Dry Land, No Building Progress

Well, the rain predicted for this week didn't come so our land is now dry. Even so, our contractor hasn't been by again this week so he must have headed over to the other job. With only a few days needed to get the building done, we are anxious for the crew to return - especially before it starts raining again.

We have enjoyed the last couple of nights on the farm now that it is dry though, and we have done a bit of clean up after the workers so we are closer to being able to start building ourselves. Ethan also enlarged the pig area some more, and I picked enough blackberries to try a batch of jam. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have pictures of my jars!

Day 9 of Construction

Yesterday morning when Ethan went out to our farm to take care of the animals, our builder showed up. He came out with one of his workers to tack the Tyvek back up since some of it had blown off in the storm the night before.

Ethan talked with him a bit, and he mentioned that he was going to head over to a different job site for awhile. Although a bit disappointed, this is what we expected since our farm is so incredibly wet. I'm sure the builder was wanting some drier ground, and this other site was in a different area of the state.

A bit after Ethan came home, we loaded up the kids and went to Des Moines for an appointment. Since Mondays are usually the day Ethan takes off, we also did some shopping (actually, just looking at things) and just hung out for the day. On the way home Ethan decided to drive by the farm to see how it was drying up.

We were a couple of miles away when Ethan picked out the white roof of our house. He mentioned that it looked like he saw some red on the sides. I told him not to get his hopes up since the builder told him he was going elsewhere.

When we pulled up to the farm, however, Ethan had been right! Although the builders weren't there anymore (their usually work day wasn't over yet), the front of the house had been sided!

We aren't really sure how long they worked - if they decided to just do some things since they were already out there and muddy, and we aren't sure if they plan on coming back this week or going to the other site. We will take it though!

Day 8 of Construction . . . Still

It took awhile for our farm to dry up after the last rain. Saturday we had to pull one of our vehicles out of the mud with our tractor. But yesterday the ground was finally starting to look dry enough for construction again . . . for awhile.

We drove out to the farm at about 5 pm to watch a storm roll in that would bring with it 60 mile and hour winds and around 1 1/2 inches of rain in 30 minutes. It continued to rain through the night, and I'm sure it would be safe to say we got around 3 inches of rain. And there is more in the forecast this week.

So we will continue enjoy just one side of the building red until it is dry enough for the builders to come back out. It goes so fast when they are out there - it's just getting the conditions right so they can be out there!

Even with the farm too wet to enjoy, I still have plenty of things to do with the project. I have paperwork I can do, and maybe I'll price shop for the materials we are going to need once the builders are done. There is also plenty to do with selling this house and preparing for our eventual move. Although, I'm still hoping for building progress out on the farm.

Sweet Potato Update

I realize that it has been quite awhile since I have done a sweet potato update. I was hoping that at this time this summer I would be able to show you my massive vine of sweet potatoes in the garden.

Unfortunately, my sweet potatoes spent much longer in planting pots and garden pots than I would have liked. While we were waiting for our garden to be workable, they were quite stunted.

This picture was taken mid June. I finally planted them in our garden the first week of July, and they weren't much bigger.











After only a couple of weeks in the garden, they have kicked back into growing gear. They are all looking about the same as this one now.

So while I probably won't have the bumper crop I was hoping for, maybe I'll get one or two for a nice fall treat.

I am going to continue to experiment with them this year though. Once the vines are a little more established, I am going to clip off some tips and try to root them as house plants.

I have heard that they make beautiful vining house plants, but that is not my reason for doing this. I am going to see if it is possible to skip the potato rooting phase of the process next year (although I'll do it again next year just in case) and just plant some slips of my house plant.

Wouldn't it be cool if I were to have grand children some day and they were able to plant sweet potatoes from the same vine their grandma did?

New Cabinets!

Since we didn't get out to the farm today, I don't have any pictures. We are assuming the builders didn't get out there either though, since it was a rainy night and day. Instead, I will share some pictures of what will be inside. :)

If you take a peek at our drawing for the dining room/kitchen, you may notice that we didn't have many cabinets. We decided to only plan for them on one wall since the more money we put into this building, the further we are away from building a stick built house down the road. To make up for the loss of space, we included a long pantry in the hallway opposite the kitchen. This is to store the overflow. We also left one wall of the kitchen open as a "just in case". It could be used for kitchen furniture or in case we wanted to add more cabinets down the road - especially if this house was the only house we would ever build.

There was one more just in case for this second wall though. Just in case we found some used cabinets at a good price.

Well . . . we did! A young couple in the high dollar part of Des Moines decided to redo their 7 year old house's kitchen. Including the cabinets. We caught the add on Craig's list before anyone else did and got a great bargain!

To give you an idea, one wall of cheap Menards cabinets was going to cost over $800. We now have 2 walls worth of 7 year old high end oak cabinets for less than that price.

This is a big answer to prayer for me! I know I could have worked with the few cabinets we had planned, but I was concerned about being able to cook from scratch the way I have been with such limited counter space while still trying to keep the kitchen area from becoming a complete disaster zone!

I am very happy with these cabinets. They will work well with our design, and they will make making homemade egg noodles and bread much easier!

Day 8 of Construction

Today the steel was put on the roof, and just in time. We are supposed to get around 2 inches of rain tomorrow, and it is supposed to keep coming into the weekend. Although the ridge vent isn't on yet, the majority of the roof is covered.

The north side of the house also got its steel on, and now our house has some color! It was really cool to drive around to the back and get a glimpse of how things will look once it is completed.
I will admit, the windows on the back of the house are kind of sparse, but we did this on purpose. We could have added a third window on the back with the new third bedroom, but we preferred to have it on the end of the building instead. Doing this allows us to have a view out each side of the house to observe what's going on in the pasture. Also, since this is the north side of the house, fewer windows means less heat loss in the winter while the cold winds blow. Besides, there are only two houses past us on the road that runs by the north side, and then it turns into a class B road - basically a dead end. So not many people will look at the house from this angle, including us.

So all of that to say, we are really happy with what we see and how things are coming along. :)

Camper Cushions

I have spent quite a bit of my "free time" in the house working on new cushions for our camper.

Not only had this camper been used for family vacations, but a bachelor had lived in it a year while building his house and the last family used it as a hunting camper. The 40 year old cushions covers that came with the camper had broken zippers, shredding fabric, outdated colors, and were just plain nasty. Because of this, the covers went straight to the garbage. I didn't even want to save them to use them as patterns.

After we sprayed off the cushions and sanitized them twice (leaving them smelling just like new), I started on the cushion covers.

I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the covers, but I wanted them nice. I got some cheap used sheets from a 2nd hand store for the first cover. I then measured the cushions, cut the fabric to size, sewed them up, and worked the cushion inside. These first covers are going to be permanent, so I finished them off by stitching the end closed by hand.

Next came the removable covers. I used some surprisingly heavy $1/ yard promotional fabric from Wal-Mart. I was really happy with this since it is similar to upholstery weight but so much cheaper! I adjusted my measurements just a bit to get a really snug fit, and then I sewed these covers up.

I wasn't quite sure how to finish them off to make them removable though. I could have used zippers, but I would have spent quite a bit of money and time on them. Buttons were another option, but also would have added up with money and time. Velcro wouldn't hold for sure since the fit was so snug, and snaps might have popped too. I didn't want to whip stitch the ends, since I wanted them to be easy to remove and wash. So I just ended up getting a box of quilter's safety pins and pinned the ends shut. These ends will be pushed against the wall anyway so they won't be seen. I did leave enough fabric, however, that if I ever wanted to add snaps or buttons I could.

We hope to pull the camper to the farm soon. We should be able to have electricity next week. So this week I am busy working on lined curtains - all 16 of them! It will take some time, but thankfully I found some more $1/yard promotional fabric that will work and have some leftover old sheets for the lining.

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Tools of My Trade

Shock Wave was the chemical that the mold remediation service referred us to when we were battling mold in the house we were living in. We were told it is what is used to clean hospital rooms that have had hazardous organisms, and that is is EPA safe. This is what we used to clean our camper and cushions, and we were very pleased with the fresh smell of the previously musty smelling camper.