Farm House Love Episode 6

Spring is in full swing here, and we are in Heaven. Our winter was long, cold, and ugly so this beautiful weather really makes us appreciate all the sunshine.

In the picture above, Gunny is standing on his dog house, which the goats have taken over, and he is about to be evicted. It's pretty funny to watch. They use their heads to ram him and push him off the roof, and he just takes it because he's a chicken butt. The three of them act like siblings most of the time as they share the paddock all day.

One day the neighbor dog came into the paddock and the Bunnery Sergeant was having his chicken butt handed to him on a platter, then his goat sisters came to the rescue. They rammed the other dog and chased her away. Yep. Gunny was beat up by a girl and saved by a girl. Girl Power. It's for real.

Stinkerbell likes to play with the goats and they do this little head butt dance with each other. I think it must feel good to them because she also rubs her fist on the tops of their heads and they love it.

The best thing about this spring is seeing all the trees and plants in the yard bloom for the first time. We moved in last year in June, and by then everything had already bloomed and gone. It has been gorgeous, and the smell. The smell is amazing.

We've been enjoying being outside and getting some yard work done. One of the first things the girls and I did together was to rip out two Juniper bushes in the front yard. I dislike Juniper bushes with a passion. I don't like their scraggly look and I can't stand the way they smell. I'm sure my mother would be horrified, but it was very satisfying to rip them out.

In the process, I learned how to use a chain saw. I really shouldn't use a chain saw because I'm the biggest klutz on the planet on account of my mother would never let me take ballet lessons.

But I did, and I accidentally went a little crazy on this Lilac bush. I know that next year it's going to be gorgeous. Trust me.

I have seven more Lilac bushes that need tending to, but I'm going to wait until their blooms are spent so I can enjoy them. 

Peanut Head rented a tiller to prep the ground for our garden. The ground here is so hard and full of rocks, that we decided we're going to do raised beds in this area instead. That will happen over the course of several years, I'm sure.

Peanut Head really wants a tractor, but it is not in the budget. Yesterday he handed me a Q-Tip and told me to go paint a room with it. "That's what it's like living on a farm without the proper equipment," he said. Point taken, but we still don't have the bucks for a tractor. 😕

This was the original garden area, but it gets too much shade for a garden so Peanut Head tilled it over and spread grass seed. The girls will love having another spot to mow.

Speaking of yard work, Peanut Head made this nifty garden tool organizer. Can you tell that he's been on Pinterest? I love that he's on Pinterest. I benefit first hand.

Moving back into the house, this is a project which I recently completed. It's the girls' hallway between their bedrooms in the original part of the house.

Who doesn't love a fresh coat of paint in a color of their choosing? With each room I paint, I feel like we are making this house more "us."

I love these built in drawers and the cupboard for linen. The storage in this house is more than I ever dreamed I would have in a house. We have more storage than we have things. We're going to keep it that way too, because clutter.

When we toured this house before we bought it, I thought this built in gun cabinet was thebomb.com.

Except it was pretty grungy looking and really, we had no intention of filling this with guns. Rifles, firearms, whatever. It could be put to better use with a little TLC.

Both the upper and lower doors had locks to keep everyone safe. We knew we didn't need those either, because my plan was to put shelves in it and turn it into a medicine cabinet.

This. Drives. Me. Crazy. I understand drilling holes to find a stud, but why not patch the holes once you find what you're looking for? Gah!

These holes were what was left over after the former owners installed their smoke detector. 

And this is the combination Carbon Monoxide/Smoke Detector that Peanut Head installed. 

Notice the lack of extraneous holes surrounding the device.

For the walls, I went with a light grey that actually has a bit of a blue tint to it. I don't love it, but I sure as heck am not going to paint it again. It's a hallway. I can live with it.

The attic entrance is propped up with thumb tacks so that it doesn't end up painted shut. People do that you know. When we moved into this house, one of the breaker boxes was painted shut. Peanut Head had a mild come apart when he discovered that one.

After painting the walls and trim, I went in and caulked all the crevices and cracks. There were many. It's a little thing that makes a big difference in the finished project.

The new medicine cabinet took several coats of primer and even more coats of white paint, of which I lost count, to freshen it up. It looks so much better now. So much that I was willing to put my stuff in it now.

Check this out. Peanut Head cut a slice out of a dowel to fill the holes left by the lock hardware that was on the doors of the former gun cabinet. He glued them in and clamped them to the door for a couple days until they were good and tight. 

Then I sanded, primed, and painted and you can barely tell there was ever a hole. Not in this picture, of course, but later.

After replacing the hinges on the bathroom cabinets, I did not want to go through that nightmare again. Instead I just painted the hinges and screws and they were just like new.

Ta Da! The gun cabinet is now a medicine cabinet with the addition of shelves. 

I believe the top part of the cabinet is where the ammo was stored.

That bottom drawer there is still empty. I have no idea what to put in it. Anyone have any ideas?

I love these knobs I found at Lowe's. So cute.

This is now my favorite part of the whole hallway. I love the drawer pulls so much. I got the idea of putting two on a drawer from Pinterest. I looked all over Pinterest for a built in like this for some kind of inspiration, any inspiration, and I did not find even one.

I did, however, find kitchen drawers on Pinterest which had two drawer pulls. Not only do they look cool, but they are super functional because these particular drawers don't slide out smoothly like they should. You really have to pull the drawers out with even force on both sides, and these pulls allow that to happen.

It was very difficult to get a full shot of the hallway because it's such a small space.

The lighting wasn't optimal either, but the project is done, so I'm doing a happy dance.

Now onto the next project--the original dining room. I'm working on finishing touches right now, so I should be back to share that in another week or two. Crossing fingers.

Farm House Love Episode 5

As promised, I'm back with more pictures of the progress on our new old house. The bathroom is limping along, and Peanut Head has started building the shower walls.

It got put off for so long because we had to tackle the plumbing first and, honestly, nobody likes that part.

Originally the shower head was not mounted like you would expect but instead was connected to the bath tap via a sprayer hose. Peanut Head had to run new plumbing up from the bath tap to install the new shower head.

Then before he could hook it up, he had to turn off all the water to the house, then hold his breathe and cross his fingers when he turned it back on. And what a relief, it worked!

He has all the plywood up now, and will start adding HardieBacker cement board this week. I could potentially start tiling next weekend. I'm going to have to psyche myself up by watching You Tube tutorials. There are so many ways I can screw this up.

Believe it or not, we haven't been laying around eating Bon Bons while we've been procrastinating on the bathroom. Back in January I started painting the girls' rooms. My plan is to paint the entire house, of course, but I started with their rooms because they refused to unpack until we painted.

I started with the ceilings because gravity. The nice thing was that I didn't have to be super careful with my paint because I knew we were going to be replacing the carpet once the painting was done. 

This lovely carpet is probably forty years old. It's from the Starkey and Hutch years, I'm sure.

I love the light fixtures in the girls' bedrooms, and I have no plans to replace them.

Before I started painting, of course I was all over Pinterest looking for inspiration. I knew I wanted to replace the trim work because it was pretty cheap, and I looooove farm house trim.

I had to plan it all out because Peanut Head was going to implement my vision and he is not a wing it kind of guy. He always wants drawings with actual measurements.

He's always harshing my mellow like that.

Can I tell you what a nightmare it was pulling all the old trim off? Night. Mare. It was January and I was sweating like a pig trying to get it all out. It was not good for my manicure either.

The window and door moulding came off a little faster because it wasn't trapped under carpet, but it was still a lot of work.

This is what the finished window trim looks like. I'm pretty happy with it.

And here's the finished door trim. The only difference is that the sides of the door trim are narrower because we had to accommodate light switches that were too ding dang close to the door.

Like this. Gah!

Oh yeah, Peanut Head replaced all the outlets and switches too. He's such a handy guy.

This is a shot of our baseboards and the new carpet. Peanut Head taught me how to use his router to make the baseboards. Routing our own baseboards saved us a lot of money and allowed us to get the exact height we needed. The height tended to vary a bit depending on obstacles we had to go around.

Like heater vents. If you look closely you can see how the baseboard curves around the corner of the heater vent.

And excuse me while I take a little side rant, but I had to replace all the heater vents because some fool painted over every vent multiple times, and they were cemented to the wall. I understand if a person wants their vents to match their walls, but why oh why can't you take them off the wall first and do it right? And really, spray paint is a better way to paint a vent than a paint roller.

That's my public service announcement for today.

The doors were painted my new favorite color for doors, Sherwin Williams' Urbane Bronze.

We also replaced the door knobs with handles. The door knobs were in pretty bad shape and needed to be replaced anyway, so we thought these would be nice in the older part of the house.

And check out these awesome door stops. They're magnetic, and oh so cool. They would be very handy on exterior doors for when you want them to stay open.

Now I'm ready to show you the final room pictures, but I have to make a disclaimer. I did not go in and stage the rooms. I instructed my girls to clean up their rooms and they are not how I would have done it myself. They like clutter. I abhor it. Although I'm a control freak, thus far I have been extremely unsuccessful in controlling the people I live with.

Therefore, I give you real life. 😬

Zoe Bug's room.

This is Zoe's horse wall, which Stinkerbell calls the PJ Wall of Worship. PJ is Zoe's favorite horse, but all the horses are pictured here, except Rey because she didn't come to live with us until February.

Now let's see some pictures of Stinkerbell's room. Brace yourselves.

I don't know about you, but all I see in this picture is a Hunter Orange bed.

Too much furniture. I've tried to talk her out of some of it, but she's having none of it.

This is the white board where Stinky likes to make her lists. I like to add important things to her lists like "Do your LAUNDRY!!!"

I'm helpful like that.

I added the mirror to the closet door, but I don't know what I was thinking. Stinkerbell doesn't primp, so in this room, it's just a prop to give the illusion of a normal teenage room.

I'm glad to have the girls' rooms finished, although we do still need to put up curtains. Peanut Head and I are going to make the curtain rods, and we haven't yet decided if we want to use plumbing pipe or something else. 

I have a painting tip to dispense.

I've been super paranoid about paint clean up because we have a septic system in this house, and it's not good to add paint to it. I'm too cheap to buy paint pan liners, so I came up with the idea of lining my paint pans with Press'n Seal, and clean up has been effortless. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.

Best idea ever.

I also use it to protect my watch while I'm painting. I do not, however, worry about my hair. I have paint in my hair all the time.

While we've been working hard on the house, Cecilia has been practicing her Yoga Corpse Pose. She's a pro.

That's all I have for now. I'm in the middle of wrapping up the girls' hallway, so those pictures will be coming soon, and I've started painting the original dining room because why not start another project before the last three are finished?

In the meantime, I leave you with some irresistible horse lips. Who doesn't love horse lips?