April Showers bring........Foxes

Fox den near the barn

Well,  Not a whole lot has been going on.  We traveled for spring break and have had some scouting events keeping us from any major projects.

Chris did get some of the finishing trim up for the bath and kitchen cabinets.  Mostly our efforts have been focused on your typical honey do list.  Fix that door, hang that picture, paint that room,  hang these curtains....you get the gist.

I am trying to get the garden ready for planting.  Most of the beds have been turned, composted and turned again.  I have loads of seedlings ready to go in the ground as soon as the danger of frost has passed.  It is hard to wait especially after we had such a mild spring last year.  I did get lettuce, onions and a new variety of rhubarb into the ground. 

We had some unfortunate circumstances with the chickens this week.  The boys and I caught a fox red-handed.  We came home to find him munching on one of our girls and a whole mess of every color feather you could think of.  All he did was eat the heads.  Eeeeewwww.  In total I think we have lost 5 chickens.  The flock is dwindling, which is OK because our coop was pretty full.  I think our egg customers will be the most disappointed.

We Passed Gas

Our final inspection stickers

The gas inspection that is.  As of 2/22 we passed our final inspections for the trades.  That is HVAC, Plumbing, Gas and Electrical.  The inside of the house is finished except for trim and Cooper's closet door.  We still have a small mount of siding and exterior trim as well.  Once those things are off our list we will be very close to getting our occupancy permit. We need to re-order that door since the opening is too big.  Chris is going to re-frame the opening and we will get a new door. 

I have been pouring over seed catalogs gearing up for planting.  the garden look a mess but I am hoping for some warmer weather to get the beds turned over and cardboard down between the rows.  I did plant some lettuce and spinach in a pot on the front porch.  My hope is that the slugs will stay away since it is up on the porch and that we will eat it faster than it grows since it is so accessible to the kitchen.

We lost another chicken.  We think to a fox.  We found her,  and whatever got her just had a little snack and left.  That brings our total casualties to 3 due to predators.  This week egg production s back up due to rising temperature and longer days.  We are getting 13+ eggs a day.

Kitchen,  still needs some trim on cabinets, but it i fully functional.

The last week of February Jim and Marie came for a working visit.  Unfortunately Marie had the plague so we couldn't work her to hard.  We did get the barn all cleaned and organized. It looks so civilized now and we can find things.

Marie and I put up a tile back splash above the cook top.  What a great mom! It came out better than expected and we are getting lots of compliments. 

My purple bathroom, which I let Chris use.

Now that we are all moved in,  I decided to change some paint colors.  I repainted the family room a dark brown and our master bath purple. I don't think Chris is too crazy about the purple,  but I love it!

Welcome Leonard

The house projects are slowing down,or maybe we are slowing down.  We passed both Electrical and Mechanical final inspections in the past couple of weeks.  Once we pass plumbing then I have to go back to researching what else we need to do to get our occupancy permit.

During this whole project the boys have been so helpful and so good at self entertaining that we treated them to a day at Madam Tussuad's Wax museum in DC last week.  While it was fun and interesting,  Jackson's only comment was that it was creepy. The boys have also been taking advantage of the slow time to work on some scouting merit badges. 

We lost two chickens recently.  The two roosters had been battling it out and the lesser dominate roo was refusing to go into the pen at night.  I told him that if he didn't go in he would get eaten and sure enough,  after 3 nights something got him. There was quite the mess of feathers in the yard. We lost the second to a hawk.  It was one of the smaller leghorns, and one of only two we had that lay white eggs.  We are down to 19 chickens and getting anywhere between 8 and 12 eggs a day,  not bad for winter.

Jackson added another pet to our menagerie.  He saved his money for a very long time and bought all the supplies and a leopard gecko.  He named him Leonard after a character from the show "Big Bang Theory". He is cute...behind glass.  If he gets out I may move back into the RV.

We are in hot water now!

January 18th we finally got the hot water running!  The hot water came in the nick of time.  Last week the propane tank for the trailer emptied.  So rather than refill it, we made due with space heaters and the elec. hot water heater which is small so that meant really quick showers. I feel like hot water is such a huge success I should stop writing now.  However,  we have gotten more things done that we need to brag about so I'll continue.

Front Porch.  Still needs railings

The last two weekends have brought some very mild temperatures and lots of sunshine so Chris was able to finish the porch ceiling.  He used pre-finished bamboo flooring planks and finish nailed them to the ceiling.  It really gives the porch a nice finished look.  Especially if you look at the photo on the top left side bar of this page.  It shows the porch when we first purchased the property.

Last week the granite was installed,  but I wasn't able to post photos so here is a shot of our giant center islandIt is 7ft x 7ft.  We have been loving eating breakfast here.  Having a solid surface on which to pour milk has made Cooper's life much less messy.

Kitchen

This week Chris has been finishing up the odd tasks.  He hangs a door or two most week nights.  He finished the cabinets in the master bath and just needs the trim work on them.  He has a huge list of little things that is getting shorter each day.

We also hope to winterize the RV this week. Now that we no longer need it for showers we can close it down.  We have quite a bit of clean up to do then we plan to sell it back to the RV place.  Know anyone in need of a 40ft 3BR 2 bath RV? 

Master BR.  Sunny with a view of the woods.

Lastly I wanted to post a photo of the view from our bedroom.  It is really cool to wake up and look right out and see deer, turkey, fox, squirrel and whatever else is meandering past.

Happy New Year

We had a great holiday working every day.  We got lots of little odds and ends wrapped up.  The closets are all finished up and clothes have moved in.  While Chris and I were happy to be reunited with our complete wardrobes,  all clothing we stored for the boys is too small.  Either they grew a lot or we lived in the RV a lot longer than expected.

The gas was hooked up to the house just today,  so we hope the plumber will be by next week to get the hot water flowing.  At that point I anticipate we will all be in the hot shower as much as possible.

The granite counter tops were installed in the kitchen today.  They came out much better than expected. We were very happy with Flintstone Granite company.  We are so pleased Fred left his position as Dino-crane operator and broke out on is own.

Bonus Update

Weird phenomenon of a ladder standing in yard.

I forgot to mention in the last post the drama a couple of weeks age with our power line.  As I was walking back from feeding the chickens,  I noticed a ladder standing straight up in the yard.  I stared at it for a couple of seconds because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how it was doing that and our ladder was by the house about 100 feet away.  Then I realized it was holding up our power line.  Yikes, what idiot props up a power line with a metal ladder?  It turns out a dump truck driver drove under it with his bed up.  Then he propped it up and left.  Needless to say,  it knocked out the power, and the guy didn't even tell us.  We got the power fixed up and called our excavator to let him know what the driver did.

I think the power repair person summed it up quite well.  "What a dumb-ass"

Merry Christmas

I will begin by apologizing to our friends and family,  no Christmas card this year,  but we will attempt to get a New Years card out.

It has been a very hectic few weeks.  I have spent every waking moment tiling the boys bathrooms and the mud room.  I got the floor of our bathroom finished, but we are going to hire out the surround as I am sick and tired of tile.  It is a difficult and messy job.  The tile we did get done looks great!

With flooring and heat in the house we decided to have our stuff delivered from storage.  While we didn't plan to move in just yet,  we just had to start sleeping in the house.  Once you see your bed all set up there is just no going back to the RV bed.  On our first morning sleeping here,  we sure surprised the plumber when he let himself in at 7am!

One of our kitchen cabinets came in the wrong size so that has been a real hold up,  but 3inches makes a big difference.  Without the cabinets we can not install the kitchen sink, dishwasher or the cook top,  so meals are still mostly eaten out.  The waitress at our favorite Tuesday spot had to let us know they will be closed for Christmas.  Guess she didn't want to have to worry that we'd be standing there in the cold waiting for our dinner.

The gas and water are not hooked up just yet,  but they set most of the bathroom fixtures this week and  will hopefully turn on the gas and water soon.  Right now it is like camping we sleep in the house but have to go to the trailer for the bathroom and shower.

One of the first items we found when opening the storage pods was the Christmas tree.  So with some coaxing,  we set it up.  It is a little sad since we don't know where the ornaments are and only some of the lights work,  but at least we have a place to put our gifts.  I think as far as the kids are concerned,  it is the best tree ever since we can celebrate our first Christmas in the new house.