Not Much

Mom's head is feeling a little better today but no change with her hearing. Hoping each day will be better.

I haven't talked to Bill much so not sure what has gone on with the house today so will just make this a short post. More rain here so I haven't taken any pictures yet. The few farmers that are here have not really been able to even start planting corn.

Update

Mom had an appointment with the ear surgeon today, and we got some better news. Her polyp/tumor is small, benign and a very slow growing type. He recommends watching it (scan every 9 months). She may not get the hearing back in her right ear because it's on that nerve. Her head and earache may be caused by a sinus problem (not caused by the tumor) so he gave her some strong antibiotics with a refill so she's hoping when they take affect, she'll feel better! The other 2 options - radiation or surgery to remove it are not good options because they would cause other problems for sure.

Bill tells me that we have carpet done upstairs, flooring in the basement bathroom and Mark's working on the basement carpet. Angie will be installing the blinds tomorrow evening and Greg will be there to put the closet shelves back together!

I think I'm staying here in Indy until Sat. to help mom some, shop, get the oil changed in the Pilot and see some friends, if there's time, since it's too wet for Bill to start planting beans, and we can't move into the house yet. I brought my camera but forgot the cord so there may not be any pics from Indy unless I use mom's. All of the redbud & dogwood trees, tulips, etc. blooming here are a nice change!

Lots Going On

We had lots of action at the house yesterday. Mark K. got the carpet padding down. Three plumbers were installing toilets and finishing up other things. The electrician got some more things finished up. Bill played plumber and did whatever had to be done to take out the dishwasher & garbage disposal to be moved to the new house. I cleaned the washer & dryer and Bill got them unhooked and over to the new house. All the water is turned on there now. Greg & Bill F. came in the evening to adjust some doors and things.

Today the stove and refrigerator were delivered! DISH Network came out and put in 2 satellite dishes and got the connections in the house tested and ready. Mark was working on the upstairs carpet.

I left for Indiana last night, stayed in Iowa City and got here about 2:00. Mom has a small polyp on a nerve in her ear (acoustic neuroma) and went to the emergency room this morning because she couldn't get in to the specialist for too long. Now her appointment is tomorrow and she has some drugs for the pain which is helping. What we find out at the appointment tomorrow re: the surgery type & time will determine how long I'm here.

Doors

Lots of doors were installed and others put back up today. The front door is a darker color than the shutters but as close as we could get with factory painted. There will be a burgundy framed storm door too.

The side door has a number touchpad/lock so we can go in and out without a key. You can program in many different codes.

We had some visitors. A couple called and asked if they could come look at our cabinets. They're going to remodel their kitchen.

The inside of the front door with the faux woodgrain.

This is my favorite - the door to the screened porch. It has the blind in between the glass and the faux woodgrain on this side - white on the porch side.

Making Progress

Greg made it here today after all! He thought he might not be here until tomorrow. He got a lot of the baseboard installed over the linoleum and it looks good!







This is our propane stove in the corner of the great room.








I got my favorite cookbooks put in their cabinet. I used to collect them especially when I traveled so I have lots more.

Moved the spices over. They take up one whole cabinet. I like to bake and cook now that I have more time to do it - and someone to cook for!








The china cabinet is in its place and partially filled.

Bill had a fire call at 3:15 am - car fire in town.

Starting to Move

No pictures today. We were busy moving stuff from 2 rooms upstairs and our living room so that Mark K. will have that carpet when he's ready for it in the basement on about Wed. Friend Kyle came over after work to help Bill get the rolls of carpet out the upstairs window down into the loader on the tractor (that would've been a good picture!) and then in through the basement window at the new house! He also helped move a bunch of the bigger pieces including the propane stove since the tile it's going to sit on is ready, the china hutch, a couple of chairs, bookshelf and more. Thanks a bunch Kyle!!

Mark got all of the linoleum upstairs finished today. Greg will be over to finish baseboard Sun. and Mark will be doing the carpet upstairs Mon. & Tues. Appliances will be delivered the first of the week and plumbers are bringing toilets Mon.! They're also going to take the dishwasher and garbage disposal over and maybe washer & dryer. It'll be an exciting week!

Gettin' There

Mark K. has the kitchen, eating area, back hallway and laundry room flooring cut and laying in place. Notice this side of the peninsula. Instead of smooth/flat - it now has "decorative panels" which are actually cabinet doors.





This is ceramic tile in the corner of the great room. The propane stove will sit on it. The stove looks like a woodburning stove and you can see the flames when it's on. It'll look kind of cozy and will be backup heat. We also thought we can heat the great room more with this and keep the rest of the house cooler if we want to.


I've moved lots of stuff into the stamp room. Just can't put things in the closet yet. Everything is just stuck in where I could find a place - will organize later. I have enough moved that I could work in here now if I needed to!




Bill planted 280 acres yesterday and just had 30 left to do today. He figures with the new seed tender he saved having to manually carry 350 42-65 lb. bags of seed. He got the sweet corn planted yesterday. They do that with the big planter! We're supposed to get rain this weekend which will be good - as long as it's not too much or too cold! :)

Last Day of Corn

Tim is spraying here at our house this morning. Bill planted 240 acres yesterday and has close to 300 to do today to get done with corn. It's sunny and even going to be warm with no wind today.





Now that I'm a farmer's wife, my Longaberger pie basket is getting more use! It's what I use to take food to Bill in the field. I keep extra plastic silverware and napkins under the shelf so it's ready to go except for the food.

I got more dust wiped out of cabinets yesterday. Almost done with that. Greg was just here checking on our To Do List and the flooring. Mark got here at 6:30 again. Greg says he'll be here Sun. to do baseboard around the linoleum areas. Mark is working on the back hallway area now so I won't be able to carry any more stuff in for a while. I'll work on bringing more stuff downstairs here from the stamp room and guest room and have it ready to take over when I can. Working to get things out of 3 rooms that we're going to use the carpet from in the new basement. If I'm lucky, Bill can help move bigger things over in between corn & beans! Rain is coming this weekend.

Pocahontas' Prom

Nephew Reed and his date are on the left with friend, Andy, and his date on the right.

At church Sun., all of the prom kids came with their dresses and tuxes on. They had not had any sleep yet!






Nephews Rob and his date are on the left and Ross and his date on the right.

Farming is going well. Bill said they got 7 fields on 4 farms done yesterday - even with a few minutes of rain. I took food to Bill last evening. He got home about 10:00. Today is a good day for planting but it's still cool.

Mark Kemna is here working on our floors and also an electrician. The electrician has quite a bit to do yet.

Good News!

Bill's friend, Randy, is here visiting his parents and stopped by yesterday. He's one of my blog followers from Las Vegas! (I try to get a pic of all of our visitors) He said he likes the burgundy walls and our cabinets.



Greg & Bill F. worked here both Sat. & Sun. They got the microwave installed.


Another style of faucet that we have a couple of.





Mark, the flooring guy showed up around 2:30 today!! Sounds like he will be here about a week and a half plus more time for the basement. He says he will be here until he's done - good news!!

I better get back to moving boxes to the basement!

House Misc.

The plumbers put in our kitchen faucet yesterday. Ahhh, the water filter (on left). No more trips to the store to refill gallons of water to drink!
Laundry room sink and faucet.


Greg & Bill F. got a lot done today. Steps from the garage into the house.

Shelves in the kitchen pantry sturdy enough to hold my KitchenAid mixer and other small appliances.

Another decision done - they put up the towel rings, bath towel bars, etc. Where to put those was pretty easy.

Peggy and I are going to go watch Rob, Ross & Reed in the Grand March for Prom. Out here they have all of the couples go across the gym floor and stand on a platform for picture taking. Everybody goes. It's fun to see all the dresses and the guys' matching vests.

We have a planting rain delay which is good. Light, warm rain just like Bill hoped for! He had just finished planting a field when it started so great timing. He and Tim then had a chance to take a look at a forklift that Glenn is selling. I ran to Humboldt for parts for Glenn.

Seed Tender

I just took the seed tender to the field for the first time with no "incidents"! Think Bill is liking the time and back savings already with not having heavy bags to carry & empty. I took a magazine with me just in case but it was a quick process transferring the seed to the planter and I was on my way.

The weather has been great this week and the dirt looks perfect - like I would know! We're supposed to get rain this weekend which would be good - as long as it's not too much and we hope it's a nice, warm rain!

We had plumbers and electricians here this morning. I think the plumbers probably got all they could do now done and they are gone. Chris, the main electrician, had to go do a service call but we still have Rob here. I'm going over now to vac all the floors and hope to move more stuff over this evening and tomorrow to storage rooms. Sub flooring was delivered this morning - good sign!

We're Working

No workers on the house today. Hard to believe that as close as we are to being finished, nobody worked on it today. That's ok, I had the place to myself. I Goo Gone'd, scraped and washed all the windows inside and out. Also vacuumed a lot of sawdust and dirt from inside cabinets, on top of them and a bunch of the doors and woodwork - dust is everywhere. Electricians are supposed to show up tomorrow for a full day of work (and a full page of "Things To Do" from us) and hopefully the plumbers. Greg & Bill F. will be here this weekend with a full page too.

I really appreciate our painters even more after doing the windows. I had built a new house in 2001 in Indiana thinking after being single so many years, I probably wasn't going to meet Mr. Right so might as well buy a newer house that would be low maintenance for a single woman. So I ended up building the perfect house for me! Anyway, I had terrible painters. And they really made a mess of the windows! The Perfect Touch painters here are - perfect! They did a great job painting the walls and staining the windows and were very professional. We're so glad we used them.

We had great weather for planting again today but Bill didn't get as much done today. He had to use bags of seed, was planting in a field with lots of corners and other stuff that slowed them down. He pulled into our field here at the house at about 7:30 tonight. We're going to be surrounded by corn at our house this year. The field across the road from us is being planted today too.

Busy Day!

Now everything is happening at once of course! Bill, Tim & Carl are farming. This is Carl. Bill was planting, Tim was spraying.

The plumbers were here almost the whole day! Greg came by to make a list of what's left to be done. Our sheetrock guy stopped by with some paperwork so he took a look around the house. He thought everything looked good.

The mirrors were delivered with a couple of problems. This is the guest bath which is finished!!

I made lots of trips back & forth and up and down stairs moving some stuff into the storm room and moved maybe a third of my stamping stuff.


The UPS guy was surprised that I got a couple of big boxes today and they weren't from Stampin' Up! He asked if it was stuff for the house (yes, 2 counter stools) so I asked if he would like a tour and he had time. He said the outside is deceiving and thought it was a big house.

I ran to Manson Ag for Bill to pick up 24 smart boxes. For the non-farmers - they go on the planter and have bug control stuff in them. I don't know much about them!

Think Bill said he got about 250 acres planted today so it was a good day. Most who went to coffee didn't have good news to share about their first days in the field!

It's A Good Day

Bill & Tim started planting today! Carl is working ground. The first 2 pictures are from yesterday when Tim was burning the "trash" off of a field. I was going to Peggy's and saw the smoke from our house and remembered they were doing that so came back to get the camera and then went to check it out! This first picture was from about a mile away.


If you click on this one you should be able to see some flames. Tiny flames made a lot of smoke!


We have not one but three plumbers here today!!!! They have 2 faucets in and here is one. On all of our faucets, we're having no plates - the flat piece that's usually across the bottom of the faucet that always has water spots.

This is Kay Brown - she did the faux woodgraining. Here she's putting a white glaze on the master bathroom walls. You can see that they put in the shower doors today. Right now they're cutting the laundry room countertop to put the sink in.

I've actually moved a few holiday decorations totes onto the shelves in the storage room but staying out of the plumbers' way!!

Woodgraining

Kay is here today and has done the woodgraining on the inside of our 3 exterior doors. She put on a 3rd coat and then used these tools to do the wood "pattern". Then she's going to put 2 coats of varnish on to protect it. She's also working again on the white closet doors and trim in the craft/stamp room.


Grant is here probably finishing up the heating today except for the air conditioner which can't be set until we get dirt moved around. The countertop people are here to sand the wood underneath the overhang on the peninsula. It was very rough. I had no idea that bare wood is under countertops like that! Check yours and leave me a comment!

Hope everyone had a nice Easter! We did. We went to church and Glenn, Amy & the boys were there. We had brunch with Peggy and a friend of hers. I read and took a nap while Bill painted parts for our propane stove at Tim's shop. Then we had to go to a calling. After that we decided to go to Humboldt to see if any restaurants were open. The better ones were closed so we ended up at Godfather's Pizza which was good.

Day of Food

With it being Easter weekend and Greg being in Florida for a long weekend, no work on the house today or tomorrow. Kyle & 2 of his little ones stopped by for a tour.

I picked up Lacey early this morning to keep her while Todd & Diane worked. She came home with me and we got busy making a breakfast feast for the triplets: eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes and "biscuits to butter" as they say! They don't want sausage gravy & biscuits, just biscuits to butter. :) They told me about their prom plans (which is next weekend), looked at the house and were gone. Lacey was a "big" helper. She set the table, stirred things and put dishes in the dishwasher. She pretended that we were cooking in a restaurant - and it felt like it to me!

This afternoon I made my long time favorite spaghetti sauce. While waiting for the house to be done, I've been making some things that can be frozen for quick heat up when we're busy with planting and moving soon. I can't hardly eat spaghetti sauce from a jar after having this. Hope you like it as much as I do.

SPAGHETTI SAUCE

1 c. finely chopped onions
1 lb. sausage
1 1/2 lb. ground beef
2 sm. cans mushrooms - or fresh (optional)
2 cloves fresh garlic, crushed
2 large cans crushed tomatoes
1 16 oz. can crushed or diced tomatoes
2 12 oz. cans tomato paste
2 t. dried basil
4 t. dried parsley
4 t. dried oregano
1 T. salt
1/2 t. black pepper
2 T. sugar

Brown meat with onions, drain. Put all ingredients in a large crock pot and cook on low all day. I freeze the sauce in the amount we need for a meal plus leftovers. I also use this sauce to make lasagna.

Good Friday

Not much to tell you about today so will keep today's post short. Bill and Tim are still getting equipment ready for planting. They could officially start today but it's not warm enough although some guys are out.

We had plumbers here for a few hours and the heating guy all day. Don't expect anybody here this weekend. Found out where the plumbers have been instead of here - at friend Kyle's house! Seems they had a shower leak between the walls. Bill sent Kyle a nasty e mail!

I made and mailed 10 cards today - customer thank you's and sympathy.

I'm picking up Lacey in the morning and bringing her to our house (while Diane delivers mail) to then make a big breakfast for Rob, Ross & Reed. She will want to be a big helper.

I'm going to the Good Friday service at our church tonight at 7:30.

Faux Woodgrain

2nd coat. It'll be fun to watch Kay on Mon. She'll be using her tool with dark brown to do the woodgrain look. She's painting the white trim and closet doors in the craft room today too.

The county is adding gravel to our road today. The road grader just went by.

THE PLUMBERS ARE HERE!!! Kay arrived at 8:00, Grant (heating/cooling) at 1:00 and the plumbers at 2:00. Mon. I tried to bribe the electricians with cookies into coming back the next day - didn't work. Maybe I should try that with the plumbers today although they say they will be here. They are sanding the edges of the vanity tops to fit them.

We got a thermostat today but Grant says it's not a programmable one so he'll be bringing a different one. Next to it is the control for the air exchanger.

Close

Yesterday we got all of the empty cardboard from cabinets out of the garage. I take quite a bit to the town's recycling, Bill recycles his way which he doesn't want me to show on the blog! So uh while the dump truck was gone, I took these 2 pictures so you can see how close the old house is to the new house. The one tree there is probably coming down when the old house does.






Kay Brown is doing the faux woodgraining of the inside of our exterior steel doors. She's famous around here for her mural painting. I've seen what she's done in a restaurant with a Western theme in West Bend and she's also done themed rooms at the motel there (lighthouses, safari, golf, etc.). Very talented.

Grant was here working on heating. I started vacuuming out the cabinets. Greg says that I can start moving stuff in to out of the way cabinets & shelves! My craft room cabinets are clean and ready! The plumbers are supposed to show up tomorrow but we'll see! Bill is at a grocery board meeting tonight. Our meal last night with Poky Mutual was good: choice of ribeye, grilled chicken, fried shrimp or pork chop. Now they finally believe that Bill has a wife.

Electricians Showed!

Dick Main from Pocahontas Mutual Ins. came by to see the house yesterday. Bill is on their Board and has an all day meeting in Laurens today. Tonight spouses join them for dinner at the Palmer House Restaurant. You can see a little box to the left of Dick's head attached to the electrical box. It's a whole house surge protector that we got from Poky Mutual! He thinks their claims would go way down if everyone had one.

The electricians AND the heating guy are here today! We finally have light for the stairway to the basement! The sconces were marbled to match the walls.








We have one bathroom light fixture installed so far.

The exterior doors are set up so that Kay can start faux woodgraining them tomorrow. Our blinds for the windows are all in and ready to be installed.

Angie called to touch base re: the woodgraining tomorrow, and Kay will also paint the craft room white baseboard and closet doors. She told me the sad news that the flooring guy will not be here until the end of next week at the earliest.

Welcome Site!

This was certainly a welcome site on a Monday morning!!! We sure hope the contractors can get done this week and flooring, paint touch up and appliances next week! I have a call in to the flooring people to see when we're on their schedule and what the plan is. Planting can start next week . . .



Greg & Bill F. worked all day yesterday on doors, trim & cabinets. They put up the 2 top end pieces with the glass doors - one is for cookbooks and the angled one is to finish it off and will be for knick knacks of some sort - probably some pretty china.