Power!!

Just in the nick of time! We have power and we have our heat pump up and running. Spring time here goes by really fast and we will be hitting upper 90's soon. We are ready! Systems are all working great and had no issues with getting them running.  All light fixtures are in and working great. It still may take us some time to remember to flip a switch for light!  So used to working in the dark...

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Now that we are getting into a list of smaller projects my husband is keeping a running punch list and so far every weekend we have completed all that was scheduled plus a little more. It is exciting now to see things coming together and the hardest decisions are over!!

Lots of beautiful light!

Moving right along, we have found these cedar planks and we will be making our kitchen island counter out of these at a later date. Aren't they gorgeous?👉

I like the live edge, it is really going to look great on our island. By the way it now looks like this. 

A friend gave us the old barn wood we used across the long side and another friend gave us the old rusty  metal we used on both ends. We stained the store bought base cabinets mahogany and it will be a fabulous contrast to the wall cabinets. 
Speaking of:👇 Here is a series of photos showing the steps we are going through with finishing the kitchen cabinets. After a sanding, we stained the cabinets Dark Walnut. Once that dried, we painted them with two coats of white paint. The finishing touches will be a sanding on just the edges to bring out the darker color underneath and then final finish of a clear glaze.

The stain sure makes them dark

Painted 

That photo doesn't do the house justice. I will upload another soon, but the lights are just amazing 

What's a farm without vegetables? We have a lot of seedlings growing and they will be transplanted into the raised beds soon. Also, added two citrus trees and another peach tree. Some of the vegetables: broccoli, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, peppers, squash

Serious business - Stained Glass window - transom windows

One step closer to having the Electrician and Air Condition hooked up and running.

We feel very accomplished this weekend. We finished all T&G wall boards up to the highest electrical outlet. The last few steps, before calling the Electrician in and Air Condition installer, will be installation of light fixtures and the island. 
We even installed 4 out of the 5 interior doors. Thanks to Youtube and THISISCarpentry. His video with a 5 step process worked great and by door number 4, we had it down!  They are square, plum and look great!

In the laundry room we opted for sheets of beadboard on the walls behind the washer/dryer, dog kennels and shelving. These will be painted white to brighten up the small room and give it a clean look. The 3 boards installed easily, even with the 5 cuts outs in the middle section. Measure twice - cut once!

We bought and delivered the kitchen island cabinets. After many hours of discussion, we decided on prefab cabinets from our Builders Warehouse with oak front drawers and doors. The three cabinets (2-30", 1-18") will give us about a 7' island. We are shopping for live edge cedar, or other hardwood, slab for the island countertop.

We changed our plan on the floor, instead of staining or painting we are going to install, can you guess?

 And the REAL fun begins. We have color!!  We have 4 beautiful stained glass windows. All four windows are going to be installed like transom windows over the 4 hallway doors. We did a dry fit of one window and it fit perfect with the custom framework!  This colorful antique window is over the laundry room door.

A little homesteading on the side.  Onion sets IN! More, much more to come.

Little steps - Big reward

There are three season around here. Spring, Summer and Hunting Season.

We continue on with the walls and ceilings. The goal is to have the electrician back to finish his work in March. Until then, we will be working steady on the tongue and groove boards on the walls and ceilings. As you can see below we finished one bedroom. Well, 3 walls and the ceiling.

Sometimes we have to re-adjust our priorities.
It often depends on the weather, but then when hunting season starts. Well, like I said, we hunt.

In preparation for our Spring garden. My husband designed and built these beds. We had a successful crop last year, but we believe we will have better water control with this system. Will let you know.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Resting our weary bones and admiring our kitchen cabinets. We are going to clear coat the wall behind the cabinets before we install them. We are also going to stain the cabinets so they stand out more. It may be a clear coat, if that provides enough color. 

Started ceiling in the master bedroom. These smaller rooms are going fast. I suppose that was the ultimate plan. We did the largest room first, so these seem easy. In planning for the electrician and A/C man in March, we will complete every wall and ceiling to the point they require. Then if we have more time, we will just keep going. The cut outs are going well. 

Had to take time out for Christmas tree project at entry and decorate 9ft tree in the house.

Merry Christmas!

Now that's progress!

We are starting to get cool (high 70's, low 80's) temperatures and that sure helps when you are working hard outdoors.

As you can see below we finished the trim boards in the living room.   We are determined and anxious to take down the scaffolding in our living room Then we will have a room we can kinda use during the winter. We made the trim boards out of some of the pine #2 tongue and groove. Each board was stained with Early American stain.  The trim boards were cut 3" wide. The wall boards will remain natural.

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One of our greatest enjoyments is relaxing by a fire. We installed the double wall stove pipe to finish the installation of the cast iron stove. We used two 4' telescoping pipe with attachments at the top and bottom.  The brick below the cast iron stove was painted with a high heat black paint.  We purchased the stove pipe for this part of the installation from Promax Supply on eBay. If you are not in a hurry and you have patience and can persevere through their erratic ordering system, their price was almost 1/2 of the retailer we purchased other parts from. Here is a photo of our first fire!  We were following the instructions to burn several small fires to break in the stove. It was only about 65 degrees in the morning, so we went for it! Really nice!! The colorful magnetic thermometer came in very handing in keeping the temperature below 300 degrees for the first fires.

We are now entering hunting season as you can see below. So progress won't be as fast as it has been. 

Happy FALL YA'LL

Life Happens and the ceiling is tops!

8-13-17 Life happens...
The tongue and groove walls and ceilings are slow going, but getting done. Life happened and we had to delay some building. We are back on track and working through the 100 degree heat to install the tongue and groove walls and ceilings.  The living area walls are complete with the installation of the 1 x 8 x16 pine T&G.  The North side of the ceiling from the wall to the center beam was finished today.

Left to do: trim.  We have had a long standing discussion on the color of the trim. Matching or working out the colors of all the permanent fixtures, floor, walls, trim, etc. is difficult.  Hours of discussion go into deciding on staining, painting, tile or wood floors. Today we decided (again) to go with paint on the floors. We will let you see how that goes when we get to that juncture.

A bridge and our beam

In light of the amount of rain we have been getting we had to take a side step and build a bridge. This bridge will do the trick to get us back and forth from the shop to the house without sloshing through the mud. While the new gutters are helping tremendously, the sand is a soggy mess when wet. A simple DIY bridge and it works great!

Sam " hmmm what is that!?"

Finished are all the 10' walls in the living area!! 🏆🏆🏆

After finishing the wall with the main door and windows, we finished the beam.  We lightly sanded then textured the wood with a few handy tools.  Those marks make a wonderful look on the finished stained wood.  The scaffolding is a fantastic tool and made this staining job alot easier!

Wall continuation.. We have a DIY Mantel!

We are finding that the tongue and groove wall installation is going fairly quickly. Over 2-3 work days and about 12 hrs we have installed the pine boards up to 10' in our living area. Three walls!
Working around the electrical sockets and window frames are fairly simple.  The pins are working absolutely wonderful and the bowrench is worth its weight in gold! The kitchen wall where the cabinets will be installed has been left open. We will be installing plywood before the cabinets.

After searching and searching for a mantel we really liked and was in our price range, we opted to do a DIY mantel. We love it and think it turned out great! What do you think?  We used four 2" x 10" pine boards, glued and doweled together with 3/4" dowel.  Then the mantel was trimmed to a length of 5', sanded, textured and stained. The mantel was installed with the top at approximately 5'. The mantel was attached to the wall with 5/16 x 3 1/2" screws. Four screws were inserted from the back side of the wall. This mantel is sturdy and isn't going anywhere!

We picked up a 2" thick 36" cement square. This will be used under the cast iron wood burning stove that will sit in front of the mantel. I will be finding a way to stain that square.

We also installed wood trim around one window after testing a handful of stains. We were looking for something just slightly darker than the wall boards. We settled on Classic Oak. This is a stain and poly product that will only take one coat.  I like the slight overhang of the upper window trim. Nice touch!