Almost done!

It's official, we're almost done with the kid's bathroom!

This last weekend, we again had a ton of help. Alexis came up from Houston, the kids and the parents-in-law helped paint and run errands and lots of other odds-and-ends, and Britta came to help with tile. As usual, we got an incredible amount done!

Friday night, the hubby and Britta were at the house till midnight grouting the tile in the tub surround. Doesn't it look awesome?

Saturday, Alexis and Britta laid tile in the utility room and then Alexis did most of the plumbing in the bathroom.

Toilet is in, vanity is in progress. Do you know how much easier it is to plumb the sink if you do all the work before you drop the sink in? Tricks of the trade... we're learning them!

Sunday, we installed the medicine cabinet and the last light fixtures.

Volia! The (almost) finished product!

Just a bit of painting to do on the trimwork and some more caulking to do, and then seal the tile, and this baby is DONE! Woohoo!

Isn't it just beautiful?

Parrot meets chicken

My mother- and father-in-law, who are currently staying in their RV at the house, have a beautiful green-wing Macaw that my father-in-law uses to do nature and wildlife outreach shows. Her name is Belle, and she's quite a pretty girl.

This weekend, my father-in-law took Belle outside for a bit of a stroll around the property. I caught Belle eyeing the chickens, so I snagged one and held it up for an introduction.

Ummmm... pretty bird?

Alas, Belle was not impressed with her lesser country cousin. As for me, I definitely appreciate the country cousin's egg-laying abilities, despite the lack of intelligence. Besides, said country cousin also eats bugs, a definite bonus in my book!

The utility room

One of the big, must-happen-before-move-in projects has been getting the utility room back together. You see, the water heater tank goes in the utility room, and I consider hot water to be a requirement in any house I'm going to live in for more than, say, 12 hours. Especially when I want to take a hot shower to get the drywall dust off me.

So, part of this weekend was spent getting the utility room back in order. One wall was partly ripped out because of the plumbing, and one wall was partly ripped out because of the electrical work.

This wall covers all the wiring that goes to the main electrical panel for the house. The two holes that we left in the wall are for the junction boxes (code says you must have access to these).

Post taping and floating. We still need to put the junction box covers on and wire the plug for the dryer (lower right corner).

Here's the wall with the plumbing for the water heater, as well as the electrical wiring for the heater. At the bottom you can see we ripped out the entire piece of drywall from about 4 feet on down and replaced it - it was in really bad shape from probably 4 or 5 repairs.

The same wall, post taping and floating. It still needs primer and paint, and of course those little silver covers that hide the holes in the wall that the pipe fittings make.

Beautiful tiled and grouted floor! It needs to be dehazed and sealed still, but it's almost done!

Sooo, later this week we'll be dehazing the tile floor and sealing it, as well as priming and painting the walls. Then, the water heater will be installed, and we can install the shiny new front-loading washer and dryer I ordered tonight. And then... then we can have hot water and clean clothes!

Nothing says sexy like overalls and coveralls

For Christmas, I got my husband a pair of navy blue coveralls. I thought they were the best present ever, but he was... shall we say... Less Than Excited. Since then, however, he has become quite enamored with them, since he can come straight to the house after work, throw them on over his work clothes, and get to work. Clean up is as easy as taking them off.

These things are seeing a lot of wear!

I confess to being a bit jealous of the coveralls. I, on the other hand, had to bring a complete change of clothes to the house every day after work, and I've done loads and loads and LOADS of drywall and paint covered laundry (my favorite!). So, I poked around and discovered some ladies' Carhartt overalls, which looked warm and toasty. However, nobody around actually had any in stock, and the one place that did had them in Pink. And we all know how I feel about Pink. So those were out. Online orders were an option, but Carhartts are pretty pricey, and I was hoping to find some on sale locally.

Well, the other day I was shopping at Academy, and lo and behold, they had a good selection of men's Carhartt overalls - on sale too! I tried on the 32/32s and the fit wasn't too bad, so I snagged them.

Aren't those just the sexiest overalls you've ever seen? I know, you want a pair too.

I admit that I was hoping for coveralls instead of just overalls, but since they only had coveralls in men's 40/32, that option was out. Besides, these will do nicely!

And in case you're wondering, yes, I did buy a pair for the husband too. He looks even better in his. :)

The Bathroom

Once again, our good friend Alexis and his wife came from Houston to help us with the tile this weekend. And boy, did we make some impressive headway on the bathroom!

Back and side wall being built up. We made the mistake of not matching the pattern on the corners, and instead basing the pattern off of a single large tile in the middle of each wall. We also picked a pattern that's really a pain in the butt to do. Oh well, lesson learned.

Building up the side wall.

Back wall completely built, ~10:30 on Saturday night. Not too shabby!

Back and side wall complete!

The floor also got grouted, which means we just have to seal it and we can install the toilet and the vanity! Woohoo!

Beadboard is up and primed. Unfortunately, it needs to be sanded and primed again.

Starting to look like a bathroom... well, minus the toilet and vanity, but still!

Who knew that a taped, floated, textured, primed wall could be so pretty? Yeah, I know it's plain, but a lot of work went into getting it to be like this!

We still have plenty to do to make the bathroom fully-functional, but it's getting closer every day! Hopefully by next weekend, it will be mostly done except for the trim work and whatnot.

Randomness

So, I have news on the bathroom over the weekend (all good) but am waiting for the pictures from it, so I'll post what I've got.

First off: The horses are slogging around in the mud in their sacrifice paddock. We've had a BUNCH of rain in the last week, and it turns out that the sacrifice paddock, especially the part under the shed eves, is a low spot in the land. Just our luck. The mulch we put in, plus the wood chips that the City delivered (free of charge!) last week, have helped a little bit, but it's very, very muddy with standing water. Ick. Did I mention that more rain is expected in the next week? A barn with a real sacrifice paddock - one that doesn't turn into mud - is going to be really high on the priority list before too much longer!

Saga standing in the rain.

On the bright side, the round bale that we got and put under the shed row seems to be working well. I love the art forms the horses munch in round bales!

Red peering out from behind the round bale. I always wonder what horses think when they see a new round bale - after all, it's a pile of food taller than they are!

We also spent our first nights at the house last week - Thursday and Friday nights, although we were in the camper. We got drywall and tile work done, and after that we were desperate for something to relax and drink. We found some black box wine in the camper from our trip over Christmas, and since we were out of wine glasses, we made do with a mug.

Classy, no? Miz Manners would never approve!

Anie continues to work well as a guard dog. Nobody walks by our house without her noticing, and she's always there to greet us when we get home. I groom her daily, which she adores. Over the weekend we heard coyotes singing in the back woods, and she howled right back - and barked, quite a lot. But she never seems to bark unless there's a reason, so I know she's doing her job.

Anie hard at work (haha!). I love how she's picked the shady spot under the tree in this picture.

Feeding the family

One of the big reasons for getting the farmlet, in addition to having the horses with us, is to provide more of our food. At our house in the city, we had 5 hens for eggs. However, they couldn't provide enough eggs for the four of us - we looove eggs here, and I use them in baking all the time. So, we wanted to expand our egg producing flock. Currently, we're at 10, 5 of which are laying and 5 of which are about 2 months old. They should start to produce late this spring. Eventually we'll get up to about 20 or so hens, but we'll build up to that as time goes on.

One of the hens dust bathing in the front flower bed (ok, there's no flowers, but someday it might be a flower bed).

Also, I want a garden... a really big garden. I've tried a bit of gardening at our city house, but had problems with rats, poor soil, and of course, lack of water. The new house has a small garden already, with some deer-proof fencing around it. I haven't planted anything in it yet, but I was walking around the other day and noticed a few onions that have somehow made it over the winter. Check these out!

Surprise! There are about 6 volunteer onions in the garden, in amongst the weeds. I wonder what else will sprout when it gets a bit warmer?

One thing we won't raise ourselves is beef, in part because we don't have enough space and in part because we have a fantastic supplier, Paidom Meats. He's not quite as local as we could get, but the quality is always top notch and he delivers state-wide several times per year. Last week we cooked up a roast beef that we ate for four days. Delicious!

We also do most of our shopping at the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market, which we can actually walk to from the new house. Someday, I would love to ride the horses to the market - how neat would that be?