Exciting Things ~Part I

Yes! Very exciting things, that I have been meaning to post about for the past month!!

Life has been crazy........but in a good way;)

Anyway.....

......first things first!

You all probably remember our lovely-closed-off-thus-non-operational-fireplace, right?

Well, early one morning last month, I had it stripped of all ornament, moved everything out of the room that I could, and covered everything else that I couldn't with sheets.

Shortly afterwards, a very kind man and his son-in-law came and began to open the chimney!

When they took off the boards that closed it off on the bottom end, they found themselves staring at jumbled bricks. My Knight was very worried that the chimney may have started to collapse. However, it was discovered (after they had removed five five-gallon bucket loads of bricks) that when whomever had cut the chimney off at the top and roofed over it, they had simply thrown all the bricks down inside the chimney itself! Nice.)

One of the men joked that Santa Claus really could fit down this chimney.......it is that big!

Pretty dirty work.......

.....especially when they had to bust through the fire brick, and found they had to remove about three five-gallon buckets worth of soot!

But how we do love our stove!!

We have been whiling away these frigid days in our cozy living room, and at least one child seems to always be sitting in front of it reading a book, or playing with matchbox cars.

I grew up with a wood burning stove, and so it is just the perfect finishing touch to our old farm house, in my mind! At least one of the chimneys is getting some use! It just didn't seem right before!

So, there you are for now.

More exciting things to follow....

...eventually:)

Egg Knobs....

We had to replace a few doorknobs, and I was thrilled over the moon when my Knight came home with these!

I know Wodehouse would approve.

Painting old Doors...

Yesterday was gloomy......so I decided to get some painting done. The laundry room door was painted something similar to sea foam green on one side. I went over that with a nice crisp white. And the bathroom door was tan on the side facing in to the bathroom. White again. I love the results. Looks so bright, cheery, and clean.

Now, what shall I do today......:)

The Dining Room

Before and after.....

    

~By the way, the lovely solid oak table (it even has another leaf!), matching chairs and hutch? Craigslist. And we got such a deal that my Knight in S.A. and I still feel like we stole it! My guardian angel had a hand (~or would it be wing?;) in it, I know. He is amazing. I could tell you so many stories....

The Living Room Then......

......and now!

A Sneak Peek....

....at our newly painted front door...

....our new kitchen....

(my Knight hopes to have all the cabinets in by the end of this coming week)

....our downstairs bathroom....

It's getting so exciting, I can hardly wait!!!

Paint

Last evening my Knight and I went and bought paint. All of it.

Twenty gallons of primer, and twenty-ish gallons of paint.

Next week we start rolling it on the walls...

New Walls...

......make our old house feel new!!!!

These first two pictures are of the living room...

......and then we have the dining room.....

.....and another angle of the dining room.....

.....and the kitchen.....

......the laundry room.....

(the mud room is off to the right)

.....Miss Posy's room.....

.....the master bedroom.....

......more master bedroom.....

(the master bathroom is through the door)

.....and the boys' room.....

There are only a few more pieces of drywall left to be hung,

and the finishing crew is already hard at work, taping and mudding.

Then we can start painting, while my Knight installs the new kitchen and bathrooms...

Exciting? Oh, yes!!!!

Daisies

Before the rain came, Miss Posy had been bringing me little bouquets of Michaelmas daisies, almost daily. I love the lavender and yellow. It is such a cheery combinaton. When we venture outside again, we will have to search the fields for more.
The weather has been so chilly that my Knight has been building a fire in the wood stove each night.
I love the pungent scent of the woodsmoke....

~~~~~~~~~~~~



The crew is scheduled to finish hanging all the drywall in our new/old house today! It is so exciting!!! I will try to post pictures this weekend, or the first part of next week. I promise.

More Hidden Treasures......

.....in the wall by the attic stairs:

An old leather pair of men's shoes;

                                                            An old wooden spindle;

And, my favorite, a beautiful glass basket,

that looks like it will be in perfect condition, once all the grime is removed!



We also found a very old shoe box with detailed instructions on the proper care of leather shoes printed on the inside.( I'm thinking of framing it, and hanging it in my mudroom;)

Handy bits of advice like;

"When shoes are wet or damp they should be dried slowly, away from the fire, as it takes only a short time to burn leather if it is exposed to undue heat when wet or even damp." 

Too neat!

Much of the attic wall remains unexplored, and I told my Knight that before it is sealed off in drywall forever, I think we really should see what else is hidden away.....

Don't you agree?

Who knows what other "treasures" we may discover.

If we don't, I know I'll always wonder!

Bones of Wood

My Knight in S.A. decided to pull down all the plaster in the old part of our house to make it easier for the drywall crew to do their thing. Last Saturday I spent a long afternoon cleaning up the mess in the dining room, while he and my father worked to remove the plaster from the rooms upstairs.
Now all the plaster is down, and all the bare lath exposed.
A skeleton of wood.
Representing hours of work done by some one's hands years and years ago.
A lost art today, but one that I can still appreciate.

Running Water!

We now have a functional shower/tub in our downstairs bathroom!!!! I was there when they tried it out for the first time this afternoon. So exciting!!!

 My Knight is so proud of his and my father's plumbing job, and I must say that I am very proud of them as well.

Peaches and Specs

I don't think I mentioned that earlier this summer we found that we had a little old peach tree growing in our east yard. We had seen it there, but had had a hard time identifying it, since it was absolutely covered in poison ivy. *Shudder* My Knight in S. A.  donned protective clothing and attacked it (the ivy of course;) with Roundup and we hoped and hoped that our little peach tree would survive.........and it did!
And we've gotten over a dozen tasty little peaches from it as well! The kids are in heaven.

On to the spectacles........My dad discovered them in a wall by the attic stairs, complete with their leather case, and also a little old mirror, framed in wood and in really nice shape ~once I get a chance to clean it up a bit. Makes me wonder what else is back behind those walls.........

As to an update on the house, well, the fellows are almost finished with the plumbing, are putting in tubs and showers, and just need to run some feed wires to hook up the new electrical circuits they installed. We are getting bids for the new drywall that we hope to have installed sometime next month. Our new kitchen is ordered ~Hurray!! (Yes, I am very excited about this!)  and I have been thinking about paint colors and flooring options. My Knight thinks we'll be in by Thanksgiving, but I just keep thinking that if we are in by Christmas, I'll be thrilled. I haven't posted pictures lately because nothing has really changed aesthetically. Once the drywall is hung and we start painting, I will post picture updates, I promise!

While We're on the Subject...

....how about a few more pictures of our house? Here's another closer shot of the mantle:

Below, you can see some of the lovely wainscoting in the dining room ( ~and a family friend working on the wiring).

Did I ever mention the huge windowsills in the living and dining rooms? ~I love them!






Here is more wainscoting on the wall dividing the living and dining rooms.

And, just for good measure, I thought I'd post a picture of the old wooden door I wrote about in my last post. Perhaps someday I'll take a shot of the staircase it conceals............;)

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the carpets are now a thing of the past. Upstairs there are some good wooden floors that, with a little work, will look very nice. Downstairs the original wooden floors are really not worth saving.........except possibly the living room.........we'll just have to see.

The wiring is almost completed, and then the fellows move on to plumbing! Hurray!!!

Upstairs~Girls Room, Master Bedroom, Bathroom, and Closet....

(The last of the pictures taken by my brother.) Here you see our stairway..........it is pretty narrow, but it looks even narrower in this picture.



Here is Miss Posy's room. It is immediately to the left at the top of the stairs.

And here is a shot of our room, which opens up immediately to the right of the stairs.........Don't you love that wallpaper?;) It's gone now......as well as the paneling.

Another shot of our room........its really quite large. The closet you see to the right of Big Brother is gone now. You see, the room he is stepping down from is what we plan to make our master bathroom, and there is a little room beyond that which will be a perfect walk-in closet.

Here is what will be our master bathroom........you can see back into our bedroom through the door to the left. We are thinking that eventually a nice garden tub would go perfectly under the dormer window to the right......

And this is a view of the little room that will become our walk-in closet. I am going to have so much room for clothes.... and shoes..... that I will have to make a firm resolution to be a very good girl and not fill it full of them!;)

~Oh yes, out this window you can get a glimpse of the new pole barn that sits almost directly west of the house.....just across from the garage.

~And from what we can see, all of the upstairs rooms have nice hardwood floors under the carpeting.......:)

Next time, I will post pictures of the house as it looks now. I was over there last weekend and was able to get some pictures.....