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!!