Thank you all so much for the replies. To answer some posts: I cannot imagine living in a state that does not allow one to live without electricity. That is so sad and I think I would lose my mind. Luckily I grew up in southern Appalachia and well, poor was the norm and I guess they figure since there are still folks living like their great grandparents live, why put the burden on them of getting electric and all that. I feel for you, not having that choice. This area is much different than most any other area in the country so, not sure if that is a good or bad thing, LOL, but I love it here.
As for the bathroom in the home. The toilet does work, but the seal may need to be replaced on it. We will work on it when we get things a bit more settled there. We have not cleaned or painted that room, but plan to as soon as we get the chance. We will hook up our rain water system outside the window, that we will have to put in, and run it through the wall directly to the tub and toilet. We can have running water in there that way. I am not sure if or how often I will use it, we mostly are hooking it up for company. We are bringing the outhouse over, as Polk County allows you to have them. I prefer the outhouse, but will have the toilet for company and such.
I too hate painted bricks, but the last folks painted them a hideous green. I tried and tried and could not get that paint off of those bricks. It made it look even worse! I had no choice but to paint over them. I cannot figure out why they did it to begin with, they were beautiful bricks!
The wallpaper strip on the fireplace in the living room is driving me crazy! I was going to leave the thing green, but the wallpaper needs to go. I tried getting it off and it was impossible. I may just paint the entire thing with primer and then pick a color and repaint it. I cannot afford a lot of new paint right now, so I am limited on colors to choose from and it has to match the curtains from the old place, I spent 200 bucks on the other curtains and don’t want to change to another color (because I cannot afford that for sure!) So I think maybe this week I will prime the fireplace area and paint it something!
We certainly had a very busy weekend. I got off work on Friday and we headed straight over to haul the 4 truckloads of hardwood flooring to the farm. It was stored in Hazel’s garage. She was on the porch when we pulled up so I briefly told her we were getting the flooring. She went into the house and Chris and I started loading. I was already tired from work. When we started loading the truck it seemed that something felt wrong. The more I looked at the situation, the more wrong it felt. Finally I asked Chris, “does it seem like there is a LOT less of this flooring that what we hauled in or is it just me?” He had noticed the same thing. When all was said and done, we have about one truckload of flooring in or at the old house. So we should have had about 3 in the garage. We hauled out ONE and all of the new stuff still in the boxes was gone. But whoever used it was nice enough to being the cut ends and scraps back and pile it on top of what they did not take! I was furious but nothing I can do about it. I just want OUT. Hazel cam outside and asked me where we were moving to. I told her way over past the county line. (I am trying to be civil until we can get all of our things out.) I was not however, going to tell her where we moved to. She sat down in the swing and said, “there sure was a good friendship ruined because of all this”. I was floored, I just looked at her and said, “uh yeah, it sure was” and she then said “I would have never thought it would happen”. I wanted to say “Just what did you think would happen when you went back on your word, continued to take our money and then tried to evict us? We are going to lavish you with love and gifts? I mean seriously!” Chris could not even speak a word to her, he is so hurt by all this. I sais “Yeah me either Hazel, I never would have thought for a second this would happen” and walked back into the garage. A little while later she came back out and said “Cyndi what made you change your mind about the flooring?” I was confused and told her so. She was under the impression I wrote in my last letter to her that I would leave her all of the wood flooring. We finally figured out that in my last letter I said we would take this this and this and leave this this and the wood flooring already installed in the house. She figured I was going to leave her all of it. Regardless, we got what was left and took it to the farm. We then had supper and grabbed a load of things from the old house as we headed home late.
Saturday morning we got up, had breakfast and went straight to the old house. Chris and I, all by our little selves, took 3 truckloads of stuff to the farm. I was exhausted! We even caught Hazel gone and was able to get the cedar slabs from the workshop that Jimmy gave to us. It is about 10 planks of cedar, some over a foot wide and 14 feet long. He wanted us to build a closet in the old house with it. I am going to get Don to assist me in building a nice cedar chest to sit at the foot of the bed and give to Lakota as a hope chest when she gets older. So we unloaded wood and got Mam-maw’s table, the Hoosier cabinet and many other heavier than I should have been lifting items. Tim, my son in law showed up a little after 2 and we got the grill, picnic table, couch, chair and lots of other things. Almost everything went into the bedroom of the farmhouse until we get the other rooms done. We needed to get the stuff out of the old house, because it was due to rain on Sunday and when it rains, there is no chance in getting a truck up the hill to the house. Tim went on to work at 530 and Chris and I continued to haul things. By 9pm we were exhausted and when the whippoorwill started outside the kitchen window, we headed on to bed.
My Mam-maw's table and the Hoosier Cabinet. I was so thrilled to have these in the kitchen finally. The old cake taker on the table holds so many fond memories. My Mam-maw used to keep leftover biscuits and cornbread in it on the table. Every time I visited, we sat at the table and ate cold biscuits with her home made apple/plum jelly and talked about millions of things over the years.
I will try to get a better pic of the pantry. Chris worked very hard on it Sunday. The left side has deep shelves and the right side single shelves. IT is plenty of room for food and pots, pans, canning supplies, etc. A good size pantry!
I was up at 5am on Sunday and it was starting to rain. I went over to the old place while Chris slept. I got another box of items. I also managed to get Cutie and Azrael, the two house cats. They did well on the trip down and adjusted pretty well to the new home. I went back and fed chickens, got more things, made a trip into town for things we needed and then Chris started building pantry shelves while I started the floor in the living room. Shannon came over at about 230 and then Amanda. We had a tough time on the flooring around the fireplace because apparently my brain is tired and I could not comprehend out to measure. I was cutting pieces with a hand saw as well and that was taking me awhile. Then we discovered that we are going to have to change the type of flooring in the middle of the room because there was not enough left of the kind we were using (Thanks Hazel!). It is almost the exact same color though, so it should be OK. Before we realized it, it was 730pm. Chris and I headed to the old place and got 3 more cats, Flat Cat, Drop Dead Fred (who is very pregnant) and Butters. So YAY…..we only like 3 more, Tree Cat, Pole Cat and Squirrel. We got more boxes and I grabbed the 5 gallons of black walnuts. We got the babies to the house at dark, lit the lanterns and got things settled for the night. Chris grabbed a bucket of water from the Spring for us to take a bath, I got out clothes for work and we spent some time with the dogs.
The wallpaper trim has to go! It is driving me nuts. Anyone know a good way to get it off without one of those electric steamer things?
Starting the wood flooring in the living room. It will be finished today. I have more pics but will have to post them tomorrow.
We have started leaving a lantern on the porch that Chris’ mother got him for Yule. It has LED lights in it and runs off of a battery. When we plan to be gone until after dark, we cut it on. The rocks leading up to the house are hard to see at night and I am scared one of us will fall and nothing will get done with one of us injured.
We have the oil lamps in place in the kitchen, but have to carry lights through the rest of the house after dark. I don’t like this as there is always the risk of tripping and the dangers of dropping a lit oil lamp are too high when it is carried around after dark. So I plan to get all of the lamps in place the next few days so we can light there where they are and not have to worry about carrying them around. I am also going to do a little work on the clothesline that goes around the roof of the back porch, so I can get some laundry done this week and hang it on the line. It is piling up fast and will take forever to do it if I don’t make some attempt to catch up on it soon.
Today Chris is working on the rest of the flooring in the living room. Him and Shannon are going to start painting the library. We have not ran across any major problems with the house so far. We had to replace 2 joists that we were expecting to replace. All of the floors are slanted, one way or another, lol. The supports under the house are good and stable, but I guess after 100 years, settling takes place and things tend to slant. It is not big deal to us, just reminds me more of my childhood and such. They make little pieces of wood that fit nicely under cabinets and things to make them level (at least I assume they make them, Chris always shows up with them from somewhere as needed LOL). A piece of wood needs replaced on the side of the porch roof and the outside painted as soon as we are settled. We are trying to figure out the best way to do the roof on the root cellar. Any ideas are appreciated! We got a window screwed up over the one missing on the side of the house. It is far from a perfect fit, but since they sawed the 2x4 into to install an air conditioner, we are going to discuss what to do there. Whether widen the hole and replace it with one of the windows from the old place, go to the old woman on 68 and see if she has a window to match or what. For now, we screwed a large window up form the outside to prevent critters, especially human form, from getting in.
So the weekend was productive, we are adjusting to the new place, working like crazy and after 6 months of laziness, I am already tired! But things are coming along and still my favorite room in the house is the kitchen.
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