Week Two Has Barely Begun

We are only a few days into Week Two of projects around our National Folk Farmhouse.  It's been fun and we have been working on things in somewhat of an order that makes sense with our budget as well as our time frame of what we want to get done.... before we tackle the BIG JOB (more on that later).

We still have many boxes to unpack, and a lot more sitting in the storage unit. Sadly, Steve lost track of ONE box marked "garage stuff" and we looked and looked all over yesterday at the storage unit. I swear we moved each and every box, and could not find it. It has been bugging him so much. We went back this morning to look again.   And there it was, snuggled in between boxes of yarn and fabric.  He was overjoyed!!! The tools in that box are what he needed for the next step on our laundry room project.  Life is good again, my man has all his tools!

I woke up to sunshine streaming into my pretty kitchen.  The little stained glass light shades and the blown glass paperweights add such sunshine to my heart. Ahhhhhh   soon we will be changing out these windows to new ones.  These are old and have blown thermal-panes and need replacing. Then they will be even more clear and pretty.   The table that I ordered for in the center of these four stools arrived in a broken open box and the table inside severely damaged. I got a return shipping tag and it was picked up. The next one will arrive at the store in Green Bay and we will personally inspect it and take it home ourselves.  For now, the four stools keep us from walking into the light fixture overhead.

Our sellers left us a brand new, still in the package, screen/storm door for the front of the house. They never got it installed, so they left it to us.  Since we were due for a few nice days, we figured it would be good for air flow to have a screen door opening into the livingroom. 

We took out the instructions (which I read) and started to assemble the parts.  Most of the instructions were translated from a very poor understanding of english, with the translation leaving a lot to be desired.  Ahem! But we got it figured out.

In the early morning sunshine, with the birds singing, we stood out on the front porch and put it all together.  It was making sense now as we set the pieces in place.  A few cuts with a hacksaw and we were in business. 

There is the solid glass door,

and the screen door option.

Our two little stinkers think this big big window is pretty cool... they can look out without having to be up on ottomans or flying over our chairs to bark out the big window.  Now they have one on their own level.... 

This morning, Steve decided it would be a good time to get our housewarming present planted. It is a Granny Smith apple tree from our oldest daughter and husband and kids. We found a good spot....

 

The ground is very very wet with all of the snow melt, and now recent rains.  Steve was able to dig the hole and get it planted with very little effort.  We will be picking up some other apple and cherry trees to plant in the surrounding area of the back yard. We have two and half acres to fill with whatever we want.

I don't think we will ever grow tired of looking at this VIEW!!!

That is our backyard all of the way back to that far tree line. 

When we bought the house, there was a flag pole holder, but it was too low and on the wrong pole. We are going to be moving over the front steps soon (to be in line with the front door) so moving the holder now was one step ahead of the game.  Steve took care of it in a few minutes, and our flag is waving proudly each morning we put it out for the day. 

Please take note, we will be moving the front steps over to the next section of the porch to line up with the door.  The steps are not up to code anyhow, the top step and bottom step are only half steps, the stringers are not correct. But also, take note of that plastic trellis stuff screwed along the porch railings???

Yup.. there it is!  it's OFF! 

 

Our daughter Erin is going to repurpose the plastic stuff for some climbing beans in her garden.  We wanted it off because not only was it plastic, but it was a smaller pattern than the wooden trellis material below the porch.  I am going to be painting that lower porch trellis a deep reddish/burgundy soon).

We are going to rebuild the railings later with taller spindles and top caps.  Also in the plans are to paint the porch flooring with a nice medium grey to set off the red and the white. And add the red shutters.  For now I think it looks much better minus the trellis! Wait till the steps are moved and rest is completed....

My inside project today was to hang up some things in the Grandtots Toy Room.  I hung our wall display of all the grandkids' names and my most favorite photos of each one.  We took the table and little chairs from the storage unit this morning so now the littlest grandkids have a seat their own size to play Tea Party.

We put the dogs' ottomans under the window, so they can look out here to keep an eye on the mail-lady.  They are getting into the routine now and are figuring out when she comes down the street. On the other side of the room, we have a bookshelf for now. But later we are going to build in a frame for bunkbeds on that wall. It will be like a college dorm maybe like a loft bed overhead.  Should be a fun project in the future.

Speaking of Grandkids....  

Clayton got over-exuberant playing in the 

spring run-off ponds out back today

Actually Chelsea did too, but not as much mud. They had to rinse Clayton off outside with the garden hose, because I was not going to let that mud into the house. They were both soaked to the bone.  Once they got rinsed off, we managed to slide off their wet clothes, and into two of Grandma and Grandpa's dry T-shirts to wear home. 

Annndddd  

this little lady is taking after her Grandpa! 

I wonder what we are going to work on tomorrow? 

Week One - We Are Off and Running

As of 3 p.m. today, we have owned our National Folk Farmhouse for one full week. So far, the furniture is moved in and about half of the boxes are unpacked. We still have a whole other rented storage unit full of boxes to take care of.

Today we are babysitting the grand puppies Ewok and Biscuit. Our daughter and son-in-law are having a roofing company come to work on their house and this will prevent the dogs from going nuts inside while the guys are busy hammering away outside. This is their dogs first time coming into our house so they had lots to sniff and explore both inside and out in the fenced-in yard too.

So far we have tackled a couple little projects. Steve added a whole house water filter, leveled the refrigerator so the doors shut properly, then he hooked up the ice maker and water dispenser on the refrigerator,

We had bought two light fixtures off Facebook Marketplace. One matches my other fixtures and Steve mounted that in the kitchen over the area that's going to be our breakfast nook. That was $75.

He also added one over the kitchen sink to match as well.

The second light fixture is a vintage chandelier that we are going to hang over the dining room table. We also grabbed that off Facebook Marketplace as well.  $60  I have prettier bulbs to put on it, and I am going to paint the little cardboard sleeves that serve as faux candles.  This pic is from the seller.

So far our best deal from the Facebook Marketplace was a guy selling four Andersen hinged patio door panels, the exterior type that are called the 400 Series. I had no idea how expensive these doors are until I looked them up on the internet later! But we were able to nab four of them, brand new in the boxes, from a guy on Facebook. He was going to use them on his home, and later changed his mind on his design. They've been sitting in his basement unused for four or five years now. So after we came and looked at them we were sure we could use two, but maybe not the other two. He practically begged us to take all four so he didn't have to carry them back down into the basement! For the bargain price of $20 a door, we went home with about $3,000 worth of doors!!!!

One more bargain we found was an exact match to the old pedestal sink that I used to have in our home on the Oconto River. I've always liked that sink, to me it looks like an old fashioned bird bath. Since we are going to be buying another pedestal sink for the half-bath that Steve is working on (more on that later), we will install this one in the full bath. We will move that existing sink over into the half-bath. There's nothing wrong with the one we have. It is perfectly new and pretty. It's just not my birdbath!

this pic is from the seller.... 

it's really white, not ivory,

She has the same mirror as I do too! 

Yesterday I got out a white paintbrush and decided to lighten up the frame around my mirror in the bathroom too. It had been a creamy ivory color with kind of distressed-looking markings highlighted on the scrollwork. Since all of the other bathroom fixtures are white, that seemed to be out of place. I really like the mirror, but just not the color. So I got out my little brush and dip dabbed on some white paint and ---- my oh my it sure looks good to me.

While I had the white paint out, I decided to paint the frame around the outside front door. It's a new door that the previous owners had installed recently. They never got around to painting the frame and I noticed that it was unpainted from the moment we first saw the house. My fingers were just itching to paint it, so that's one of the first projects I wanted to do.

I got both of the sides done and instead of going inside to get the stepladder, all I had to do was call on my Mister Tall Man. He took care of the top portion for me.

Now on to Steve projects:

Steve is really thinking a second bathroom makes a lot of sense. We have a nice large laundry room that it would be easy enough to add a toilet and sink to. Actually, originally this was the full bathroom so he is just putting a sink and toilet back where they were.

The sink he will install is the one from the master bath. The toilet will be the one he chooses like the one we had in the last home. As I type this blog on my phone, we are on our way up to Marinette to Menards. He will get his toilet along with a bunch of other things on our list.

Not only is he going to add a toilet and sink to the room, but he's going to change the entrance. Right now the entry into the laundry room comes from the dining room. He will close off the original doorway, leaving a long wall in our dining room.

It will be perfect for my buffet to fit on the long wall.  Temporarily the buffet is located in the kitchen and I would really like to get it out of there and into the dining room where it belongs.

He is going to move the entrance to the room to the kitchen instead. There is an awkward piece of cabinetry in the kitchen that was over head of the original kitchen stove location. The stove is now a slide in one in the center of the island. The remaining piece of overhead cabinetry is just kind of hanging there. He decided to remove the piece of cabinetry to make a new doorway to get into the laundry room / new half bath. He sure has some good ideas!!

He carefully removed the piece of cabinetry because I have an idea of what to do with that. Once he checked out the wall for locations if electrical and plumbing were hidden inside of it, he was able to move ahead and start removing the wall surfaces to make the doorway.

Such a Happy Man with Projects To Do! 

At the same time he decided to strip down the laundry room of the beadboard paneling and bring it all the way back to the studs. We will pick up new sheetrock today to enclose the room with fresh new walls and possibly some new flooring.

This will probably be the only room in the house that we are really revamping. So we may as well make it the way we want it.

As for the remaining piece of cabinetry, there's another awkward space on the opposite all wall in the kitchen. It is where the refrigerator used to be located.

The more I looked at that space, the more I was looking at that leftover piece of cabinetry. If we just hung it horizontally in it's original orientation, it really wouldn't fit and it would look funny. But I would like to keep it and re-purpose it rather than throw it away. That's what bugs me about those HGTV shows. They rip everything out in the kitchen and start over with brand new. That's not our way. I would rather reuse, re-purpose, or recycle.

The more I looked at that piece of cabinetry it suddenly hit me. I am wishing for a coffee bar. Our big tall coffee maker does not fit underneath the overhead cabinets while sitting on the kitchen counter. It is a taller coffee maker because it grinds the beans as well as brews the coffee.

For the past week, every morning we have to take it out of a cabinet, and put it out on the island and plug it into the receptacle to make coffee.  Then we put it away because I don't like it cluttering up the island.

But, if we had a little coffee bar like we had in our last home, we could just leave the coffee maker out and make coffee and be able to fill it from the top with the water and the beans.

So the more I looked at this piece of leftover cabinetry, I decided we should flip it on end and make it vertical! The very top surface can then have added a matching piece of counter-top. Steve said he could move that center shelf board a little bit over to the left. That will be fantastic because we already own five really neat wrought iron wine bottle racks. We can stack the wine bottle racks in the wider opening and make it into a wine cabinet!  On the left side it will be narrower we can add a couple little shelves. That will be perfect for Steve to put his big growler jugs from the microbrewery or maybe some of his booze bottles standing up right.  And the coffee bar on top!

I think this will be a win-win situation and it will fill in that awkward space as well, but still leave room enough to pull out the drawers or get into the cabinet in that corner.

Well, we are almost at Menards in Marinette. Time to sign off and go fill our lists and check them twice. I will add photos to this later and hit publish when I have a chance. We are busy busy busy so I'm not sure when that will be?

 P.S. Well, $900+ later, 

we are set and ready 

to work on our projects!