New Life Old Farmers

Boy did we goof this morning!  We got to church early!  People are creatures of habit.  I’ve heard it said, that if you want to see what kind of Christian someone is just sit in their pew on Sunday morning.  Most people sit in almost the same spot every week in almost every church.  We’ve been late up until now, so we could just sit where ever there was room for us.  Getting there early made things tricky.

We leaped in and sat down, gingerly waiting for whomever we’d now misplaced.  It happened, the family walked in, turned to their pew and…….. laughed.  However, I think we should play it safe and just continue to be late for church!

We have two neighbors.  Both have welcomed us kindly to our new home.  One family raises Bison and brought us homemade muffins and daffodils.  They don’t bat an eye at the sounds of the kids ‘hunting’ those nasty pigeons in our barn.  The other is a widower farmer and his fields ring our home.  He brought us ‘breakfast’ yesterday.  Eggs from his hens, non-store bought bacon and sausage! He is our expert to all the things we don’t understand (which are many) but especially about irrigation ditches, ponds and the history here.  With only two neighbors, we couldn’t have asked for nicer ones!

I’ve spent the last few hours on our tractor, Jubal. I was using the blade on the back to ‘smooth’ out the land where it was lumpy.  This actually entails steering with your left hand, adjusting the hydraulics with your right hand, driving forward and looking backward.  Good thing I know how to multi-task!  Tractor driving is simply gardening on steroids!

Kansas anymore?  The truth is I am probably closer to Kansas in a rural sense than ever before in my life.  We’re not in Los Angeles county anymore and that is for sure!  One of my jobs this week included ‘watching the fire’.  This fire was from the pile of brush we’d burned and I was ‘watching’ it to make sure we didn’t burn anything else, like the barn!

Moving to the country is almost like moving to another land.  The vocabulary is a bit different.  Boys were their pants where they are meant to go and old men wear suspenders when they are working for the same reason!  Plumber cracks are not acceptable here and I for one am grateful.

The hardware store sells everything from cowboy hats to aprons in camo print! A long history of chain saws hang from the ceiling as well as assorted other items, some historical and some hysterical.  Everyone is friendly and I can’t wait to go back.

The music is of course different and even the bank plays both kinds… country and western.  I was so excited to be in Fred Meyer’s and hear some James Taylor! Woo Hoo!  I am embracing the change, enjoying the difference and even know when not to say the “city” things I’m thinking, like (“ut, oh, it rained and the tractor got wet”)

I’d like to say that the hardwood floors are done, we’re all unpacked and settled, but that is just our dream.  Using a heat gun, we’ve just removed the last of the stuck on linoleum from the dinning room floor and the shop vac remains my best friend.  We know what a mess refinishing the floors will make, so we’re still in ‘camping mode’ and have only unpacked the bare essentials. (Except for the wine opener which we couldn’t find, so off to Fred Meyers to get a back up). The roofers came and installed a wonderful new roof last week and shook 15 years worth of dust down upon our heads.  The windows are original so the wind comes flying in, as do lady bugs and wasps which spent the winter hibernating upstairs.  They’ve woken up now and we have lady bugs everywhere!

So, my greatest pleasure comes from being outside! It is so pretty here.  This is the view as we sit in the kitchen often watching quail as they run up and down the driveway.  The space, the fields, the mountains in the distance and the barns that dot the landscape sooth and fill up my soul.  I cannot believe we are learning to call this home.

One must remember that this house is old 1889 and I grew up watching “Little House on the Prairie” and “The Walton’s”.  We have these pumps all over outside.  I was so impressed, as I thought, “Wow, we’ve got to pump the water outside!”  I know exactly how to do this.

Well, not exactly!  Lift the handle and the water floods out! The dog bowls I was filling got dropped and water went everywhere.  I’ve been laughing ever since, who knew you couldn’t learn it all from the good old TV shows……  Good night John boy!

Fred Meyer is part of dinner plans.  Fred Meyer is the grocery store and I’m still not use to having a store that sounds like my neighbor’s husband.  I’m also not use to a grocery store where I can pick up apples, organic milk, dog food, pork chops, Lima beans, long johns, office furniture, diamond rings, TV’s, plumbing supplies and Twinkies.

They don’t hide the bathrooms behind the meat department, there is a supervised play place where you can leave your toddlers and YES, they have a Starbucks!  This is one big store in one small town and the teens call it ‘the mall’.

Hard to believe but this mid-sized bath room has 3 doors!  Door one goes to the kitchen, which is good if you want a quick snack while you shower.  Door two goes to the laundry room, which is also good if you forgot your underwear.  (The laundry room is a bit of a mud room, so that means you can also go out side).  This is great if you need to feed the dogs or pull some weeds, but probably not straight from the shower.  Door three is the one that will be kept and comes straight from the living room.

Remodeling this bathroom was on the to-do list, but not anywhere near the top.  However, after removing a leaky toilet and carpet that had seen better days, we found ourselves with a stripped bathroom.  The fir floors were not salvageable, so tile became the next best option.  There was little reason to not install this now.

Our goal is for a period look to the home using the stores we have available to us and at an economical price.  We’re doing the work, so a regular supply of Advil is also a requirement.

Off to Lowe’s to purchase white square tile for the floor and sheets of 12×12 patterned tile for the border. Black strip accent pieces were also added to the mix.  The next day as we laid out the pattern, I realized it wasn’t quite right and the look was too modern.  We adjusted our plan and were really pleased with the expected result, except of course this meant we didn’t have quite enough trim pieces or white tile.  So back to Lowe’s we went, (which is now a 35 minute drive).  Lowe’s did not have enough of our 8 inch accent pieces in stock, but they were happy to order them and they’d be in soon or about a week.  So… off we went to The Home Depot who had the black accent strips in 6 inch lengths.  NOT a problem, we used the shorter accent pieces on the inside of the design and the longer ones on the outside.  A stop to the drive through Starbucks and we were on our way home again.

We trimmed the 12×12 patterned tile into 4 12 inch strips.  This is so easy it can be done with scissors and we ended up with a patterned strip for less than $1.00 a foot. It was a great price and so easy to work with.  I kept thinking as I installed it of one of my mother’s favorite sayings, “There is more than one way to skin a cat”, which if you think about it, is really pretty gross.

Day two we added grey grout, re-installed the pedestal sink and put in a new, non-leaky toilet.  More Advil for our sore knees and we are thrilled with the result.

The bathroom with three doors is in no way done.  It is better though, with a new floor and one door blocked.  Finishing the bathroom with three doors will now go back on the to-do list as we tackle the other more pressing projects.

We’ve heard the term and understand the meaning of the “Ugly American” when traveling the world.  I had heard that there can be some prejudice toward Californians coming to Washington.  With this in mind, I’ve tried to enter my new state with a quiet and gentle understanding and be graceful and grateful.

My darling little red Lexus with California license plates has not actually helped.  I am trying to keep a low profile, but driving in a strange town is often confusing, okay, well I did get flipped off by a country boy in a pick up, but so far only one.  I am also grateful that there are few people on our country road so only our neighbors those we most want to befriend saw the bright ORANGE moving van with “Beverly Hills Transportation” on the side!

I like camping.  I really do, and I usually plan very well when we go camping.  This time however, I moved.  I planned, packed and projected.  Everyone including the 2 dogs and the damn cat made it in one piece.  Operation successful.

It feels like we’ve gone camping in a very big old home with no supplies and we don’t know where anything is!  Because we are redoing 90% of the downstairs hard wood floors, we’ve not moved into those rooms, which mind you includes the kitchen.  Most of the downstairs furniture is stuffed/stored in the master bedroom and I haven’t yet figured out how to get to my dresser which is crammed in the farthest corner.  My clothing options remain limited.

Sleeping here for the first time last night was interesting and cold.  All the baseboard heaters are off due to the remodeling.  The second bathroom just a shell and the wood floors still loaded with nails.  A pair of gardening crocs were left at the foot of the stairs for anyone needed to go to the bath room during the night.  Pity the poor one of us who had to race downstairs, into the crocs through the master “bedroom” storage area to make it to the only bath room, with the stomach flu.

I’d thought ahead and bought bagels for our first breakfast at home and tin foil for toasting in the oven, as we don’t know where the toaster is.  The only problem was that the oven had been removed as well to work on the floor.  The new coffee maker worked great (yep, can’t find the coffee maker either).  However, there was a distinct chemical taste to it… I’m guessing the manufacture recommends washing it first, and I’d have to agree on that score.

I got brave and dove into the “pantry” (more on that another day) where all the other kitchen and family belongs are being stored until the floors get done.  I hit pay dirt and of course found the coffee maker, but also found the toaster as well.  I for one have never been so happy to see a butter dish in my life.

 
What a discovery the last few days have been.   Pulling up old carpet that has seen numerous pets and better days!  The aroma was not pleasant.  On day one we discovered linoleum under the carpet in the dinning room, much to our dismay and a few curses toward the previous owners (sorry).  Day two we hit the coveted fir wood floors.  We knew we were in luck when we’d not only found the wood we had hoped for, but also found 2 strong 18 year old country boys to do the fairly disgusting task of ripping up the carpet which smelled worse with every tear.  Believe me this was money well spent!

The floors already look so much better and the house feels classier to say nothing of cleaner!  We love what little we’ve done so far….

The wood floors were what we’d hoped to have found beneath the carpet.

We knew that whatever we might find under the bathroom carpet could be very scary.  The carpet was blue and nylon and , well let’s just say “not my style”.   So I was more than happy to dig into this part, just to start the process of evicting the wretched stuff.  Again we had carpet, linoleum and some sort of thin plywood.  Under all of this was one of the most original insulating properties… newspaper.  Only this newspaper was printed in 1926!  Now we know when the bathroom was put in.  The kids and I had a hoot gingerly removing what we could of this mini time capsule.

Love the heading.. “Building and Real Estate Page”, how perfect is that…enjoy reading!