A Very Nearly Tea

Once upon a time, there was a little house on a hill. The little house on a hill was in need of many things, but one most special need was a toilet. With never ending cleaning and five children coming and going, there was great need of running water, but especially great need for a toilet.

So it was with great anticipation that the little house waited for the day The Water Guy would come. And come he did. The Water Guy did what water guys all over the country do and turned on the water. A faucet in the basement did what faucets all over the country do when left on and poured great quantities of water into the basement.

The owner, and mother of the five children, laughed. It was good to see water flowing. After all, it meant The Water Guy was there and that the water worked. And there is nothing wrong with water flowing from a faucet that is turned on, even if it is flooding the basement. Unfortunately, the faucet had been on for a very long time so it was stuck. Stuck on on. And her feet were getting wet.

The Water Guy, however, had turned many stuck faucets in his life and turned it off rather quickly. Actually, he made it look rather easy, like maybe it wasn't even stuck, but there wasn't time to fret. The mother ran upstairs to see if the water was filling the toilet, yet, because that was the object of her desire.

She didn't make it.

There was running water in the kitchen.

Water running out the side of the sink all over the kitchen floor. Mother sent her daughter to chase down The Water Guy and ask him to please make it stop. But he couldn't. He did, however, find the leak and it was in the water filtration system that was broken. He said that theoretically, he should be able to just disconnect the filter and have water to the sink, but he couldn't figure out how.

So The Water Guy shut off the water to the kitchen. Then it began to rain.

Rain is a good thing, usually, but not when it is in a basement.

Standing in the rain with the flashlight, The Water Guy spotted the hole in the hot water pipe leading to the bathroom so he shut it off. It stopped raining, but the toilet still would not fill. He went out to check his meter and it was running.

Running, showing large quantities of water usage. But in the house, there was but a trickle from one faucet and gurgling noises in the toilet. So he followed the pipes and a few of them led into a concrete wall in the basement

"Surely they didn't build this on top of the pipes with no way to get to them," he said.

Yeah, surely, thought the mother. But you never can tell.

The Water Guy walked all around the house, inside and out. The Water Guy looked baffled and this made the mother very concerned. But The Water Guy did not give up, and The Water Guy prevailed. He finally found a piece of plywood on the wall behind which he discovered the crawl space, a broken pipe, and a great deal of water. Then he turned the water off to that section of the house.

His meter showed only a little water usage, now. "Probably just the toilet," he said. And then it began to rain. Again.

The mother's son had decided to try to fill the bath, and apparently the drain has issues as well.

The Water Guy laughed and advised the mother not to use the bath. Then The Water Guy showed the mother all about the water meter, how to open it up and, most importantly, how to shut it off. After a few well placed horror stories to make the mother not feel so bad about her own situation, he left.

The mother returned to the basement and wondered why towels and mops had not been on the list of needed equipment for the day the water was to be turned on. All she had was paint brushes, paint, a picnic basket and five storage tubs of clothes to be stored.

Clothes. Made of fabric.

So the mess got cleaned up. And the little house on the hill got a working toilet.

Well, ok, so mostly just during. The camera ate my before pictures so we're going to use a little guided imagination to picture the transformation this room is undergoing.

So close your eyes . . . well, maybe you'd best leave them open, else you won't be able to read what you're to imagine.

So picture yourself leaving the kitchen into a large, rectangular room. Spacious, with high, peaked ceilings AND A BAY WINDOW! I have wanted a bay window since I was a little girl, and I have spent almost as much time dreaming about my little window seat and the cushions I'm going to make to put on it as I have about any of the other projects I've set before myself.

The walls are white; the carpet is beige and in need of a good cleaning but otherwise in good shape. On the opposite side of the room is a large, sandstone colored chimney where a wood burning stove used to stand with a hearth of yellow ceramic. The same ceramic tiles are used in the entry way, and some of the tiles are cracked. When the realtor showed us the house, I was impressed by how good of shape the room was in and the fact that the only work we needed to do was to replace the shower and knock the moldy drywall out of the basement. Eventually, we'd replace all the carpeting with wood floors, but that was by no means necessary.

But then we went and showed the house to my parents after we bought it.

And here you have to imagine the other picture I took. This is where we removed one of the vents and pulled back some of the carpet. What should our wondering eyes behold but hardwood floors?

So you can probably guess what happened next. Tearing things up is cheap. And kind of fun, too.


We're hoping to maybe put an electric fireplace there against the chimney along with a small sitting area. A couch! Some comfy chairs! My parents won't have to bring their own seating when they come to visit! Imagine the joy and comfort!

And the view from the other side of the room, just so you can see all the carpet we tore up, as well as the stair leading to the basement.


Our dining room table will go there, more or less where the carpet is piled up. And I will have space. And a place to sit. And a place to feed people. And a little room to keep all our homeschool projects so they don't accumulate on the table.

Space.

I still can't quite fathom it.

Welcome to our little house out in the country. L.E. Fant, our gorgeous little greeter, is here to welcome you for a little tour of the kitchen.



And please note that we're going through the kitchen door. Because that's the kind of guests you are. No formal front door stuff around here. I'd put on the kettle if we had a stove. The kitchen door is very informal at this moment.


Because, uh, I broke the lock on the front door. The key wouldn't turn and I was afraid I was going to break the key and I pushed a little harder and the lock just spun. My dear husband didn't seem to believe me until he had the same trouble with the kitchen door, except he just went ahead and broke the key off in the lock. That worked just about as well as my take on the locks.

We contemplated the relative costs of breaking in versus calling a locksmith and as you can see my husband chose the former option.

The kitchen is the one room in the house that I wasn't too sure about it. It is small. Very small. The children will not be able to stand on their step stool to watch what is going on at the stove anymore. I will not have much room to move around.

But the room is growing on me. The cabinets are nice. I will actually have more counter space. There are lots of outlets for things like electric roasters and juicers and toasters. Oh, and the electric stand mixer I've had my eye on for years. And the space that is there is used more efficiently than in our current kitchen.

Just look at the pantry.

Surfing around to see how other people deal with small galley style kitchens, I came across some famous chef who designed his own super efficient galley kitchen and he had a cool pantry with shelves that slid out. I thought that was way cool and a great investment for my super small kitchen. It might make the whole small kitchen thing worthwhile, I thought, as I pondered a bit of remodeling just for the fun of it rather than because it actually had to be done.

But what should I find when I actually looked in my pantry?


Shelves that pull out! One of the cabinets has shelves like that, too. How cool is that?

And see, if you were really dropping in for a visit, I picture you sliding onto one of these little built in benches while I served you a cup of tea on the little table I have not yet found to put in front of the little built in benches. It seems like such a nice, neighborly, just-popped-in kind of place to sit and chat.


I think this will also make up a little for the fact the children won't be able to help with the cooking as much. Here, they can measure and mix and beat all at their level and without the step stool. And the seats lift up for storage. No idea what to store in a bench in the kitchen, but I'm sure something will come to me.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour. Join me again for some before and after pictures of the work we're doing in the rest of the house!

Perhaps it is due to many long and pleasant hours spent with Anne Shirley of Green Gables, but I have always had a bit of a romantic fascination with naming houses. Growing up in suburbia, however, it never seemed quite right. Here, we live in houses, not estates. But downtown, there is a beautifully manicured lawn with a sign posted at the corner: Hunley's Haven. Whenever I drive by, it makes me smile. They have built themselves something more than a house to come home to at the end of the working day.

When we were in negotiations to buy the house down the road from us, the idea came to me again. It was a large house on almost three acres. It was a home to be named, but what would we name it? What name would impart our hopes and dreams for it? A name would come, I decided, and come it did. The house named itself: The Stinky House. That's what the children called it. That's what we called it. That's what we still call it though we are no longer trying to purchase it.

A strange name, but one with a bit of history and meaning to us. I wonder what the neighbors would have thought?

And here we are again, on the cusp of embarking on this journey of country living. Five acres, a couple of barns, a pasture. And a home to be named. And here I am, again, unsure exactly how one goes about naming a property.

So far, two names have occurred to me. I sort of like them both, but for very different reasons.

1. Roscommon Acres. Because our family name originates in County Roscommon, Ireland. Ballaghaderreen, to be exact. Actually, I kind of like that, too, but would anyone be able to pronounce it?
2. A Very Nearly Nowhere. Because that is exactly where we will be living.

Then I'll have to start working on my sign so the cows know who we are.

When we bought this table set, we knew we'd need to reupholster the chairs eventually. OK, so most people would have probably thought soon rather than eventually, but when you have five kids and two dogs, serviceable seems much more important than style.

Unless you call blue faux suede accented with spaghetti sauce and painted in wet play-do stylish.

Enter the cat. And one chair found itself and its stuffing soon parted. And this chair became the catalyst for my first real do-it-yourself home decorating project.

The directions I found said it was easy. Perfect for a beginner, even. The voila in step seven made it seem so much like "and that's it!" Like "Yeah, even you, Dana, who found out that "Quilting for Dummies" expected too much prior knowledge, can do this."

So I armed myself with a cushion and went to Jo-Ann Fabrics, hopeful but not particularly expectant. After all, it wouldn't be the first project I'd undertaken that looked easy from the directions and turned into a nightmare I'd never care to repeat.

OK, so maybe normal people would give up on their plan for a quilt when their materials list included a sewing machine--something they hadn't operated in 20 years. But clearly I'm not most people and I often completely miss those warning signs of rough waters ahead.

I take "perfect for beginners" with a grain of salt. I'm not your average beginner. I'm generally somewhere far behind that noble newbie. The only thing I've really got going for me is that I'm not particularly afraid of failure. We're on familiar enough terms, it's like having an old friend pop in for tea.

Here's the surprising part: it was easy. I even tackled stripes. I even had to restuff one of the chairs. The hardest thing I had to do was run out for more staples because the ones I was using were too long for the project. But I just handed the staple gun to the guy who looked like he was dying of boredom anyway and told him I needed something 3/8 inch. He handed me a box and I took his word for it.

My husband said, "Wow!" I think maybe he was expecting failure over for tea, as well. Even our real estate agent noticed as she sat in one for a two hour open house with no visitors.

I said, "Children, you are not allowed to eat on the kitchen chairs. Ever."

All for $24.

As I shared previously, we are remodeling our former porch to make it into a bedroom for our daughters. We replaced the windows to make the temperature a little more stable...today was cold and windy and it was so nice to be inside and not feel the chilling breeze! Here are some pictures from our efforts over the weekend:

We have light! And note the ceiling? My husband and brother hung that and it looks beautiful!


We have heat! This area still needs a third coat of paint and then we will put the cover back on the vent. See the hole cut out of the wall as you peer through the door? That is where they knocked out part of the wall to connect the vent. Eventually that will get patched up!


We have color! This is the yellow from my daughter's quilt we got her for her birthday. My mom is selecting fabric to make curtains from. Hopefully we will have them after Thanksgiving, but we should at least have a photo of the fabric to share.


So much for phase one. The space is now livable, despite the below freezing temperatures we had today. Phase two will involve laying a new floor. We currently have really ugly and badly stained blue carpeting. We are planning on laying wood laminate and putting a nice throw rug on top. Phase two will also involve this corner:


Imagine all that stuff gone. The bed will go here (it is a daybed with a trundle underneath). Around the bed, we are going to build a sort of arbor with lattice work and string some plastic ivy and little white Christmas lights to go with our garden theme. And delight our little ladies who love that sort of thing. There will be a curtain in front of this to give them some privacy. Unfortunately, our house is a bit too small to give them this whole room as theirs alone. It still will be the playroom/sewing room. But they can have a little corner to themselves.

Hammering. Drilling. Sawing. Our house is undergoing some major modifications. Technically, our house is all of 700 square feet. We also have a sort of sun room that is 210 square feet that we use as a playroom. Last week, we got new windows so the heat stays pretty steady up there, making the room usable year round. My parents came up to help with more remodeling.

This weekend, we are extending duct work, putting in a new ceiling and painting.

Later, we will be re-flooring and putting in cabinets under the windows.

Then, we will be putting up a bed out there with a curtain around it and the girls will have their own, very nice, bedroom.

This is where the bed will go with a curtain around it. We will be installing a small reading light over the bed. You can't see the ceiling very well, but it is basically plywood painted white. If you look at the pillow sham hung over the rocking chair, you will see the colors for the room. The walls will be painted that yellow, and the curtains will have that lavender. The floor may as well, but we haven't decided what kind of floor to put in. That may be a project for next month.


This is the east wall/corner. A shelf will go around the room, under all the windows. This will be a nice workspace for the kids, especially for artwork, play dough and studying our birds. Under the shelves will be box units. Some will be drawers, some boxes, etc. This will be for storage. The shelf will be strong enough to hold someone sitting on them.


We are redoing the ceiling, as well. I'll take a picture when it is done. I'm so excited!

So is my daughter. We got her a quilt and pillow sham (same colors as above) and she says it is her favorite birthday present ever.

Related Tags: homeschooling, remodeling, family