I'm in Love

With my new cement board siding.

In the above picture you can see the old and new siding. Which is which you ask. Would you believe it's this hard to tell in real life too? Honest.

The right hand side is the new cement board and the left hand side is the old cedar.

We've got another great carpenter working with Dale on putting the stuff up for us. I don't know what we've done lately. Maybe it's the bad run of luck we've had in other areas of life, but we've had amazing carpenter karma. Actually it all started when I got pregnant. Is that the secret? People do say I'm glowing. Or has it just gotten around town that I'm pregnant, married to an unemployed guy, and living in, as Greg would say, a fuculent hell hole. Do I invoke pity? Hell! Does it matter?

On another note the picture above shows a little surprise we uncovered. The two different colors of wood shows where they raised the roof of the original house at some point.

Fan Mail

Got this note delivered to me yesterday.

I already had guilt because I haven't sent my Christmas cards yet.

A Little R&R

Last Christmas Tim gave me a gift certificate for the bed and breakfast in town. We were planning on using it when we refinished our floors. However, since that hasn't happened yet, and the thing has a year expiration date on it, we opted to just stay for no good reason. We were the only couple there that night and we had a lovely time exploring, sitting in front of one of the many fireplaces, and vegging out in front of the TV.

In fact, if you are still looking for that special Christmas something for that special old house-a-phile I think this would be a great idea. Especially if you are currently like us, camping with a mortgage.

This was our bedroom:


Here's some shots from the rest of the house:


Oooo! And if anyone needs any ideas for me, I LOVE this nativity set.

Work continues in the kitchen and pantry this week. There is SO MUCH wood work to be primed, painted, and hung.

The pantry's doors and drawers are finished. They just need to be hung and handles put on.

We're basically sitting around waiting for paint to dry. Here's a view of the pantry looking through the dining room pass through. The interior yellow is so much brighter in person. I'm disappointed it doesn't come through better in the photo. It's going to take another coat of the cream to get good enough coverage.

Dale has all of the bead board up and painted in the kitchen. There's pieces of cap missing here and there, but then we've pretty much finished up with woodwork in there. Well, at least until we get a little warmer weather to do the exterior doors and windows.

Welcome Back, Looking Good

Isn't funny how when you put certain parts of the house back it's like welcoming back an old friend who has been gone for way too long?

Welcome back kitchen bead board!

Kitchen Trim...So Close

The trim is up around the openings in the kitchen. We both made the comment after seeing this that we were starting to think this day would never come.
Of course, we still have a ways to go. The windows themselves need painting. The door to the south porch needs trimmed out and a coat of paint.
And we have A LOT of bead board to deal with.

Ok. I officially depressed myself.

While We Aren't Quite Ready to Host the Thanksgiving Feast...

We are getting closer thanks to Dale. I'm currently so smitten with him I'm thinking of calling him Wonder Dale. Well, maybe not actually to his face. I don't want him to think I'm making fun of him and leave.

Last week he finished up where I left off with the mudroom trim.

And made short work of the trim in the little hallway to the mudroom.

Em and family- note the base board. It's the stuff from your barn :)
Thanks again!

It's Been One Hell of a Fall

I'd like to start out by apologizing to everyone. I am so sorry for falling off the face of the "earth" with no warning or explanation. I just didn't really have the energy to share all of this until now.

I don't know if I ever officially shared this here, but Tim is a professional pilot. He went to college for it. He has just about every license the FAA provides. And what's really amazing is it all comes so natural to him. To him flying an aircraft of any type is as easy as walking down the street. What is strange is he's always known that he was going to be a pilot. His family tells stories of asking him what he was playing and he'd answer, "I'm Darryl Klink the spray pilot." It's still a mystery where he got the name.

Every year a professional pilot must get a flight physical. Tim went in for his early this fall. I went along, but waited in the waiting room. The whole thing took way to long and I made it through the waiting rooms selection of crappy magazines way to quickly. When Tim finally came out front he didn't speak to me, in fact he walked right by like I didn't exist. I knew something was very wrong. It seemed like forever at the nurses check-out. He was setting up more appointments for some scary unknown reason. Why wouldn't he look at me to let me know it was alright?

The next couple of weeks were a blur of doctor and nurse's appointments. To make a long story short Tim has Type I diabetes. His blood sugar level at that first doctors appointment was in the 300's, a normal person's 80-120. It had some how developed in the last year (the previous year's flight physical was completely normal), and as the doctors described the signs we began to wonder how we didn't catch it earlier.

So with one simple urine test a 10 year career is over. The FAA doesn't license pilots who are taking insulin due to the risk of low blood sugar. How does someone find a new "career" when they've already had the one they love? That's the question he's struggling with now. And I don't know how to fix it. I'm not used to that. I dive in with a list and a plan of attack to make it all better. But there is no where to dive and I can't make it better. I just want to give him my pancreas, but we'd probably need a weeks vacation time to get to one of those countries that would perform that kind of surgery. I used all of my vacation accompanying him to flight training schools this spring. (see we still have some what of a sense of humor)

But according to his specialist the out look is good. In 5-10 years a legal transplant or a prothesis of some sort is very likely to be an option. His only task is to keep himself healthy until one of these options becomes available. And he's doing a wonderful job of that. He was just telling me the other day that his one month level is at 97. And this entire time he's never had a low blood sugar episode. Take that stupid FAA.

In other news we have hired a friend of Tim's to help finish the house. Last week was his first week and he's doing a beautiful job. He works quickly and neatly. I had some real problems wrapping my head around the idea of someone helping with stuff we are "perfectly capable of doing ourselves." But Dale definitely won me over in the first week.

Plus, how much right to I have to complain when I'm not allowed to help because I'm pregnant. Yes, one week after we found out about Tim's diabetes we were very surprised (we had been trying for over a year) to discover I had my own health issues.

So I am 28 years old, pregnant, married to a guy with no job, and living in a house with holes in the floor/walls. Not exactly where I had pictured my life ending up. But you know what, I wouldn't change it for the world.

In The Soft Glow of a Work Light

I guess Tim was pretty proud of the painting he did around the front door this afternoon. It was in the "spot light" when I got home from work tonight.

Three Years of Marriage

This little guy in our front yard is my one year anniversary present to Tim. It is the first new tree we planted on the farm. And while the maples we planted a year later have slowly failed this lively little pin-oak keeps growing like a weed.

I think it's a good sign :)

We Have Lights, Kind Of

Tim got this set of posts completely painted.

5 more to go.

He also got the light fixtures in. However, since we don't have the switches wired yet we can't turn them on.

However, that should be done by Christmas along with the electrical boxes, and we can string tons of lights.

Who Needs Lighting When You Have Bright Yellow Paint?

Friday the pantry looks like this...

By Monday it's almost looking good enough for the fine china. One more coat of the yellow to go and a couple of coats of cream on the outside is all it needs.

Thanks for all your help mom, you're the best!

A Little Color on the Porch

Tim did a test drive of a couple of the colors last night.

She's a Priming Machine Folks

My sister just rode 5 miles on a bike to prime my porch ceilings while I, unfortunately, have to go make the money to purchase the gallons of primer she is working her way through.
Why else does she rock? She brought me the rest of my birthday present that finally arrived (the first part was dark chocolate from Germany).

The book is titled, "Historic Preservation" by Norman Tyler. It's "An introduction to its history, principle, and practice" as the book cover says. I will be taking to work with me tonight to read over break.

The books starts off with a great quote,

"Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, "See! this our fathers did for us." for, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones or in its gold. Its glory is in its Age." -John Ruskin

Kitchen Porch Primed

Action shot:
Tim caulking the kitchen porch. My sister and mom came Saturday and finished priming the porch while Tim and I were bumming around at Osage's Fall festival. Yes, I'm starting to have guilt.

Porch Painting Starts

Tim got the last of the trim up.

Unfortunately when we finished the roof we did not leave enough room to match the trim on the other porch. I know it's going to bother me, but two years after starting this project it's just good to see the end in sight.

My sister and mother-in-law were over yesterday (I of course had to work) and got some priming done.

Work on the Porches Continues

Siding is going up on the porch boxes. While it doesn't seem to be quite as sucky of a job as putting in the corner shower enclosures it's a pretty miserable job.

My dad put it best when Tim was complaining about how un-straight the boards were, "You wouldn't want them too straight, they wouldn't match the house then."
The siding is up around the front door.

Just a couple of coats of paint and a quick visit from the electrician is all that's needed here.

The ceiling is up on the kitchen porch too.

And yes, I will be painting both porch ceilings the traditional sky blue to confuse the local bumble bees.

Front Porch Ceiling Progress

The ceiling is up on the front porch.

We just used beaded plywood and large cove molding from your local big box store.
Tim is now working on putting up molding and the missing trim around the front door.

Won't be long until we'll have the warm glow of porch lights to welcome us home at night.

Something's Going to Happen!

Tim's dad and brother are showing up tonight to help him put the ceilings in the porches (I have to work of course). We've borrowed an air nailer and stapler from a friend so progress should be swift. Expect pictures soon!

Laboring on the Trim

It was my weekend to work, but yesterday before leaving I got a little more woodwork put up in the mudroom. All the chairs in the photo I inherited from my step-father. The two cream ones I'm going to clean up and leave in the mudroom. I think the others are in pretty bad shape so I think I'll use them on the porch to hold plants or something like that.

I'm pretty much done with this room until we get the extra baseboard pieces made.
Tim got the first coat of paint on the trim feet that go in the kitchen.
He also got the first coat on all of the headers and the final coat on the side trim pieces. Where just days away from having the kitchen doorways and windows completely trimmed out.

And then of course it's on to the dreaded 500 million pieces of beadboard.