A Roof Over Our Heads (Almost)

Since I last blogged we have been very busy at the Farmhouse.  We now have all of the walls in the addition up.  The roof trusses have been installed and the porches have been framed.

This will be the porch off of the mudroom.  We will usually enter the house here.

This porch is off of the great room.  A large slider will be installed to enter the porch.

Dave is one on the workers and he puts in a full day.

To show my appreciation I made a batch of Zucchini Bread.  Wes Jr. had requested a somewhat healthy snack.  Kids these days!  Anyway.... Please hold your applause.  I was unable to wrangle the food stylist away from the golf course so I styled the food myself.

Voila!

It's tasty, too.

In other exciting news, I was thrilled to see this:

My first tomato of the season. Let the madness begin!

And Lordy, Lordy look who finally arrived:

Please meet St. Joseph.  He is here to sell my house.  He seems kinda small, but I hear he does good work.

Sadly I will have to bury him to find out.  Keep tuned...Thanks for stopping by.

Reality TV - Not So Real

I am an avid fan of Reality TV.  There I said it! Actually I love it. Before you get all judgy wudgy, I am a good person.  I graduated from a real University, I volunteer and I even run a charitable foundation! For goodness sake ...I Blog. But I do love me some Bravo TV.  Real Housewives of every state, I watch 'em all.  Teen Mom, Catfish and Celebrity Rehab, who says I'm too old to watch MTV.  Food Network is on my favorites list. But I am calling on all of you to BOYCOTT HGTV.  I considered myself a big fan of House Hunters (International, not so much), Love It Or List It, why I even considered Holmes on Homes a prophet....but listen folks these shows are a sham! How can they renovate an entire home in a one hour period?  Seriously? It has taken a full week for my contractor to erect 3 walls! It makes me extremely jealous when I watch them take a falling down Cape Cod and turn it into a Dream Home in under 60 minutes. Do I sound a wee bit whiny when I ask why my little house is taking sooo long? Reality TV has made me inpatient. Cable television has turned me into an irrational human being.  I ask Cliff why the guys aren't working on Sunday.  He rolls his eyes and gives me "the look". His look says it all - this is The Real World ( not the MTV show!) He implores me to stop watching these renovating shows and try reading a good book. I may have to take a break from HGTV.  But how will I know if they love it or list it? How will I know which house they picked and why?  I need to know and I need to know within 60 minutes.  I mean when Rachel Ray says 30 minute meals - they take 30 minutes! When The Barefoot Contessa says her Beef Wellington will take 50 minutes, it takes 50 minutes. All of this technology is great, but now I need instant gratification.

Things are humming along at The Farmhouse.  We now have several walls up.

 

Cliff is standing in the mudroom .

We had a few visitors this week.  I can't help but think when people see what we've started they must shake their heads and think we are crazy. Maybe we are.  And that's straight from the horse's mouth!

Walls!

I can't express the thrill I felt when I saw a wall today.  An actual wall!  This really is going to happen.  There is going to be an addition to The Farmhouse.

Not only is there this wall, but there is also this wall.

This will be the new kitchen and this is the window over the sink.

Here is Cliff pretending to wash his hands in the new kitchen.

Do we know how to have fun or what? The excitement is palpable :)

Today I took my friend Kathy for a tour of the new digs.  Thankfully this girl has vision because a lesser person would run screaming down the road saying, "you guy's are nuts!"  Like I said before we are in The Ugly Duckling Phase.

Here is the demolished master bath. 

 Ahh I can just imagine soaking in my new tub.

It has been brought to my attention that the photo of the cookies I made for the guy's was less than appetizing.  In fact I believe the word turd was thrown around.  Well I have to say I do agree - this looks gross:

After much discussion it has been decided that all future food photos will be done by my own personal food stylist. For now I will keep her identity private, but she assures me all future posts will look like this:

Romancing The Stone

Today I went to visit our granite slabs.  They arrived at the fabricators last week and I was anxious to pop over and say , "Hi!". They are quite the beauties, two slabs of granite from the deep granite quarries of India.  I was a little nervous to see them in the daylight since we only saw them inside of the warehouse a few weeks ago. I was thrilled to see how wonderful they look. I am deeply in love :)

If you are in need of granite counter tops I highly recommend Rock Tops in Owings Mills.  They are great to deal with and do a very good job.  We used them for our current kitchen and are very pleased.

Work is progressing at The Farmhouse.  Last weeks' rain set us back some on construction. They were able to do a lot of demo inside, however.  The whole back side of the house is gutted.  Today framing started!

Yeah! I told you this excites me.

It is interesting to know that this is how high the floor will be.

Since we are sooo happy progress is happening - I made a batch of these:

When Wes opened up the hole to the basement he found our old friend the Black snake.  He was there when we had our home inspection and I guess he didn't get the memo that new folks now own the house.  

                                                                        

Eww.......

An Ugly Duckling

I am calling this phase "The Ugly Duckling Phase".  Demolition has begun inside and it ain't purrty!

The stone mantle is gone and the wood stove, too.

This will become the family room.  Please notice the fabulous orange color on all of the moldings.

The old and I do mean OLD kitchen is gone.  I can't believe how tiny the space looks without cabinets and appliances.  This space will become hallway.

These are the old cabinets.  We are going to hang them in the new mudroom and paint them.  They are actually pretty nice.

The wood was delivered today to start framing.  This excites me for some reason.

Once framing starts we will actually get to see what the house will look like! Yeah!

Now I would like to update you on my Craigslist experience. Last weekend I posted some furniture on CL.  I am trying to clear out our basement.  I listed our leather sofa set and a pine armoire as well as some office furniture.  I started getting emails about the leather set right away.  This being my first experience I didn't know the "rules" of CL.  Apparently anything goes when you are a buyer on CL.  You can say you will come at 9 o'clock and never show up.  You can say you are coming with a truck and show up with a Prius.  Or you can explain how your foster dog ate your sofa and you need a new one - quick - and cheap!  Well after 24 hours of these shenanigans I got smart!  I started being much more selective of who I would respond to.  Enter Tom.  I am calling him Tom to protect his identity.  Tom told me on the phone that he lived in a restored farmhouse (MY GUY!!) and raised a few cows.  Oh and he was a professor.  He had a BIG truck and would be right over.  Enter Tom and his wife.  Tom was a pleasant fellow, he had a long gray ponytail and loved to chat.  The wife - not so much.  Anywho...while loading the stuff in his truck we asked him what he taught and he told us he taught graduate cinema studies.  Being the nosy body that I am I looked him up after he left. Well....Tom it seems had been a White House cinematographer for the Regan and Bush administrations, has won 16 Emmy awards for Cinematography and lighting and has worked for John Waters, Dino De Laurentis and others! And he's buying my used furniture.  Go figure.

Cleaning Out and Throwing Out

Cliff and I agree on most things.  We've been married 30 years - mostly harmoniously.  With thoughts of moving constantly on my mind I have been cleaning out closets and drawers.  There lies a beast down below.  Just thinking of it gave me the willies.  This beast is the basement.  It's large and cavernous.  Finished parts and unfinished parts.  Furnished parts and parts that just hold STUFF !! Come on people - you know what I mean.  Years and years of STUFF.  For 28 years the basement was the place you put your STUFF.  Now is the time to purge.  Last weekend we started and boy oh boy did we work hard.  We hauled stuff out by the bagful, the carton full, the wheelbarrow full. It felt good! Until we came upon the record albums.  That's right those relics from our past lives. I remember laying on my bed in my mother's house listening to my albums while reading the liner notes and digging the groovy artwork and photos. It is etched in my mind. I think I remember the words to almost all of my records. Great memories, but memories nonetheless.  Here's the rub:

I say throw out - he says keep. I ask, "Why schlep boxes of albums to the new place.  We never listen to them.  We don't even have a turntable!" He says, "XY%#*!"

  Loved This!

I will leave it up to you to guess who won this round.

I have not felt this light since I lost 25 lbs. at Diet Workshop in 1987.  I now enjoy looking in the basement.  It is no longer "The Beast".

Went down to look at the Farmhouse today.  The tree mess is gone just the stump needs to be grinded. Ground? Wes boarded up the windows and hopefully the mason will come tomorrow and fix the foundation.

I hope to have a lot to report next week.  Hopefully!

I also want to tell you about an anthropological study I am conducting.  I am calling it The Craigslist Chronicles.  I listed some furniture on CL and I am truly amazed at the responses I have gotten.  All I can say is WOW. This is a new one for me and I look forward to studying man and his interactions with sellers on CL.  Stay tuned.........

Taking A Deep Breath

When it rains it pours.  Whatever can go wrong - will.  I have a lot of luck, all bad.  These adages just about sum up my life right now.  After doing some excavation work Wes informed us that he had exposed some roots of the HUGE tree that stands in front of the house.  This may cause problems down the road.  We discussed it and decided it would be best to remove the tree now before the house is built.  I really feel that I would be extremely nervous about that big tree coming down on the house in the future.  The weather has been so crazy the past few years.

We got a price from a tree expert and the work started this morning.  If you have never seen a HUGE tree being cut down it is quite a sight.  A man actually climbs up the tree and cuts small sections off.  That piece is then lowered to the ground by ropes and shoved into a chipper machine.  That is until one piece goes careening out of control and smacks into a little farmhouse!

Two broken windows and a busted up (new) foundation.  Thank goodness nobody got hurt. Thank goodness this tree company carries good insurance.  They will now be paying for custom restoration windows (no Anderson windows now) and repairs to the foundation. I must admit it is hard for me to look at the house now.  I know this sounds silly, but it just seems sad to me.  I told Cliff I won't be going to the house until the whole tree business is done.  I can't look!! I guess I have fallen in love with this little house and it is too hard to see it broken like that.  Sounds corny I know.  The bright side is we were going to remove those windows anyway and now we will have new custom made windows.  It still hurts.  If you drive by the house blow a kiss - it needs it!