Down to the trim and Christmas time!

Over the last 2 months, we have continued our focus on finishing up the house.  With the cabinets installed, we were able to order countertops.  They were installed a few weeks ago and, with them, a new kitchen sink!  After more than a year of having to go into the bathroom to get water, wash hands and get dish water, it was amazing to have a sink in the kitchen.  All of the sudden, we could really wash dishes like normal people again! 

We decided to order a butcher block top for the kitchen island.  We found one very reasonably priced through MSC Industrial supply.  Everything on the order looked perfect and it was set to arrive the same week as the counter tops were due to be installed.  I planned to take that day off work to finish the butcher block while the other counter tops were being placed - it was going to be perfect!  I should have known it wouldn't work out that way.  When I checked the tracking information online, I found a note that the butcherblock delivery address was illegible and it was being returned to the MSC distribution center in Georgia after it had made it all the way to Kansas City.  Then I had to wait several days and make SEVERAL phone calls to get them to re-ship one to us.  It finally arrived and after a light sanding with ultrafine grit sandpaper, I sealed it up and it is beautiful!  We love it!

With that finished, we started digging out all the rest of the boxes of kitchen stuff that have been in storage for well over a year.  Our pie plates, cookie sheets, bread pans, cookie cutters and a host of other kitchen tools are all carefully stored away in the new kitchen cabinets now. 

Then it was time to get the last lighting circuit done (finally).  The dining room light was first.  We found this fixture at the Habitat Restore several months ago.  It reminds us of Jeremy's grandparents cabin light fixtures so it was a natural fit for our house.  With it complete, I turned to the other 2 light fixtures in the kitchen.  It took a bit of work to get all the wires run, boxes built and lights mounted, but the result is just what we wanted.

Out of all the rooms in the house, we put the most thought into the kitchen and it shows.  We spend most of our time at home in the kitchen - our lives revolve around food in so many ways that it is only natural for us to spend most of our waking hours doing some form of food work.  Despite having a very small house (less than 1000 sq feet all told), 6 people can work comfortably in our kitchen.  We're looking forward to it finally being the center of our lives again (instead of our lives revolving around building a house).

The list of things left to do before the house is completely finished is getting very short.  We need to get the oven vent hood installed, build the linen closet upstairs, install the cedar trim around the window and door wells downstairs, install the cedar chair rail in the living/dining room and do all the trim work downstairs.  Those aren't simple tasks, but given where we've come from it is a very manageable list of things to check off.  Jeremy is well into working on the cedar for the window and door wells.  Some of those boards may make their way into place this week even.  I am working on the plans for both the vent hood and the linen closet.  Its getting very close.

With the reduction in things still undone, our lives have continued returning to normal.  We put up the Christmas tree on time this year (the weekend after Thanksgiving).  We are making and decorating sugar cookies again this year.  It has been several years since we really did that for the holidays and it feels so good to bring back that holiday tradition.

As another bonus, now that we have finished more of the weather stripping around the doors and capped off all the input pipes around the foundation, our little house is staying nice and warm with just our little wood stove! 

Back in the garden! And a little more house...

What an amazing year we have had so far.  We finished the last of the tile in the storage hallway and we got some more outlets operational in the dining room and kitchen.  Then it was time for a break from the house, so we shifted gears to the garden!

Beginning in the spring, we started prepping garden beds.  First, we had to dig all the weeds out of them.  That was a job!  We also moved our asparagus patch from the bed along the hoop house into 3 garden beds in the main garden.  In the process of dividing up the original 12 or so asparagus plants, we ended up with 80 separate crowns!  That filled up our 3 beds and we gave some away.  I love self-reproducing perennials.

 second load of asparagus crowns

We decided to build sides for the beds this year out of some of the live cut boards we weren't using for the house.  We also dug hugel trenches along each bed.  The trenches got filled with old logs and wood chips up to the level of the aisles.  The idea is that the wood will soak up water when it rains and then release it to the garden bed during the dry periods.  I have to say that the strategy worked.  Even though we had drought weather for an extended period this summer, we only watered the garden 3 times and it was still one of the most productive years we've had for the limited crops we planted.

I have to say that it felt absolutely amazing to be back in the garden again.  The smell and feel of dirt, little seeds tucked in and then growing into plants taller than I am, the joy of the first ripe tomato...these are the things that brought us to the farm to begin with.  It is wonderful to be back at it again.

In addition to the usual annuals, we also bought and heeled in 50 root stocks for pears, plums and cherries.  We hope to graft off of our existing fruit trees to these root stocks to increase the orchard.

We set up the chicken coop this spring also and stocked it with 10 laying hens.  We lost some in the summer heat and had to replace them, but overall the girls are keeping us in plenty of eggs.  It is wonderful to have farm fresh eggs again!

The garden harvest was very rewarding.  We didn't plant as much variety as we normally would, but we still canned over a hundred quarts of tomatoes, green beans and soup.  It was another return to normal to get the canners out.  It was also an awesome opportunity to really test out our 6 burner propane stove!  It was an investment, but so worth it to be able to put 2 canners and a large pot of tomatoes on the stove at the same time!

Corn and melons thriving in the garden

harvest waiting for canning

New stove ready to go!

Along the way, we did finish the beetle kill pine wall boards in the living room and dining room.  We still have to wrap up the upstairs landing with them, but we got to check 2 more walls off the list as finished.  I think it turned out really well!

Living room pine wall

We also hired out the building of the kitchen cabinets.  They were delivered and installed last week and they turned out perfectly!  The doors and drawers are made out of the douglas fir we had milled from Colorado and we finished them to match the staircase.  Now we just have to do the counter tops and then we'll have an actual kitchen again.  Woo hoo!

Returning to normal (a little)

The last month has been spent making progress in the main bay downstairs.  To finish up from the last post, Jeremy go the stairs pegged and the pipe clamps off, so we have real stairs now! 

Pegged stairs

I also finished the end wall of the laundry room and Scott got the electrical taken care of so that we could finally get a washing machine.  No more laundrymat!!!! 

New washer and built in shelves

And along with those finishing details, we got the laundry/utility lights wired and installed and got the light at the top of the stairs wired and installed.  With a little more electrical tie up, we were able to have actual operating lights everywhere except the kitchen and dining room. 

The stairs were the last holdup for getting the rest of the downstairs floor tiled.  Because the tile pattern is centered on the front door (right in front of the stairs) and there is already a section of tile there under the wood stove, we had to begin the new tile on that side.  With the stair feet locked down, we could finally put down the rest of the cement board. 

Dining room and living room prepped for tile

Ultimately, we did tile in 4 phases to account for having to move stuff around on the first floor.  First, we did the north 3/4 of the living room.  Why 3/4 you ask?  Because we still had to be able to get from upstairs to the bathroom and the kitchen while the tile set up, so we left a path without tile on the south side of the room and at the base of the stairs.  This stage didn't get grouted immediately because we thought we would finish the dining room and then tile all of that side at one time.


Once that set up, we shuffled stuff around and did the tile in the dining room.  Here is where our former plan kinda crapped out.  We had to move stuff onto the living room tile to be able to clear out where the dining room tile had to go.  Sigh.  So we got the dining room done, grouted and sealed, then did the stuff shuffle again. 

Jacob was my mortar mixer and gopher while Jeremy cut tiles

 The finished dining room floor

We decided to try a blitzkrieg day on Saturday the 3rd - finish all the tile in the main bay was the goal.  That included putting cement board down in the kitchen, tiling the entry and south 1/4 of the living room and doing all the tile in the kitchen.  Despite our best efforts and a very long day, we still had half the kitchen left when we had to call it a day.  We still considered it a success though and we got to have Matt Jolley out to help again which is always fun.  I grouted all the new tile and part of the old living room tile (that wasn't covered by stuff) on Sunday and sealed it up on Monday.  Woo hoo for finished floor!

 Half the kitchen done

Entryway tile

South 1/4 under the stairs

Catherine is our expert grout washer!

Weather was a constant concern through this process.  The tile saw has to be set up outside which means that the weather has to be above freezing and not super windy.  That limited the days that we could lay tile pretty significantly.  Because of that, I took a day of vacation on a Thursday to finish laying tile in the kitchen rather than wait for another nice day on the weekend.  Doing the other half the kitchen required installing the floor outlets first though, so Scott and Jeremy worked Wednesday night and got those installed.  They were even able to place them so that the landed inside of the grey diamonds in the tile pattern!  The result looked really nice when it was all grouted and sealed.  With a solid day of work, Jeremy and I got the rest of the kitchen tile down.  I couldn't do the grout the rest of the living room and the kitchen until Saturday, but I got it done just before bedtime on Saturday evening.  Unfortunately, that meant cleaning up the grout lines in the living room without great lighting and while tired.  When we looked Sunday morning there were several spots that needed patched so I did that on Sunday.  The tile was finally sealed up and ready to have things put on it by Tuesday. 

This is where we started - you can see the 2 floor outlets.

Finished tile

 Floor outlets inscribed in the diamond

And with that, the downstairs suddenly got to be organized!  The couch went to its final home in the living room, the buffet to its home, the piano and dining room table to their homes.  The refrigerator is still waiting for the last electrical in the kitchen to get tied up, but finally being able to spread things out has made a huge difference. 

We still have to wrap up the tile in the storage/utility area that was left from Christmas, but we're almost done with the floors downstairs.  Hopefully that will happen in the next few days.  Jeremy has already started cutting trim to finish out the spaces and I am eagerly looking forward to finishing up some other small projects that have been on the back burner while we focused on tile.

These milestones really bring home the length of the journey we've been on.  Most of the time, we just put our heads down and keep plugging away at whatever is next on the list.  It often seems like an endless list - a never ending treadmill of work on the house - then we get a moment where something goes back to being normal again that has been off for a long time.  When we finally set up the couch again and sat down we realized it has been 6 months since we've had a couch to sit on.  When we used a light switch to light up the living room instead of a lamp or headlamp, when we did the first load of laundry at home in so long, something started changing.  The house felt more like home, more like "normal".  We started to feel like our old life was coming back after a long hiatus.  It feels good.

There's still plenty to do before the house is actually finished, but these little steps feel pretty huge to us.  We've even started talking through the garden for this year!  The light at the end of this very long tunnel of house building is getting brighter.  Finally. 

Another sign of the normal annual cycle of farm life arrived in the middle of January - kids!  We had 6 does kid in the span of a week in January in the coldest weather we have ever kidded in.  As a result, we lost our first kids - a really nice set of twins from Rosie.  They were already frozen when we went to check on the goats.  It is so hard to lose any of them.  The other kiddings went well and all the mamas and babies are doing well.  We had 8 kids from the other 5 does (3 sets of twins and 2 singles) and the cuteness has been irresistible ever since.  We will have 2 or 3 more does kidding in another month or so, but for now we're enjoying this round.

Stairs, walls and floors!

We continue to make progress, albeit slowly.  The last month was spent making progress on the laundry room, getting the water heater going (finally!), hanging drywall in the kitchen and getting stairs in.

First, we got the water heater working.  I was elsewhere for this event so it didn't get photographed, but man was that first hot shower at home amazing!  Finishing the vent stack for the water heater also enabled us to finish out the last of the laundry room/coat closet.  We started by hanging the last drywall in that space, then moved on with the usual mud/sand/mud/sand exercise.

 

First coat of mud

 

  

Power panel ready for paint

We got it primed and painted before the holidays, so I spent the time just before Christmas putting down cement board and laying tile in the laundry.  For anyone not local, we have been in a deep freeze since just before Christmas eve, so getting the tiles cut for this work involved a very cold Jeremy running a tile saw well past dark while I carefully laid out tile and marked cuts.  We ended the evening of the 22nd with all the tiles cut for the laundry and the first couple of rows in the coat closet.  We couldn't keep going - it was just too cold to keep cutting - so the rest of the coat closet will get tiled later.

Cement board ready for tile

We were up early the morning of the 23rd to lay tile before we left town for Wichita.  We were supposed to be there for lunch, so the race was on!  I managed to lay all the tiles we had cut and Jeremy was amazing and cut a couple of re-do's and a couple of extras so we got a little more done than we thought we would.  Here's what it looked like when we left town:

When we got back, I knocked the levelers off so we could walk on it more easily.  There was one tile that didn't stick in one corner that I had to re-lay, but the rest of the floor was solid.  Woo hoo!  I felt pretty good about that for my first attempt at laying tile.  I got the tile grouted the day after Christmas and I think it turned out pretty well!

As my Christmas present to myself, I sealed up the coat closet studs and installed the coat hooks.  I think our family must have 20 different coats and jackets that had been strewn around the house.  It was driving me more than a little bit crazy!  I feel much better now that they all have a home.

You can see the line of unfinished stud at the back

All sealed up and ready for hooks

The coats have a home!

Meanwhile, Jeremy worked on the stairs for most of December.  You saw the rough cut treads in the last post.  Each of them got sanded 3 times, shaped, cut to length, any cracks filled with wood epoxy, sanded again and then Jeremy got to start on the runners and go through all of it again!  Once everything was sanded and test fit, he put 2 coats of tung oil on them and it really brought out the grain and beauty of the douglas fir.  The result is so worth the weeks of work!  We got them installed on the 22nd, although they were held together with pipe clamps.  The treads will get pegged into the runners just like the knee braces everywhere else in the house.  It was so nice to finally fold up the ladder we had been using to get to the second floor!

Treads with wood epoxy drying

Chiseling out tread slots

 Assembling the finished stairs

The craftsman with his creation!

Now we are working on finishing the last of the sanding, mudding and painting downstairs and moving on with tile!  Bit by bit, it is getting there.