Chicken Mama

Introducing the Flock!  Currently we have 8 hens and a rooster.  Here is Virgil, the man of the coop. He will celebrate his 2nd birthday next month.

Chickens were the first farm animals introduced to the farm.  Our first flock was a barn yard mix of some of the prettiest birds I'd seen.  They were all different in color and when they started laying, the eggs were brown, peach, green, blue, and white.  I loved it!  A couple of dog attacks later, Virgil is the only one left.  We replaced our hens with the red ones you see in the photo above.  We get 6-8 eggs per day usually.

Come Spring, I plan on building these guys a new coop.  I want something pretty and white!  Currently our coop was built off of our barn and works just fine, but I intend to use it for meat hens I'm going to start this Spring as well.  Here is the current coop:

We were certainly newbies when it came to this.  First we secured the coop area, the part under cover of the barn, which is completely secured with 1x1 wire.  The run we did by setting 4x4 posts and 2x4 supports, encasing the whole thing with chicken wire.  The wire was buried about a foot inside to prevent predators from digging in.  We did that right, nothing can get in there! Inside the coop we used closet rod poles attached to the barn with brackets for them to roost on.  We converted an old wooden box into nesting boxes.  Works nicely.

Here is my inspiration for the new coop I'm planning:

source: Country Living

Hopefully I will be able to accomplish something similar.  This is actually quite perfect since we let them out to free range during the day, they just need a cozy little coop and run.

Wishing you a beautiful day!  Thanks for stopping by.

Shanna

uh-oh....

Well this is more than I bargained for! My "sneak peek" of what was behind the drywall was way off!! The ONE little piece that was actually painted was where I peeked. The rest.....WALLPAPER. So, out comes my alcohol and chisel once again. Can't say I've missed them.

This really drove home the whole "don't assume anything" rhetoric. You never know what's under the surface. It may not be what you'd planned on, but once you're uncovered it there is no going back. While there is much more work here than I anticipated, I will push on and be even more proud of the accomplishment. 

Happy day to you!

Shanna

Hello Friends!  It has been quite frigid here in my neck of the woods the last week.  The temperature finally is starting to warm up so I am no longer dormant.  I do not like the cold.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday.  We sure did, lots of family came up to visit.  I sure love having them all here.  With things getting back to normal I need to get back to work!  I promised my son that I would start working on his room next, so that it shall be.  His birthday is next month and I would love to give him a lovely new room.  His is the last of the kids rooms to be renovated, I haven't posted about the other two yet, but will real soon.  I have some tweaking yet to do for them to be post worthy.

I'll share pictures of the room I'm about to start on as it sits now.  I usually don't like to post "before" pics before I am done but maybe this will light a fire to get it finished quickly!

I just adore the emerald green carpet and cracked drywall, don't you? And that ceiling fan fixture is just to die for!  Haha, I kid.  I will be stripping out all the trim, sheetrock, and carpet first.  Under that sheetrock is more of my amazing tounge and groove bead board.  This stuff is 1/2 inch thick, I kid you not.  What 10 year old boy wouldn't love this room?  Ha, right. He does have an awesome view though!



Here is what I found peeking through the drywall a few months back.  By peeking I mean I used a nail bar to yank off a chunk of drywall  :)

I will simply repaint the walls once uncovered in my favorite shade of beige and add new trim molding top, bottom, and corners.  I love using 1x's for trim.  It is simple and fits what the style I like, and it's EASY!  I use 1x4's for crown and 1x8's for baseboards.  I'm going to repaint the ceiling which is also beadboard and install an new ceiling fan.  Eventually, he would like carpet but that just isn't in the budget, so for the mean time I will sand down the original wood floors hiding under that lovely green carpet.  

The majority of my house was "updated" in the 1970's so there are lots of interesting things I find unwrapping it all.  It may be taking me a looooong time to get through all this renovation but I do see the beauty in the end.  I am doing this all by myself while raising three very active kiddos with insane sports schedules.  My hubs works very long hours and I like to have it "cleaned up" somewhat before he gets home in the evening.  That and dinner, gotta cook dinner!

Lot's to do, guess I better get started!  I can't wait to have this one checked off my list!

Study Makeover

Hi Friends.  Last Spring I spent my days giving my Study a rehab.  It was quite the eyesore, located right off the main living space.  You have to walk into the study to get to the Master Bedroom.  It didn't help that during the construction of the Master a wall had to be pulled in about 3 feet.  Quite the sight to get to my room.

The room was covered wall to wall with homemade shelving/bookshelves.  They had to be removed to get to the sheetrock that I insisted disappear.  I saved every single piece of them and have already used them on numerous projects.  No waste here! There was also a lovely gray shag carpet that had to go.  For some reason I don't have any photos before the room renovation began.  I have these which were taken after the shelving and sheetrock were removed:




The ceiling sheetrock and that oh-so-glamorous ceiling fan came down next.  Before removing the carpet I finished off the walls, really I loved the suspense of not knowing what I would find under that carpet!  The walls were quite the task, I think it took about 3 weeks to remove all that wallpaper. Armed with a squirt bottle full of alcohol and a chisel, it didn't stand a chance.  It then got a fresh coat of white paint, as did the ceiling once the sheetrock came down, and some 1x4 crown molding, also painted white. Finally time to reveal what's under the carpet!




What a mess!!  I chiseled off the super vintage carpet pad only to find the entire perimeter of the room was painted a blech brown.  The rest was in remarkable shape!  That is 100 year old red oak floor boards y'all!





They span the entire length of the room so were installed at the time of construction, otherwise there would be no way to get them in.  So cool.  Now time to attack the muck paint.  Out comes the sander... nope.  Wouldn't even touch the stuff.  Well I'm no quitter so I grabbed my angle grinder and a metal cup brush and went to town.  Two weeks later I have a glorious original floor!  I couldn't stain as it is red oak and turns, well, red.  After much consideration, I pulled out my handy Minwax finishing paste and gave it a good coat (in sections) and bought a giant buffer pad for my angle grinder.  IT IS FABULOUS.  Worth all the super hard work.




Here is the room with construction done.



I refinished the furniture in the first pictures for my husband's desk, and a storage cabinet for me:





Oh, and I found this cool industrial light at Home Depot for $25!



We hung it from the original fixture "hole" and it was off center so I just swagged it!  Love.


I ended up building my own desk for two reasons:  I'm picky and cheap.  I used a few pieces of the shelving removed from the room for the top, and the two front legs are actually the staircase spindles from the staircase we had moved (more on that another time).  It is cute and mine.  This is about the third life for that chair.  Haha like I said, cheap.  The thing hanging over the desk is a frame from one of the original windows in the house.  I kept them ALL.  I added chicken wire and a cute grain sack fabric backing, which I also used on the chair cushion.










That's my cozy little work space.  I have a piece of trim yet to install under the window, someday.  I also want a cute overstuffed chair or daybed for the other side of the room.  And curtains, I need curtains. Can't make up my mind, imagine that.

Thanks for reading, I'll post about two other rooms I've conquered real soon!

Love,
Shanna

It's been a while...

Lots of changes have happened here on Legg Hollow Road over the last year!  Here is a photo my sister in law took of our home exterior over the holidays.  We have replaced all the windows, doors, roof, siding, deck railing, one of the stair cases, and all of the siding! I'm super excited with how it has turned out.  I love the clean, simple, farmhouse look!

We have made progress on the inside as well.  First up was the remodeling of the former dining room into a master bedroom and bathroom. This was a chore!  We converted a half bath, laundry room, and  the dining room into a master suite.  Here are some before pictures and during pictures...

This was after the half bath and laundry room were completely gutted (yes that's dirt) and the floor joists were rotten so had to be replaced which is the next photo.  There was a wall where the white plumbing pipe is. We took out a massive 230 water heater and replaced it with an efficient tankless one mounted on the exterior wall.  Best move ever!

 This is the former dining room before it was gutted. We had to call in help for this.

Ceiling that was under the popcorn sheetrock:

                                     The wall cabinets were removed to give us more space.

 A wall separating our study and the new bedroom had to be moved back about 6 feet to make room for the closet. We actually found a fireplace hidden in that wall.  That was a huge obstacle.  It had to be removed.

                                                       
                                                        New closet wall going up:

                                        The ceiling was removed and we chose to plank it:

                                                               Beadboard going up:

                                                        Flooring going down finally:

Here are some after pictures.  The room isn't "finished" in the sense I want it to be.  I have plans for a new reclaimed wood headboard and a few other projects to finish it up.

We had barn doors made but the only picture I have is before it was painted,  It has since been painted white and looks amazing!

I used an old window from the house for this cute cabinet:

I love this table I found at a local shop, it is the perfect folding table for the laundry!

 Vanity light fixtures from Lowes:

I made this shelf from a piece of the baseboard that was originally in the room:

 I found these cool nightstands at a consignment shop and painted them white to use for bathroom vanities:

The finished vanity area of our bathroom.  Cozy and adorable to me! 

I tried to use as many materials from the house in the renovation as possible.  One thing I did was take an original closet door from the wall we tore out in the kitchen last year and refinished it.  I love it.

I also saved a brass armed chandelier and transformed it with some white paint!

Well, that's enough for now.  I'll be back soon with stories of our adventures in gardening, pig raising, and chicken keeping!  It has been a blast and we are learning so very much every day.

Wishing you a Happy New Year, may it be filled with happiness and success!

Shanna

Fantastic Find: Farmer Markets!!

Part of the reason we chose to move to the country was to be able to grow and produce our own food.  I am terrified of the foods I find at grocery stores, not knowing where it came from and how it was raised.  To obtain this level of self-sufficiency is going to take a while, so in the meantime I have been trying to find alternative sources for our foods.  Not at all happy with the local grocery store selection of meats and produce, I set out to find a way to buy foods direct from local farmers.  I hit the jackpot this weekend when I discovered not one, but two local farmer markets.  The beauty of these markets lies in the online ordering system.  You browse products available that week and add what you want to your cart.  You can read bios and farming practices of the growers on the site as well.  On delivery day, simply go to the market meet-up location, pick up your order, and pay.

I was simply giddy when I walked into the first market yesterday to retrieve my order.  This market was about 30 miles from us and we arrived a little early.  I was greeted and welcomed so warmly I almost started bawling right there!  I mingled with some of the growers bringing their product to market.  Everything was labeled and ready for collection by customers.  I have honestly never seen such beautiful produce in my whole life.  Being winter, the selection is mostly greens.  This is so fine with me, most nutritious of all foods!  I scored gorgeous spinach, kale, turnip greens, and collard greens, all beautifully packaged labeled for me.  I had also ordered a couple of natural chicken breasts, breakfast sausage, and a couple dozen fresh laid eggs.  What a fantastic experience.

We then headed to the closer market, only about 10 miles from us.  Bobby had to go pick up for me since we had to get one of our kiddos to basketball practice.  I was so sad to miss this initial pick up.  Bobby says he was greeted by the sweetest young couple. From this market I ordered a whole broiler chicken, fresh ground beef, mixed salad greens, lettuce,  turnips and greens, and 4 dozen MORE eggs.  I love eggs.  All was stunningly beautiful and perfect. The market managers even threw in some extra Gluten Free Almond Cookies to try.  Happiness.  

This has inspired us to start offering some of my homemade creations at the markets.  In the works are milk baths, natural laundry detergent and fabric softener, and sugar scrubs.  I also may offer my infamous peach cobbler and peanut butter blossoms.  :)  The only thing standing in our way is a name for our farm.  We need help!  We are on 37 acres in a beautiful hollow.  We want something original, catchy, and timeless.  We plan to start growing a large garden and raising chickens and cows in the near future.  Any suggestions?

To find a farmers market near you, try Locally Grown.  Happy hunting!

Thanks for reading!  Wishing you a fabulous day and a HAPPY NEW YEAR from the farm!!

Catching up and Dining Room Rehab

Wow, been a while.  I am finally forcing myself to sit down and catch up on what has been going on at the farmhouse.

Our trip here went well.  It was a very long drive, we drove through the night.  We arrived at our new home around 2:00pm.  The kids and I were first to pull up the long drive and make a beeline to the door.  Kids couldn't wait to see their new home!  We were welcomed by a spooked skunk who managed to spray the door and porch in his hasty getaway attempt.  Lovely scent to come home to! As if that wasn't enough we came to find out the heat wasn't working!  Eeek!  It was sub 20 degrees.  Of course we moved the week of the coldest cold snap this area has seen in years in November.  So our first night we stayed in the local Inn, all 5 of us and the pets...Jules and Griffyn.  They did very well, as they had been slightly sedated from the trip so they were still droggy.

The morning brought us to the local diner for a hot breakfast.  We looked mighty fine after our overnight drive and short rest in a hotel.  Lovely way to introduce ourselves to the town.  We then made our way to our home.  Luckily, the heater only needed a part to get it going and we were able to get the serviceman out that morning to fix it.  Now the daunting task of getting house clean enough to move into....

This house has been owned by the same family since 1988.  It was their vacation home so hasn't been lived in full time for who knows how long.  The previous owner left several furniture pieces in decent shape so we utilized a newer looking bed in a bedroom upstairs to sleep in for the night.  Kids got pallets on the floor in the same room.  I spent most of the day cleaning years of grime and dirt from the kitchen and bathrooms.  Our moving truck still sat full in the yard.  It ended up taking us about 7 days to unload it all.  The most challenging thing was my beloved refrigerator.  It was too big to go in any of the door frames in the house so we had to completely disassemble it.  Thankfully the kids were in school by now, so they didn't have to witness our many tantrums throughout the process of disassemble and reassembly.

Our first project required a contractor.  The home was in dire need of a new roof.  The original roof from 1900 was still being used and consisted of ornate metal shingles.  I kept those for future projects.  :) It took about 3 weeks for them to get out and get started.  We had them deck with Tech Shield for better insulation.  New soffits and gutters also went up, along with new columns and ceiling for the porch.  We chose a metal roof in galvanized silver.  My vision for this house is SIMPLE.  It will be very understated but elegant in it's mere structure. It merits mentioning that during the roofing process a squirrel found it's way in the ceiling and managed to fall through.  My 8 year old son, Dawson, found him and freaked the freak out.  It was quite comical watching the dog chase the squirrel (who failed miserably) then Bobby chase it with a baseball bat.  The baseball bat won, thank goodness.  

Next up came windows.  Again, original windows were still here!  We used Lowe's for the windows and installation.  FANTASTIC JOB.  The installers were nothing short of amazing.  The were able to remove and install 22 windows in ONE day, including my kitchen window we had resized and had to be reframed.  They came the next day and wrapped all the wood around the windows in vinyl.  It looks amazing.  We purchased Pella Double Hung windows which all had to be custom made for this house.  By the way, I kept EVERY SINGLE window that was removed.  Watch for projects to come from those soon....including mirrors and such.  :)

During the exterior construction, Bobby and I began working on the first room in the house.  We chose what has become our dining room.  I will include pictures of the room before.
       
 My awesome husband about to start one hella project:

 After the sheetrock is down and part of wall torn out:

 Closet that we opened into the kitchen:

 Odd shaped side of the fireplace:

 Tearing down the kitchen side of the wall:

View from kitchen side once we broke through the wall:

 We tore out half of a wall, opening the room to the kitchen.  We found old HVAC duct work that was about 10" in diameter in the wall.  More work.  Once the wall was down we exposed the side of a very unusual shaped fireplace. We tore out all of the sheetrock in the room. There were layers of wallpaper under the sheetrock.  We finally got to that beautiful antique tongue and groove beadboard.  Something told me to go ahead and remove the ceiling too and I am SO glad we did.  There were nests everywhere!  Also found the ceiling was not closed off to the front patio and back porch.  Not good for heat retention!!  So...we plugged the holes in between the beams with 2x10's cut to fit.  Then we caulked all the way around it.

This was as we added "plugs", in between the beams were openings onto porch:

 And after plugs installed and caulked:

We decided to plank the ceiling with 1x8 pine boards and paint them. Here are a few photos of them going up:

Notice the blue carpet is gone?  Hallelujah!!  The floors are original to the house.  There was a patch about 5 ft square that had been cut out for beam repairs at some point and plywood was laid to patch. We removed the plywood and bought the closest 3x tongue and groove boards we could find.  They are pine but the floor has to be painted anyways.  You can't find solid oak these days at a reasonable price like what was originally laid.  

This photo shows the plywood and where we started laying the new floor.  Yes, that is dirt ground directly under the floor.  Pier and beam house folks!! 

 After new pine boards installed and puttied:

Sanding the floor was next.  Since we are painting we just did a light sand with my orbital sander, using a 40 grit paper, to remove any chipping paint and give it teeth to grab the paint.  

Before painting we had a bit more to do...remember the ugly fireplace?  We chose to plank it like the ceiling to close it off.  I love how it turned out:

While installing this wall we have to mention we found this lovely piece of oak that fought a hard won battle with someone years and years ago that maybe had too many Colt 45's which we did find in the wall too:

Now it was time to paint!  Here were my paint selections (top is ceiling, then wall & trim which are the same just different sheens):

All paints we are using are Benjamin Moore.  Ceiling is in Calm, wall & trim is Winter White. 

Ok, so we painted then were ready to paint the floor.  I chose Ozark Shadows which is a light, taupey gray.  Here are some photos as it is right now.  We still have to add crown molding and a few pieces of baseboard.  We have them already just waiting for kids to go back to school to finish. We tend to get testy when working miter cuts. The mirror you see is also antique...mercury glass.  I feel so lucky to have found it left here.  

Oh, and somewhere in this process Bobby took the chandelier hanging in our bedroom and relocated it to the dining room.  It looks fantastic after a good cleaning.  It is definitely antique, the weight and wiring are a dead give away.  I love treasures!!

Well that kind of caught us up on what's been going on around the farmhouse.  I have more little stories to add in another post.  This is way long!  I intend to take better photos in the future too I promise.  

Until next time....