The Harvest
We can hardly believe it is the first of October. We have made so much headway from when we first got to DRF in June. Just as the farmers around us are reaping the fields, we too are reaping the passage of progress.
The Regulars
The crew of Doug, Adam, Luke and Mookie/Aaron, aka the Regulars, finished getting the OSB board and Tyvek up before I got home from Maine. Once that was done, then the windows could go in.
Here is the south garage wall.
The north mudroom wall and garage wall. That northern mudroom wall will be porch and eventually tie into the wrap around porch — at least that is the current plan. (Plans may change and I may have to adjust my vision — but I hope not.)
Transitional Plans
Here is a “before” and “after” of the west garage wall. You can see it has been framed in for the garage doors that will eventually be there, once we are done with the renovation of the original four-square section of the house. But in the meanwhile, the garage will be our living room, kitchen and bathroom. So the “after” picture shows how we will have these two huge windows in place of the future garage doors.
These two windows will then be popped out, when we hang the garage doors, and will be used on the east side of the house for the sunroom wall. Pretty cool huh? The only small quirk will be that when the exterior garage lights are hung, they won’t be in balance with these temporary windows. The lights will be centered and placed based on the positioning of the garage door frames. So it will be a little wonky in the meantime. And that’s okay. Perfectly imperfect, right? Right? (Yes, I have to remind myself of the long term vision.)
Here is the view west of the farm, that we will have from the garage/living room for the next two years… Ahh! Happy happy happy!
And this is the view through our new window from the kitchen. (That gray Ford belongs to the hottie on the crew, so I can’t be too annoyed at where he parks.)
Mudroom window, looking south.
The Roof Over Our Heads
Doug and his fellas then got hard at work with the shingles and metal roof. There was some debate on the color of the metal roof. The original front porch has a tin colored roof, that had been painted silver, several times over the years. For years, I had thought we would continue that tin color on the new section of the farmhouse. But then, just since we got to the farm in June, I switched gears and thought that we maybe should do black tin. I got swayed by Pinterest. Oops. My bad.
Doug, our builder, first got BJR back on track with the color of the tin. Then BJR had to get me back on track. And my wonderful mother in law, Mimi Donna, was sweet enough to come out to the farm, to weigh in on that issue, while I was still in Maine — when the decision had to be made. I was a tad stressed. But it felt better having a woman’s point of view — no offense fellas. (So thank you, Mimi!) It was hard because I wasn’t here to see it. But we got turned back around to the original plan and went with galvanized tin for the porch. And I am so glad!
Luke and Adam in action. (But I missed Luke’s “good side” with this action shot. Sorry Luke!)
The view from the upstairs window…
And below is the finished product…(the shingles look a little gray in the full sun of this picture, but they are black.)
Lots of Moving Parts
Just in the last week since I have been home, the farm has been buzzing with a motley crew of electricians, plumbers, HVAC fellas and tree trimmers from Consumers (and that’s in addition to the regular crew!).
Thank you to One Way Plumbing: Bo, Anthony and JT, you have no idea how happy I am, for that hook-up — that is the promise of having a washing machine again! (And all God’s children said, Amen! I miss my washer and dryer!) It’s another one of those, I will try to never complain again about “having” to do laundry, ever again, after having been without that capability for over 100 days. Make that 107 days, I just counted.
And having a real shower and tub again! Double whoop whoop! This is the garage bathroom.
Let There Be Heat
And look at this: duct work! Raise your hands up like you don’t care — happy dance at DRF.
Thank you Dick Lunger Heating & Cooling! Butch, Dan and Jim, are great guys — with their own repertoire of colorful jokes — and bring their much needed expertise of HVAC to the farm! I miss heat too, but don’t want to complain — we have only had one night that got below 40.
Yep, that’s right, there is NO heat in the old farmhouse currently. So you can imagine how darn special these shiny tubes, look right about now. (Dance party!)
And then there are these little gray boxes, that I had previously taken for granted, in my 49 years of life. Never again.
It’s just a praise-a-thon around here, with all this progress!
Thank you God for modern day conveniences!
As much as I loved my Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I don’t know if I would have cut it on the banks of plumb creek or in a little house in the big woods. I like my modern day conveniences much too much for that.
Happy October, y’all!
xo