Saturday, March 28, 2009

Allison visits the farm!

Road before (after ice storm).
Click on photos to enlarge.

Road today. Most trees are gone.

Looking north. Still a few small trees to cut
and brush to burn.

Lots of limbs and twigs to burn.

More firewood than we will ever burn!

We were delighted today to see that Allison had ridden along with Kathy's son, KJ, when he came to work at the farm. Allison is the oldest of Kathy's three granddaughters. And even though she was sick with a sore throat, she still worked very hard.

Bonnie worked in the basement in the utility room, putting up wainscoting, painting, and working on the walls above the wainscoting. It is coming along. Bonnie also spread 25 lbs. of Companion grass on the vineyard this week while she was on vacation. Companion grass is for vineyards, orchards, and just about anywhere else. It is supposed to only have to be mowed a couple of times a year. Guess we will find out!

Kathy was outside all day. KJ had cut lots of trees yesterday and cut even more today. He had hoped to be finished today but didn't quite get done before his chains became dull. He has only a few trees on the north side of the driveway to do. Kathy spent her time (along with Allison) dragging limbs and twigs to the burn area and pulling some from the road in to the property more where they could be more easily drug to the burn pile at a later date.

Kathy tried to get a fire started, but she is the world's worse fire starter and very little was actually burned. Then the wind picked up so she gave up. She also stacked all of the firewood KJ cut in one area. Unfortunately, it will need to be moved at least one more time when Bonnie decides where she wants it. The funny thing is, we never had campfires all the years that we camped. Maybe we had 3 fires. And some of the firewood Denny brought from our lot to the farm was purchased at the campground in Peru when we camped there quite a few years ago! But maybe we will surprise ourselves and have campfires at the farm.

Kathy treated everyone to Elmo's pizza in Roanoke and she said the garlic chicken pizza is yummy!

Tomorrow will be a more restful day. Kathy is working on a painting project at the cottage and wants to continue that. Let's tell you about it. You see, we bought 4 or 5 gallons of our primary wall paint months ago. When Mike was just about done painting, he told us he needed one more gallon of that paint. So we took a container with the formula printed on it back to Menard's and had one more gallon mixed. Well, when Mike needed to touch up some walls after he closed off the ends of the stairway railings leading to the loft, he (or his helpers) used the new can of paint and it looked horrible. It didn't match! Kathy was beside herself trying to figure out what went wrong. Bonnie purchased a gallon of white paint and Kathy has been mixing it into the paint that does not match, trying to lighten it up so she can cover 5 areas in the cottage where the non-matching paint was used. It has been a frustrating battle, but she is getting closer and hopes to have a match tomorrow.

Denny and Barbara started burning limbs and brush for us on Thursday. Denny is much better at fires than Kathy is! While we were burning on Thursday, our neighbor, Ellen, stopped by and carried a few bunches of twigs to the burn pile and introduced herself to Kathy and Bonnie. Kathy gave her a tour of the cottage and she invited us both to stop by and see her house one day. If you enlarge the 4th photo from the top of today's blog, you can see Ellen's house over Denny's observatory. It is yellow, has a large barn, and a pond. It is a very attractive homestead.

We have water to both outside spigots and also a faucet Rex installed near the pressure tank in the basement. We are still carrying water from the basement to the upstairs bathroom so that we can use the main floor toilet. Hopefully, Rex will have working toilets for us soon!

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Spring has arrived!

Spring has arrived at Blossom Ridge Farm and it has been warm enough to work outside in a t-shirt.

Saturday was a beautiful day and we met Barbara and Denny at Biaggi's for a meal. The food was good and the company even better. We spent only about half of the money we were given by the insurance company for picking up the campsite after the ice storm, so we hope to eat out again, this time letting Denny and Barbara choose the restaurant.

After the meal we drove to the cottage to meet with Kathy's son who was there cutting down and cutting up some of the smaller trees and limbs, most of which fell during the ice storm. Kathy helped pile up some of the wood that will be used later as firewood, and also some of the twigs. Allen and Anna, whom we had camped near for the last several years, stopped by in their truck and took a quick tour of the cottage. Bonnie cleaned out her raised beds, starting to get them ready for planting. She has ordered her seeds and plants.

Denny and Barbara are busy working on their retaining walls and Denny was rebuilding one of them. Kathy stopped by to see what they were doing and it looked like a lot of work to her!

Gizmo joined Kathy at the farm today and he seemed to have a good time. Kathy had forgotten just what her hedge trimmer was capable of doing, and she remembered wrong and got nothing done. So she moved into the cottage and swept the basement stairs and cleaned the loft stairs. She also had short visits with Denny and Barbara individually.

We expect to move the end of April but the move will be dependent on when Rex gets the rest of the electrical and plumbing completed. That must be finished before the final house inspection can be done which, of course, must be done before we can move in. We have every confidence that Rex will be able to wrap things up in time for us to get in by the end of April.

We found another place on the west side of the house where the siding has buckled, so Bonnie will be mentioning it to Mike who was probably going to walk around anyway to check for additional buckling when he fixes the buckled siding on the south side of the house. We miss our weekly visits with Mike to admire his handiwork and to discuss the work to come. We look forward to working with him again as finances allow.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

No photos today.

Just an update.

Not much news. Most of the electrical work is done at the cottage. Some left to be done in the kitchen and basement. Also some outside lighting.

Much plumbing to be completed yet and propane line to be connected. The toilets are in place but no water to them or the sinks yet. Kathy has decided that she does not like the shape of the toilets and finds the seats (which she tried out with jeans on) uncomfortable.

Kathy's son, KJ, is in The Fort for 3 weeks of CDL school and the two of them drove to the cottage after work/school yesterday afternoon since it had been a while since KJ had been there and much had been completed. They noticed a section of siding on the south side of the cottage that had buckled and Kathy will give Builder Mike a call so that can be replaced. It seems to be the only place that happened. Thankfully there is extra siding. Kathy and Bonnie noticed it from a distance while driving a couple weeks ago but weren't certain what it was because of shadows and weren't able to stop at that time.

We will be treating Barbara and Denny to Biaggi's this Saturday and are looking forward to that. Kathy had a chef's special the last time we were there that was very good. She was told that the chef would be happy to make it any time, but Kathy can't remember what it was now!

No offer on the villa in Ft. Wayne. That is a disappointment. It would be nice to have it sold.

The grapevines don't look too good. Don't know how many we will lose and must order some more. We will know soon enough when we have (or don't have) bud break.

Bonnie has been busy working on the utility room, trying to get it ready for Rex to put in the mechanicals. We saw an application of plaster on the walls at Olive Garden recently where it looked as though the plaster had been applied with a trowel and a heavy hand. We saw the same application at Cebolla's. So Bonnie is trying that method on the walls in the utility room since it will hide a lot of sins. And we may carry it over to the rest of the basement when we finish it. We hope to do a Mediterranean theme in the basement, and doing the walls that way will work well for that theme.

The rest of our things from the campground lot have been brought to The Farm. This included the charcoal grill, a fire pit ring and firewood. Another thank-you goes out to Barbara and Denny!

Oh, yes. We do have gutters and a downspout on the front of the house now but none on the back yet. Too muddy to get back there and do it, perhaps?

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Thank you, Denny and Barbara!

The ceiling fan on the cathedral ceiling.

The vent-free gas fireplace.

Range hood.

Basement stairway railing and wall light.

Fan on porch/living room.

Shelf on Dutch door.

We went to the farm today. Barbara and Denny arrived from the campground with a load of aluminum from the dismantling of the portable porch. Bonnie went into the basement to begin taping and mudding the drywall while Kathy headed to the campground to empty the shed. Barbara and Denny were right on her heels and they made fairly quick work of it. Well, kind of. The shed fell completely apart when we tried to put it in Denny's trailer.

The comedy began when Kathy, Denny and Barbara arrived back at the farm and attempted to put the shed back together...in the wind...and in a place other than where Bonnie had originally told Denny to put it. And, try as we might, we could not get that shed together. And, believe me, we tried again, and again, and again. Until Barbara decided it might help to look at the instructions. Surprise! We then were able to put it together! Once together and weighted down on the floor with some cement blocks, Denny and Barbara headed home while Kathy put everything back in the shed. For all of their hard work, we hope to treat Barbara and Denny to dinner at Biaggi's in the next few weeks.

June and Scooby stopped by for a short visit and June was complimentary of what she saw. While she was there, Rex and LeeAnn arrived to continue their work. Rex wants to get the electric done and then get on to the plumbing. Everything they have done looks just great. They are making so much progress. All the lighting and the fans look even better than we thought they would. It was hard to pick these items out when we had no idea what the cottage was going to look like when they went up. And the vent-free fireplace had been brought up from the basement and put in place. It looked nice. Also, as promised, Rex brought the hot water heater out of Denny's barn and into the basement.

Yellow brick road?

Our beautiful sidewalk!

Running the water from the well to the cottage.

Freeze-proof hydrant-style water faucet.

Kathy stopped by the cottage on both Wednesday and Thursday this week on her way to and from Logansport to check on the progress of setting the septic tank. The tank had been set on Wednesday, and the line to the leech bed had been done by Thursday. Rex had run the water line from the well to the house and had installed a freeze-proof, hydrant-style water faucet next to the well. The angle of the third photo doesn't accurately show the depth of the trench. It was many, many feet deep.

There were piles of dirt everywhere, so Kathy is still concerned about when the back-filling will be done. She was told that the rains needed to settle the piles of dirt first which does make sense.

We hope to have a working toilet soon since the port-a-pot was removed this week. Barbara offered us the use of their bathroom should we need one.

The ends of the railing to the loft had been amended so that they would pass code and a railing had been run down the basement wall. Mike had dry-walled the utility room, and the plan calls for Bonnie to mud and tape it, which she plans on beginning today instead of installing shelving that she purchased for the closets.

Bonnie has a 5-day holiday and she, Denny and Barbara have been disassembling the deck at the campground and the portable porch. The aluminum from the porch will be sold for scrap and the lumber from the deck will be recycled into a temporary back porch for the cottage until we can afford the wrap-around deck. Kathy will be at the campground today while Bonnie works on the drywall. She plans to empty the shed so that Denny can move it to the farm. She also wants to reverse the doorknob on the upstairs basement door so that the lock is on the kitchen side which makes a heckuva lot more sense to her than having it on the basement side.

Bonnie was excited yesterday to arrive at the cottage and see that the large ceiling fan we purchased for the cathedral ceiling was up. She loved it and said it went very well in its location.

Rex told Denny he would be by for the water heater that Denny and Barbara have so kindly stored for us in their barn. So Bonnie feels a little pressure to get the walls in the utility room done before Rex needs to install all of the things going in there.