Thanksgiving 2018

We've owned the farm for (very slightly over) two years now, and while we still have a lot of projects to work on, we've continued to be pleasantly surprised by how smoothly most projects have gone. It has really been a fun project overall, and we have a lot to be thankful for. In no particular order, here's our farmhouse top 10 list for Thanksgiving.

1. Heat
Seriously, heat is great. We've been lucky to have the wood burner since the beginning that really kicks out a lot of heat, and how we're going to be extra toasty with central heat that we can schedule to turn on before we come up. 

2.  Good neighbors
We've been so lucky with our farmhouse neighbors. They're often stopping by in the summer with garden produce for us, and last winter, one of the neighbors plowed a path up our driveway all season so we could get in when we came up. They've shared what they know about the place, and the guy across the street even took us on a tour around the area. 

3. The front porch was saved
You may remember that I was prepared to cry if we had to lose that nice stone porch, so I'm definitely thankful that not only were we able to support and save it, but improve the steps so that the whole thing is a charming place for some quality front-porch-sitting... in those few moments we have for just sitting around.

4. Doors that open
It seems weird to be thankful for doors that basically just do their job, but in a house where we didn't get any keys at closing, everything's not-quite-straight, and most of the doors are at least a little sticky, we're definitely glad to be at a point where all available doors can be opened, closed, and (where applicable) locked. 

5. People pitching in
From the first moment that Tony Bucket hurried back from his dinner so we could write up an offer on the farmhouse before heading home, people have been lovely about helping to make this happen. My father, of course, has been basically a rock star. He's been ready to help with any project, and always does a careful and beautiful job. My mom has stripped wallpaper and painted. My sister has come from out of town to strip wallpaper and refinish windows. I think just about everyone in Chris's family has been part of the ongoing project to move the leftover rocks away from the front porch.

 

6. History lessons
One of the most fun parts of the farmhouse is that people seem to enjoy telling us about what the place was like before we owned it. We've had a former resident come for a tour and to share her stories. The neighbors are always a good source of information about what's been done and when. One of my coworkers is even the nephew of the man we bought it from. We have a lot of fun walking people through the place and listening to them share what they remember about how it used to be.

7. A roof over our head
The farmhouse roof is steep and can't be stepped on, making it one of the more terrifying parts of the house. Despite that, we've been able to get up to make the necessary repairs to keep the water (and sometimes the bats) out.

    

8. Hyacinth Bucket (van)
We would definitely not have made the progress we have without the bucket van. We've done roof repairs. We've scraped and painted. We've removed and replaced storm windows. We've moved in a boxspring. We've picked apples. We've repaired a chimney. And through all of that, we haven't had to worry about falling off ladders. Seriously, that van is great. 10/10, would buy again.

9. We can actually vacation at the farm
We have a functional kitchen, a television, and two complete bedrooms. We have a working bathroom and a window a/c unit. We're finally at the point where we don't have to necessarily hustle every single second of every single visit to the farmhouse, and that's a very good feeling, indeed.

10. The water's still flowing
Even when we winterize, we have a steady outflow of water. We've cleared the ditch a bit, and we may have successfully found the outflow for the basement floor drain (which may mean less basement flooding in the future?). In a world where even pretty nearby, access to clean water isn't a guarantee, the fact that we have water that literally is constantly flowing through our house at all times is pretty great.

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

All Mod Cons pt. 2

So, this is finally an update to a project that has been (sort of) underway since Labor Day weekend. That weekend, we had planned to remove the excess chimney, but it turned out we didn't have quite the tools we needed and weren't quite sure the weather was going to be good enough to warrant putting a hole in the roof. So instead, we tackled the furnace.

First, there was the matter of unhooking and removing the old furnace. We were anticipating that this might be a huge, heavy job... but surprisingly, it mostly wasn't. It came out easily, and while taking it out the back stairs was awkward, it was significantly easier than when we attempted to do the same thing with the old water heater.

Out with the old!

Then we were faced with the somewhat more daunting task of getting the new furnace installed. This furnace had come out of our primary house when we had that furnace replaced over a year ago, so it had been sitting in the farmhouse basement for awhile surrounded by random pieces of ducting that we hoped would be useful. The initial work took most of an afternoon with my dad getting the gas lines run around to where the new hookups were, and Chris and I trying to figure out how to put a square peg in a round hole -- a.k.a., getting the old duct work to align with the new furnace.

In with the new(er)

By the end of the day, we had everything pretty roughed in, but it took Chris and I a few more weekends to get everything really set to go. Then there were some other matters to attend to. For one, the house wasn't that clean when we moved in, and the furnace hadn't been run in something like 2 - 15 years, so we were confident that if the ducts were just full of dust, we could count ourselves lucky.

We initially thought that we might be able to tape some rags onto the end of chimney sweeping poles and run those through the ducts, but we quickly discovered that even a much more flexible piece of PVC just wasn't flexible enough to make the nearly 90 degree angle through the vents. Fortunately, then Chris realized that we had a very long hose that was exactly the same size as the hose on the shopvac (the hose had previously been employed draining the flooded basement). So we attached that to the vacuum, and down the holes it went.

This job sucks.

Then there was the matter of the chimney itself, which we weren't positive was actually open, which is an important part of the function of a chimney. We kept hoping to get a friend with a drone to come up and look at it for us, but then Chris answered the question in the way that people presumably answered this question for centuries before drones came along... we stuck a mirror into the chimney and looked up.

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is daylight coming through the chimney opening.

The chimney was open. The ducts were clean-ish. Everything was installed. Chris and one of his buddies even stopped up one day and brought the stove in from the lean-to where it had been languishing for the past year and a half.

Just like a real kitchen!

So, yesterday was the moment of truth... we scheduled DTE to come out and turn on the gas. In an unexpected turn of events, they said a technician would arrive between 12 and 4 p.m., and he actually arrived by 12:30, making this possibly the most timely service call ever.

DTE said "let there be heat!" And there was heat. And it was good.

The furnace was the easy part. Despite having sat for quite awhile, it fired right up and immediately started pumping lovely heat throughout the house. The initial whoomph did also blow a bunch of nastiness out of the ducts, but... I guess they're cleaner now?

The stove was actually the hard part because when we turned on the gas at the appliance... nothing happened. There wasn't even gas coming through the lines. This was odd, especially since the furnace was already blowing steadily -- a clear indicator that the gas was coming into the house just fine. Chris and the gas technician looked around the basement a few times trying to see if there was another shutoff somewhere, but couldn't find anything. We all stared deeply into the creepy crawlspace that runs under the kitchen, hoping the flashlight would not hit a shutoff valve that would require someone to actually slither under there. We discussed breaking a pipe open to see if a blockage could be discovered by snaking wire through the pipes. Then we all looked one more time, and I found the shutoff, and then everything worked out just fine.

Cooking celebration ramen. As one does.

It should be noted that about 30 seconds after taking the picture above, I had both the coat and hat off because it was warming up significantly in the house.

So that's how it came to be that two years and three days after initially purchasing the farmhouse, we now have central heat and a working range.