Memorial Day Weekend

We had quite a busy weekend. With Jill being in town in addition to a variety of picnics to attend, it flew by.

 

While we did get up to the property early on Monday so that I could mow, I didn't take many pictures of that.

 

However, if you recall in my previous post, I mentioned that baby Ryan was gonna have a new cousin?? Well, this weekend, we found out whether they were a boy or a girl :)

 

Here is the before:

 

Everyone crowded around to see what baby Schweizer will be:

 

Missy is cutting the cake. Her sis, Sam is documenting it. She has to prep for baby blanket time :)

You should check out Sam's blog: Not Your Gram's Afghan

It's a boy!!!!!!

 

Just some random photos from the day:

 

The Master Chef: a/k/a Missy's Dad

Tons of food

Poor T.L. is still the only girl!

A variety of guests

 

 

It was a fun weekend! Right now we are gearing up to go to the property.

 

Agenda: Begin putting up walls in the Porchouse, get my garden in (thanks to some wonderful friends that are letting me borrow their rototiller), mow the lawn. I suspect we will only get a Saturday of work in, as we have other commitments on Sunday!





Throwback Thursday

My dear friend, Jill, is going to be visiting this Memorial Day Weekend. I am too excited. I know that I did see her around Christmas, but it was super busy. Besides...she lives in Texas now, it'll be nice to have her in this time zone again.

 

In anticipation of this weekend, I'm going to do a tribute to Jill with this post. She should be thanking her lucky stars right now that digital cameras were not available in our awkward years. I am limited with my photo options right now to only those that I have on my computer. No fear, I have some good ones!

 

My apologies to Linda and Amy, by default, you are in most of these too!!!

 

Road trip!...Donuts anyone?

Obviously, this is the only thing you should do when you spot some railroad tracks.

Jill and Jeff - I'm not entirely sure where I got this picture, I know I wasn't there.

Me and Jill at her Bridal Shower

All of us!

Me and the Beautiful Bride

Her and her Hubbs (I'm pretty sure she was freezing)

Obviously, the only option when you get married in the winter...boot photo opp.

 

As I mentioned before, these photos really make all of us look good. Once upon a time, in the age of disposable cameras, this would not have been the case. Someday I'll throw back that far, but for now..ENJOY!

 

 

 

 



The Property Never Sleeps

C had drill this past weekend, and last minute we realized he would be in staying close to the property. So he was still able to get some stuff done in the evenings. I, on the other hand, already had tons of plans to fill up my weekend including a baby shower and visiting with friends.

 

Apparently, this little man also visited on Saturday. By little, I mean, not at all little :)

Clearly he is taking after Mr. Sleeveless.

 

I got a lot of fire-starters made. Thanks to all who contribute their dryer lint and egg cartons. It would take C and myself quite awhile to go through that many eggs on our own. I do bake a lot, but still...

 

C-waterproofing the outside of the Porchouse

Another critter...

C-Day 2 Waterproofing

Doing the front of the Porchouse.

 

 

You might be wondering where the flag went while waterproofing the outside. It's now become quite a patriotic shower curtain.

 

If you recall, from my post HERE, C did an awesome photoshop that included cut up logs under the Porchouse, what a dream come true right??

The Greek ventured to cut up some trees that were laying on the ground, and Featherweight made this is their new home.

This is what happens when you spend your days running the chainsaw.

 I am excited to see the progress. But this weekend is a holiday and my lovely friend, Jill, will be visiting from Texas. And we have many picnics to attend.

 

In fact, the little man pictured above with the flowers, is gonna have a new baby cousin soon. On Sunday, we get to find out the sex of the baby!

 

 



More plan change ideas...

Our original plan was to put a bench seat with cubbies along both sides on the left wall upon entering the Porchouse.

 

Exhibit "A"

 

Source

 

I still love it and think it's darling, but I'm beginning to think it doesn't maximize secret storage as much as it could. For instance, the bench seat isn't really able to house extra blankets or my board game collection.  Additionally, it has 10 wicker baskets. I love the look, but in all reality, it will be a bit pricey to find 10 matching baskets. Not to mention everything in them will eventually be coated with dust. That is the main reason I don't prefer open shelving...DUST.

 

 

I took to Pinterest to find something efficient and cute.

 

Exhibit "B"

 

Source: Unknown

 

Not only do I love that the benches are actually storage, but notice the built in shelving on the left. Perfect for items that you use everyday. Now that we found the table we want to use, I can see it fitting perfectly in this area.

 

We wanted to see what it would look like to scale, so C drew it up:

 

Exhibit "C"

 

Obviously, we kept the full bed in this design. That is still TBD. So the bottom left corner would be the breakfast nook. The table could be expanded and the chairs could be turned to face the table.

 

I think it's good to note that there is still a tiny open section of wall space not being used that could still be used to hang things. I could totally make that out of some recycled pallets.

 

Exhibit "D"

 

Source



 

 



Bedroom Furniture

C and I were discussing the storage situation briefly. As in, what will we do with all of our other stuff when we have to live in a tiny Porchouse? We don't want to get rid of all of it, because then when we have a house, we will have nothing to furnish it with. However, most of it we picked up for free and painted, and/or were gifted and/or got from Craigslist.

 

The current issue at hand is mostly on the beds. We have a twin-sized mattress, that was initially intended for the Teardrop Camper. We automatically assumed this would be the bedding of choice in the Porchouse. The problem with that is, the Porchouse will very well become a guest house some day, and it would be more convenient to have a full-sized set in there.

 

Either way, C quickly came up with some plans for both options.

 

Obviously, we lose some space with the full sized bedding option, but in the long run, it might be the best bet.

 

We were also discussing tables. Our current dining set is great, but obviously it won't ever fit in the Porchouse, and I see a nice barn-wood table in my future. That being said, we are looking for an alternative that offered ample seating, but was space efficient and we found this item on the Ikea site:

 

It offers six drawers for storage and those sides fold out. I don't know if we would just purchase it from Ikea or try to build our own. Either way, this is the style we need. When the arms are down, it can be re purposed into a side table next to one of the chairs.

 

We will also be letting go of some kitchen appliances that are rarely used, or storing them. We still plan to purchase the Kitchen Aid Convection Counter top Oven. I'm pretty excited about that. It does everything a real oven does, but it doesn't make your house hot and it's holds just the right amount for 2 people. There is also a warm setting, which would allow for easy leftover warm up. That being said, we will say "Goodbye" to our microwave.

 

I realize that I don't use it all that much in the first place. Last summer I went to visit my dear friend, Jill, in Florida. She and her husband didn't have a microwave. At first I thought, how could that even be possible, mostly because microwaves are in every home. But then I thought, well she probably wouldn't use it for anything anyways. That got me to thinking how much space our microwave would take up in the Porchouse and what I would prefer to have more. A  cookie/pizza baking oven and toaster all in one. Or a microwave? Easy choice!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Progress on the Porchouse Floor

This weekend we had terrible weather. Saturday was gloomy and Sunday was cold. This is supposed to be May people!

 

Anywho, we made so much progress on the Porchouse, I really feel like we can start the fun stuff now. As most things, completing the floor didn't come without challenges.

 

Challenge No. 1: The shower.

 

If you recall, our new "neighbor" down the street, Cliff, offered us a brand new stand up shower he never ended up using for $100.00. That being said, we took it right away. All measurements indicated there would be no issue. The first task was fitting the shower through the door. We had to remove the door, put the shower in and re-install the door. We were just glad to have it in there, we never did try to stand it up...

 

Fast forward to Saturday:

Here it is, just waiting to be installed.

Whoops...

After much trial and error, an entire lawn mow on my part, and some acupuncture for RobSr...they finally got it to stand up!

 

The final 10 boards or so were added to the floor:

 

It looks awesome, but we had another challenge, of plugging all of the holes where the screws are:

 

 

C and I got this task done fairly quickly, all the while RobSr. was making the plugs.

 

And we only had to use one piece of wood!

 

So the method was:

 

1. Plug Hole

2. Hammer the plug in

3. Chisel off the remainder of the plug so we didn't have to make 500 of them

 

 

Challenge 2: We had to wait for the sanders.

 

Next came the sanding!

 

C and I both grabbed our orbital hand sanders and got to work.

 

Then, one final sweep with the shop-vac and we were ready to use the first coat of Poly.

 

I cannot wait to see how it dries.

 

 While we were waiting for the sanders to arrive we got to other tasks.

 

We had some trim on the sides and roof that needed fixed up:

 

 

I finished my mowing and C installed one of the light fixtures:

 

 

 

Saturday, we also decided to burn more of the big fire. We had some poison ivy in there, which apparently is all over the property! In any case, I made the executive decision to just do away with these, that were originally on the door:

 



The door looks great without it, and it will be much easier to clean. :) My favorite

 

I'm so bummed because I had many more flowers to plant this weekend. Since it was Mother's Day, we had both Moms  with us, and they were a huge help. I've obviously never had any reason to plant flowers before, so they did a great job. I don't have pictures of the new ones planted, but I do have a picture of one of them because I thought it was pretty. We don't know what it is, and couldn't locate it in Gram's Wildflower book.

 



 

 

I'll take pictures of the flowers that were planted next time...and also of the railings the Greek put on my treestand!

 

In other news:

 

 I'm going to be starting a small vegetable garden at the Greek's house. Just enough to get some experience, and maybe a green bean or two.

 

Our neighbor, Pat, ventured over late on Sunday to tell us about the bear he saw in our yard Saturday night. Apparently, these bears know when it's garbage night. We did have a garbage bag that was all ripped up and shredded. I though maybe someone just threw it into the woods, but, it has been confirmed that the bear was into the garbage cans this weekend. It's kind of exciting and yet, kind of scary at the same time.