Welcome!

In February of 2009, my husband and I bought our first home located on a few acres in Johnson, Vermont. We live here with our dog, Ollie, two cats: Elvis and Atticus, six Nigerian Dwarf goats: May, Chutney, Poppy, Juniper, Willow, and Jokers Wild, and about fifteen laying hens. And to top it all off we welcomed our daughter, Isabel, into the world on January 11th, 2011.

We're slowly updating our 1850's farmhouse while steadily working towards a healthy, meaningful, self-sufficient life together.

This blog details our endeavors along with our successes and failures- all in good fun. Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon!

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May
May and I enjoying some sunshine

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Sunday- not just the day before 'back to work'-day.

Lovingly Posted by Melissa Sunday, January 3, 2010

Last Sunday, after our awesomely-fabulous trip to Lowes that only cost us the price of gas and a couple breakfast sandwiches, we stopped patting ourselves on the back and got to work on the guest bedroom.  My dear friend, Stefania, had been planning on coming up for New Years eve and I really wanted her to have a decent place to pass out after hours of fun.


Kyle got to work creating a new door frame for the closet door while I got to work cutting drywall for the closet.  Luckily, as we still had the old door frame in place I had my own entrance into the closet where I wouldn't be harrassing Kyle during his project.  As I worked my way around the little closet, drywalling, Kyle finished up the door frame and started wiring up the new and improved wall sconce we picked up earlier that morning.  No more bare bulbs for our lovely little closet-to-be, no sir.

It took some time to finish the drywall in the closet, with its little kneewall, outlet, switch, and light, there were alot of calculations to make to be sure everything fit correctly.  But we got it finished, and I think we can officially call it a closet now.  After a quick break for an early dinner and a couple glasses of wine (normally beer is our home-renovation requirement but you work with what you've got, right?) we headed back up to start on the rest of the walls.


On the section of ceiling above where the funky, narrow hallway used to be, we secured a piece of foamboard to help insulate.  I fastened it up with an unnecessary amount of drywall screws before moving on to attach a piece of sheetrock over it (also with a large quantity of drywall screws...this time it was necessary, though, as we were only going into plaster/lath so the more the merrier).

My arms seriously needed a break at this point.  Being just under 5'5" doesn't help reach those places way up high where drywall screws need to go.  So we headed downstairs to feed the impatient dogs before going out to the barn.  The girls were happy to see that their dinner was coming and they all ate happily as Kyle and I looked around for the eggs.  The chickens were getting wise to the fact that we're taking their eggs, and must not be appreciating it because we had to search extra-hard to find more than a few.  All in all we found a dozen eggs, all but four in these new hiding places.


It was a busy, arm-killing day, but were we done?  Heck no!  How do you think I could possible have a mirror for our bathroom and just leave it in its box?!  You know me better than that.  With a level, some screws, and some good eyeballing, it took literally five minutes to secure the new medicine cabinet over our sink.  And 'whoa nellie!' we had a mirror and more storage in our upstairs bathroom!  Not to mention the fact that I finally got a good look at myself and couldn't believe my husband could look at my bed-head without laughing his face off.  After all, the guys at Lowes don't care if I brush my hair on home-renovation day so why should I?


So, there you have it folks.  Over the course of two days we were able to get our washer and dryer hooked up, drywall up in the guest bedroom (all but two small sections), install a light in the closet and a medicine cabinet in our bathroom.  And I was finally able to get some clean clothes, not too soon, too, as we all know what Monday means.

1 Responses to Sunday- not just the day before 'back to work'-day.

  1. wow! It looks Awesome!! We'll have to come down for a tour sometime! You left your new calender so we'll come down and deliver it sometime...)
    You guys are doing GREAT work! Love your bathroom it looks GREAT!