I love how this spot across the road looks like a passage to a mysterious world.
Nature’s Portal
farmhouse restoration
The Simple Life – Welcoming Spring One Day at a Time
We had very nice weather over the weekend, so we decided to clean up the garden and set up a few things for planting season. We are surrounded by trees and no matter how much leaf raking we do during autumn and winter, we always end up with tons of leaves to clean up, especially now, when a few windy days come up during March and April. We’ve had a few days of very strong winds, one of which truly shook me a bit, and there are many down branches as well. We had plenty of chores, which we enjoyed thanks to the good weather. For some reason, here in Virginia, I find myself wishing for the start of spring, and I find winters long and cold. Having lived most of my life in Jersey, I find that odd, but my husband feels the same way. My favorite season used to be Autumn, but now, I am starting to love and crave for Spring. There is plenty to be thankful for during the seasons.
Little birds are starting to show up in numbers. My husband made the pumpkin for the veggie garden out of scrap wood. We hung up a birdhouse that my sister gave me. They had a 5K on their farm (Barn on the Hill), and they gifted birdhouses to participants; she saved one for me. It looks lovely next to the Faerie Garden.
We cleaned up flower beds, removed old stumps, planted some flower seeds, repotted plants that needed more space, and became a bit creative. We started a new planting area near the entrance of the property, an area that we need to develop much more in the future. An old tree trunk is now a planter, and an old magazine rack will become full of hot pink flowers at one point. Our goal is to add at least one thing every year.
White farmhouses get very dirty during the year. My husband and I cleaned up the house twice a year during spring and before Christmas. It takes a bit of work in some areas. Power washing will be something to consider in the future. We are still saving for a new roof (cash only is part of the simple life), and that one needs to be repainted, hopefully over the summer. We took everything out of the porch, and I cleaned the chairs, tables …. while he worked on the siding. Once we finished, we decided to change things a bit (decor wise) from last year.
With most of the garden ready, our next item on the list will be preparing the veggie garden for planting, and some repainting here and there. We are setting things up for an upcoming yard sale as well, and there are some farmhouse projects lined up for the year. With everything that is going on in the world these days, chores are helping me a lot in dealing with the great sadness that it causes. Keeping busy helps my mental sanity. During this time, my novels have been put to the side, and being in the present, doing chores, helps me deal with all this. I hope you enjoyed this post.
The Simple Life – The Process
Process – A series of steps, actions, or operations used to bring about a desired result. (American Heritage Dictionary)
For today’s post, I want to write about the process in pursuing the simple life. If you read the above definition of process, for me it was all that, and more, and I can honestly say that the process continues. It continues in the material, the mind, the physical, and the soul. If I go back to some of my posts about the simple life ten years ago, I see part of that process taking place in between words. For me the process was/is long, and I compare it to separating bolts and nuts into groups by size and form. Each person goes through their own bolts and nuts situation when pursuing simplicity in life. Although I am pretty sure that it might have started earlier than that, I can pinpoint the journey about over 10-12 years ago. Like any person with a brain would say, looking back, I could have done things much better, but that is always the case, isn’t it? Whatever brings you into the process, I have found that it is better to embrace the upcoming change with an open mind, in faith and hope, and focus one day at a time, whether that day brings a challenge or rest. Although not easy at first, a grateful attitude, and prayer, helps a lot. Depending on how you came into the process, willing or not, attitude is key, and it might make all the difference. Process will take as long as it has to. I can honestly say that now.
During the process, there will be highs and lows, a natural flow, and supernatural as well. Awareness is important, but many times our radar is a bit cloudy, and that is when prayer and a good honest attitude with ourselves help. I think that we are about to go through many challenges as citizens of this country, and of the world as well. It will be a process, in which we’ll need those two. But going back to my personal experience, I can say that this process started with the need of letting material stuff go, and that was the first tangible step that I took. I started decluttering my physical space, and eventually, decluttering other areas of my life as well – spiritual, financial … You have to start somewhere, right?
During this purge, the material stuff was the easiest to let go off, although not necessarily too easy. We accumulate things through a lifetime, and those things have memories, emotions, and feelings attached to them, so that is not so easy at times. The more we live the more we accumulate. I am still letting go of stuff, believe me. Every step takes you closer, and the more you let go, the freer and more satisfied you feel, to the point that you actually feel that there is nothing you really need, except for the important things in your life like God, people and values, beliefs… the not so tangible stuff. I can honestly say today that I could walk out of this house if I had to, and take nothing with me, and I will be fine, material stuff that is. I can appreciate beautiful things, like them, and enjoy them, but I am not tied to them as I might have been before. In the pursuit of the simple life, you learn to appreciate the good, the bad, and the ugly, although in the beginning you might not even like it or realize it, and even fight against it. The aha! moment comes later on, at least it did for me.
In ridding myself of much material stuff, I had to do it systematically, one step at a time; it was what worked for me back then. The process was a process in itself, if that makes sense. The method I used was to go room by room, and divide items into donating or give, selling, and trash. There wasn’t much in the trash category, but I started by selling stuff in three steps. We would use the money to put towards our upcoming move out of state. That added to the motivation. First, I sold things online. What didn’t sell online ended up on various yard sales, and what did not sell in a yard sale, we sold at a flea market in two occasions. At the end, we gave away the stuff to sellers that did that continuously for a living, and they were appreciative. I also gave stuff to family and donated an entire room full of stuff to a veteran’s organization in three different load trips at the beginning of the process. It took time and effort, and it certainly did not feel good in the beginning. Once we moved out here and were settled in the home after fixing up the place (you can check out that process under the topics farmhouse restoration, the simple life, or restoring an old farmhouse) I realized that there was still much more to let go, and I was able to give and donate much more. This process continues until today. After living here for about 6 years, I find that there is much more that I can do in this area. After all, it is a different space and a different lifestyle, and the time was necessary to understand what works and what doesn’t work in the new setting. It also let me explore new possibilities and understand why some of the stuff is not a good fit anymore. I will write about that in much detail. The next blogpost will be about simplifying your space, and it ties to this one. I hope you enjoyed this post.
Farmhouse Project – The Pumpkin Area
We had plenty of rain over the past two days, so in the interim, we were able to tackle one of the projects from the immediate list – opening up an area in the back part of the property for pumpkins or other veggies . Last year, we tested a small patch of grass where we were able to grow a few pumpkins and cantaloupe, not many. We realized we had to move the planting a bit to the front, where there is a bit more sun, so we finally settled on the area. We took advantage of the very wet and soft ground after the rain, and we finished the job quickly. The seeds are planted. Only a few rows, just for a second test to see how it goes. This year we planted a few seeds – pumpkins, cantaloupe, sunflowers, and a bit of corn. Not too much because we are still testing. Here are a few pictures of the project.
After testing this area, if it works out it will be expanded a bit to be able to plant more, and added to over time. I am sure that we will find more interesting things buried in the soil. I hope you enjoyed this project; I surely did.
Fixing an Old Farmhouse – Future Projects
We had a pretty heavy three-day ice storm, and I am so grateful that we did not lose power, and also grateful that we did not have any trees damaging our home. I also feel for the people that are without heat in this type of cold weather. We are expecting another storm by tomorrow, and that will add to the damage we had, which was nothing compared to other people. The amount of ice was so heavy on the trees that I could hear the tump tump tump every time one fell. Many of our trees lost a considerable amount of heavy branches, including the one near the house, my beloved old cedar tree, which is as old as the farmhouse is, or older. This storm put into perspective the need to remove two more trees that are too close for comfort, although I truly hate to see them go. This of course will be expensive because they are old giants. One of them lost most of its branches, a few of them hitting the porch at the corner but thankfully, only leaving a slight dent on the old roof, which is over 100 years.
(Photo by M.A.D.)
The list of chores keeps growing around here. For now, the way to tackle these coming up projects will be one at a time, little by little, and all in due time. I will share some of them here. Hope you enjoyed this post.
A Day of Farmhouse Chores
My latest post was about The Christmas Tree Project which we did last Saturday. While we were waiting for the moment it lighted up we had many autumn chores to do, and it translated on time going so fast that we hardly noticed the long wait until sunset. Around here, autumn means tons of cleaning up before winter or the first snow, prepping certain areas, and getting ready for future chores during early spring, so I figured I would share some of those.
Cutting the grass and blowing out leaves usually takes my husband the whole day. Once he is done, he sees another thin layer of fresh leaves that has just fallen. It is the never ending autumn story, but they look gorgeous when the entire grass is covered and one sees the many colors of the leaves on the ground, like a multicolor carpet.
By the time we had our lunch break, and finally, we were both done with our chores, it had become dark and our reward was awaiting to be enjoyed.
Dracula’s Teeth – What Are The Odds?
The ground around this property seems to change constantly. One day there is a small dip on the ground, and a few weeks later is either larger or it disappears; I don’t know why this is. The only thing I could think of is moles; there seem to be plenty around here. We are always finding things that come up from the ground, especially after heavy rain. The latest is so timely and fun that it made us laugh.
Over the weekend, my husband was blowing out the leaves and cleaning up around the house when he came across something unexpected near the well. Unexpected because this is an area we walk around all the time. He called me so I could see it. He said, “What are the odds?” I laughed so hard that I cried. Here is what came out of the ground, and mind you, soon it will be Halloween. Perfect timing. And of course, it was the perfect opportunity for a picture.
We are puzzled because we mow that area all the time and we never saw it. It also lets me know that I am not crazy when I see a slope or dip on the ground that wasn’t there before, because that must have been buried completely at one point and it just surfaced. So what are the odds?
This gave me an idea; to start collecting every little oddity that comes out of the ground and save the items in a box, and share it here from time to time. I have found plastic soldiers, broken china, vintage bottles, odd metal things, marbles, a tiny birdhouse figurine, Tiny colorful beads, and other things. Some of them we placed in the garbage and some ended up in the faerie garden. Other items ended up as part of my décor. Here are a few examples.
Some call it junk, some call it treasures, I call it history. Hope you enjoy this post. Happy Autumn!
Fixing an Old Farmhouse – The Bedroom
The experience of fixing this old farmhouse has been everything we thought it would be and much more. We do not regret it. The last room to share on the “Fixing an Old Farmhouse” series of posts is the bedroom. Technically, this house was listed as a three-bedroom house, but currently, we use one of the bedrooms as the living room because we set up the living room as a dining room, and the other room is set as the office. You can view these rooms on my previous posts.
The bedroom was the first room we fixed. Like the rest of the house, it was in very bad shape and required work. The walls had significant damage as well as the ceiling. The floor had some minor issues but we decided to install laminate flooring due to the uneven space between boards, some discoloration, and other minor issues, something quite normal. The room is 15 x 15 feet and it has two floor to ceiling windows due to the low ceiling (seven feet or so). The house does not have any closets, except for the one in the living room, something common for this type of construction. The room had a makeshift shell of a closet that was falling to the side, kind of hanging there with no support. We thought about using vintage his and her armoires but settled on the idea of building a walk-in closet around the chimney space, which worked out great. The chimney was in rough shape and had to be covered anyway so the space was ideal for it. I thought that building the closet would rob the room of space but it worked out well; we don’t miss the space and it was a much needed use of it. Because this was the room at the far end, we knew that it would be the coldest room. The pellet stove does a great job at heating the house, however, we decided that adding an electric fireplace on a corner would be a good idea, just in case we needed extra heat on a cold winter. This arrangement has worked fine.
Here are a few pictures of the before, during, and after process.
AFTER
This concludes the Fixing an Old Farmhouse series, for now. There is still some work that needs to be done, mostly the porch flooring (slate) and the future installation of a new roof (biggest ticket item). There are a few things to build outdoors, and a garden to develop slowly. I will share more on future posts as we complete each project. It has been a labor of love, exhausting at times but rewarding in many ways, fun too. I hope you have enjoyed the before and after of the process, and hope that in some way, these posts have been inspirational to someone.
Fixing an Old Farmhouse – The Office
The second floor of this 1910 farmhouse is typical of this type of construction. Immediately after going up the stairway, one lands on the first bedroom. There are no doors, neither a landing. There are two rooms and one connects to the other. The entire space upstairs measures 30×15 feet resulting in two 15×15 feet rooms. These are supposed to be bedrooms. They lack the privacy found in modern construction. We set up the first bedroom as an office. This was a necessary room. Before buying the house, I asked the realtor if there was internet available in the area, if not, that would be the deal breaker. Although broadband was not available, other types of connections were. This room was the second to be finished. The floor was in good condition, however, some boards were loose. The walls and ceilings were in bad shape – holes, dirty, mismatched materials … The chimney in the center of both rooms had to be covered, and some wood beams had to be reinforced. There were birds nests, wasps nests, garbage, debris, and even vines growing inside. As any other room in this old house, it required much work.
The ceiling in this room is lower than the ceiling downstairs, something that made installation a bit easier for us. I found this room challenging in the sense of the difficulty of bringing material upstairs. In fact, we had to make an opening through the kitchen wall to be able to bring panels, wood, flooring, and long pieces of wood because the stairway was difficult to navigate at its angle, and many things would not go through. The steep incline and the narrow steps presented a challenge as well. By making this opening in the kitchen we were able to go straight up. Later on, when we were done, we closed the wall opening. Another challenge with this room is that I don’t feel it quite ready/finished yet. I call it the messy room. It is were we work/study and it serves as an art/craft room as well. It is a room in progress as far as setting it up. It needs better storage. Due to the low ceilings, it is very hot during the summer. Autumn and Spring are the seasons when this room feels more comfortable as far as temperature.
Before starting work upstairs we had to clean and get rid of a few pieces of very dirty broken furniture that were left, and other scattered items, clothes, garbage and broken pieces … One feature in this room that I liked and we kept was the original banister/handrail that prevented someone to fall through the stairway opening. It was loose, so we reinforced it, replaced the base wood, and painted it. I also like the fact that the windows are floor to ceiling due to the low ceilings in both rooms. The cats love this feature too. They love to look outside, and they don’t have to climb on the window sill. Although the floors were in good shape (if sanded and polished), the openings between some of the wood boards were uneven or a bit wider than we wanted, so we installed new flooring, as we did on the first floor.
Here are a few pictures of the before, during, and after process. Please excuse the dust orbs on the camera lens due to flying dust.
AFTER
Room as it is now.
Update – Some minor changes (2021)
Fixing this old farmhouse has not been easy. By sharing these posts, I don’t want to give the wrong impression that it was a breeze to do the work. It was not. My husband and I did all the work and it took a lot of effort, patience, dedication, stamina, hope, courage, and faith. We operated in a cash only small budget, hence why we did mostly everything ourselves, and hired the experts where it counted. There were days when we doubted, we were extremely tired physically, mentally, and spiritually. There were days when we were grouchy and days when we were very happy, days when we felt we could vaporize each other if we could, and days we enjoyed working together and had fun. We had good times, bad times, horrible times, and great times. It was not easy but it was worth it. If you ever decide to take on a similar task take all factors into consideration – finances, health (physical, mental, and spiritual), disposition, and what you can do and cannot do as far as skills. It is not a job for one person; it takes two at the minimum. It does require a lot of physical work, and you might have to forgo your fear or disgust of bugs (big and small), dirt, the gross and disgusting, and any other surprise that might show up. On the other hand, if you are up to it, it is very rewarding and it feels good once you are done. These posts are meant to inspire the reader, as well as give an idea of potential, and encourage you to see things from another perspective, one of hope, vision, and possibility. I hope you enjoy this post.
Fixing an Old Farmhouse – The Dining Room
Technically, this 1910 farmhouse is a three-bedroom house with an eat-in kitchen and bonus room (cat room). We set up the rooms in the way we live. There are two bedrooms upstairs, and the third bedroom is what we set up as the living room, adjacent to the bathroom. The original living room is what we set up as the dining room. One of the upstairs bedrooms is being used as an office, and the other, as our bedroom. These rooms can easily be changed back to their original set up by just moving furniture around. The mudroom could have been used as a dining room, but our cats deserved their own space; we love them that much. The kitchen can easily be converted back into an eat-in kitchen in the event that we would need the living room as a bedroom again, and the living room would move to what is now the dining room. The office could be moved to the mudroom if needed, thus reversing to the original bedroom. This house is very flexible because most rooms are square and measure 15×15 feet, and with the exception of the kitchen, nothing has a permanent fixture that would impede the use of the rooms in a different way. The furniture is moveable and I would not mind disposing of a few pieces if necessary. All rooms mirror each other because of an existing center chimney downstairs and upstairs, not including the kitchen and cat room, that is. This post will be about the dining room, what should have been a living room.
This room was in better shape than the others, meaning there was no water damage and no damage to the wood. The only issues were the condition of the ceiling and walls, and the “never cleaned” chimney that almost started a fire on one of the interior wood beams. We found a bit of charred wood when we took down the walls. It is a miracle that the house had not burnt down. The entire chimney was full of ashes inside. We had to vacuum it up, and because the bricks required extensive work and repair, as well as the inside of it ($$$), we decided to clean what we could and closed it up. Our heating source is a pellet stove, and electric fireplaces that we use as supplemental heat if it gets too cold. In the event of a power outage, the pellet stove can be hooked up to a portable generator. In the future, we would love to install a Generac system and ductless heating/air. Ideally, all that to be powered by solar energy; however, we are not there yet, and things work fine the way they are now. On the low budget end, the smart thing to do would be to install a wood stove, because in a real emergency, there would be no electric service, no gasoline or gas service, and the delivery of things would be disrupted. The more I think of it the more I convince myself that going with a wood stove is the right choice. In the event of a simple power outage, I have candlesticks and candelabras in every room, and there is a candle chandelier in the dining room. In addition, battery-operated candles are an extra option.
As I mentioned before, our style is more reminiscent of an early American rustic farmhouse, and that follows through into the dining room. This room was the third room we fixed. Here are a few pictures of the before and after condition.
BEFORE
AFTER
I hope you enjoyed this room’s before and after photos. Compared to the other three rooms I have shown, this one was less problematic. However, as you can see, it was a ton of work. I hope these series of posts will inspire you to remodel a room in your home, take on a DIY project, or find that dream property that might not be so dreamy at first glance, and give it a little bit of life.
Inkspeare 