Category Archives: Quail Run Farm

We Have a Hall

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I have written before about the strange floor plan in our new house.  To get to one of the bedrooms, you have to walk through the master bedroom, the only full bathroom, and the laundry room.  It is not very conducive to having children, or privacy.  Another strange feature is they type of construction used on the outer walls, without going into a lot of detail, the outside wall are made of concrete.  Weird, I know.  The house has a main living area, that is square, and two wings on either side that have a garage and a room above.  The square part of the house’s walls are concrete, so are the outside walls of the wings.  When we looked into making a hallway, so one could get to the laundry room (which is going to be converted to a second bathroom) and the back bedroom we soon realized that we were going to have to cut through a concrete wall.  That is no small feat, but with the help of a good contractor and some manly concrete cutters, the job has been completed and we are well on our way to having a more functional house.

The first hole in the wall, confirming that it was indeed concrete.

Bigger hole in the drywall, and a drill through the concrete to determine how thick it was. Six and a half inches to be exact.

The room and area to be cut all prepped. They had to use a dimond bit saw with water to cool the cutting edge, so everything had to be covered well with plastic to prevent water from damaging other parts of the house, including running into the walls below.

First cut

First block of concrete to be removed, it took four men to carry each block of concrete out they were so heavy.

Half way done! We have a hole!

Cutting complete, not a drop of water escaped, everything around the cutting area was dry. We can now see into the back bedroom! The doors going from the mater bathroom into the laundry room are being sealed off, no longer will my bathroom be a hallway!

We had a hallway framed in, taking part of a bedroom to make the hallway, no more of this walking from room to room, we are going to have a proper hallway!

The back bedroom didn’t have a closet either, so we had a closet made as well. I know it isn’t part of the new hall way, but it looked so pretty to me I had to take a picture and include it.

Drywall up, mudding was finished today.

The pretty corner closet, in the cute new nursery, LOVE the angles.

(please forgive the typos in the photo captions, for some reason WP isn’t letting me edit…)

The Perks

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It seems like all I talk about are the hard and weird things about our new house.
I don’t sound very grateful.

I am grateful, very much so.
I need to show it more in my words and actions.

We live in a beautiful valley, west of the Wasatch Front, it is a hidden treasure away from suburbia.  It has been very cold, which means lots of snow, ice and fog.  I am learning that in the country, snow, ice and fog are beautiful!

The view of the sun setting from our back porch

The fog rolling in one evening, this is looking south over the future chicken coop and gardens.

A foggy drive to school

A snowy drive to school, we had 6 inches over night, added to the almost 6 inces the day before. They don’t plow dirt roads.

 

A clear evening, from my kitchen window.

Semi-private

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 There are a lot of funny little quirks in our new house, things that you would expect in an older  home, not one that is only ten years old, and it seems we keep discovering things everyday.

We have started calling it the “You would have thought….” house.  Meaning that everytime we are on the cusp of a new discovery Dadzoo or I always say “You would have thought that they wouldn’t have wired the whole kitchen on a switch.” or “You would have thought they would have calked all the windows”.

One of our “You would have thoughts” regards our master bedroom, or as we call it, our semi-private master bedroom.  When we were looking at this house, I fell in love with the glass french doors on the master bedroom.  Sure, they are glass, but it isn’t anything some curtains couldn’t fix, and how lovely and unique are glass french doors.

Right?

Once we had bought the house, and we were moving in, I noticed a problem with those pretty french doors.  Something I hadn’t anticipated, something I should have anticipated, which is typical with this house of ours.

Notice on the picture below.  Notice that there is no latch, which means there is no lock, which means our bedroom isn’t private at all, which means I sleep in a hallway (one of the entrances to the only bathroom), which means there will be no eighth child until a solution is found.

As typical, I fretted and Dadzoo solved.  He installed a simple, fence latch, and while it isn’t super solid, a good push and it would pop open, it is enough to keep the roaming bands of children at bay.

As for the other problem, the clear glass part, here is what I came up with.  I think  it is lovely, I kind of get the impression others (the people who have seen it in real life) don’t think it is as pretty as I do.

Oh well.

Pantry Makeover

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Our new house is a fixer-upper.

There are holes in the walls, doors that need replacing, things that don’t work and everything needs a coat of paint and a lot of love.

There are also some significant design flaws in the layout.  For instance, there is only one full bathroom for all nine of us, also to get to the back bedroom one must walk through the bathroom (which is a master bathroom) and through the laundry room.  We have plans to create another bathroom and a hallway into the back bedroom, and we have hired professionals for that.

As for the cosmetic work and all the small repairs, we are on our own.  It is fun to decorate this house, knowing it is our forever home and I don’t have to think about someday selling it.  One of our first projects was the pantry.  We did it first for a couple reasons, one that I needed a functional place to store food, second, it is small and easy to do, third it is too cold outside to paint cabinet doors (for the kitchen, another post).

The pantry is a pretty good size room, but it had no shelving, someone took it all down (there were still holes and anchors in the wall).  The walls were also dirty and needed a new coat of paint.

I decided that I wanted to paint the pantry walls a color that I wouldn’t paint any other room in the house.  Something really bright, and pretty, and maybe a little obnoxious.

I picked this bright peachy/pink color out, and it was beautiful in the store, and in the paint can, but on the walls it GLOWED, and I love it!

Adding white shelving mellowed the color out a great deal, and I loved it even more.

 YAY, to my first real pantry and to my wonderful handy husband… on to the next project!

(notice the empty shelves…HEAVEN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beginning of a Journey

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I think that the last six weeks have been the longest of my life.  Even longer than the last six weeks of pregnancy (did I really say that?).

Our Christmas season was nice, but consumed with home inspections, contract negotiations, packing and planning, mingled in with the regular Christmas busyness. I was so excited, anticipating the move, the new house, the new beginning all the while feeling twinges of homesickness for the house I had loved so much.

We planned to move the weekend of January fourth.  Moving day dawned bright and beautiful, although very cold; the high temperatures that day only reached the teens.  Everything went wonderfully, we had lots of help from family and friends and our new neighbors.  We were upbeat, optimistic and excited.  We noticed when we unloaded during our second trip that the house didn’t seem to be warming up, despite the furnace running; in fact it seemed that the vents were blowing cold air.  I figured that because it was so cold outside (below zero at this point) and the doors were open with people unloading that the furnace just couldn’t keep up.

Boy, was I wrong.

Later, I was alone at the new house with the kids, who were playing and exploring their new house.  I was nursing Squishy, under a big quilt because it was freezing, and heard the furnace click off.  I looked at the thermostat it was 45 degrees in the house.  I knew the furnace was in working, order; we had had it inspected and serviced, could it be the propane?  This house, being so far out from town, runs off its own propane system, something that is new to us, and we hadn’t even thought to check the levels of the propane tank.  When Dadzoo got back and unloaded the truck, he went and looked at the meter on the tank.

It wasn’t low….  It was EMPTY.  Zero.  Nothing.

There we were, with our children, our babies with no heat and it was negative eight degrees outside….

It was going to be a long, long night.

I got the children settled with many blankets and a small space heater, while Dadzoo researched propane companies.  Realizing there was nothing we could do until morning and we could contact the previous owner we, took the babies to bed with us (to keep them warm) and tried to sleep.

I cried.  I wanted to go home.

The next morning was chilly, we hurried and dressed and headed back to the old house to take hot showers, load more stuff and figure things out.  Dadzoo spent most of the morning on the phone trying to figure out how to get propane delivered while our good neighbors loaded all the big stuff into the truck.

To make a long story short, we weren’t going to be able to have any propane delivered until Monday morning.  Because of liability issues we had to have an account set up with the propane company that owns our tank before they could deliver, and since it was a weekend there wasn’t any office staff to set things up for us.  They promised a truck would be there first thing to pressurize our lines (since we had to turn the gas off, there wasn’t enough propane to even hold a pilot light) and fill the tank.  In talking with the company, we found out that the previous owner had been out of propane for quite some time.  While I was really angry that she didn’t inform us, so we could have had it taken care of before we moved it, I tried to focus more on how sad it was that she couldn’t heat that house for her children.

Saturday we moved the rest of our things, with the exception of a few odds and ends.  Family came over and helped me put the kitchen away.  It was cold.  My little Monkey walked around in her coat with a runny nose and purple fingers.  The only warm spots were right next to the space heaters.  It was so cold that they didn’t really help unless you were right next to them.  I was so discouraged.  I wanted to get my house in order, but it was so very cold.  My children were cold (but not complaining!)  My baby had to be bundled, but as much as I tried to keep her wrapped up every time I would nurse her, her little nose and chin were freezing, and she had developed a yucky cough.  The thought of staying another night in that house was unbearable.   I just couldn’t do it.  I was trying so hard to be brave, but I just couldn’t, all I could do was lay my head on the ice cold table and cry.  I wanted to go home, I wanted a hot shower, a warm bed, familiar surroundings, a CLEAN (the new house, despite having had it cleaned was filthy and smelly) place to be.  I was so homesick, tired and discouraged I thought my heart was going to tear in two.

I just kept thinking “what had we done!”

Dadzoo, saw my distress, and because he is a kind man, packed us all up and took us back to the old house for the night.  The kids slept on the floor, the babies in porta-cribs and Dadzoo and I on an air mattress (thanks to my dear neighbors who picked it up for us at Walmart).  It was good to be home.  I cried off and on all night long.  I had no idea I was going to have such a hard time leaving.  I had no idea how much I had loved that home, and now I was leaving, all the time, love and work for an orphan of a house that had no heat, a fixer-upper, that smelled bad and was dirty.   What was I thinking!

Sunday was a little better, we cleaned the old house, packed up and moved the few odds and ends and ran some errands.  We were able to stay in the old house one more night, per our contract we didn’t need to vacate until Monday morning (tender mercy!).  We rented a couple of movies, ordered pizza and had a little going away party on the floor of our old master bedroom.

Early Monday morning we left the keys on the kitchen counter, locked the doors for the last time and pulled out of the drive way.  We said goodbye to eleven and a half years, to all those memories, to the place we brought home four babies, and birthed one.  We said goodbye to all the work we had put in, all the love, the tears all those moments.  How we loved that place, our first home.

At nine o’clock that morning we met a big beautiful propane truck.  I have never wanted to kiss a man (that wasn’t my husband) so much before.  He filled our tank, checked our lines, lighted the pilot lights and fired things up.  By that afternoon the house was toasty warm, our things were starting to get put away and spread out and slowly things were starting to feel like home.

We have lived here now two weeks, and every day I get glimpses of home, as we work on this little orphan house we put more of ourselves into it and it becomes ours.  We have a long road ahead, there is a lot of renovation and loving to be done, but we are going to jump in with both feet and in the process make this place, home.