Plank wall makeover

The kitchen did not get done over the weekend but we're so close now I can feel it!  I ran out of paint yesterday in the home stretch of repainting the walls.  The timing couldn't have been better though because I could use a little break.  We've been working hard for over three weeks.

The walls look so much better!  I love the pine planks walls but the knots showing through the paint were finally starting to bug me.  I covered and filled them and the nail holes with sheetrock putty.  Jeff prefers it over wood filler.  He says it's easier to work with.  I then repainted the walls with Valspar's zero voc paint and primer in Garlic Clove (an Olympic color).  It's white with a hint of warmness.  It's been my go to white for the past eight or nine years and I still love it.

Here are before and after pictures.

I covered literally thousands of nail holes!  You can see the yellow knots and knot holes and some of the planks have cracks running through them.

Here it is after filling the holes and knots.

So, so, so much better!  It has a crisper, cleaner look now.  Next, we need to tackle the ceiling.  I'm sure that'll be loads of fun!

One of the nice thing about using sheetrock putty is there's no dusty sanding.  If it needs to be sanded after it dries just use a damp sponge or rag and wipe it smooth.  No mess!


We're getting into our new fall schedule (even though it's still summer...grrr) which includes getting up at 5:30 every morning to milk the cow.  It's not necessary to do it that early but the girls still need Jeff's help at this point and he's got to leave for work around 6:30.  Once Bonnie (the cow) learns the routine well enough to get to the stall pretty much on her own they'll push it back to 7am or so.  I can't wait.  I'm so sleepy all the time!

Yesterday was Evelyn's 6th birthday.  Normally I'd cancel school for the day but since it was only the second day and she still looks forward to school I gifted her with a little extra school work.  She loved it! She also helped Gracie bake sugar cookies which all the kids had fun decorating.

These are the very best sugar cookies in the world, by the way!  Way, way better than store bought.  I've had the recipe so long I don't remember where I got it but I think it might be my cousin's grandma Lil's recipe.  I hear they were legendary.

Cookies or cupcakes are how we celebrate actual birthday's when the party doesn't fall on the same day and it rarely does.  It's a tradition the kids always look forward to since we don't eat a lot of sweets around here.

We also decided at the last minute to pull out Jeff's great aunt Jewel's fine china and wrinkled bunting and fabric scraps and have a "tea" party with milk.  As you can see by Evie's face (the one with the heart on her shirt) she's feeling pretty proud.  It's fun that it takes so little to make a kids day.

Sugar cookies:
1 c. softened butter (no substitute)
3/4 c. white sugar
1 egg
2 T. milk
1 1/2 t. vanilla extract
3 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
Cream butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl then beat in the egg, milk and vanilla.  In a separate mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Gradually add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture.  Chill dough for one hour or until easy to handle.  On a lightly floured surface, roll dough to 1/8th inch thickness and cut with cookie cutters.  Place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets.  Bake at 375 degrees for 5 to 8 minutes until just slightly beginning to lightly brown.  Cool before frosting.

Frosting:
1 c. powdered sugar
1/2 t. vanilla or almond extract
1/4 t. salt
1 to 2 T. milk
food coloring, optional

Mix all ingredients well in a medium bowl and frost right away.  (It will begin to get dry and crumbly if you wait too long to use it.)

*Update:  TODAY is Evie's birthday!!!  not yesterday...  I guess we'll be making cookies again.  Am I a bad mother because I mix up birthday dates?  I don't think she'll be disappointed when I tell her.  Jeff and I have on more than one occasion celebrated our wedding anniversary on the wrong day.  I blame it on the aluminum in my deoderant.

Girls dorm part 3

I only a few minutes before I need to start school with the kids so this will have to be a quick update on our progress.

We have the walls and floor painted but I forgot to take a good picture of the floor before we started the beds.  Oops.  It looked beautiful though.

We used zero VOC Olympic brand paint in Garlic Clove (my preferred shade of white that I've used in all our houses.)  I've never used zero VOC before and didn't know how well it would cover but I'm happy to announce it covered excellent with two coats.  The floor will get a third but only because we left marks during the bed building process.  I'm sure extra coats there will be a good idea anyway.  I don't know for sure what I want to do on the floor permanently...carpet, wood, rugs, leave it as it is.  I really like the white paint, which with four girls in one room, I'm sure will be covered in make up, nail polish and markers before too long, but it's paint.  Who cares, right?  Just slap on another coat of paint.

Paint scuffs terribly, but the scuffs have always come right off with a mop and they don't wear shoes past the front door anyway.  (We have free range chickens.  Ahem.)

So for now, that's as far as I want to go with the floor and I'm loving the way it looks so much that I'm thinking I'll paint my bedroom floor white too!

Once it was all painted and dry, Jeff and Gracie set up shop and built four beds together.

Jeff hates to work alone (even if he doesn't need help) and Gracie has really been wanting to participate so he handed her some power tools, and I'm sure, made her do most of the work.  He excels in delegation.

I was happy to have the day off and only be on camera duty.  That's my favorite part anyway.

Bed number one. 

Good work Grace!

Bed's number two, three and four.

Outstanding craftsmanship, Grace.  I'm really impressed.

They screwed them to the wall on two sides so we only used one leg per bed.  It might look a little funny right now, but we plan to have built in bedside tables and desks which would prevent you from seeing any of the other legs anyway.  We're going with "built-in" furniture because it's an oddly shaped room that would be difficult to furnish otherwise.  And if it isn't extremely sturdy and nailed to the floor it wouldn't last around here for long. 

Now, guess who has to to clean up this mess and paint the beds?

If you said me, you're probably right.

Next (once our bank account recovers) we'll be adding two large custom built (Jeff built) drawers under each bed.  We're also tossing around the idea of incorporating some book shelves into the trim work around the door and window.  I'd really like to get this room completed before we move on upstairs, but we'll see how that goes.

I think I'll link up with Sarah today at A Beach Cottage.  Sounds fun!

Girls dorm part 2

It's the middle of the night and I'm ailing a bit so I figured I'd post an update on the girls room.  I always hate to read on someone's blog that they're sick.  It causes me to hold my breath and read as quickly as I can or even only scan the pictures if it's an extra long post.  I occasionally have sympathy illness symptoms. 

Having said that, I don't know why I then feel compelled to share with you how I'm feeling at the moment.

Possibly because I hate to keep secrets.

I'm sorry if any of you struggle with hypochondria, which I feel is an underrated disorder worthy of a foundation.  Let's start one, shall we?  Hypochondriacs unite!

Don't worry though, I won't tell you any of the symptoms of what I may or may not have so that you can't get it.

Let's move on, mkay?

Once we covered the ceiling with pine boards it was time to build some doorways and short walls.

Jeff is doing the hokey pokey in what will be the girls bedroom door.  Directly behind him is the doorway to what will be their walk-in closet.

Once that was done, it was time to move on to the short walls.

Before we could build them, however, Jeff decided to add some chalk to his chalk line thing which became clogged or something because he then began pulling out all 3,000 feet of string which dumped a significant amount of bright blue chalk on the floor, then he rewound the string, then he repeated the entire process several more times. 

Here, let me show you...

OCD much, Jeff? 

They have medication for that you know.

(You know I love you anyway, Jeff,  right?)

(RIGHT???)

Once I finished the collage and went back upstairs only to find him still messing with it, I ripped the dadgummed thing from his hands and tossed it out the window...not really, but I wanted too.

He did finally give it up when I suggested that we use the other fully functional chalk line thing sitting in the tote behind him.

I have, in the past, diagnosed him with child induced dementia so I'll just assume he forgot he had the other one and move on with this post.

Finally, the short walls. 

Did you know you build the wall on the ground first and then raise it into place and nail it in?

You would think I'd have known that being married to a man who used to build houses for a living.

Yep, easy peasy. 

The short walls are about three feet tall.

Then it was time to cover all the walls in pine.

It's apparently a good idea to put as many nails in a board as it will hold.  Otherwise, it just might POP right off the wall.

Because OCD is not one of the disorders I suffer from, I will not be filling the nail holes. 

 NO.WAY.

Nope, I just paint right over them and call it character because we could all use a little more character, couldn't we?

And there you have it.

More later...I'm feeling much better so I'm going to bed now!

P.S.
I've been popping vitamin C's during this entire post and I'm already beginning to feel tip top again.
You should google vitamin C therapy sometime, it's pretty effective.

P.P.S.  or is it P.S.S?  I forget.
Anyway, funny thing...as soon as I finished this post, google flashed me an "anti-anxiety" ad. Ha!
What are you trying to tell me, google?  Hmmm?
Just spit it out, for goodness sake!
☺

Girls dorm

 We finally got started with the girls room upstairs.

We started by by adding another layer of insulation over the bats of insulation.  There's also a layer of the blue styrofoam under the bats so that we have three layers total.  Hopefully this will keep the kids toasty in the winter and cool in the summer.

Next came the fun part...the pine boards.  We've used number four pine boards all over the house so there are a lot of knots and variations in the wood.  I don't necessarily love the knots but I do love saving money any time I can. 

(We didn't add extra insulation on the straight wall where draftiness is not an issue.)

Their room is approximately 16' X 11' so it took us a while to get to this point.

I have more to show you later but that's it for now.

Short and sweet.

??? daze ???

Aside from a couple of near death experiences over the past few days, things are moving along smoothly.  A couple of days ago, the kids and I were out running errands in the Suburban when at some point the hand held propane torch that also happened to be in the truck got stuck in the on position.  The kids were being noisy, the baby was crying and the radio was on so we only noticed the hissing sound once I parked the truck and turned it off.  After I got the kids and our groceries in the house, I went back to investigate the noise and noticed a strong foul odor.  Once I found out it was the torch, I quickly thanked God that none of the kids nor I were smokers.  We might all be wandering around with singed eyebrows, or worse.  (No lectures on the propane torch, please.) 

Then the next day, I talked to Jeff on the phone for a little while around 3:30 pm and a few minutes after our conversation, I called him back to tell him something I'd just read on the Internet about metal and condensation but he didn't answer the phone.  I tried a few more times over the next twenty minutes or so with no luck and just assumed he was on the phone with one of his parents or something and would call me when he was finished.  About two hours later, I realized he had still not called me back so I tried him again.  Still, no answer.  I started calling every couple of minutes thinking he's probably sawing and nail gunning a lot so he probably just didn't hear his phone.  After about twenty minutes of that, it dawned on me that he may have had an accident.  I realized that he had probably fallen twenty feet off a ladder after sawing off his hand and passing out from the blood loss.  Then I realized this probably happened a couple of hours ago when I couldn't reach him the first time, so more than likely, he's dead by now.  That's when I began to have a serious panic attack.  I told the kids, "Get your coats on and get in the car!  We've got to go get your father, RIGHT NOW!"  The kids naturally wanted to know why and what the hurry was and not wanting to scare them with the story of their fathers accident, I told them, "He forgot his wallet and might need to get gas."  Which was true.  Then I thought, maybe that's the problem.  He ran out of gas on our little country road and no one has passed by to give him a lift to the gas station.  Then I remembered he hasn't answered any of my phone calls over the last 2 1/2 hours so my mind went right back to the vision of him all broken to bits at the bottom of the ladder he was working on.  So I grabbed his wallet and the kids and I rushed out to the Suburban to find that the only door we could get open was mine.  All of the other doors where frozen shut.  I started the truck to thaw out the other doors and contemplated calling 911 to ask them to send an ambulance out to my husband.  I decided to call my parents instead.  I managed to choke out a few words to my mom about how Jeff hadn't been answering  his phone, that he's alone, and most likely dead so the kids and I were going to get him just as soon as the truck thaws.  To all of that, my mom calmly said, "Okay, we're on our way to Branson so call me when you find out what's going on."

The kids were all in the driveway crying about things like the subzero temperatures and 700 mile per hour wind gusts so I decided they should wait in the house for the truck to thaw.  I also decided to give Jeff another call and run back outside to try the truck doors again and noticed what a mess my house was and that everyone from Oklahoma was going to want to stay here for the funeral.  Once I got outside I opened my cell phone and pressed 3.  He's number 3 on my speed dial.  I don't know why or how that happened.  He's also the only person I EVER speed dial.  "Hello?" he whispered.  I gasped, then I yelled, "JEFFREY MICHAEL DIXON!!!!  WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?????  ARE YOU ALRIGHT?  I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!!!!"  He continued talking softly and acted like he had no idea what I was talking about and told me he was outside tracking the biggest rat he'd ever seen.  "EXCUSE ME?  I'VE BEEN CALLING YOU FOR HOURS AND YOU HAVEN'T BEEN ANSWERING SO I ASSUMED YOU WERE DEAD AND YOU'RE DOING WHAT????  I'M GONNA KILL YOU WHEN YOU GET HOME!!!"  Then I cried.  He chuckled sympathetically then said, "Hang on, your parents are calling me."

It turns out that when your phone is stuffed in your pocket under seven layers of clothes, the extremely loud propane heater is on, the radio is blaring, the air compressor is running and you're using no less than four power tools, you really can't hear a phone when it rings.  Now Jeff is no longer allowed to leave the house in the morning until I have inspected the duct tape that holds his cell phone over one ear.

My imagination occasionally gets the best of me but for good reason in this instance.  Jeff always answers my calls and even complains on a regular basis that I don't call him enough.  So naturally I assumed there was a very good reason, i.e. death, for him to not answer my calls.  I'm never calling him again.

***

Jeff's been hard at work trying to get the house ready for us to move into it.  Over the last few days, he's been nailing up wood planks on the walls.  I haven't been out to the house in a while, but from the pictures, the wood walls have really changed the look of the house. 

My dad keeps telling Jeff we need to stain or seal the wood.  I guess he likes the rusticness of wood.  I don't really care for that look myself.  I'm one of those people that loves wood, PAINTED.  Stained, sealed or raw wood is yucko to me.  We'll be painting it all white in the spring.

It looks like Jeff's been missing me.

I've been missing him too.  It's starting to feel like this has been going on forever. What's today? I'm not sure. We, meaning Jeff, has been working so hard for such a long time now that I'm having a hard time keeping track of the days. BUT, our projected date of moving in is set for January 2nd and 3rd. Will you all come help us please? We're old and frail and could use all the help we can get. We're so old, we've been mistaken for senior citizens. I'm not kidding. Last night, the kids and I ran to Lowe's to meet Jeff there about 45 minutes before closing time so we could get a few light fixtures for Jeff to install today and as we were going through the checkout line, the little, red headed, twentysomething, checkout lady looked at our two year old, Evelyn, and said, "Awww. Have you been shopping with grandma and grandpa today?" I was standing back a bit, holding fussy little Sophie, and thought maybe I misunderstood her and I gave Jeff a confused look. He turned to the lady and politely said, "What?" Then she said, "Have you guys got the grandkids tonight?" Mind you, Madison is only a few inches shorter than I am which gives testament to her age and there were FIVE children altogether. That means we didn't even look like fresh, first time grandparents to this lady. She repeated her question so confidently that she must have genuinely assumed we were the kids grandparents!!! Jeff let out a big, "Nooooo! These are our KIDS!" and I laughed so hard I thought I was going to blow a gasket! Her face immediately turned as red as her hair and she began apologizing profusely and saying something about how her dad has a beard. Once I finished my Tom Hanks, Money Pit, laugh, I said, "We're only thirty!" Jeff corrected me and told her, "Actually, we're 34." Like that was really necessary. My point in saying thirty was that's the general category you could put us in compared to the 70 something category she had us in.

Do you know the laugh I'm talking about? Have you seen that movie? I love it. Tom Hanks character, Walter, had just been through one ordeal after another with their money pit of a house and then this happens...which is exactly how I reacted to the grandparents comment.

Child's Play

I feel like we really got a lot done this weekend.  We now have steps that lead into the house, all the windows are in, the house is completely wrapped and interior walls were built...then torn down and rebuilt.  Hmmm...  Anyway, I also now have all but three of my twentysome plants, grasses, bushes etc. transplanted to the new house so I'd say it was a pretty productive weekend. 

Notice the trash pile is gone!  My dad burned it.  Hurray!

Goodbye ladder!

2x4 labyrinth.

I took a box of sidewalk chalk out to the house to draw in the upstairs to see if what I had in mind would work so the girls and I had fun pretending to use the chalk drawn bathroom and walk through the chalk drawn doors.

Then the kids decided to color all over the floor downstairs and naturally that lead to drawing hop-scotch.  As soon as Gracie finished drawing the last square, rocks began flying everywhere and children began hopping all willy-nilly, like loud, squeelly, laughing popcorn.  It was obvious they had no idea what they were doing and needed an intervention.  I, being an expert on the rules of hop-scotch, calmed them all down and began to explain how to really play the game.  Once their eyes were sufficiently glazed over, I knew I had thoroughly explained the rules.  Then eight year old Gracie said, very seriously, "Hop-scotch is complicated."  Just call me the fun sponge.

I don't know which is worse, that my children didn't know how to play hop-scotch or that they now think it's hard.  This is what happens when you homeschool.  Next weekend I'll be teaching them to jump rope and hula hoop.  That should be fun!

Isaiah spent the weekend being as manly as possible for a four year old boy.  He hammered nails into everything he could and wore a piece of rope looped over his shoulder because that's just what men do.  I think it was for therapeutic reasons.  He is after all, the only boy and he's always surrounded by a bunch of girls.  I think it gets to him after a while.  These things must be done to reaffirm his manhood and regain his dignity because occasionally when his daddy isn't around to protect him, things like this happen...(I don't have five daughters.  Isaiah's the one in the hat.  Poor guy.)

My apologies go out to his father and all his grandpas and uncles.  Oh, and to Isaiah.  Sometimes girls just can't control themselves.  We must girlify everything.

Plank Walls

Tonight we'll be going out to the land to get started on another weekend's worth of work and the weather is going to be great! Sunny and low 70's. It doesn't get any better than that!

We've been going back and forth on some of the details of the house and some of those details are the walls. We're leaning toward wood planks on the walls. For Jeff it's because it's easier for one man to do than sheet rock which he hates to install and for me it's because I LOVE plank walls!!! I can't decide if I like it better vertical or horizontal though. There are things about both ways that I love.

Here's vertical...

And of coarse, this just happens to be exactly how my bedroom will look with the exception of the bed size. It will be king size.

And here are the vertical planks upstairs...

This also just so happens to be exactly what the upstairs will look like too! Amazing!

I like that the vertical style is very traditional. It's hard to go wrong with traditional.

Now, here's the horizontal look...

I personally like white paint on the planks the best but I'm loving this green color too!

Horizontal planks seem more old timey, more authentic, you just don't see it as often. I'm pretty sure it's my favorite and what I really want but the vertical seems safer. What do you all think?

I even love the way it looks in this kitchen. There's no need for a separate style of back splash.

But I don't want to get my hopes up too high in case things turn out badly and look more like this...

I hope you all have a nice weekend!

Walls

The pressure is on...Jeff has started working on the house in the evenings now to insure we meet our deadline. Since daylight hours are getting shorter he's hanging up some shop lights to work by. His old lights weren't working last night so he and JJ worked by flashlight. That's dedication!

We were hoping to have the roof on by last weekend but naturally that didn't happen. This is the time when Jeff starts feeling stressed. Even though we've been here before several times and we know things really seem to slow down the further along in a project you get, he still has high expectations. He must be a "glass is half full" kind of guy.

Last Saturday, we had really nice weather so the kids and went out to see the progress and I was impressed. The size of everything is more in perspective now which is always fun to me. It makes me want to get the kids chalk out and draw in the kitchen and bathroom and fireplace and... That was one of my favorite things to do as a kid, draw life size (kid sized life) floor plans on our back patio then play house in the drawing. We never actually had chalk though, we had to go hunt for what my sister and I called "chalk rocks" to draw with. Awww. I didn't care though. It wasn't about the chalk.

I hate it when Jeff gets to the roof part of a house. I usually stay home because it makes me too nervous to watch. The roof is a 12 pitch which is pretty steep and he'll be putting on a metal roof which can be kind of slick and that makes me doubly nervous! I would prefer that he always wear his repelling gear while up there but he just ignores that suggestion.

Guess what. Today is my dad's birthday. Happy Birthday Daddy!! We're planning on having a chili picnic on Saturday out at the land while he and Jeff work...probably on the roof. What a way to celebrate, huh? Have I mentioned how sweet my parents are? They're the best!

Totally unrelated to the house...We have eggs! One of our chickens has finally started laying eggs! You can't tell it from this picture but they're a really pretty blue green color. I can't wait for the rest of the hens to get with the program too!

Isaiah's such a cute little workin' man!

See you all next time!

It's starting to look like a house

Jeff, Eric, Rick, Chad, JJ and Dave put in some long hard hours on the house this weekend and we now have walls! It's great to have such good friends and family who'll spend that kind of time and energy helping us!





Jeff and I spent an hour or so on the fine details of the blueprints Friday evening to decide exactly where all the windows and doors need to be and while we were going over that Jeff decided he'd go ahead and build a few more of the interior walls. So hopefully, I'll have bedroom walls!!! It's nice to be able to have a place to hide out for a few minutes every now and then and with only one bathroom for seven people I need a second place to hide. Not that I ever get to go to the bathroom by myself anyway.

Since I haven't actually been out there to see the framing for myself this is one of my favorite pictures because it was taken inside the house from the dining area. Chad (ladder on the left) is in what will soon be the bathroom and Eric (ladder on the right) is in what will be the bedroom. You can also see the opening to the second floor which is over the living room.

There was only enough time for them to start on the roof assembly but Jeff is taking all of next week off to work on the house. I can't wait! I've got to figure out a way to spend time out there and keep the baby out of the weather, preferably without having to spend the week sitting in the birth mobile, er I mean suburban! Hopefully the weather will be good. We've been having some cold, wet weather lately.

Sophie seems to be coming out of her newborn coma like sleep and I've been feeling like I'm slipping into the new mom coma. If my posts seem are incoherent filled with mispelings and not good grahmer, you'll understand why. I did get an eight nonconsecutive minute nap today though, so I'm good. Actually my sleepiness is coming from my newest late night addiction. Lost. No, I'm not talking in my sleep...I'm addicted to Lost, the TV show. We're one of those families that "doesn't have TV." So then, what pray tell, is that big black box on the wall over the fireplace, you ask? Yes, it's a TV. We don't have network, cable or satellite but we do have Hulu.com and about a week ago we began season one, episode one of the show. We just finished all twenty something episodes of season one last night. Maybe we should slow it down a little...if we can.