Our Hillbilly Home - Our Winter's Work

This story is about how we got started with our farm several years ago...I was chatting with a friend one day and talking about how we got our house, and she wanted to see some photos so I decided to write the story for my blog and share photos instead of trying to e-mail a bunch to her. If you missed the first part of this story, you can find the links to all the parts on my links page.
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With the House moved, we had to finish the ends of the foundation...and then Dad worked on getting our Kitchen foundation blocked up, so when we got around to building it in the spring it would be ready.

When I was asked how big I wanted the kitchen I said I wanted it to go from the window in the Dinning room to the end of the house so it wouldn't block the Dinning room window...but had I known at the time that DH was planning on making the side porch go the whole width of the house, I would have had them put it out to the end of where the porch was going to go.

That's the biggest problem I have with our house...I wish the kitchen was a tad bit bigger...yes it really SHOULD be big enough, but had I had that little extra room, I could have had the refrigerator so one side wasn't against the wall...and that would have made my life much easier. LOL It's next to impossible to get some things in and out of my side by side freezer, cause I can't open the door back far enough. I'd have loved to have that little extra cabinet space I'd have gotten, if I had that extra room too. *sigh* Live and learn...guess I'm stuck with it like this now though. I do love my home, so if that's the biggest problem, I guess I can't complain to much.


Anyway, once Dad had the kitchen blocked up, they got the foundation for the side porch ready to pour. We needed to get all of the foundation work done, so the landscaping could get finished...so that was the first thing we worked on...even though the side porch wasn't built till much later, we at least had to have the foundation ready for it, so it could be buried when the landscaping was done.. :)

It took the landscaping guy quite a while to get back and get all the dirt moved around so we had a better looking area around the house. He got sick, so couldn't make it back for several weeks. I was so happy to finally have it done once he did make it back to finish.


December and January of that winter, I worked on getting the layers of wallpaper off our walls, while DH worked on rewiring the house...so it was up to date with the wiring and had way more outlets. By the middle of January 2004 we had electricity, so we could stop having to use the small generator when we needed some.

Another winter project was to put some pull down steps in the utility room so we could actually use the large space in the attic. We put down flooring after we insulated the floor (We blew in insulation in the attic floor and the walls because I was tired of having a cold house like our Polk one was.) added some lights up there and have a wonderful HUGE place to store all the things that wouldn't fit downstairs in the main part of the house.

We also changed out all the old windows, with some that we had gotten on our jobs over the years...ones that weren't the right size, or had a small thing wrong with them that wasn't going to bother us. They are double pane windows, so much better than what was in the house before. We had to take all the trim off from around the windows, and had a little repair work here and there with the plaster, but eventually we had all the windows in, and the trim back on.

The interior doors got changed out also, so they would actually open and shut right. LOL The old doors wouldn't shut very well, so I finally decided to just get new ones, on everything except for the closets...and wish I had there to actually, since it would be nice if they would open and shut nicely too. However, that wasn't to important to me, so to save money I let them go for now. Maybe eventually they will get changed out too. We got a double door for the guest room, because I didn't like the idea of just using a curtain for that room. This way too, we can keep the dogs out of there and keep it looking nice, without to much work.

All in all it was a productive winter with warmer than usual temps for the first half of it (I think we had some 50's and 60's several times through December...just not exactly sure of the exact temps...and that's totally unusual for here), so we were ready to build the kitchen and paint by the time spring came, once we could find the time to be at the farm long enough to do so.

Stay tuned for Building the Kitchen...

...next time on "Our Hillbilly Home".
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More will come once I get the photos gathered, and words written...please forgive the fact that I'm clearly NOT a "writer" AND the time it could take for the next part to show up...a day, a week, a month or... God forbid... a year.
Next installment is here.