Pop's House

A few of you may know that we are in the process of renovating a house on 47 acres near where we currently live, with the idea being that my parents (my dad mostly) will be "Winter Texans." Yeah! I just uploaded 2 photo albums to facebook so you can visit there to see the whole thing from the very beginning (warning: it  ain't pretty - and it's just now approaching "livable"), but here is a quick update of what we've finished within the last few weeks. Facebook photos

I will try to comment so you can follow along. 

Outside view on front door

This is the "front door" of the original house, (taken from inside) which was basically on the back of the house and made the whole thing feel totally wonky. This is now going to the the back. And the next shot is the new back door from the inside. 

  

The new front door.  The dining room was here on the original house but we replaced a big window with a new front door and have a big covered porch now too.  

The original house, "breezeway". 

 New inside standing in kitchen, looking into family room, with sunroom in far right distance.

Inside new sunroom 

 Original sunroom. Inside (which I don't even think I was brave enough to photograph except from a way distance), there was a 3-sided elevated hydroponic growing area. We're not sure what they grew in there. People say she was a real horticulturist! 

Original family room, with sunroom in far back (we'd already ripped out the "growing area".)

 Looking into family room from sunroom.

New front face of house. There are 2 windows that still need installed. 

Progress on the fence/gate

This is where the stone columns will go for the gate; they will be built onto the concrete bases.

Long view down right hand side where fence will be. 

Pump House Completed

Here are a few shots of the completed pump house.

Here's a close up of the detail on the gables. 

Weekend progress on well (oops, "pump") house

View from right side, showing finished new roof.

View from front

From left side with new "porch".  

Note to sales girl at Lowe's: this paint does not even come close to covering in ONE coat!!  

My funny kids

So we worked at the property the entire weekend. . .Mark was working on the "well house." He had brought over a generator to use for powering his electric tools. It was quite loud and just about every time a kid walked past it, it got shut off. Anyway, this irritated him and inspired the kids to try to "re-start" the generator. Here they are trying.

It has a pull start, like a lawn mower. Madison is hanging on to that. 

Pulling. . .pulling 

All fall down. Poor Madox getting squished! 

Family photo, October, 2010

I took about 15 shots to get a decent one, and this is the best one I could get. 4 kids and a dog can be very wiggly! 

If there was a blog award for the most sporadic blogger. . .

I think I might be in the running. I tend to dump a bunch of info in one sitting. . .so here goes a "dump" of otherwise random items of interest. 

Madison lost one of her front teeth this week. She might be in the running for an award something like "I leave my loose teeth in as long as humanly possible." Seriously, it's been loose for over a month. It even turned gray inside her mouth while we were waiting for it to come out. One evening while we were having our reading/tv/family time on the couch, Mark reached over and plucked it right out of her mouth, midsentence! She didn't even cry. 

Here's a special order I did this week. I particularly like the varying sizes of the polka dots and it's my favorite 4 year old boy's favorite color! 

The other project we are working on this week and last week it the well house at the "property". I think we need to come up with a better name, but for those of you that don't know it's almost 50 acres a few miles down the road that we are going to work on and clear enough space to build a house in the next few years. This is a shot of the "well house"; the pump and tank for the water well is located inside. 

Here is the well. It also used to be "home" to some sheep or goats (or something kinda stinky that slept on hay).  

Anyway, we decided to clean it up a bit and make it into a workable storage shed. We definitely need a place to keep and lock things up while we are over working to build/repair the fencing and clear the (jillions of) cedars.  

Here is the new roof Mark is installing. PS. How are you likin' the pink and yellow color combo? Yikes. 

Working at the Property

Last week, Mark started clearing out some of the heavy cedar trees near the front of the property so he could get the electrical service installed and start on the fence along the front.

The backhoe/digger (I think that's what it's called) 

The wood chipper, an absolute necessity with all of the cedars around there. 

The cutest backhoe driver ever! 

More pictures to come as we make progress; although progress will likely be rather slow.