No Rest for the Wicked

The days have been a blur lately and I'm too exhausted to write. We've been busy working on home improvements and sanctuary improvements all summer. It's all stuff we should have done years ago but life got in the way.

When we started having kids eight years ago, all the home improvements and even some of the upkeep was put on hold. I didn't have easy pregnancies so for almost a full year, it was simply to survive and then the first year of baby, again it was simply to survive. If you're a parent, you'll understand completely. After the first year of baby, I'd finally come out of my fog and look around the place and do a little work but then return to the fog of baby.

Now that I'm too old to have kids, I took a look last September and realized that we needed to do a lot of work around here. I started last year painting the house but only got one side painted. Sadly, I used wrong paint or the wood is so old and dry that it disappeared. Fast forward to this summer and I decided to paint the south side of the house. It took me six months to do because I was doing it whenever I had "free" time. Anyone with kids and/or horses knows that there's no such thing as free time. But I FINALLY got it done this past weekend (after the threat of freezing temperatures). Ok, so it's not done as finished but there's a couple of coats of paint slapped on and I've decided I'll be taking a week off to paint the house properly next spring/summer. I won't try to do it after work and in between all the other stuff. But at least now when you pull into the driveway, the house won't look so ratty.

We also poured a huge concrete slab this spring after digging out what we wanted when we rented the skidloader. It's a lovely concrete pad that I'm hoping will get lots of use. While it's not sanctuary related, I do see that we'll be using it for many different purposes and if I get to do what I want, we may very well be using it for the sanctuary. We also hauled away six of the eight years worth of manure this spring. It's something we should have done every year but didn't. Sadly, we ran out of time to get all of the manure out so we'll have to push to get the remaining manure (and this year's manure) out next spring. After I get the trailer paid off, I'll be on the hunt for a skidloader. I'm thankful for our tractor but we sometimes also need a skidloader. My mother taught me to be as self sufficient as possible and to do that, we'll need a skidloader.

We also finally put gutters on the house. Now I feel like I'm an adult because I'm excited for gutters. We haven't had gutters on the house in years. We finally got rain yesterday and couldn't figure out what that sound was. It was the gutters! It makes me feel old to be excited for gutters and a little sad because we've gone this long without them and who knows what damage we've done to the house because of it. This past week, we also installed five new windows. They aren't officially done and we still have a bunch of stuff to figure out, but we now have brand new windows that open. Of the five, I was down to only having one window that would open. We'd stuffed weather stripping in all the windows because they leaked so bad. Come to find out that when we pulled them out of the house, that these were the original windows. Either original to the remodel or at least to when they put the siding up. So our best guess is that these windows were installed in the 1940s. At this point, we are also figuring everything around here is from the 1940s.

This fall I insisted we get a mini excavator so that we could bury water lines from the barn to where I want an auto water. We finally got the auto water installed although there's still some wiring issues we need to resolve. The barn's electrical box cant handle it. We are hoping though that with the new auto water, the electric bill will go down. We won't have two 500 watt water heaters in an open 100 gallon tank. I am super excited to not have to haul water every day. With how 2020 is going, I wanted to be prepared. It will also make life easier when we go on vacation. I won't have to worry about lugging water up to the red shed and that pasture when we go on vacation and trying to come up with a water holder so that the tanks stay filled while we are gone. We do everything we can to make it so that whoever is looking after the place doesn't really have to do anything (but make sure no one falls out of a fence).

When we had the mini excavator, we also dug out a trench for the electrical to go from the power pole to the new garage (new to us anyway even if it is 10 years old).  I've been trying to get the new garage hooked up with electricity for 10 years and hopefully this winter, we can finally work on it and convert the new garage over to a shop so that we can get a few more projects done. With kids, I see a lot of time in the garage building stuff. We better be prepared now for it.

We also started an accidental remodel of our utility room. Of all the rooms in the house, the bathroom and the utility room are probably used the hardest (with the kitchen a close third). Having the utility room in disarray for the summer was ok, but we are still in the middle of the accidental remodel and now that winter is almost here with boots, hats, gloves, snow pants, coveralls, and everything else that winter requires, I'm struggling. The wood paneling we need to even hide the 1950s mint green (with glue that was used to hold the old wood paneling) is still in eye sore I see every day when standing in my kitchen. We can't find the wood we want to cover it so until we can find it, it's mass chaos in my house. The accidental remodel is going to be moved up higher on the "to do" list very soon.

With all of our projects, we still have work to do to wrap them up and make them look nice. But at least the hard part is done and we can tinker to get everything looking the way we want all winter when we are hunkered down after the snow flies.

I think we made up for the last eight years in just one year. I guess it's a blessing we had the pandemic and I'm working from home at the paying job so that we can tackle some of these projects that have been at the back of my mind for so many years.

It's probably a good thing that winter is right around the corner so that we can rest for a little bit. But not for long as I look through my brand new windows (but see that there's no trim around them). No rest for the wicked.