Newfangled Flush Toilets

I don't think of myself as especially high maintenance, but I admit, I really like indoor flush toilets.

A lot.

Don't get too worried -- despite being built in the 1800s, the farm does (now) have a bathroom that's up to modern standards (and maybe just a little too much up to modern styling... but we'll worry about that much, much, much later).

This, however, was the pipe that carried everything away after you flush that lovely modern toilet. It's pretty easy to spot the hole down at the far right, but it may not be as obvious that the entire outside of that bent part is also a big gaping hole. What this means is that anything flushed down the toilet would soon be deposited on the basement floor, which is not even remotely what I signed up for when I bought a house with a bathroom in it.

Fortunately, Chris and his friend Josh spent the better part of a day removing that pipe. That's right. Hours of work, just to get the old one out.

I spent that day up in the kitchen, scraping up the contact paper that someone had put up as if it were wallpaper (which it isn't) in place of a backsplash (which you don't use wallpaper for, either).

This is neither wallpaper nor tile. It is also not an appropriate use for contact paper.

Goodbye.

When we came back the next day, the hard part had been done, so it was just a matter of getting the new pipes all fitted and secured. And just like that, modern conveniences have been restored!

Well, sort of. We're still flushing with buckets instead of using the toilet lever like civilized folks, but that's just because we want to limit the amount of water we put into the system so we don't have to keep winterizing everything. Have I mentioned that it's winter? I feel like that may have come up here before... two or three or ten times. Still. Flushing with a bucket is better than, well, other ways one might use a bucket in a bathroom situation. Viva la plumbing!

Raising the Roof

We live in Michigan, so winter is a thing. Usually, it's a thing we enjoy (Chris because he gets to go skiing, me because I get to curl up with the cat and drink hot cocoa), but it turns out that winter can be fairly inconvenient when you buy a house and really need to get some repairs made on the roof.

The good news is that some of the roof repairs were actually an indoor job. Some of the rafters had cracked over the years, and while the roof wasn't sagging yet, we didn't really want to give it a chance to start. Our inspector had suggested that the roof shouldn't get loaded up with snow without undergoing some repairs... so naturally, the day after we closed on the house, it started snowing.

Since the indoor part of the roof repair was the most structural part... and because it was windy and snowy and gross outside... we started in the attic. Remember that attic bonus room? That's where our work began, pretty much as soon as we took possession of the house.

Chris was able to screw the rafters together, and most of them drew together pretty nicely with just a little encouragement. It was still a lot of work (and a lot of standing on a ladder), but we were able to rest a bit easier about our roof situation.

Was that it? Of course not. Some of the rafters were really pretty sad, so there was some sistering up to be done. This may have been the hardest part, since the first time through, we failed a bit with the ratio of number of times you're supposed to measure versus cut.

Sisters!

We also added in some cross beams. There were a few in place, but they were just next to the chimney, so Chris added more throughout the attic.

See out the window at the back of the picture? It's snowing. Of course.

So that was a lot of roof work without actually going on the roof, but we (and by "we," I mean "Chris") weren't going to get off that easily. There was one small-ish hole in the corner of the roof that needed to be patched up, and some roof tiles were missing. I think we had at least two or three days when we planned to go up and work on it, but were grounded by snow/rain/wind.

Last weekend, we finally got a few clear hours. Since the hole was right near the corner, Chris was able to get at it with a ladder. I was fairly freaked out about that part ahead of time, but in the end, it wasn't as bad as it looked like it might be.

Patched!

The problem with this roof is that it's covered in asbestos tile. It's actually not the asbestos part that's the problem in this case -- it's the fact that, like any other kind of tile roof, you can't just get up there and start walking around on it because you'll crack the tiles. Fortunately, the tile issues were on the other part of the roof, where there are a porch (in the front) and a lean-to (in the back) that both have metal roofs. Those are ok to walk on, but get really slippery when wet, so the incoming snow was starting to be a concern. It wasn't coming down yet, though, so Chris bravely plowed ahead.

Our first chicken ladder!

This is how you get up on a roof you can't walk on... you build a ladder that hooks over the roof to distribute your weight and keep you from directly stepping on the tiles. And thus, the tiles got patched, just as the wind started picking up.

By the time we left for the day, the snow was coming down steadily and the ground was turning white, and by this time next week, there may be a few inches of snow up at the farm. At least we can rest easier knowing the roof has been shored up against it.

Buying the Farm

Spoiler: we didn't die.

About a month ago, Chris and I bought a farmhouse about an hour north of our actual house. Our plan is to use the farm as a vacation place; when we were looking, the fact that we wouldn't actually live full time in this house gave us the freedom to consider something we've talked about for years: getting a place that needed... a bit of love.

If we can't save the stone porch, I'll probably cry.

So we got this.

We'd spent most of the spring and summer looking at places online and driving up to scope them out, and nothing ever seemed worth taking up the time of a realtor to actually step inside. And then we saw this on the Internet, and basically called the realtor immediately. Then we went to see it, and walked saying delighted things about the vintage light fixtures and the wide baseboards, and then we pretended like we wanted to see another house that turned out to actually be in far, far worse shape without any charm to redeem it... and then we went back to the realtor and wrote up an offer before going home for the night. It's probably one of the fastest joint decisions we've made in over ten years together.

We're putting up this blog to keep track of what we do up at the farm, and to give the people who don't live near us but keeping asking for photos a chance to see what this place is that we keep talking about. So. A small amount of basic information -- more pictures and details will definitely follow!

It's the original farmhouse from this parcel, built in about 1885. That makes it one of the oldest houses in the area, especially that's still standing. The front porch has doors into the living room/parlor and the dining room; there's a lean-to off the back of the house that has a door into the kitchen. The first floor also has a bathroom and a master bedroom. Upstairs, there are three more bedrooms and a huge attic space that could eventually be a nice bonus room. The house has an artesian well, which basically means the water is constantly flowing right through the house and into an outlet at the edge of the property (hence the name of the blog). It sits on an acre of property in the midst of farmland; you can hear the cows calling to one another across the fields.

This is the lean-to that leads into the kitchen.

There's a small shed in the yard.

One last look from the side yard.

And that's our new (old) farmhouse!