Long Time No Post

This winter has turned out to be unseasonably warm!  This is was the warmest winter that Nebraska has had in the last 40 or 50 years!  We did have some blustery days, but thankfully, if we were to have a mild winter, this past winter was most beneficial to us since we still have been unable to completely close up the walls!  As usual, we have been very hard at work and our little old house on the hill is much better for it!

The family keeps growing up, dirtying laundry and are always hungry!!  We are sure to be eaten out of house and home before we have a chance to complete our renovation!

This is our sweet Grace who really wanted coy-wees (curlies)  in her hair for church.  I granted her wish a couple of months ago!  She was more than happy to let me take pictures!!

These are photos of the progress of mine and Tim's room.  This room came together pretty quickly.  I was surprised!  

Getting our king size mattress up the stairs was equally challenging!  It took us 35 minutes to stuff the mattress around this corner in the stairwell!

We have since enjoyed  many blissful nights in our bedroom!  I am currently working on window treatments and other details.  I will post finished pictures when I am finished!

The yard has also been a big priority.  We are needing to tame the wilderness that lays beyond our front porch...  We have a plethora of poison ivy that has taken over the property.  I am terribly allergic and despite that, I waged war on anything that lays in the immediate yard.  I am still paying for it, but I sure hope that very soon I will no longer be tormented by the noxious weed!

Creating a garden has also been very important.  I am leaving behind berries and asparagus and other wonderful things that I have become quite spoiled by when we lived at the orchard!  It was very important to establish perennials right away so that we could enjoy them next year!  We've planted red raspberries, strawberries, asparagus, a cherry tree taken from my little teeny grove at the orchard, rhubarb, white and purple juicing grapes, and of course, flowers and starts from the orchard as well as plants I've relocated from around the property to a more local bed so that we can be aggressive in removing poison ivy on the rest of the property.  We've also planted a good part of our veggie garden!  Unheard of this early in the spring in these parts.  I'm not complaining!  More pictures of our 'formal' style potager garden to come!

We had several hollow and huge trees that posed a serious threat to home and power... Thanks to the power company, several of these threat were removed, including a large  Lindon tree that we learned would have likely fallen onto the roof of the house within a month's time.  It was on of those tender mercies that the tree was taken down only a few days before a serious thunderstorm came through that produced tornadoes in Talmage and Nebraska City!  We surely would have lost the tree on the house!

 One of those sweet moments captured of the little people in my life!!

We haven't captured any photos of Mama Fox's babies yet!  But they are cute as they can be!  I was trying to photograph one of them when she walked around the corner of our dilapidated barn and she was startled at my presence.  She told me a thing or two and then leaped and bounded in the poison ivy that we grow so plentifully!

The First Bedroom Nears Completion!

Here is how progress has been made!

In the beginning there was a very tired room.  It was dirty too.  My favorite: the haunted house curtains hanging in the window!  LOVE them!!

A large portion of the plaster from the ceiling had succumbed to the forces of gravity.  We knew we needed to insulate and run new wiring.  So we thanked gravity for helping us get a head start on the destruction process.

We hammered and got all dirty.

We updated the electrical.

 We put in insulation and energy efficient windows.

Then we put up sheet rock and mudded and taped and mudded and taped and mudded and taped and did a whole bunch of sanding in between.  And we got all dirty.

Then we primed and painted and wall papered!

Wallpaper detail with a funky cast of color.

Painted wall with the great antique bed find (painted a smoky purple.  I will probably do a black glaze on it when its done getting painted)

Still have a corner to take care of.  We need to put in the duct work for a vacume system and finish tying in the sheet rock with the chimney.

We will be putting crown molding at the top of the walls.  We will be putting picture rail molding on where the  green meets the cream color.  The moldings will be stained in the same color as the other mill work in the room and house.

Here is another project, but it also has a story.  The same day that I went antiquing and found the bed for 10 bucks, Gracie Anne found this lovely framed print.  

Gracie loves thumbing through pictures in our church Children's Songbook.  There are little pictures in there with Mary and baby Jesus and the stable with little lambs.  Her favorite song for quite a while has been, Mary Had a Little Lamb.  She would run up to me with her song book pointing to Mary and exclaiming, "Look, Mommy, its Mary had a little lamb!"  

Not too long after we entered the antique store Gracie Anne had found this... in the dark!  We had a bad storm go through the night before and a lot of power was still out.  That sure didn't stop us from our adventure!  We had flashlights!

When Gracie saw this she ran up to me.  Pulling on my arm she was exclaiming, "Mommy!  I found Mary had a Little Lamb."  So what could I do?  I had to buy it!  I was already married to it so the best I could negotiate was from 15 bucks down to 11.  I do have to say, she does have very good taste for art!

I don't like the frame AT ALL!

But found this and negotiated $3.

My Amish neighbor in MO is cutting some glass to go into this.  I need to cut a matte and I will  need to do some chip repair on the old frame.  After that I will paint it.  

 Finally, my rocking chair.  It will go in this room with some diy shelving for picture books.   My Amish neighbor, Joe, made this for me when I was expecting Gracie.  We had to start from scratch with the baby necessities since we got rid of everything after Avery!  This is such a comfy rocker.  I do want to finish it though.  Not sure if I should stain it or paint it.  It definitely will get some cushions!  Any ideas?

I still need to scrub, stain and seal the floor.  We still have some more big projects in this room, but in a week and a half, we've gone from sheet rock to paint and wallpaper in the 'south wing!'  In the same week and a half, we've gotten the west wing from sheet rock to this point:

More to come on the 'west wing!'

Windows to the World!!

This old lady of a house was in desperate need of new windows.  Many had cracks, several wouldn't slide up and down, some were falling out of their frames... OK bunches were, and to protect ourselves from the winter, we had to cover them with a pretty thick plastic.  Imagine our surprise when the new windows arrived and were installed and we could actually see outside!!!  Which created another project - window coverings!

All of the windows made a huge impact - efficiency wise, and visually.  However, the kitchen window was a very exciting moment.  We decided to go with a much larger picture window for this particular window.  With some of the big changes we are making in the layout of the kitchen we really  need to be getting natural lighting wherever we can get it from.  

Here is the hole they made for this bad boy!

 Window is in!

Enjoying the view!

This is a very serious game!

After the windows were installed, which happened within a day and a half, the tedious work of wrapping the old trim work began.  It took several days to finish, but as you can see it has made a monstrous difference to the exterior of the house!

Before

After!

Before

After!

Sanding

I know!  We really should have taken the lath down first, but we didn't!  We went ahead and sanded and it was good!! 

We used an orbital sander.  It allowed us to get right up to the floor trim.  I sanded, and sanded, and sanded!  In the evening of the first day of sanding, I completed the upstairs and made it into the kitchen. 



While working in the kitchen I started to feel very excited about our kitchen plans and began wondering how it was all going to look when all was said and done!  It was a good feeling to complete the job!

The pantry got even more cute when the sanding was completed!

(looking through the back porch door)



Even though everything turned out so well, I did end up injuring my wrists.  They are healing very well now, but it did become quite a challenge over this weekend to do much of anything at all!

(soaking hands and wrists in cold water)