I guess I am ready for spring. This has been a weekend of planning. We are trying to figure out where we might like to have things (outside), garden, swing, conservatory, porch, fences, paths, flowers, etc. We are getting excited about planting things. Yes, I know it is way to early. I say this as we watch another 5 -8 inches of snow fall outside. But still I am thinking about it.
We have also taken two trips to the library to search for information on our house. We have not yet found anything. But we will keep looking. We really think our house had a front porch at one time. And we would like to know what it had looked like to help us plan the future porch.
I did a lot of searching on the internet. I found a couple of really cool looking conservatories. Right now we are not sure if we will have it attached to the house or separate. I was also looking for designs for the garage. We would like to make the garage a little bit wider, and have a second floor on it. Then there would be a bridge path connecting the second floor of the garage to the first floor kitchen. This bridge would also create a covered walkway from the ground level of the garage to the basement.
I am pretty sure about some of the flowers that I want to plant. Mostly I want to know where I want to put them. So I need to have an idea of where things should go. We also need to get the swings up for the kids and if we are lucky build a little Victorian playhouse for them. It would be nice to have these ready when the weather gets warmer.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Day 312
Well, here we go with some more fun. Jonathan and I were sitting in here near the fire. Merlin started to act like he could sense or hear something coming. Everytime we would make a noise he made a strange noise. He was continually looking at the ceiling. This is never a good sign. Bug, Bird, Bat... Well, it was once again a bat. It started flying around the room and Jonathan went for the gun. I guess it is a good thing we have a "warning cat."
Friday, February 19, 2010
Day 307 - 311
The past week has been pretty quiet around here. I day of sun a couple of days of clouds and a day of snow. Melinda did make a Valentine's party for us (more about that on my other blog).
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Day 303 - 306
Well, we are still waiting for spring... There isn't a lot of things we can do right now, but plan. Hopefully it will start getting warm soon and melt all of this snow. :)
Happy Valentine's Day everyone.
Happy Valentine's Day everyone.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Day 302
Treasure hunting:
After supper we went down into the crawl space to see what we could find with our new metal detector. If someone wanted to hide their money or treasure that would have been a good place to do it. Right now it has a lot of junk down there, screen doors, glass, pieces of wood and pipe. There are little pieces of wood, and can you believe it trash. ;) But after digging around in the cold for about an hour we found several old nails, some wire, pipe, some foil and a piece of copper pipe. We will keep on working down there at least until the ground outside isn't frozen. If we keep it up we will have the crawl space cleaned up. The girls thought this might be a fun place to have a playhouse. We will also be able to use this to help us clean up the yard as we know there are lots of nails and things out there. Plus we make actually find some treasure - or at least a few coins.
As we entered the crawl space...
Jonathan sweeping the ground with the metal detector..
What could it be?
After supper we went down into the crawl space to see what we could find with our new metal detector. If someone wanted to hide their money or treasure that would have been a good place to do it. Right now it has a lot of junk down there, screen doors, glass, pieces of wood and pipe. There are little pieces of wood, and can you believe it trash. ;) But after digging around in the cold for about an hour we found several old nails, some wire, pipe, some foil and a piece of copper pipe. We will keep on working down there at least until the ground outside isn't frozen. If we keep it up we will have the crawl space cleaned up. The girls thought this might be a fun place to have a playhouse. We will also be able to use this to help us clean up the yard as we know there are lots of nails and things out there. Plus we make actually find some treasure - or at least a few coins.
As we entered the crawl space...
Jonathan sweeping the ground with the metal detector..
What could it be?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Day 301
Well, this is not really some work we have done today. But it gives me something to write about during the cold, workless days of winter.
We have several things in mind for the outside of the house. We are not ready for it yet, but we are wondering what color we would like to paint the house and what the tower roof and the mansard part of the roof will look like.
We are also figuring out where we want our wrap around porch. The porch would wrap around from the east (front) to the south of the house. We want to put on a conservatory room so that we can have a nice sunny spot for growing things. The conservatory would be on the south side of the house probably connected to the wrap around porch, with a door into the parlor. In the conservatory I would like to have a koi pond. We have been wondering if we can make this area 2-stories. I have been (jokingly) trying to talk Jonathan into a 2-story cylinder of fish like they have at Henry Doyle Zoo. It would be really cool. But I am sure that we don't want to have to take care of that. So I will just stick with the koi pond. ;)
North of the house we are considering putting in a garden maze. The thought right now would be mostly stone wall maze, not a hedge maze.
In the back (west side) we would have the 2-story garage. The first floor of the garage would of course be for our cars. The 2nd floor of the garage is still in question. We are thinking of using it for storage. But there is the possibility of a 'guest house' up there as well. My parents have been teasing us that we already took away their 'apartment' when we knocked down some of the walls here on second floor and took out the extra kitchen and bathroom. So maybe we have need of a guest house. :D There would be a bridge-like cover walkway connecting the second floor of the garage to the first floor kitchen. The walkway would then be a covered path connecting the 1st floor of the garage to the basement. I was considering having a swing hanging under one of the arches in the path.
There would also be some sort of play structure for the kids in the back. We took down the "space station" we were building at the old house as well as the playground. Hopefully this summer we will find a way to put them together for the kids. I think we are going to do something a little different than what we had. But we haven't thought much about that yet.
We also want some kind of tall fence or hedge around the whole property. We are unsure of what we want yet. And in the front yard I thought a fountain would be very cool. Of course I also see beautiful paths lined with different flowers and plants all around.
For now I think that is about all we have thought of. Except for the TARDIS in the middle of my stone maze. I guess you could probably see the observatory up on the roof from the outside as well.
We have several things in mind for the outside of the house. We are not ready for it yet, but we are wondering what color we would like to paint the house and what the tower roof and the mansard part of the roof will look like.
We are also figuring out where we want our wrap around porch. The porch would wrap around from the east (front) to the south of the house. We want to put on a conservatory room so that we can have a nice sunny spot for growing things. The conservatory would be on the south side of the house probably connected to the wrap around porch, with a door into the parlor. In the conservatory I would like to have a koi pond. We have been wondering if we can make this area 2-stories. I have been (jokingly) trying to talk Jonathan into a 2-story cylinder of fish like they have at Henry Doyle Zoo. It would be really cool. But I am sure that we don't want to have to take care of that. So I will just stick with the koi pond. ;)
North of the house we are considering putting in a garden maze. The thought right now would be mostly stone wall maze, not a hedge maze.
In the back (west side) we would have the 2-story garage. The first floor of the garage would of course be for our cars. The 2nd floor of the garage is still in question. We are thinking of using it for storage. But there is the possibility of a 'guest house' up there as well. My parents have been teasing us that we already took away their 'apartment' when we knocked down some of the walls here on second floor and took out the extra kitchen and bathroom. So maybe we have need of a guest house. :D There would be a bridge-like cover walkway connecting the second floor of the garage to the first floor kitchen. The walkway would then be a covered path connecting the 1st floor of the garage to the basement. I was considering having a swing hanging under one of the arches in the path.
There would also be some sort of play structure for the kids in the back. We took down the "space station" we were building at the old house as well as the playground. Hopefully this summer we will find a way to put them together for the kids. I think we are going to do something a little different than what we had. But we haven't thought much about that yet.
We also want some kind of tall fence or hedge around the whole property. We are unsure of what we want yet. And in the front yard I thought a fountain would be very cool. Of course I also see beautiful paths lined with different flowers and plants all around.
For now I think that is about all we have thought of. Except for the TARDIS in the middle of my stone maze. I guess you could probably see the observatory up on the roof from the outside as well.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Day 300
Well we have owned the house for 300 days. I wonder what it is going to look like 300 days from now...
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Floor plans
Hopefully these drawings will help out in understanding the layout of the house and make it easier to see what we are doing.
Here is my drawing of the first floor. Right now, we are using the 1st floor as a place to store our stuff. There are boxes and shelves in all of the rooms but the bathroom. (Right now the floor of the bathroom on first floor is a dangerous place to be - you could fall right into the basement.) We are also stacking wood along the wall in the dining room. Our main wood pile is on the porch off of the kitchen.
Here is the drawing of the basement. Our back door goes into the basement. This is often the door we use to get into the house as we park in the back. We have to walk up the stairs and into the kitchen. Then go through the house to the front stairs. (I normally use the front stairs as the back ones are narrow and hard to get bags of groceries up.) Right now the basement is mostly storage as well. The first room in the basement is full of garden stuff, kids outside toys, and things we will put into the shed in the spring. This is the room with the water heater and freezer. The second room is the workshop. Most of Jonathan's tools are here. The third room is mostly boxes and things from our garage that need to be sorted and put away properly. The room labeled 'bathroom' was a bathroom at some point in the past. We are planning on making it a bathroom again in the future.
This is the 2nd floor plan. We are living on 2nd floor right now.
Landing Room:
The "Landing" room is the room you are in when you first come up the stairs. Right now, it has some of our dressers in it. We also have tools that we are currently using in it. Mostly it is a large hallway to get to the kitchen and bathroom from the bedrooms and living room. But as we got the electricity working out there, we might start using it a bit more. This will also happen as it gets warmer and it is not so hard to heat. I am hoping to soon be able to put our table out there so we can eat there. It will be nice to have the table closer to the kitchen. A long way into the future, we are planning on making this our craft/hobby room. It will be a place we can hang out and work on our various projects.
Mars Room:
The kids' bedroom is the room we called the Mars room. Right now all three of them are sharing a room. This is mostly due to heat. It has been really cold and we are trying to keep the heat in as small a number of rooms as we can. The Mars room in the distant future will be a guest room/sewing craft room. Yes we will have two craft rooms. The landing room will be for more messy crafts.
Tower Room:
The tower room is currently our dining room, living room, library, and laundry room. It also has the wood stove in it so it is the warm room. We wanted the laundry up on 2nd floor. I was not looking forward to years of going down two floors to do the laundry. We will eventually close this area into a nice looking cupboard. In the future we see the tower room as a library/parlor like room. With all of the windows and doors we are not sure how the library idea will work out. But that is all still in the planning stage.
Green Room:
First of all the Green Room is no longer green. But in the old pictures and posts that is what we called it. This is Jonathan and my bedroom. That is what this room is going to be in the future.
Bathroom:
This is the one room that is nearly finished. We do still need to do the wood work. Because the roof is still leaking next to the chimney, there was a little water damage (to our new drywall) that we will need to take care of in the future. But I like to sit in here and imagine that the rest of the house looks this good. ;)
The kitchen:
This is the only kitchen beside the 1st floor kitchen that we will be keeping. This kitchen is connected to the first floor kitchen by the back stairs. In the future this will be our craft kitchen. We will be doing our candles, clay and brewing here.
This is the 3rd floor plan. The 3rd floor also has a landing room. This one is smaller than the one on 2nd floor. When we talk about it we usually say "3rd floor landing". This will be the kids' common room. The way I have drawn the third floor is what it is going to look like in the future. The bathroom is not actually against the exterior wall right now. It is towards the center of the house. We want to move it back against the outside all to add a little room to Bedroom 3. It is the smallest of the rooms, so it would be nice to give it just a bit more space. Bedroom 3 was the kitchen to the 3rd floor apartment. It is the only room we have yet to knock the plaster down in. We climb out the window in bedroom 3 to get on to the 2nd floor roof and than climb up the ladder to the third floor roof. We are considering actually making a bit of a porch up on the second floor roof and putting a more permanent ladder or staircase up to the 3rd floor roof. We want to put a telescope/observatory up on the 3rd floor roof (possibly in the tower). We still have not decided which of the rooms goes to which of the children. We will have to see as things go along. We are also considering finishing up the 3rd floor landing room first. Then letting Zeb use this room as his bedroom. But right now that is not possible with the terrible cold we have been having this winter.
I hope this helps to give everyone a better idea of what we are doing and where we are living. :D
Here is my drawing of the first floor. Right now, we are using the 1st floor as a place to store our stuff. There are boxes and shelves in all of the rooms but the bathroom. (Right now the floor of the bathroom on first floor is a dangerous place to be - you could fall right into the basement.) We are also stacking wood along the wall in the dining room. Our main wood pile is on the porch off of the kitchen.
Here is the drawing of the basement. Our back door goes into the basement. This is often the door we use to get into the house as we park in the back. We have to walk up the stairs and into the kitchen. Then go through the house to the front stairs. (I normally use the front stairs as the back ones are narrow and hard to get bags of groceries up.) Right now the basement is mostly storage as well. The first room in the basement is full of garden stuff, kids outside toys, and things we will put into the shed in the spring. This is the room with the water heater and freezer. The second room is the workshop. Most of Jonathan's tools are here. The third room is mostly boxes and things from our garage that need to be sorted and put away properly. The room labeled 'bathroom' was a bathroom at some point in the past. We are planning on making it a bathroom again in the future.
This is the 2nd floor plan. We are living on 2nd floor right now.
Landing Room:
The "Landing" room is the room you are in when you first come up the stairs. Right now, it has some of our dressers in it. We also have tools that we are currently using in it. Mostly it is a large hallway to get to the kitchen and bathroom from the bedrooms and living room. But as we got the electricity working out there, we might start using it a bit more. This will also happen as it gets warmer and it is not so hard to heat. I am hoping to soon be able to put our table out there so we can eat there. It will be nice to have the table closer to the kitchen. A long way into the future, we are planning on making this our craft/hobby room. It will be a place we can hang out and work on our various projects.
Mars Room:
The kids' bedroom is the room we called the Mars room. Right now all three of them are sharing a room. This is mostly due to heat. It has been really cold and we are trying to keep the heat in as small a number of rooms as we can. The Mars room in the distant future will be a guest room/sewing craft room. Yes we will have two craft rooms. The landing room will be for more messy crafts.
Tower Room:
The tower room is currently our dining room, living room, library, and laundry room. It also has the wood stove in it so it is the warm room. We wanted the laundry up on 2nd floor. I was not looking forward to years of going down two floors to do the laundry. We will eventually close this area into a nice looking cupboard. In the future we see the tower room as a library/parlor like room. With all of the windows and doors we are not sure how the library idea will work out. But that is all still in the planning stage.
Green Room:
First of all the Green Room is no longer green. But in the old pictures and posts that is what we called it. This is Jonathan and my bedroom. That is what this room is going to be in the future.
Bathroom:
This is the one room that is nearly finished. We do still need to do the wood work. Because the roof is still leaking next to the chimney, there was a little water damage (to our new drywall) that we will need to take care of in the future. But I like to sit in here and imagine that the rest of the house looks this good. ;)
The kitchen:
This is the only kitchen beside the 1st floor kitchen that we will be keeping. This kitchen is connected to the first floor kitchen by the back stairs. In the future this will be our craft kitchen. We will be doing our candles, clay and brewing here.
This is the 3rd floor plan. The 3rd floor also has a landing room. This one is smaller than the one on 2nd floor. When we talk about it we usually say "3rd floor landing". This will be the kids' common room. The way I have drawn the third floor is what it is going to look like in the future. The bathroom is not actually against the exterior wall right now. It is towards the center of the house. We want to move it back against the outside all to add a little room to Bedroom 3. It is the smallest of the rooms, so it would be nice to give it just a bit more space. Bedroom 3 was the kitchen to the 3rd floor apartment. It is the only room we have yet to knock the plaster down in. We climb out the window in bedroom 3 to get on to the 2nd floor roof and than climb up the ladder to the third floor roof. We are considering actually making a bit of a porch up on the second floor roof and putting a more permanent ladder or staircase up to the 3rd floor roof. We want to put a telescope/observatory up on the 3rd floor roof (possibly in the tower). We still have not decided which of the rooms goes to which of the children. We will have to see as things go along. We are also considering finishing up the 3rd floor landing room first. Then letting Zeb use this room as his bedroom. But right now that is not possible with the terrible cold we have been having this winter.
I hope this helps to give everyone a better idea of what we are doing and where we are living. :D
Day 299
It is still snowing. It has been snowing everyday since Thursday. It doesn't snow a lot, but just enough to cover everything back up everyday. I actually don't mind it. It is warm (in the 20's and 30's). The white, sparkly snow is beautiful. An of course it is just the first week of February - it is supposed to be snowy. It doesn't make us really want to work much though. We did carry a bit of wood today. But than we do that every day.
Happy Birthday, Rick!
Happy Birthday, Rick!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Day 298
Saturday.. :) I like weekends. It snowed just a little bit again. But nothing compaired to December and January. We are doing some exploring around Beatrice. We went to a card/game store, a computer store, a pawn shop, the antique store, the YMCA, and the library. Not much else going on, just looking for treasure.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Day 297
Today Jonathan finished getting the landing room wired. We now have full use of electricity out there. The last thing was just hooking up the outlets, as we had all of the wire to the boxes. But it will be nice to move things back against the walls. And not to have to have extension cords when working in that room.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Day 289 - 296
We made to through those couple of cold days just fine. With all of the things that we have done the last couple of months (Insulation, drywall, cardboard, and plastic) it seems to have helped. :D But then it was only 2 days. That is a huge difference than weeks of bitterly cold days.
Then there was Maddie's birthday party. And back home to plan and relax. We know that the busy days of spring and summer are coming up.
On Sunday we all helped with the wood moving. It goes a lot faster with Jonathan's help. He threw up a bunch of wood onto the deck and we made a stack next to the fire, in the dining room and on the deck.
Happy Birthday Dad!
Happy Birthday David!
Happy Birthday Crystal!
It was a big birthday week for our family.
Then there was Maddie's birthday party. And back home to plan and relax. We know that the busy days of spring and summer are coming up.
On Sunday we all helped with the wood moving. It goes a lot faster with Jonathan's help. He threw up a bunch of wood onto the deck and we made a stack next to the fire, in the dining room and on the deck.
Happy Birthday Dad!
Happy Birthday David!
Happy Birthday Crystal!
It was a big birthday week for our family.
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