Tag: adventure

One Year Update

Listing Photos

It all started with my Starting Point post. There I wrote my initial thoughts and ideas for this house as recorded last November. We bought this house and found many things wrong with it. We starting putting work into the house starting last October/November, and below is what we were able to accomplish so far.

Current Progress

As you can see just between the first set of photos and the second, we’ve made some big changes. We removes trees and bushes, put in raised beds, added an exterior door on the garage, and changed the accent color on the house from red to teal. Inside, we removed a lot of the latex paint off the utility room walls, we built and removed our builtin pantry, and installed a storage shelf instead. We removed the broken dishwasher and sealed the space to be used for my canning stuff. We also upgraded the light in the kitchen, painted cabinets, remove the old range microwave and added a new range-hood, as well as replaced the old leaking kitchen faucet. In the dining room, we refinished the wall after removing about 1/3 of the wallpaper in the house, and we also created a lampshade for our single handing bulb from a lantern we used at our wedding reception. We haven’t done too much to the living room yet; we added a projector screen and are mainly using it for storing some of our extra stuff until we finish the master bedroom. We replaced the light fixture in the hall, and upgraded all the light switches in the house to the rocker style. We repainted the bathroom, removed the medicine cabinet, changed the light fixture, and painted the vanity and changed the hardware. We also added a new shower curtain to match. In the original green room, due to it’s carpet color, we originally replaced the floor in the closet with vinyl planking. After seeing how easy it was, we took on the task of redoing the entire rooms floor, which was not an easy task. we remove the wood from the closet to be replaced with matching floor eventually, I also painted the bedroom the two shades of orange, we moved in, and that is the state of our orange room. Finally, our current project is the master bedroom, or our new green room. We just finished laying the flooring on Saturday. There is still a lot of work we want to do in that room before the new unveiling, but I hope this helps build some excitement for the next unveiling, which will be coming in the next two weeks or so.

A Year’s Worth of Projects

A year is so long, yet so short. We were able to accomplish so much because of the blessing we’ve received this year and from taking things in stride. We are happy for our new experiences and are content with this house even as we continue to find more problems. We aren’t sure if we’ll keep this house forever, but we are happy for all the good things this house is providing for us. This Lustron gives my husband and I something to do together, to bond over, and to dream for. We hope for nothing but the best for this house in the future, and we hope our fingerprint on this house improves the beauty of this old Lustron, rather than hinders it’s potential.

For more on our home improvement posts from this year, feel free to check out any of this posts below. If not, I’ll see you again soon!

Starting Point

New Light Fixtures

New Kitchen Faucet

Update and Mistakes

DIY Hidden Pantry

New Dining Room Light

Removing Wallpaper

Closet Work

Bathroom Transformation

Dishwasher to Storage

Kitchen Cabinet Updating

Raised Beds

New Kitchen Vent Hood

A New Big Project: Laminate Plank Flooring

Green Room Flooring

Finishing Our Guest Room

New Kitchen Shelf

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Garden Update June 2020

Hello, and welcome to another one of my garden updates. My last update was for May, and this one is for June. (Sorry it’s a bit later than the last one.) My garden has grown so fast, it’s shocking! I’ve gotten some radishes and lettuce off my plants, and this weekend I was able to get some cucumbers off my plants too.

This last month I’ve learned some valuable lessons. First, and I mentioned it in my last post, it is so important to space radishes. I tried to get them high density, just it just grew into a mess, and it took about 2 weeks longer to get any. Also, the two pictures below of harvested radishes is all the radishes I was able to harvest out of that mess. I had several radishes break under the soil and begin to rot, and I had many many more that produced no bulb due to overcrowding.

Second, I’ve discovered that cucumbers are a handful! I’ve been trying to grow them vertically, tying them to a tomato cage. And, though that works, They don’t climb naturally well, so I find myself every 1-2 days in the garden directing and tying off my cucumber plants. I also trimmed off some of the lower leaves off my cucumbers. They were turning yellow and dying, and they were also restricting air flow and making it hard to see any low hanging cucumbers.

Third, I learned all spacing needs to be respected more. I planted my green beans and cucumbers about 18 inches apart, and you’d swear they are star-crossed lovers. I go out into my garden everyday, and I always see these two plants reaching for one another, and being less than an inch from becoming a tangled mess I don’t look forward to dealing with. However, my other bed of lettuce, Swiss chard, tomatoes, and onions aren’t having any crowding issues. My Swiss chard didn’t come up. I believe I waited too long to plant. I also planted another segment of lettuce, and that also didn’t come up, I’m assuming same problem. My onions in that bed have appeared to stop growing. They are tinier than the other bed despite being planted earlier. They tops have also begun to fall over on several in that bed, leading me to believe pour drainage is likely a problem. I have several tomatoes that are nice and big, however none have begun to turn red yet. I also have one that a bug got into, but that’s not bad.

Fourth, I’ve learned good soil and drainage is important. As I just mentioned, my one bed isn’t holding onions, and I’m positive that if it isn’t holding onto moisture too much, the soil is likely not giving them enough nutrients. This bed was filled with mostly decomposed mulch, so the soil isn’t as good as my other bed. Besides that, the fabric bags we filled using soil from my in-law’s house, and their soil has a very high clay content. Because of this, in the hot June/July weather, I have to go and water them about every other day, when I see the leaves really wilting.

I’ve gotten everything planted and going. Some things aren’t growing as well as others, but I’m learning. We got a peach tree about 2 weeks ago and got that into the ground. I also left a few radishes to go to seed, and I have 2 onion sets going to seed now.

Ive also fertilized my soil about 3 times. I’ve been using Miracle Grow plant food for vegetables. Between that, watering regularly, and all the warm weather, my veggies have grown so fast!

May 24

May 29

June 9

June 18

June 21

June 24

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Update and Mistakes

Josh and I have been working on multiple big projects since Christmas. We’ve been working to get a bit more DIY content on the blog, but we’ve found it’s just a little too hard to do some of these projects in winter.

We’ve pulled out our old dishwasher, since it stopped working mid-November, and though we would like another one eventually, we just don’t have the money or the options at this point to get another one, even used. So, we’re trying to come up with a plan for the now hole under our cabinets. We’ve also been working on a hidden roll out pantry. We started this project on the First, but we’ve been delayed a bit and it’s been taking a few days to finish it up, but hopefully, it will be up by Friday, fingers crossed! Finally, our big mistake.

We’ve been working on removing wallpaper for a few weeks now. But, there is a spot where they plastered over wallpaper, so we decided sanding would be the best option. So, last night we decided to sand down the wall, and though it looks great now, I think I’m going to go crazy with how much plaster dust is covering EVERYTHING! I’ve seen some forums talking about this problem and they encourage washing all fabrics and wet wiping down all surfaces, but man! It’s so much! So, if you ever attack a project like this, please, wear face masks (we did that atleast), make sure the room is well ventilated and sealed off from other rooms if possible, and try not to get frustrated with the mess you just made!

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This Weekend: Shower Disaster and, Filling our Freezer

Shower Problems

One thing that happened this weekend was our shower stopped working. When we first moved in, the shower was already not working correctly. The hot water knob would slip and make it very difficult to turn on and off the water, as well as hard to close it enough to prevent a leak. In September or October, Josh pulled apart the hot water knob, and was able to tighten a clamp on the cartridge. But, Sunday morning when I was about to shower, the clamp finally gave again, so Josh pulled apart the mechanism and broke the old clamp, but it needed to be actually fixed this time anyway.
We turned off the water, took out the cartridge, and took it to ACE hardware to find replacement cartridges. We found two, so we could also replace the cold water too, and we also bought new handles that attach directly to the splines on the cartridge. We returned home late, but we still fixed it and with that we finally have water again. What do you think of the new knobs? Have you ever had problems with your shower handles?

Packing our Freezer (Venison)

We are not vegan or vegetarians, but my husband and I are fervently against animal cruelty. We also understand that our meals come from animals. We understand that some are against hunting, however hundreds of deer die every winter from starvation and car accidents in our area, and if hunting will prevent animal suffering and if hunting can provide food for someone, we feel hunting is worth it. We don’t enjoy the action of hunting, but our ecosystem is cruel. We also use as much of the meat as possible, and find that the meat is often healthier than normal grass/corn fed beef, and has a fat content of less than most beefs. Deer usually has a fat content of less that 5%.
With that understood, Josh went hunting this weekend and managed to get a button buck. I had gone hunting with him earlier this year, but this weekend we were fortunate enough to get a small buck. We then took Sunday to process the deer and get it cut and packaged for meals. We are grateful that now we will have 36 meals covered as a result, and it is a blessing that we won’t have to spend as much on groceries in these winter months as a result.
What does this mean? It means I’m going to be making a lot of recipes in the next few months using a mixture of my normal beef, pork, chicken, but now also venison. This will be my first year cooking venison, so bear with me as I try new recipes and give you alternates to Venison if you want to try the same recipe. As you can see my freezer is now mostly meat and frozen meals, so please consider subscribing or following if you want to keep up with everything to come!

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They come in Threes

Hello everyone. Another update into our lives in a Lustron.

Starting the day before yesterday we noticed our lights dimming whenever the heat or well pump would kick on. However, yesterday night when our furnace’s fan would kick on, the whole house would dim down to nearly off. We started by warming up some Chicken Divan in our microwave while watching the power drop, and decided that we would call once we eat, because we knew it could be a long night. We called at eight o’clock last night, and the repair technician arrived at nine. It took him an hour and a half to fixed the problem and he was on his way.

What happened?
Well, As mentioned in the post “Starting Point”, we had taken down a large pine tree with our wedding money. That had been a long day because the company was supposed to arrive at noon, then one, then two, but they eventually got here at five after having to change a flat on their way over. When we got a quote from them, we had pointed out how close it was to the house and had mentioned that our electricity is run into the house near the tree. Can you see where this is going? About six thirty, they were cutting a branch and guiding it down when it pulled our 220 line out of our house, and our 120 was flickering. The electric company has been fantastic every time we work with them, and they sent out a man who came to disconnect us until the tree company could get a man in to fix the weather head. So, then he did that, he put in connectors on our lines from the road to make the hook up faster and to have a fast way to disconnect and reconnect in the future. It turns out our neutral connector had come loose, which was why all our power had been flickering.

Never a dull moment. Hopefully that is it for the excitement for a while, but we are very glad that is was an easy fix, and it didn’t cost us anything!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and Josh and I have decided to do it as just ourselves this year as our first year married. It’s also beginning to look a lot like Christmas in all of the stores. How are you on your holiday shopping? We have most of ours done, but the idea of Christmas hit me before Halloween this year, so I started very early. Don’t let the holidays stress you out. Amazon can ship really fast, and making sure you stay on top of life’s expenses is more important.

Stay tuned for some recipes over the next couple days. I’ve been doing so many posts on life updates and projects that I should really start working on my strong suit.

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