New House Sneak Peek!

For everyone that doesn't know, we officially have a closing time! Tomorrow morning at 9AM we will be signing papers for our new to us house! We will still have a couple months of tiny house living since our loan is a rehab loan. The house has sat vacant for around four years, so there is surface mildew on some of the trim work, the plumbing is stripped out, the furnace needs replaced, the electric is shut off, and the carpet is coming up in places, not to mention there are raccoon tracks going from the open dryer vent to the toilet (and that raccoon enjoyed playing in that toilet!).

Once we sign Friday morning, we are heading straight over to the house to change the door locks and start ripping out some carpet and drop ceiling. This weekend is a little messed up, because Luke has a photo shoot Sunday, and Avery and Henna's birthday party is Saturday afternoon, but we are hoping to get as much ripped out as we can before our contractor officially comes in to start working. That means we'll be bouncing all over the place this weekend. It really doesn't help that it gets dark at 5PM, and with no electricity, we'll have to drag dad's generator back up there with extension cords and lights so we can see if we do anything in the evenings.

While the demo is going on, we also plan to get a box truck and empty our storage units into the small garage, and grab as much of our outside stuff from dad's yard as we can before it freezes to the ground. We also hope to move Luke's Fieros from dad's yard, but that will require us to push all the crap that's in the big pole building (nicknamed "The Toybox) out of the way. There's china, a dresser, a wood totem, craft stuff, VHS cassettes...just a bit of everything in there!

I hope to have a lot of blog posts about the house progress, but in the meantime, how about a sneak peek of the property!

This is the fireplace in the living room. Technically, we are going to call it the library, since we plan on using the formal dining room as the living room with the TV. This room will have bookshelves, the piano, and probably a table for games.

This is creepy Halloween Tree. It's in between the house and the driveway, and looks to be wrapped around a windmill base. It's super neat, and it had orange flowers sprouting from it earlier this year.

This is facing directly East when you stand in the driveway. You can see the little deck and back entrance into the kitchen, the concrete patio area, the toybox (red building) in the far distance, and lots of trees. 5 acres is massive after living on a city lot for 11 years!

This is the two car garage where the driveway is. I guess it can be my garage since Luke gets the big one LOL!

This is the view facing Northwest from the driveway. The overgrowth shrubby areas are on our property. The nicely manicured field is the next property over. We can see a lot of sky. Perfect for the Observatory we want to build.

Here's the Southeast view from the driveway. You can see the front porch on the other side of Halloween Tree, and it's nothing but farmland and sod farm fields in front of the house.

Stay tuned! We'll have a lot of in progress pictures from demo work coming up in the next few weeks!

Delays, Crafts, and a Boot!

The great news for the week is that the water test came back good! No E. Coli or coliforms. The bad news is that due to the sheer amount of paperwork involved in a USDA rehab loan, our closing has been pushed back, and due to Thanksgiving, our new date is December 4th. Looks like we will be tiny home living for awhile longer.

It's not all terrible though, Luke has some photography stuff to finish up, and our Girl Scout troop is going crazy with Christmas crafts (and I'm the troop craft mom), so we are plenty busy with things, and getting a delay gives us more time to finish up stuff. We will be shoving family into my dad's house for Avery and Henna's birthday party, which is scheduled the day after closing!

Our Girl Scout troop wants to make ornaments and tags to sell as a fundraiser this year. Our meeting spot is a little grocery store that only sells locally grown foods and local artisan crafts, and they will allow us a small table after Thanksgiving, so I've been busy trying out different crafts, seeing what will be easy for us to do. The hardest part will be coming up with prices.

On a last note, we had our check ups at the podiatrist this week. We go every 6 months. All four girls seemed to inherit my flat feet unfortunately. Lexi, Lilly, and Henna seem to have no problems or pain with theirs. Avery has some leg pain, but her left tibia is also twisted slightly, which may be contributing to everything. We saw an orthopedic pediatric surgeon in June that did a full x-ray, and we are playing the waiting game now to go back in a year for a repeat x-ray to see if it is straightening on it's own, or if it's getting worse. As for me, my problems started in 3rd grade after being asked to run a relay race. I've had orthotics, foot surgery in 5th grade, and then slacked off with visits and orthotics in my late teens and early 20's because of insurance and kids. That was the biggest mistake ever. Now I have plantar fasciitis, and it is awful! I've done inflammation medication, cortisone shots, and new orthotics. Now I have basically have a walking removable cast. We are starting with my left foot, and I wear it all the time until the pain is gone, then wear it a week longer. Then I can switch it to the other foot. Needless to say I go back in a month to see how things are. Right now we are trying to avoid surgery, but make it easier for me to keep up with the girls.

Isn't it gorgeous?

Hurdles of Buying the Homestead

Closing on our new house is supposed to happen Friday. Late last week we were hit with the fact that the loan people need a water test done, to check for E. Coli and coliforms. Generally that wouldn't be a problem; call the realtor, get in, turn on the tap, and BAM, sample. Not so easy with a rehab house that's been vacant for about 4 years and owned by a bank in like California. The power is shut off, and it can't be turned on without an inspection from the utility company. The inspection would fail because of wiring (that will be fixed in the rehab loan). On top of that, all of the copper piping has been stolen, so you can't even get water from the sink!

It's a good thing we are so handy. We had loan people and realtor people saying it was impossible to start the well pump with a generator (why do you think people buy generators in the country!?!). We spent all Saturday-Monday visiting the house each day to turn on the well pump and let the water circulate for a bit.

It started off with a nice yellowish brownish tinge, with sulfur and iron smells, but after running it for a few days, it has cleared a lot. On Monday I couldn't smell the sulfur anymore, but it definitely has iron, which we figured, since the bathroom sink and tub both have iron stains on them.

Luke got up nice and early this morning to run back over with the sample bottles from the water treatment plant and get a sample, then run it to the plant, since they do testing today and it needed to be in by 10:00AM.  We should know after noon tomorrow what the results are, and we believe this is our final hurdle!

We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Moving Forward...

Our house is gone. We closed on October 13th, so we spent the weekend before clearing out the house, and cleaning. The night before we brought the girls back over to help with a little last minute cleaning, and for them to say good-bye. They took pictures of everything, and when our big camera died, I gave my cell phone to Lexi so she could keep taking pictures. She took this one of Lilly. It describes perfectly what our mood was that night. As glad as I am to be rid of that house, it was our home for the last 11 years, and the only one our girls have ever known.

Shortly after moving in, my grandma went into the hospital for surgery, and ended up with a blood infection that she couldn't recover from. It sucks to move so close, only to have her gone just 2 weeks later. I still don't think it has set in completely, but I hate that she'll never know whether or not we will get the rehab house we are looking at. At this rate I'm not sure we'll ever know either! We are currently waiting on the appraisal, which should have been in last Friday, but we've yet to see it.

Moving in to tiny barn hasn't been easy, but we've managed these past few weeks. We are currently fighting off a little sickness, which is hard when you live in less that 480 square feet with 6 people. There's no place to rest in the quiet, and when one is up coughing, everyone is up! We got through Halloween, although we had no inside decorations. We still have a lot of organizing to do in tiny barn. We'll probably have it done by the time we move out lol! If you can't tell, we were Doctor Who themed this year

And here's me with one of our chickens that are left. Whenever we move, building a bigger chicken coop is one of the first things on the list, so not only can we get our two remaining chickens back, but get more too!