to remove a screwed up heat duct installed by the PPOs that "feeds" off of the duct to the master bedroom and effectively cuts airflow in half. Which is all well and good, until we find that the wall that the old, original heat duct ran through no longer exists. When they opened up the wall between the kitchen and dining rooms, they took the duct with it. So now, in order to really, truly do this project right, we need to build 16" of wall between the dining room and kitchen.
Did I mention that the dining room still has its lovely paneling and ceiling tiles? And don't forget the window opening that is hidden beneath that paneling. And the beautiful, unrefinished pine floors lurking under the Pergo. Oh, wait! And if we build a wall between the kitchen and dining room, we can't very well leave all the nasty wallpaper in the kitchen up; we'll need to remove it and paint. And since the kitchen doesn't have any heat ducts of its own, we should probably fix that while we are running ductwork, right?
This is where I start wondering why the hell I ever thought we needed to fix the closets...
4/04/2009
We love our house, but...
Several months ago, Shayne and I started to seriously talk about moving. We've always wanted more property, but we always had the mentality of "someday, down the road..." Ultimately, though there were things we disliked about out current location, most everything was good, and we were happy. But then things started to change.
I started to become upset with our neighbors, the ones who own the noisy bar a block or so away. I kept thinking about how I don't want our future kids to be outside playing in the evenings amid the sounds of drunken revelry. I started to be bothered by their blatant disregard for others. They blare loud music out in their barn at 2 am and tear up our grass by riding snowmobiles across our yard when there's only 2" of snow. After a few months of silent fuming, I decided I needed to adjust my attitude. Talking to them about the problems was impossible; they refused to answer the door when I went over there. So I decided not to let it piss me off. It was just little stuff, and not worth an ulcer. I managed to chill myself out and felt much better about everything.
Then a few weeks ago, I started hearing chainsaws. All the time. And bit by bit, the woods that separate our properties shrank, then vanished. At first, they left some of the larger trees, making it look somewhat park-like and pleasant. I had hope that maybe they were done and, even though most of the woods was gone, a little of our natural privacy fence would remain. A few days ago, those last remaining trees also ended up in the ever-growing woodpile. When we talked to the neighbor's son, he said that the woods were ugly and mom wanted "landscaping".
Here are some pictures to show how things have "progressed":
But now??
Both Shayne and I are horrified. There's no other way to put it. When I look out the kitchen window, which is the view in the last picture, I want to cry. Those last few little trees are on our property. As skinny and straggly as they look, we're keeping them.
Part of the reason we liked and bought our house/property was the setting. Even though we don't live too far from the city it felt pretty rural. Our little half acre felt bigger because of the trees surrounding it. With woods on 2 sides, our yard was a bit isolated, and we liked that. Now our privacy is gone. You can see our house from quite a ways down the road, and we're in full view of the road and neighbors the second we set foot out the back door. Our backyard no longer feels like a little haven surrounded by woods; it feels like we live in a subdivision.
I hate it. Shayne hates it.
Funny how just one thing can push you over the edge.
And so, we've decided to wrap up our unfinished projects and move on. It'll take us several months, at least, to finish what we've started, but we want to get the house into "sell-able" condition, then start looking for something else. We're not in any real hurry, and we're not going to do shoddy work just to get the house ready to sell. But our focus has definitely changed. We were planning on living here at least 10 years, possibly longer. I was really looking forward to putting the house back the way it used to be. Now I'm just looking forward to being done.
I started to become upset with our neighbors, the ones who own the noisy bar a block or so away. I kept thinking about how I don't want our future kids to be outside playing in the evenings amid the sounds of drunken revelry. I started to be bothered by their blatant disregard for others. They blare loud music out in their barn at 2 am and tear up our grass by riding snowmobiles across our yard when there's only 2" of snow. After a few months of silent fuming, I decided I needed to adjust my attitude. Talking to them about the problems was impossible; they refused to answer the door when I went over there. So I decided not to let it piss me off. It was just little stuff, and not worth an ulcer. I managed to chill myself out and felt much better about everything.
Then a few weeks ago, I started hearing chainsaws. All the time. And bit by bit, the woods that separate our properties shrank, then vanished. At first, they left some of the larger trees, making it look somewhat park-like and pleasant. I had hope that maybe they were done and, even though most of the woods was gone, a little of our natural privacy fence would remain. A few days ago, those last remaining trees also ended up in the ever-growing woodpile. When we talked to the neighbor's son, he said that the woods were ugly and mom wanted "landscaping".
Here are some pictures to show how things have "progressed":
Even in winter, we had some privacy...
But now??
Both Shayne and I are horrified. There's no other way to put it. When I look out the kitchen window, which is the view in the last picture, I want to cry. Those last few little trees are on our property. As skinny and straggly as they look, we're keeping them.
Part of the reason we liked and bought our house/property was the setting. Even though we don't live too far from the city it felt pretty rural. Our little half acre felt bigger because of the trees surrounding it. With woods on 2 sides, our yard was a bit isolated, and we liked that. Now our privacy is gone. You can see our house from quite a ways down the road, and we're in full view of the road and neighbors the second we set foot out the back door. Our backyard no longer feels like a little haven surrounded by woods; it feels like we live in a subdivision.
I hate it. Shayne hates it.
Funny how just one thing can push you over the edge.
And so, we've decided to wrap up our unfinished projects and move on. It'll take us several months, at least, to finish what we've started, but we want to get the house into "sell-able" condition, then start looking for something else. We're not in any real hurry, and we're not going to do shoddy work just to get the house ready to sell. But our focus has definitely changed. We were planning on living here at least 10 years, possibly longer. I was really looking forward to putting the house back the way it used to be. Now I'm just looking forward to being done.
12/15/2008
She's making a list...
Of all the crap I still need to accomplish, preferably before I'm pregnant again. It's not a big list. It's not even a terribly difficult list. It just requires time. That's what I'd like for Christmas, Santa. MORE TIME.
Since Shayne's on midnights and I'm on afternoons, there's no good time to accomplish anything together. His days off are so screwy that we hardly have any together. He's working afternoons for the rest of the month I think, so tonight when we're both home, I really want to accomplish something.
Finishing the upstairs was on my list of New Year's Resolutions. With only 2 weeks left to go, I think we're going to fall miserably short. Here are the things we have left to do:
Since Shayne's on midnights and I'm on afternoons, there's no good time to accomplish anything together. His days off are so screwy that we hardly have any together. He's working afternoons for the rest of the month I think, so tonight when we're both home, I really want to accomplish something.
Finishing the upstairs was on my list of New Year's Resolutions. With only 2 weeks left to go, I think we're going to fall miserably short. Here are the things we have left to do:
- Finish skimcoating the office walls
- Frame over the existing closet opening and rough in the new one
- Drywall over the closet door opening
- Paint office
- Move bedroom into office
- Remove paneling and funky built-in shelf from bedroom
- Frame divider between the two closets
- Drywall bedroom wall and closet divider wall
- Refinish bedroom floor
- Refinish office floor
- Refinish nursery floor
- Replace/recreate missing trim in office
11/11/2008
What? It's November?!
I can't believe that the year is almost over. That means I have 2 months to finish the projects I had started in order to complete my New Year's Resolutions. In cause you forgot (I did), here they are again:
- Finish office, master bedroom, and little front bedroom.
- Find and install a "new" front door
- Finish the stairway
Doesn't sound like too much, does it? Here is what I had accomplished as of June:
- Last pieces of paneling removed from office, little front bedroom (nursery!) done except for floor refinishing.
- New front door found! Carpenter AWOL.
- I've vacuumed the stairway several times and removed 1 nail. No progress.
- New laminate floor in the kitchen after ripping out the unsanitary carpet.
- Gotten rid of 90% of unnecessary junk in the house. I'm pretty proud of this one :)
- Begun restoration of 1941 Chambers stove. I've thoroughly cleaned everything and replaced the service cabinet door and floor, plus gotten the parts for natural gas conversion. I'm waiting for hubby to remove 5 stripped screws from the chrome top. Once that's done, we can send it to be rechromed, and then we're ready for reassembly!
- Edged the flowerbed with brick pavers.
- Agonized over how little I accomplish.
- All wallpaper removed from office
- Large hole knocked in immaculate plaster wall in order to make closet door opening wider
- Old knob-and-tube wiring discovered in new closet door opening
- Office walls prepped for skimcoating, which I'm crazy enough to want to try to do myself
- All upstairs doors removed, stripped, and sanded
- 90% of stairway sanded. The top 4 steps after the landing are refinished and back in place (1 step still awaiting stain)
- Stove restoration on hold, pending removal of stripped screws via industrial drill press
- Spoke to carpenter numerous times and secured multiple promises to call when he's going to be out my way. Resovled to find new carpenter...
- Veggie garden abandoned after pest infestation and discovery that there's not enough sun in that location
- Skimcoat office walls
- Refinish all upstairs floors
- Finish sanding the damned staircase
- Stain and shellac the damned staircase
- Remove wall in master bedroom made of paneling and replace with drywall
- Reskimcoat some areas of the master bedroom walls to even out
- Strip and refinish master bedroom woodwork
9/20/2008
The 2 Week Home Project Extravaganza
Starting tomorrow, I have the next 2 weeks off from work, so I'm gearing up for a home project extravaganza. My hope is to finish sanding the stairway (this will get done even if nothing else does!!), stain and shellac the stairs, sand and refinish the floor in the tiny bedroom/nursery, and start prepping the room to actually be a nursery instead of a catch-all room. I might also drop off the living room windows and the bedroom, closet, and bathroom doors at the Strip Shoppe to save myself some agony. I'm getting lazy, and it's only 3 years in.
3 years?! I had a house-iversary about 3 weeks ago and didn't even realize it! Time flies when your life is crazy...
I'd also like to skimcoat the office walls, but I'm really not sure that's within my skillset. That one might stay in the queue for a while yet. Other unfinished projects include the knob-and-tube wiring I found in the office, finding someone to reverse and hang our "new" front door, finding some way to insulate the pipes to the laundry room/back porch before it freezes, and adding a last coat of dewaxed shellac to the living room floor. It never ends...!
I'll try to post my progress each day, since it'll keep me motivated to see that I'm actually getting somewhere!
3 years?! I had a house-iversary about 3 weeks ago and didn't even realize it! Time flies when your life is crazy...
I'd also like to skimcoat the office walls, but I'm really not sure that's within my skillset. That one might stay in the queue for a while yet. Other unfinished projects include the knob-and-tube wiring I found in the office, finding someone to reverse and hang our "new" front door, finding some way to insulate the pipes to the laundry room/back porch before it freezes, and adding a last coat of dewaxed shellac to the living room floor. It never ends...!
I'll try to post my progress each day, since it'll keep me motivated to see that I'm actually getting somewhere!
7/13/2008
Closet vs bathroom
Planning for the bathroom remodel is giving me fits. I'm almost seriously considering taking over the hall closet just to be able to make the bathroom bigger. And then I think about the lost storage, and resale value of a home with only small-ish closets in the bedrooms, and how much I hate the PPOs for screwing up the house to begin with. And then there's the fact that someday (soon, hopefully!), we're going to have a baby. I know that closet space will come in handy So I go back to my home design software and try yet again to find a way to make the bathroom work.
Am I nuts for considering this? Help!
The least expensive way would be to leave the fixtures pretty much where they are. Since the bathroom is so awkward as-is, I could borrow a little space from the closet to make an alcove for the sink. It would open up the floor plan quite a bit, but then the closet would be slightly awkward instead of the bathroom. Would it really matter if we had a weird closet? Would future owners hate me?
We could always make a deep toilet alcove, instead. That saves the closet from awkwardness, but involves moving more plumbing...
The original plan called for moving all the fixtures, which our plumber said he could do for less than $800. But then there's the issue of waterproofing the window. And finding a 5.5' tub that doesn't cost $1500.
Or, I could just leave well-enough alone. We're pretty used to the layout now, and it's probably how it was originally. It's only awkward when one of us wants to get past the other person in front of the sink, and that doen't happen too often. It would leave the hall closet intact, plus we'd still have room in the bathroom for storage.
Or, I could just leave well-enough alone. We're pretty used to the layout now, and it's probably how it was originally. It's only awkward when one of us wants to get past the other person in front of the sink, and that doen't happen too often. It would leave the hall closet intact, plus we'd still have room in the bathroom for storage.
Another option is to lay it out like SactoDiane over at the OldHouseWeb forums: we could just cram it all in there. Somehow it looks nice in her bathroom, but I worry that mine would be cramped.
And then I think again about taking over the closet. It would add 24 square feet to the 60 square foot bathroom. Since the PPO's messed up the closets, we're getting by without the extracloset space now. We could have a separate shower and bath. And, I could have a clawfoot tub, as long as it's a 6' model (did I mention there's one on craigslist for sale nearby??). Hubby refuses to take a shower in one, since he says the curtain gets sucked in and sticks to you, but he doesn't mind them for soaking. Homes with larger bathrooms (74 square feet is hardly large by modern standards, but still!) have higher resale values, too. We'll have more storage anyways when we expand the back "porch" across the entire length of the house. And there's always the basement. And what really needs to be stored up here besides the linens and our clothes? Maybe most importantly, to us, the bathroom would be our little oasis from the chaos of remodeling; the one luxurious space in our utilitarian, efficient little house.
Or perhaps like this one...
Am I nuts for considering this? Help!
6/04/2008
Planning ahead and lack of patience
I'm great at planning ahead. I can come up with all sorts of plans and ideas, it's the execution of the plans where I get hung up. I procrastinate. I get impatient and start another project before I finish the first. I spend money on stop-gap measures instead of saving for the big overhaul. Granted, some things need a temporary fix. The kitchen floor. The office carpet. The dining room walls (I never blogged about that... Hmmm. Well, they're now a warm tan instead of red and yellow. Still paneling, but an improvement).
After realizing that there's a good possibility we'll need to rip out the kitchen ceiling when we move the bathroom plumbing, we decided that it's probably a good idea to renovate the bathroom first. I'm now having to restrain myself from painting the kitchen cabinets and buy new hardware for them, since they're so fugly. Shayne won't let me, thank God, but I'm driving myself nuts... But, since I like to buy things for the house, I've decided it's a good idea to start buying materials for the bathroom bit by bit. This way I won't have to actually save the money for as long as it takes, so there's less chance of it being appropriated for something else. Plus, I'll feel like I'm accomplishing something just by buying faucets, towel racks, grout, cement board, and boxes of tile.
The bathroom is a good idea for another reason: it's a feel-good measure. Once it's done, the upstairs will be a sanctuary from the rest of the restovation mess. Sort of an oasis above the rest of the chaos.
It's still a ways off, but I already can't wait. I've been thinking about the bathroom since before we even moved into the house...
After realizing that there's a good possibility we'll need to rip out the kitchen ceiling when we move the bathroom plumbing, we decided that it's probably a good idea to renovate the bathroom first. I'm now having to restrain myself from painting the kitchen cabinets and buy new hardware for them, since they're so fugly. Shayne won't let me, thank God, but I'm driving myself nuts... But, since I like to buy things for the house, I've decided it's a good idea to start buying materials for the bathroom bit by bit. This way I won't have to actually save the money for as long as it takes, so there's less chance of it being appropriated for something else. Plus, I'll feel like I'm accomplishing something just by buying faucets, towel racks, grout, cement board, and boxes of tile.
The bathroom is a good idea for another reason: it's a feel-good measure. Once it's done, the upstairs will be a sanctuary from the rest of the restovation mess. Sort of an oasis above the rest of the chaos.
It's still a ways off, but I already can't wait. I've been thinking about the bathroom since before we even moved into the house...
6/02/2008
New Year's Resolutions: Halfway Point
Well, half of 2008 is gone (yikes!), and I'm wondering if I'll ever accomplish any goals I set for myself. Here are my house resolutions:
- Finish office, master bedroom, and little front bedroom.
- Find and install a "new" front door
- Finish the stairway
Here is what I've accomplished:
- Last pieces of paneling removed from office, little front bedroom (nursery!) done except for floor refinishing.
- New front door found! Carpenter AWOL.
- I've vacuumed the stairway several times and removed 1 nail. No progress.
- New laminate floor in the kitchen after ripping out the unsanitary carpet.
- Gotten rid of 90% of unnecessary junk in the house. I'm pretty proud of this one :)
- Begun restoration of 1941 Chambers stove. I've thoroughly cleaned everything and replaced the service cabinet door and floor, plus gotten the parts for natural gas conversion. I'm waiting for hubby to remove 5 stripped screws from the chrome top. Once that's done, we can send it to be rechromed, and then we're ready for reassembly!
- Edged the flowerbed with brick pavers.
- Agonized over how little I accomplish.
On the personal goals:
- Create a vegetable garden and grow carrots, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and maybe broccoli.
- Learn to can my own veggies, sauces, and meats.
- Increase our food storage to a 3 month supply.
- Take at least 6 backpacking/camping trips (to keep my sanity)
And my progress:
- Veggie garden created and planted. Everything but peas eaten by moles and rabbits...
- No canning.
- Begun adding to our food storage, but I'd still say that we only have maybe a month's worth. It doesn't help that food is so freakin' expensive right now.
- No camping due to bad weather on my days off. I'm supposed to go this weekend, but of course, thunderstorms are predicted. I did take one hiking trip in February, but I stayed in a hotel overnight and not my tent.
- Gained 5 lbs. *sob*
So that's my year so far. I guess it's not too bad, but I always feel that I don't accomplish enough. At least the living room is finished, though, so I can look at it and know what I'm capable of. That room is my refuge and my inspiration. Just sitting in it makes me feel happy. Someday, I hope I'll feel that way in every room of this house.
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