How To Leave The Homestead

I bet you're thinking WHAT? Leaving the homestead? Why? No, we are not actually leaving our attempt at homesteading, but everyone needs a vacation every now and then right?

Rosa (made by Lilly), hanging out with the Fieros at the car show in Carlisle, PA.

I'm talking about all of the work that goes into running a homestead. We just got back from spending the weekend in Pennsylvania for a car show. We left Friday afternoon, and returned Sunday afternoon. That means evening chores for Friday, morning and evening chores for Saturday, and morning chores for Sunday needed to be done by someone else. The lucky winner, my brother! My brother has no interest in homesteading, animal husbandry, gardening, or anything else related to that lifestyle really. That means we needed to prioritize and streamline the process as much as we could, as fast as we could.

--I ditched the garden. I barely pull weeds and water it, so there was no need for him to do it. It seems to have survived the neglect so far...

--All of my porch plants and indoor plants went to the front lawn. We had a lot of rain on Friday when we left, so having them someplace where nature can water them meant he didn't need to care for them.

--The turtles had an extra mound of food in their tank, and plenty of water. (They do well for a couple of days if need be anyway)

--We bought a 2.5 lb waterer and 10 lb feeder for Loki and Freya (indoor cats). With a freshly cleaned litterbox, they would have been able to survive more than likely 2 weeks without us before needing a refill.

--Our newest acquisition, the outdoor cat Sunny, was given a large mixing bowl of food and water on the front porch. She wasn't seen Friday or Saturday, but Sunday morning she popped in when he came over. I guess we have ourselves a permanent outdoor cat now!

Sunny!

 

--We installed a PVC waterer and feeder for the rabbits. The small garage protects the feeder from the rain, so the rabbits had no problems eating while we were gone.

--We made the same PVC waterer and feeder for the chickens. The heavy rain on Friday moistened some of the chicken feed in the pipe, so the chickens had some problems getting it out, but with 5 acres to forage, they didn't starve. My brother had to come up every morning and evening to open and close the coop door though.

The PVC feeder and waterer installed on the side of the chicken coop.

--The dog stayed at my parents. He did well, but he has a lot of anxiety, so he barely ate while we were gone.

--Last but not least are the ducks. Since the house and fence we have them in now are temporary, we had nothing set up for them. They completely relied on my brother to open and close the coop, and feed and water them each day.

The point of all of this, is that everyone survived! We had no problems besides the chicken feeder getting clogged, and once we make a small roof for it, that should keep the rain from getting into the pipe.

Next on our list besides a more permanent structure for the ducks are automated coop doors. That will reduce the need to have someone come over daily early and late. A midday visit to make sure everything looks ok will be all that is needed.

Demo Days 6, 7, Santa, and 8!

Thursday and Friday were spent working on flooring. Thursday we finished ripping out the fiberboard in the living room, and on Friday we finished the library.

Here's the living room. Mopping it over really brought out some of the original stain color.

The girls hung out with us on Friday while we finished the library.

Here's the library. It still has some staples on the floor, but we'll get to them.

Today we had our Build and Grow at Lowe's. We built a holiday train and then got to visit with Santa! This is Henna's first year that she actually spoke to him, although I had to walk up with her.

My dad and brother came up to the house today, which was a huge help! We filled the dumpster with everything we had in the front yard, only to pile more carpet and paneling in the yard while we wait for the dumpster to get taken away and emptied.

Our focus was the upstairs. We got the carpet ripped out of the 3 bedrooms up there that had carpet, pulled out the plywood that was down on the office floor, and pulled out most of the paneling in the hallway and staircase.

Here's the front loft bedroom so far.

This is the John Deere bedroom. It'll be Luke's office, and since it had plywood instead of fiberboard, we got most of the flooring uncovered today.

Here's the back loft bedroom. We may work on this some tomorrow since it has plywood down instead of fiberboard.

And finally the staircase and hallway.

We also had to take a time out and fly the plane a little more.

Tomorrow we will be back at it again. We may try and take off all of the doors upstairs and put them in the garage so we can scrub them down later, but mostly we will probably be working on uncovering floors...

This is what we have to look forward to. Piles and piles of tetanus!

You guessed it! Demo Day 5...

Wednesday was our 5th day of demo work. Our main focus was the library (otherwise known as the fireplace room). We pulled off the rest of the paneling on the walls. It seems like the entire house got a makeover in the 70's.

Here someone drew a picture of the fireplace on the wall...next to the fireplace!

We also worked on the floor. A third of the flooring didn't have that masonite fiberboard. It had some kind of thin plywood instead, which meant the entire sheet came up all at once, making that section of the floor SO EASY to uncover. This room used to be two rooms, but thankfully the wood floor ran underneath of the wall that used to be there, so it looks to continue seamlessly throughout the room. The only issue is that we uncovered a patched area where a furnace vent used to be. Originally it would have been up against the wall that separated the rooms, but now it's just going to be in the middle of the library. Not really that big of an issue though, people have register vents in the middle of rooms!

 Forgive my phone...anytime I take pictures with my flash on it, I get the red lines.

Luke of course spent a couple of minutes chipping the plaster off of the chimney in the kitchen again. I swear he's in love with it! The plaster is in such bad shape, it's coming off a lot easier than anyone expected.

The weather was very overcast, and it actually started sprinkling, so we lost daylight rather quickly inside. We took a quick peek upstairs under the carpets in the front loft and office where they meet the hallway. It looks like the fiberboard covers painted wood floors up there as well. We just aren't sure of their condition. It also seems like the fiberboard is molding in some places. Ick!

Here's the rain clouds rolling in...

On another note, we've had numerous people stop out and ask about the property. Four or five of them were actually interested in buying it, and a few others were from somewhere in the vicinity and came to see what was going on and congratulate us on our purchase. It seems like a lot of people have had their eye on the property for quite awhile. I guess it's a good thing I made Luke contact the bank in California that owned it, because if it would have actually went to market, it would have been sold long before we were able to purchase it!

The plan for today it to continue pulling up fiberboard, and start hauling out smaller debris that is piled up on the floor downstairs. We are hoping to gather up a little more help on the weekend, which will make ripping out the carpets and paneling upstairs a lot easier. My boot for my plantar fasciitis doesn't allow for very good balance going up and down stairs, especially carrying debris, and trust me, those little pieces of fiberboard add up into piles real quick!

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!