You know how you get so behind on something, you dread starting on it again? Like laundry, or bill paying, or scrapbooking, or exercising…it’s harder to get going again than it is to just keep up with whatever it is in the first place.

That’s what has happened here with our blog, tracking our progress as we rebuild the farmhouse so we can finally get to what we really want to do: start a farm. I didn’t write about anything for a while because progress stopped with Bob’s new work schedule and my increased workload. Plus I sometimes feel like, you poor people, you keep wanting progress, progress, progress and we are letting you down with how slow this is going!

But it has now been a year (and nine days) since we were handed the skeleton key to the front door of the 1890 farmhouse, and it seems a good time for an update. Hold onto your hats, however, because it’s going to be quite an update, since it has been so long since I updated about anything! Actually, as I type that, I realize it won’t be one update…it will be a series of, and I will try really hard to get a few posts done to bring everyone up to speed.

First, we’ll tackle the bathroom update…

The bathroom some of you have seen, if you see me on Facebook. I posted photos there as we installed the beadboard and laid the tile floor. All of that was so we could finally pick up our antique clawfoot tub from the tub dealer, who had been patiently waiting on us for many months to do so. (Thank you, Steve, for not charging us storage fees!!) There was no way I wanted us moving that four-hundred pound tub twice, so I wanted to make sure when we picked it up, we were ready to put it exactly where it would go. Forever. We had helping hands lined up Thanksgiving weekend with our helper Andrew home for the break and my son Evan down to make some cash. So they loaded in the truck for town, got the tub, got it up the steps that now lead to our front door, and into the bathroom it went! Aaaahhhh….

The bathroom had so many issues, it was ridiculous how long it took us to even get to the point where we could do the tile! And of course, not having done tile before, I learned a lot of things by doing it wrong. Does that mean I want to tackle a renovation like this again in the future to put my newfound knowledge to work? Not on your life!! But we really wanted the old style tile on the floor. Vinyl just won’t cut it in a house as old as ours!

The beadboard installation was, well, H-E-double toothpicks and the first time we bickered while working on the house. But I have to remind myself: This bathroom was so rotted out, it has to be gutted to the point where it didn’t even have a floor! You could see clear down to the ground under the house! So we have come a long ways, and crooked walls and slanted floors are just one small part of the battles we’ve fought.

This past weekend we installed the toilet for good! We have put the toilet in five times now. Don’t ask. We also got the water heater and put it in place. We are now at the mercy of the electrician to come back and get it hooked up and give us some more light. How many times are you allowed to call, text and email a subcontractor before it’s considered harassment??

Then there’s plumbing…or lack of. We had decided to use an old dresser we already had as the vanity, to save money, you know. I took it to a friend’s and he cut out the hole for the sink with his jigsaw. Months ago. In preparation for progress that didn’t happen. The dresser than sat in the “garage” and…warped. Turned out it was all veneer and it all peeled up. Thank goodness that happened in the garage and not in the bathroom once installed, warping from the moisture of the baths!

So I found another old dresser and finally picked it up this weekend. Now it waits for a hole for the sink and then there will be the plumbing.

But the bathroom is key! Absolutely key, right now, and here is why: We have rented a friend’s trailer and it is parked at the farmhouse and our goal is to be living in it, not the house in town that’s a half hour away. Living in the trailer means saving hundreds of dollars on gas because right now we drive to the farmhouse and back twice a day in order to tend to the animals. It also means being able to get in an hour here and an hour there, where right now, we have to have at least half a day to make a trip out there worthwhile.

So still no hot water, still no sink or bathtub that works, but the toilet is in for good. I hope. And it’s painted and the new window is in and the lights and fan work and it’s going to be a beautiful bathroom!! Someday!!

When we first took a hammer and pry bar to the farmhouse on December 31^st of last year, we never, ever thought that 10 months later we would still be struggling to get the house livable. We never stopped to think we’d be paying two mortgages all this time, or that we’d log on those miles on our cars and put all those dollars into the gas tank driving back and forth everyday to take care of the animals and eek out the hour here and there of actual renovation.

Why is this taking so darn long? Looking back now over these past 10 months, I can tell you what we did wrong. Our biggest mistake, if you will.

We tried to do too much.

If the house had been our only focus, we’d be living there by now. If we’d ignored the barn, left the fencing, lived with the trash and foregone the garden, we’d have the walls done and the hot water running and a kitchen and a bath…and maybe we’d have the starlings kicked out of the upstairs rooms by now.

But we didn’t. We didn’t realize the total neglect the house had suffered for decades that lead to us having to practically rebuild it. When we started, we thought we’d be living in the house last March. Three months of two mortgages? No problem! Coming up on a year of? Major problem!!

When we realized it wouldn’t be March, we thought June. When we realized it wouldn’t be June, we thought September…then by Thanksgiving. Last night I was praying we’d be there before next Easter! (Insert very, very sad face here.)

Everything just takes so long…and we are still finding rot. My poor husband, each time he pulls back another layer, he confronts another problem he must figure out and fix. As for me, I am faced with the amount of work it takes to save the little bits of the house we are trying to save, painstakingly scraping off little bits of paper, painstakingly pulling out hundreds of nails, painstakingly sanding and caulking and priming…then finally, painting.

Even the sheetrocking takes so long because—in addition to mudding and taping being an artform—you can’t finish a room because you have to wait for something else to get done first. (And I really, really suck on sheetrocking which doesn’t help! I usually end up crying when I have to hang sheetrock. I’m not kidding.)

You know that term “domino effect”? Sometimes I think we are living in Domino Effect Hell.

So all these hours spent on cleanup, livestock, barn work, fence repair and trying to put in a garden and greenhouse and compost bin…maybe we should have skipped all of that. Well, all but the barn work and fence repair. Those had to be done for hay storage and horse safety. And the chicken coop had to be built. No way were we risking another coyote attack on our egg supply!

But still, I have this sense that we weren’t focused enough on the house, that our dreams of starting a farm and all the different pieces of that kept us from seeing the realities of how long the farmhouse renovation would take.

Now it is November. We are looking into renting an RV or trailer to live in so we can live on site and lower our bills by getting down to one mortgage.

Now we will focus. The weather will make it so. Now I get it: Starting a farm means first having a farmhouse. Period.

For nine months now, we’ve been doing demolition and trips to the dump and burn piles. My poor husband has been rebuilding walls and replacing floor joists, with no end in sight as we discover ever more termite damage.

On the bright side, we have started on some of the restoration part of this and made some decisions. We got the dining room ceiling done and that has helped us to clarify how we want to handle other rooms moving forward. You can see a photo of the dining room ceiling here, but that was after we: pulled off the stapled on ceiling tiles, pulled out the hundreds of staples, scraped off the glued on paper, pulled out dozens of nails, sanded, swept and vacuumed. That pink ceiling in the photo has already had many hours of our time before the paint ever hit the wood!

This one has been our trial run. We have these same tongue-and-groove ceilings in three more of the downstairs rooms, and all need a lot more work than this one to restore. So it was important to get one done and see how it turned out. It turned out gorgeous!!! Lucky for us, both the electrician and our friend Steve H. suggested we caulk between the boards. I–being the one doing the painting–hadn’t planned on caulking, never even crossed my mind. But after two people made the suggestion, I bought the painter’s caulk and caulked. It took a couple of hours to get between every single board, but boy, the results are worth it!

I don’t know if you can see it in this third photo, but here is our dining room ceiling, fully restored. Uncovered and unstapled and unpapered. Primed and caulked and painted. I am so very happy with how it looks!

Finding out how gorgeous our ceilings will be, once we are done with all four of the downstairs ones, well, it made me willing to give up on restoring the walls too. We only have one room with most of the tongue-and-groove walls intact, and that’s the downstairs bedroom. Three of those walls can probably be restored with a reasonable amount of effort. But seeing the dining room with the sheetrocked walls and the beautiful ceiling, it made me okay with doing sheetrock in the living room too.

We had to sheetrock the south wall, since it was the falling down one! But I had originally thought it would be neat to save the tongue-and-groove walls that we could, despite all kinds of work required to restore them. And I don’t just mean some sanding. I mean a lot more work than that with patching holes and more. You can see in the photo the south wall with sheetrock vs. the east wall in desperate need of restoration!

I really think with the effort it will take to restore the ceilings, we will opt for gorgeous ceilings…and we’ll put beautiful moulding on the walls to dress them up. I feel really good about this decision, but Bob is I suspect waiting to make sure I am not going to change my mind–again!

I have to say, I like the clean look of the sheetrock! Everything will be easier this way. Putting in new windows will be easier. Redoing any framing will be easier (sorry, honey, but there might be more rebuilding to do as you turn the corners from south to east and west!). And we have to rebuild some framing between the dining room and living room and THAT will be easier if we are just putting up sheetrock too, rather than trying to patch up the new wall with old paneling and make it all look good.

So now I am working on the kitchen ceiling, going from the easiest (the dining room) to the hardest. The kitchen ceiling had paper and strips of wood that have been pulled down. Now I am scraping off the glued on paper and pulling out hundreds of nails…and taking loads of ibuprofen because my neck is killing me from working over my head like that! It’s not just a matter of pulling out at nail. You have to use a putty knife or screw driver to dig away at the paper so you can get the channel locks to where you can even get a grip on the head of the nail. THEN you pull out the dang nail! Repeat that a few dozen times, constantly looking and working up over your head, and you’ll be downing the ibuprofen too!

After that part, we’ll sand and see what we can do about the smoke damage that covers a big part of the ceiling, and we’re still brainstorming creative ways to cover up the gaping hole where the old chimney went through. Then we can move on to primer, caulk and paint at last!

Then we get to work on the living room and bedroom ceilings!

Lucky for us, the bathroom was a more recent addition to the house, so all we had to do there was replace the sheetrock. Now I only wait for the hubby to be done with the mudding and taping so I can primer, baby, primer!!

Progress is still slow as can be, but getting the one ceiling done helps a lot, showing us what the other ceilings will look like and inspiring us to keep on keeping on, striving to make this a wonderful, charming home…rather than a falling down eyesore. 🙂

I tell this story so often, how we got here into this project with this farmhouse, that I decided to write it down. So here’s the history behind this farmhouse folly…

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to live in an old, two-story farmhouse, surrounded by ancient apple trees, horses, and garden beds teeming with vegetables. After a lifetime of unexpected twists and turns, disappointments and distractions, such a house became a real possibility.

When I first laid eyes on the two-story farmhouse, I saw potential…and land. Lots of land. Almost 22 acres to be exact. What I didn’t see were the rotted out beams, the extensive termite damage, the precariously leaning walls, or the collapsing kitchen floor. Layers of carpet, vinyl, wallpaper, particle board, sheetrock and paint hid more than the history of the house. They hid a history of neglect.

Still, I saw a small home for me and my daughter, old apples trees, and plenty of land for our horses, chickens, cats and dog. Some upgrading and some paint and we’d be good, right? A single mom, long divorced, I’d resigned myself to a life lived alone. Why not be alone in a cute little–very little–farmhouse, raising my own food?

I made an offer based on the value of the land alone, pretty sure the rundown house had little value (and pretty sure I wouldn’t qualify for much more). The sellers accepted my lowball offer! A few months later, I was handed the key to what I then considered my “free” house. Excuse me. Our free house. In the time it took me to work through the home-buying process, I’d fallen in love and gotten engaged. Now I had the house and a partner.

My now husband was as ignorant as I about the real condition of the house. He was also as enthusiastic as I about the prospect of being able to raise our own food, living in the quiet of the country.

Our free house quickly morphed from a 9-week job to going on 9 months now…with no real idea just when we’ll be moving in. Nor is it still free given the cost of materials and labor we’re pouring into it! Although it’s still a very good price, all things considered.

Plenty of people consider us foolish. Loads have asked why we didn’t tear it down and get a double wide. Some have offered to knock it over with their trailers. One person offered us a match to torch it.

Is the bigger folly in saving the old structure? Or in tearing it down? For us, our way is admittedly harder, especially given we do most of the work ourselves, fitting it in around work and parenting and the tasks of daily living. But 130 years ago, a family toughed it out and homesteaded way out in the middle of nowhere, building this home in stages and feeding themselves from this land. Given that we have the advantages of electricity and plumbing, power tools and petroleum, we are already wimps in comparison. Still, we see ourselves as following in their pioneering footsteps by saving the house and bringing the farm back to life.

We’ve had big expenses for things like lifting the house and installing a foundation, but otherwise the costs are for materials, namely lumber. There’s little we can do about those costs, but we do pinch pennies when we can. We scored bargain windows from a defunct construction company. We re-use what we can and we’ve found some used fixtures and lights.

One of my friends joked we’re rebuilding the house using the original as the house plan. He’s not far from the truth. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. As we rebuild the farmhouse, we build the foundation of our marriage. Saving the old structure fits our frugal values. And when we are done, our labors and patience will be amply rewarded.

In the end, we will have a bit of history and a bit of land for a very good price. We’ll have the peace of mind knowing our 1890 house is safe, sound and well insulated. And we’ll have the satisfaction of a job well done, a house well (re-)built and a farm well loved.

No folly there!

Today I started painting primer on the dining room ceiling. I can’t even express to you what a big deal that is, even though it is the only place in the house ready for paint of any kind. After all the demolition and rebuilding we’ve done, the sheetrock has been a big deal. Truly. But there’s something psychological about paint. Even paint that’s primer. It’s as if you’re on the downhill slope at last!

To celebrate the milestone, I videotaped the dining room before painting, giving a state of renovation and a rundown of what it took to get there:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW_cV9wEm38]

And after the video? The roller, putting primer on the ceiling.

In a couple of weeks or maybe even as soon as next week, our wood stove will be delivered and installed. The dining room has to be done a.s.a.p., as in all sheetrocked, mudded, taped, sanded, primered, painted. All. I thought the bathroom would be the first room we completed, but apparently heat comes before bathing. 🙂 That’s okay by me! The nights are getting cold!

I’ve been reluctant to write about what I call The South Wall Project. It has been dragging on for two months now and really set us back on the farmhouse renovation. It has been the most challenging part of this project, and it has been hard not to be discouraged while tackling it.

The south wall rot has turned out to be about one thousand times worse than suspected, from moisture to start but then from extensive–nightmarish even–termite damage. Bob says the house was essentially falling in on itself, that’s why all the leaning walls. He estimates in 10 years the house would have started collapsing if not for the work we are doing to rebuild it.

I haven’t written about The South Wall Project because there is so much to say. So I’m going to try telling the story in pictures…

The contractor didn’t want to build the front porch yet, and I know it’s out of order to do so, but it does my spirit so much good to see it coming together! The inside of the farmhouse is still a total disaster, as we are scrambling to get framing done so the electrician can come in so we can start putting in walls and finally get a bathroom! We have open walls—I mean open to the outside!—and lumber everywhere and beams holding up ceilings and messes and general chaos.

So driving up to the farmhouse each day and seeing this front porch coming together, it’s important. It feels like, looks like, progress…something we haven’t felt since starting this project five months ago.

We sit out there to eat lunch on the days we work on the house, picturing the lawn we will someday have and the fence we will someday build. I walk through the front door and out again, pretending we live there, pretending there’s a home to walk into. Sometimes I stand in the doorway looking out, imagining it all done and friends walking towards the steps and up them and onto this front porch for a visit. I’ve decorated it with wicker furniture in my mind and we even added a hanging basket to it this weekend for Mother’s Day. (Thank you, Bob and Emma!)

No, it’s not just a front porch. It’s so much more.

Here’s my advice to you: Don’t take on a major renovation, starting a farm and planning a wedding all at once. I’m here to tell you it’s a baaaaad idea and a lot of work. Nothing will get done in a timely manner except the wedding, and that’s only because those darn printed invitations give you a hard and fast deadline.

All that said, we are still having a blast working on this project together, and all things considered, it’s a good sign for us as a married couple, being able to weather these things as well as we are!

Below is the latest video. We’re trying to show in a couple of minutes where we’re at now.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qvlw_NZEcM]

You can see there’s a lot less house…but not a lot of progress. The plumbers have been out and we now have water to the house, YES! Although still no fixtures or toilet. Now it’s back on us to make those things happen, and boy, do I want to make that toilet happen! (Me to Bob today: “What comes first, the bathroom floor or the toilet?”)

But at the same time, the electrician has said he can’t come through until we have all the framing done, and with the rot, well, there’s a lot more framing than anticipated.

You can see in these photos where the 5 foot by 4 foot window used to be. I pulled out the top molding above the window and the whole thing came crashing down onto the floor. The header was completely rotted away, as was a lot of that whole south-facing wall. It turns out it was put together as siding/insulation/wall. No vapor barrier or tar paper or plywood. None. We knew that wall was rotted but wow, we had no idea it was that rotted!

Now that wall is a priority, but at the same time Bob is trying to get some stuff done on the exterior to tie in the kitchen walls to the new foundation…and so on and so on and so on.

Someone on Facebook joked that we’re rebuilding the old farmhouse, and only using the original as the house plan. He’s not that far from the truth. But it’s worth the effort. I do believe we are doing something good and worthwhile here, both in our efforts to save the old house and in trying to bring the farm back to life and produce some local food.

But, however worthwhile this endeavor might be, I am thinking the toilet is still a long ways off. Sigh…

During yet another full day working on the old farmhouse, we got to see some progress. The bathroom is ready for the plumber, and one of the walls is almost framed out in the kitchen.

Funny thing about the bathroom. I kept thinking the new tub had to go where the old tub used to be, which would have been fine if we were using the same kind of tub that had been there. But we want a clawfoot tub and we were having the darndest time getting the bathroom to work without having to get a very small clawfoot tub.

Then it suddenly hit me standing there watching Bob work on one of the bathroom walls: Was there any reason why the old tub had to go where the old tub had been? I asked Bob. He said no. Turns out he thought that was where I wanted it to go, and I was stuck thinking that’s where it had to go…only because that’s where it had been.

Once he said it could go anywhere, I was happily grabbing chalk and a measuring tape and totally changing the bathroom layout, as you can see in the picture. Now we have more than enough room for a good-sized 5 1/2 foot clawfoot tub!

It’s an interesting thing, though, to step back and look at how the brain works. Because the old tub was in the corner to the left, that was the only place I could envision the tub being. My brain was trapped! We do this in life all the time, and it’s a real challenge to think not only outside the box but outside of what has been to see what could be.

OK, that’s my pedantic moment for today. Let’s just say, the bathroom is ready for the plumber, and it’s going to be adorable. We also scored a new window for it that will let in lots more light.

We’ve also made progress in the kitchen, where we ran into other snafus. Not the same snafus the bathroom offered up, but snafus nonetheless! Working around the beam currently holding up that end of the house, Bob was able to start framing the exterior wall.

We also scored a great new window for that wall, one that will sit over the kitchen sink and give me a wonderful view of the orchard while washing dishes. Bob was frustrated with only being able to frame part of the wall at a time due to the beam, but he was happy to get it up and level as you can see in his smiling face. 🙂

Next up is figuring out how in the world to attach the exterior wall to the framing. It was so rotted through from a plumbing leak that was never dealt with that the floor and wall were no longer connected. We are framing out a new wall, one that will be rot-free and have much-needed insulation, but now we have to figure out how to connect the outside wall in such a way that the new framing will bear the weight of that wall. Hmmmmm….

So we are still framing, not farming, and I suspect it will be a long time before the “farm” part of Literal Road Farm becomes, well, literal!