Paint Time Baby!!

To say the least, I have been a complete slacker with updating this blog recently!! So, I dedicate this update to Annie and Rozzie (now please quit sending me text and FB messages to update the blog).

Since the last post, we have made great progress. Thanks to our wonderful painter Clifford, the outside painting is almost completely finished. We are still waiting for the wood siding to be put on the back side of the house, once that is done the outside will be 100%   finished...WOOOOHOOOO!!! For the past four weeks, we have continued to sand and clean the interior walls to prep for paint. I am so excited to tell you that we (well, Steven because I had to work this weekend) started to prime our walls. Words cannot even begin to tell you how excited that makes me. I am so OVER sanding freaking walls that I have almost had a mental breakdown over it!!! So all of you that have told me you like to paint, it is your time to shine. Anytime you want to help, just stop on by. Josh Black and his girlfriend stopped by to check out the house when they were in town recently, so of course I had him play a little. I was in my glory sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch listening to him play!!

Our plan now is to continue to prime and paint. Our rough in plumbing and electrical have passed, so hopefully soon I will have pictures of my bathroom soon!! We have big plans to have this house move-in ready by the end of May...OH MY!!!!!

Back of house waiting for siding and paint















Annie, Ayisha, and Rozzie picked out the colors for our pantry and painted while they were home for Spring Break...









Not so sure the girls understood what blue painter's tape is for!!!!

Walls in office prior to primer...

Walls after primer :) :) :) :)

Sunday Sand Day!!!

It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it..."Sanding Steve"!

First of all, let me apologize for not updating the blog in 2 weeks. The past 2 weeks at work have been very busy for me, plus I was working five 8 hours shifts so I did not have alot of downtime. The past 2 weeks have been pretty busy on the homestead as well!! The plumber and electrican have both practically completed their rough-in work. Lots of work is being done to the foundation as well.

Last Saturday we had family work day on the farm. Steven's parents and my Mom came out to help scrub walls, base boards and start cleaning the kitchen. We do not have water as of yet, so we have been carrying MANY 5 gallon buckets back and forth. The walls were so dirty it literally took us 2 days to clean all the walls downstairs only. That set us up to spackle the cracks in the walls yesterday and start sanding today. We made the decision when we bought

 this house to keep it as original as possible. So, we are keeping the plaster walls even though we have heard over and over to replace the damaged plaster with new sheet rock. Through researching how to repair plaster walls, I have found that plaster is resistant to mold, better acoutically than sheet rock and is more fire retardant. We have also found the house is painted with oil paint so we have to prime EVERYTHING prior to painting.

Gene spackling like a pro!

Steven's Dad Gene came out to support us again yesterday and help us spackle. Between the 3 of us, we essentially had no idea what we were doing but we figured it could not be to hard to throw some spackling over cracks. The quote of the day came from Gene: "We're worth about what we are getting paid"!! :) Today when we started sanding our work, to our surprise we really did a good job. There are places we are going to have to put a second coat of spackling on but overall I give us an A+! Steven and all sanded all rooms except 2 and we are beat. Maybe he will finish the last 2 rooms while I am at work this week (hint, hint). I asked Steven to describe how he felt right now, and I have to leave some off but see if you can fill in the blank..."I'm tired, sore, hungry and______" Oh yeah, I married a classy one.

The plan for the house this week is to continue to sand and hopefully we will be ready to start painting in 2 weeks. We went to Lowe's last night and I'm pretty sure I have my colors picked out. I'm under strict orders from Steven not to put any beige color in the house (that is what we have now), so I am going with more greens and even a jade color. I'm going to surprise you with the kitchen, but think spicy!! I am also hopeful the foundation work will finish this week as well. We had to bite the bullet and contracted someone to paint the outside of the house and he should start in 2 weeks. I know this is a long post but I had alot to catch up on!!


Layla was so dirty from playing in the rain she had to take a bath outside!!



Our handy work :)



Bullets and Beer!!

This weekend we took a break from working on the house and enjoyed the property with our friends Britta and Dirk (from Robbins, NC) and Cola and Brian. We have been so excited to spend this weekend with them on our new property camping out. Everyone brought their hand guns/shot guns and we had target practice in the field. I haven't ever experienced shooting a shot gun at skeet, and I am HOOKED!! I have told Steven at least 5 times since yesterday how much I want a shot gun now!!! We finished the evening by cooking a pot roast over the fire (for 4 hours, we didn't eat until 9:30), then enjoying a bonfire with our favorite friends. Now when I say bonfire, I want you to imagine Steven blaring Kid Rock and putting a tire on the fire...yeah, it got HOT!!!

As many of you know, Cola and Bryan are expecting so we changed our original plan of camping on the property in tents to staying in my Mom's pop up camper. Cola was not in the least bit excited to sleep outside so we thought the least we could do was let her sleep on a mattress in a camper with a ceramic heater!! It was quite hilarious in the camper with 6 adults and 2 dogs. We finished off the visit with a yummy breakfast cooked by the boys as the girls sat around the fire chatting. We always cherish every second we can spend with this group, and the weekend was a huge success! As Brian said this morning "Well, I think Camp Thunderbird was great fun!!"

Britta and I showing off our country skills :)

Cola doesn't like guns at all!!

As far as the house, the back porch which has water and termite damaged was torn off and the construction on our laundry room began. The HVAC crew started installing our new systems as well. The plan for this week will be to have the house pressure washed to prepare for painting and hopefully the brick masons will be there to start repairing the structure.

Before

After

Layla (our child with four legs) and Timber (Brian and Cola's love) joined us this weekend as well to enjoy the property. As usual, Layla drove everyone crazy wanting to chase the ball and Timber was in his GLORY chasing skeet. My sister Rozzie has been driving me crazy to put up a picture of Layla, so this one's for you Roz...

Scrapin' and Scrubin'

Notice the new windows!!!

The past 2 days at the ole' Spangler Homestead has been been a butt kicker to say the least. We started scraping paint on the south side of the house Thursday and started cleaning the walls and ceiling of the front porch today. Steven and I are so sore right now that it feels like we have been doing P 90X workouts for 48 straight hours. All I could think of the past 2 days is: keep working hard and you will have the best arms this side of the Mason-Dixion! We knew that it was going to rain today, so we planned to clean the walls and porch ceiling today so we would be out of the rain (plus it would give us a break from scraping). Well, what we didn't plan on was the fact that we would be cleaning with water and the high today was 34 big degrees!!!! To say the least, by the time we quit today we were frozen solid and so sore it hurt to laugh!

 The house tried to get the best of us today, but we won in the end. Right when we started to get in a cleaning grove, it was so cold out that the hose on the sprayer busted. So off to ACE Hardware we went (which was our second time leaving within 30 minutes to run an errand). As we were getting back into the truck with our new sprayer, Steven noticed his gloves lying in the parking lot SOAKING wet!!! God love his soul, he rarely loses his temper and becomes frustrated but that one almost got the best of him. Thank goodness for some good tunes on the i-pod and the cleaning finally kicking into high gear!!!! Check out our before and after pics below. The new windows were also put in this week. They look GREAT, we are very pleased with our decision to go with no grids in the windows. Steven will continue to clean tomorrow and Sunday as I head off to work this weekend. I am secretly very glad I am working to give my muscles a break!! If the weather will cooperate Monday, the back porch will be removed and construction will start on our new laundry room.

Before the scrubbing...

After the scrubbing :) :) :) :) :)

Leaves, Leaves, Leaves!!!!!!!!

Steven and I have spent the past two days picking up and bagging leaves. So far, we have bagged a total of 90 bags...thats right people...90 BAGS!!!! Steven estimates that the leaves have probably been there 3-5 years. The south side of the house is totally clear of leaves, we finished almost the entire front flower bed before having to run off to Lowe's. Speaking of Lowe's, we went yesterday after a GREAT early morning Worship Service and successfully picked out our vanity and faucets for our master bedroom. We completed this task without even and argument!!! Our biggest accomplishment yesterday was buying a 1921 cast iron clawfoot tub from a couple in Huntersville. We priced them at Lowe's from $1500, but we scored our for the nice price of $300!!! WOOOOHOOOOO!

We still have a very big week planned at the Spangler Homestead this week. New windows will be in by Thursday and they will be tearing down the existing back porch (which is basically falling in). The next big project Steven and I will work on is prepping the exterior of the house to paint. Should be a load of fun!! I will post before and after pictures as work gets done this week.

How This All Came About...

It has been a long time dream of ours to one day buy an old farm house with land to renovate. Little did we know that our dream would come true during this stage of our life. In October we were presented with the opportunity to purchase a 1925 farm house with 18 acres. The house had only been on the market for 4 days and already had 1 offer made on it so we knew we had to move fast. From the moment I stepped foot in the house I knew it had to be mine!!!! To make a VERY long story short, the house of our dreams became ours on December 30th, 2010. Now you can only imagine how painful the loan process was considering it took from October to the end of December to close. We learned very quickly that banks do not like to lend money for property over 10 acres. Thanks to Steven's business savvy and lots of prayers we were able to close the deal. We celebrated by having a bonfire with our friends and family.

I do not think that my life is so interesting that people would like to read my blog, but we have family and friends throughout the US that we thought would like to keep up with our progress. Steven has a brother (Bryan) who works with the Thunderbirds and stationed in Vegas, his wife Stacy is in SC now proudly working as a nurse. I have a sister Annie who is in her junior year at Dartmouth College and my baby sister is a freshman at UNC-Wilmington. Other than that, thankfully the rest of our family lives either in Cherryville or Shelby. We also have friends scattered all throughout NC that we really wanted to keep in the loop. Plus I wanted a way to document our dream coming true without having to scrapbook!!!

Our plans for the house are new plumbing and wiring, refinish the existing hardwood floors (which are BEAUTIFUL), fresh coat of paint, converting the sitting room into our master bedroom, converting another room into a bathroom and converting the existing bathroom into our closet. We will be painting the outside, fixing structural damage, replacing the windows, painting the kitchen cabinets and installing new appliances. The property has several buildings that we are tearing down or fixing and MUCH work needs to be done to clean up the property in general. Our contractor to help with the major projects is Vickie Spurling, otherwise we a doing the rest ourselves. We spend every extra minute and EVERY weekend at the property. We LOVE to have visitors so please stop by if you have nothing to do on a Saturday or Sunday!!! :)

We should have our new windows installed this Wednesday so that will be our first major project on the house. I will post pictures soon of the work we have already completed. So, I hope you enjoy following along with us as we remodel our home and learn all about country living!!!

Before I close, I want to give all the credit and praise to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. HE is the one that has made this all possible. I have become much closer to Him throughout this journey thus far. During the time of trying to close on this house, we experienced some very stressful times. The saying "Sometimes He calms the storm and sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child" rings very true to me!!