More Projects Complete & a Surprise

Last week was a busy one at the farm. I didn't get much gardening done, but that is because there were people here working for two of the days. I wrote about the roof ridge cap being done but I didn't write about the other thing that was done that day. And that was because it was a surprise for Steve. If you have been reading the blog for a while, you know that Steve & I have put in all the windows so far (and there are a lot of them). Well, there were three windows left to do on the upper west end of the barn. After balancing on scaffolding too high in the air too many times, I didn't want Steve up there again. So I arranged for the company that did the ridge cap to also do the windows. I kept this a secret for at least a month or more. So Friday afternoon when Steve got here, I told him I wanted him to see something. So we walked to the side yard & I told him to turn around. He was so surprised & happy! It was so worth it! I didn't even know how much he was dreading doing those windows until then.

This is the "easy " way to do it.

All the windows are done now. Someday there will be a deck out that door too.

On Thursday, we had and inch of soy insulation blown on the under side of the roof & knee walls. That was an all day project. What a difference it makes though. It is a light green color so it really brightens up the place. We will eventually be finishing off the rest of the insulation ourselves, but at least this seals everything up tight. Between the insulation & the ridge cap, we shouldn't have any more rain coming in or bats (like our one last year).

Wouldn't want this job.

 We worked on the coop all weekend and are getting a little closer. Right now, the base is set up and leveled & the walls are built. Next weekend, windows, doors, ladder & hardware cloth work. They should be in there soon.

Getting Ready for Radiant Heat

Last weekend we met with John Murphy from GreenHome Solar again about the specifics of putting in the pex tubing for the radiant heat. We are now waiting on the wide crown staple gun we ordered. It should be here by the time we get back from Oregon so we can get started. We will be stapling the tubing to the plywood under the main living area floor. After that, we will staple insulation to the bottom of the rafters. I will try to take a lot of pictures to walk everyone through the process with us.

Since we didn't have a stapler to do the job yet, we worked on more windows on the north side of the barn. Every new window makes such a difference. The old Amish windows were single pane and you could just about throw a cat through the leaks (sorry Mia :-)

We also have two outside doors to put in, hopefully before the snow flies. I painted one of them last weekend inside so it will look finished when we get it in.Three windows done on the north side

Steve fixing the hole from the old basement stairs

We also needed to fix the hole in the floor from the previous stairs leading to the basement so we can install the pex tubing.

New boiler for the radiant floor heat

John has been there during the week installing the Munchkin boiler system for the radiant heat. When we are done putting up the pex, he will come back & hook it up. We will still have several projects to get done upstairs before it will be effective for the winter, though. Closing in the wall between the shop & the living area, insulating, drywalling and putting up doors to the basement & shop are all a "have to".

Besides doing all of that, I need to get the garlic planted & the potatoes & leeks harvested. It was too wet to prepare for the garlic last weekend. I did find a source for organic straw in the area for the strawberries, blueberries & garlic.

I picked the last of the tomatoes, dug all the carrots, cut some parsley, picked the gourds and one red cayenne pepper before we left for home. With not being up there this weekend, I'm afraid that it will frost and be the end of the garden for the year. I guess it will be a relief (as long as I get the garlic planted) that it is done. We really couldn't keep up with the weeds this year. Next years' garden will be much smaller, at least until we get done doing the major projects on the barn.

I will be "off-line" for a week on vacation. Talk to you when I get back..

Wisconsin Solar Home Tour

This weekend was a cloudy & rainy one. We still had fun though participating in the solar home tour. We went to two houses on Saturday morning. The first was Roald Gunderson's. He is well known in the area for his building practices called whole tree architecture. You can find our more info here about that. He has designed & built buildings at the Angelic Organic Learning Center (where Angie has been accepted into the Farm Beginnings class and at our favorite spot to eat, the Driftless Cafe. He re-uses materials in a very creative way. Inspiring. So much can be done with what we have. There are more pictures on his website of his home & the other structures he has designed & built. In the above pic of the greenhouse, the hanging planters are sections of gutters. The greens you see growing on the left are growing on pieces of steel siding (like we have on our barn). They also offer workshops at the farm.

Door to the greenhouse at Gunderson's

The second home we saw was Sara & Joel's. I was really excited to see their home & wasn't disappointed. They have a greenhouse on the front of their home for passive solar heat. The only back up they have is the wood stove. Having a greenhouse attached to front of the barn is in our plans for the future. The wall in the greenhouse is painted black for maximum solar gain & they have shades that rise up & down on a thermostat so they can take heat with the sun even when not there. They also have a nice, well-producing garden. It is so nice of everyone participating in the tour to share their homes with us. A great learning experience. Maybe someday, our home will be on the tour, too.

More Windows In & a Little Painting

Three more windows in last weekend. It's really coming together now. We are getting more excited each weekend!
We met with the electrician and Johnny Murphy from GreenHome Solar. We have decided to go with a small boiler system & radiant floor heat. We need to have some kind of heat source while we are away so the pipes don't freeze. This involves getting a propane tank but our useage should be minimal when we live there. The woodstove will be used most of the time. Eventually, we'd like to get more hot water solar panels to run the radiant floor heat.While Steve worked on the windows, I painted trim around the front door
and did some gardening.
Next week the plumber is coming to do the rough in for the kitchen sink, the electrician will be here to finish the electrical in our new living area, the propane company will be setting the tank & Johnny will met with us about the radiant heat.
Lots going on, but it is exciting!

Some Progress Made on the Windows

The 2 windows on the far left are the ones we worked on

We worked hard this weekend to get a new window put in the living area. Two old windows were removed, the hole from one was closed off & the other hole moved to be more centered with the other windows. See pic above to check out the window spacing. We are putting a wood stove in the corner of the living area so we eliminated the one furthest to the left. The next one was moved over a bit toward the left.

The scaffolding worked great

Next, a new piece of siding was put into place & trim was put up.

Only eight more to go!

The rest of the windows should be a lot easier. It is a matter of taking one out & replacing it in the same hole. Except when we get to the smaller window that is also not evenly spaced. We only plan on replacing three this year (the 2 others next to the new one). They are in the new living area. Next spring we'll see about buying replacements for the rest of them. We have so many other projects to do to make it livable, which I'll keep you updated on.

While Steve worked on the window, he only needed my help sporadically, so I began applying polyurethane the windows we already have installed in the rest of the room.

Even though we would have liked to get all three windows in, it was a good feeling to at least get the hardest one done. We had visitors on Saturday so those breaks backed us up a bit. It's a good delay though when people visit.

I can't tell you how much difference it makes to not have the dreaded CAFO hanging over us. To work on a project & not have the thought in the back of your mind that you may never get to live out your dream is great! Back to making plans for the future.

They'll be farm news all week so stay tuned...

Bringing in the hay

A Stay at Home Weekend

We decided to stay home this weekend & work on some projects for the farm here in the shop. We get some really great things from Freecycle & this is one of them. This is oak flooring from an old house that someone had taken up but never used. We knew we could use it at the farm someday. A portion of it will become stair treads on the stairs going up to the second floor. Today we sorted through it all, measuring for the size we need for the treads. There are 13 stairs & we need 6 strips to cover each stair. Seventy eight in all. Looks like we will only have to piece a couple of them together. The rest are long enough. Now it is just a matter of cutting them to size, gluing them together, staining & installing.

Last weekend we were at the farm. Steve framed in another wall in the foyer & we will be making use of another Freecycle item in that wall. It is an octogon window that someone planned on installing but never did. We are really being rewarded for people not finishing their projects! :-)

This is the wall between the foyer & the shop area. The reason for putting a window here (which will be covered in a non-see-through material, like a contact paper. The shop view isn't that great :-) is to let as much light into the foyer as possible limiting the light usage. There is an outside window right next to this wall in the shop.
We also worked on the kitchen layout. This is really exciting to me. I know it is at the "hard to image" stage now but it is exciting to be this far. I'll go into more detail about the layout sometime soon. Last night we sat down at home & did a little more planning. We have some nice extras like roll-outs for the cabinets at the shop that will work great in the new kitchen.
Today we are going visiting. We'll go out to lunch with Steve's dad & then to the nursing home to visit his mom. Then on to my mom's at the assisted living home.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Living the Dream

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the before & after of the room we are using now in the barn. I thought I would look back at what has been done on the other side of the barn. This is a before look since we haven't made it to the "final" after yet. Slowly but surely it is changing.

Earlier I posted pics of how it looked when the Amish lived here. The following pics are from the time we closed on the farm until now.

This is the room that all the machines were in when the Amish owned it. There is another room (on the west side) that was also used as a sewing/bedroom. The wall you see divides them.

This is the view facing east of the same room.
The doorway you see is what is now our living area. It really is a huge space. The barn measures about 38 x 66. With three floors, that's a lot of square footage. Since we have the custom cabinet business, that will take up a big chunk of space. Our living area will only be around 900 to 1000 square feet on the main level with guest bedroom/craft area upstairs. Until we get the upstairs done, the room we live in right now will be for guests. Here is our son Shane, tearing down the dividing wall. Having no electric in the barn made it easier since we didn't have to worry about wires. The power tools we used were run by a generatorThe wall is down. It really opened up the room. We were also working on the windows.
They needed painting & some were warped.

That day, Shane built some walls for our "bathroom". Steve made a sawdust toilet that worked fine for an indoor toilet. It was an adjustment getting used to that but it wasn't all that bad. It had a regular toilet seat & was at the same height as a "normal" toilet. Better than going outside to an outhouse when it is cold outside. Now we have indoor plumbing which was celebrated by calling our kids & flushing the toilet so they could join us for the momentous occasion! The oval object on the wall is a solar light.
A small panel is mounted outside the window.Blue jean insulation was added to the wall adjacent to our "living room".
We only have heat from the wood stove in that area so we made it as warm as we could.The only way to get to the basement was by the stairs that were under a heavy door on the floor. They were pretty shakey & I always worried about the door falling on my head. Here we had already taken down the basement stairs & were using a ladder.After many hours of planning the layout of the living area that we wanted,
Steve started working on the new basement stairs.It was spring & was warming up, so we turned our efforts to outside projects & the garden. Then the accident kept us from traveling to the farm for a while & we had a lot of mowing, weed pulling & tending to the garden when we did get back to the farm. In August, Steve put up the bathroom walls. By October, we had plumbing.
After a year and a half of using a sawdust toilet & a solar shower,
having a real bathroom is HUGE!
And that brings us to the new picture window & French door.And finally the stairs.
This is where we are now in the process. Last weekend we set a couple new support posts & this weekend we hope to put up some 2x4 walls in the new living area. As I go through all these pictures, it brings back all the dreams we had that got us to this point.
We have to step back every once in a while & remember, we are living that dream.
And as excited as we are to finish the house,
we know that what we are doing now will be looked back on and cherished.

Improving the Back Side

Oh, you thought I meant that back side :-).
This is what the back side of the barn looked like when we closed on the property. There was an additional structure connected to this "porch" that was used as a spray area for their furniture business. They sold that to another Amish family & it wasn't part of the deal. The structure was on the cement blocks.

We used it as a loading dock of sorts at first.

It wasn't in our plans to keep it, so off it went.

The landscaping was done next. A new driveway was put in & everything leveled off.

Steve put in the new front door.

Then the windows (bathroom & bedroom) , Tyvek & insulation next. Then replacing the siding. We re-used some from a pile left
over when they built the barn & bought some additional from
Eli that he had in his barn.This was the noisiest part of the project.
Cutting steel siding is not something you want to do every day!

The finished product. The other doors are to, at the far left,

our current living area & the middle one is the shop area.

Taking you inside

Thought I would take you inside to our current living area at the farm.

Here are some before & afters...

Really basic, this was the Amish family's kitchen area. They aren't allowed to have any cabinets attached to the walls. The floor is simply plywood stained with linseed oil. The other end of the room was the mother-in-law's sleeping area. All curtains that were on the windows were black throughout the whole barn.We brought up some furniture from home & a campstove to cook on. A cooler for a fridge. I made white curtains out of sheets. The gate in the photo was to keep Ginger (our blind & deaf dog) from wandering out of the room. Here's Steve cooking up some breakfast.
We were given a customer's old cabinets & put them to good use in the kitchen.Next came the painting.Then the bottom cabinets and a counter top were installed.Then the wood stove. It's a soapstone. When fully loaded, it will
burn for up to 8 hours, providing up to 12 hours of sustained heat.
Steve's dad Joe came up to help us & they put jam liners around the
windows to seal them up & keep the breeze from coming through.We bought a used door at the Re-use It Center near us in
Illinois to replace the very poorly made door that was there. We are trying to use as much used stuff as possible. We Freecycle, garage sale, buy from Craig'sList & curb shop.Here is a newer pic of the room. Those windows face south for great solar gain.Here is the other end of the room. Since this was taken, we have
added a dorm fridge & toaster oven. All the comforts of home!