October 2011

A few updates to share!  We've been in the house for just over two years now and are for the most part happy as clams with it!  And if there are parts we wish we'd done differently, we have only ourselves to blame!

Over the course of the last year, we have added a silo stave brick patio, a partial paver walkway, an erstwhile pond, a staircase to the roof complete with artwork, a Whistlepig workshop, and a scrounged up but beautiful wood shed.  Two years out from beginning treatment for lymphoma, I am healthy and happy to have recently had my chemo port removed!  We are also both happy and sad to report that the farmhouse is scheduled to be a practice fire for the fire department next spring.  I am in the process of making a photo collage in our hallway that shows several views of the farmhouse in its better days.  Other than that, we're battening down the hatches for winter!

Summer 2010

We've finally reached a state of  "done" that we can be happy with!  There are little things that can we worked on that come up every day, like trim (uugh, we're big picture people!).  I finished laying tile in the north bathroom, some lovely slate from Building Hope, although I still have to clean a bit more in there.  Last weekend we had an open house, well attended, and it was great to show off all our hard work!  Thanks to Deb for taking pictures whilst we were busy talking!

Houston...We Have Occupancy!

We took forever about it, but we have finally moved in to the new place. There were lots of little details like purchasing a kitchen stove and getting propane service and a phone line put in that took a bit of doing, but as of the beginning of October we have been living in the joint! There are plenty of things to still be done, with more being discovered every day, but we are warm and dry and well fed and those are the things that matter.  We've been giving ourselves some time and space and not getting too worked up about things because the week that we moved in I went to the doctor to have a lump on my collarbone looked at, the upshot of which is that I've been diagnosed with Stage IIA Hodgkins lymphoma. I started chemo at the beginning of November and am set to have it every two weeks for the next six months. I feel OK, no super awful side effects yet, although I have had my head shaved because it's pretty sure certain that I will be losing my hair. So I'm not busting my chops about anything, although I have two rooms that need tiling and lots of stuff to be put away. Bit by bit things are getting there - we have a lovely "sitting room" in front of our stoveNorbert with the bookcases from Grandma and Grandpa Hedges house and Grandpa's repatriated Foxfire books - thanks, Aunt Bets! The turquoise pig from the Illinois Hoy contingency is presiding over our kitchen, Grandma's gargoyle is stationed outside the front door, and the poppy picture that used to hang in Grandma and Grandpa Hoy's dining room is gracing our guest bath. And Dan just put up the loft bed that Dad and I made for me to take to college - it has been languishing in Mom's basement for lo these many years, awaiting a new place alongside Erin's sunflower bed box in our south "Niece and Nephew"bedroom. And the nasturtium plate collection has been put up. So it is all coming together. Come spring when I am done with chemo we're planning a super duper housewarming extravaganza to show it off, but in the meantime, here's some pics from June through now!

Move in Date is...

..coming up very soon! Yesterday we were declared done by the appraiser, we signed on it this noon, and promptly started thinking up new projects to torment ourselves with. Where will the garage go? Can we put in a pond in the dooryard? Can we reinstall a ram pump on the stream to have a waterfall? Tomorrow we are doing area beautification, tool repatriation, and long neglected farmhouse cleanliness measures. And Sunday we are doing nothing - I repeat, nothing. Breakfast late, followed by visits from some family and friends. Then Monday I will finish tiling the Lowell Pate shower enclosure so that when the propane tank comes, I can take my first truly hot shower in months. Or a bath in my fabulously deep slipper tub. Hmmm...so hard to choose.

Lilac Time

The roof has been Enkadrained and dirted, with much effort by the usual crew plus Uncle Jim and his Cat as well as his work crew. He lifted the dirt up in the bucket of his Cat and we hauled it out of there and spread it. It's been seeded with rye grass that is just coming up and I have oodles of perennials to transplant once the innards of the house are done. This weekend (Memorial Day) we will be painting up a storm and putting in the glass block shower, cabinets, and assorted trim bits. Before we got the roof on I was just so tired and unhappy, but now that that's done we are at the "kind of fun" portion of the house, the prettification stage. And we have hot water again at the farmhouse, which was also taking its toll on our oomph. When you move tons of dirt, you really want a hot shower afterwards. The farmhouse is giving us distinct signs that it's time to get out, but when you consider that it is 110 years old this year, it has stood up remarkably well in spite of several generations of Hoy cobbling. Now if only the wind would stop blowing - I have had horrible dreams about the farmhouse blowing over or falling off its very minimal foundation before we finish the new one.

Barefoot!

Coming back from the new house this morning, I decided to ditch my crocs, which are on their last legs. When we are done with the house I will be done with them! They have taken a licking, as have we, but we keep on going. I thought tiling was bad, and it was, especially when I decided to grout, then go to work, then clean the grout when I got home at 9:30. Bad idea - I was out there till 2:30. But it looks good now, especially with my bare feet on it! The hardwood glue is currently kicking me six ways to Sunday, but it's going down and looking good too. We have most of the plumbing done, along with most of the drywall and most of the electric, so we're just rounding up the straggling bits and the cabinetry!! Check out the fabulous painting Erin and I did on our stained concrete floor - nasturtiums make everything better!

March Madness

Slogging away here, literally, since everything is melting. Getting from the farmhouse out to the new house is an exercise in puddle management, but yesterday and today were quite warm and windy, so things are drying up nicely. Sunday and yesterday Dan, Deb and I put in our thermopanes between the beams and got them trimmed. We did have one pane blow out before we had it secured, but otherwise all went well and it adds a lot of light. Mom and I got all the other windows trimmed last week between the window and the box and Sam stained the trim for the box edges on Sunday, so today I'll get that up. The trim we've been using is some rough sawn cedar that Dad had in Warehouse #3. It looks great, appropriately rustic,and smells great too, but the sawdust it makes is so fine it gets into your lungs and makes you all wheezy, so I'll be glad to be done with that. I've been cleaning mortar off the post facings so I can stain those too and stained the concrete in the two bedrooms, one copper and one green. The green bedroom Erin and I are going to paint nasturtiums over top of, like the living room in the farmhouse. The tile in the entryway is in and Thursday I'm probably going to lay tile, the yellow stuff, in the kitchen. So then we just need a wee bit of plumbing and some drywall! And a nap -I'm thinking I may just nap for all of May.