When we purchased our acreage about 7 years ago we knew it would be a lot of work, but we were a little naive to just how much work that included. We knew we needed to start with getting rid of the brush that engulfed the house or houses. Yes, there were two houses, on of which didn't even have running water! That needed to come down, also. And the house we were going to move our family into was less than updated. In fact I don't think anything had ever been painted or updated in any way or cleaned for a very long time. The barns needed work, the fences were terrible and there were only two of us with regular jobs, I was going to college and our funds were very limited.
Before we moved in I painted every room of the 1 1/2 story old farmhouse with bright white paint after cleaning everything from floor to ceiling while my husband worked on the overgrown yard outside or what would eventually be a yard. Also before we moved in we burnt the old house we wouldn't be using, which turned into a fiasco of it's own involving the fire department twice. Many times thoughts of "what are we doing here" and "maybe we bit off more than we can chew" ran through both our minds, but never did either of us regret it. We moved in on Halloween 2005. The house was slightly smaller than our house in town. It seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere. My son in school would now have to ride the bus. The boys shared a less than beautiful room (at first anyway) and everything seemed ancient.
After countless hours of work a year and a half later, a decent yard and a few updates to the house, including a nice new bathroom (the old bathroom was a closet on the main floor with a toilet and a sink that was about 10inches wide with a slanted ceiling so you had to duck to sit on the toilet and a full bath upstairs with a tub but no shower) we were ready to remodel the house.
We did everything ourselves including new plumbing, electric, drywall, a new garage and a large living room addition with walk out basement underneath. We did all the work with some help from my family except the cement. We hired that done along with the new heating/cooling system. It was a ton of work, but now we have a beautiful house to live in and we saved a bunch of money doing it ourselves. The kids all have their own rooms. There are a few minor things we still need to work on but it has all been worth it.
We also in the middle of everything had the chance to purchase 30 more acres of land that was part of the original farmstead. So now we have 40 acres. Our attention for the past couple years besides taking a short break on the house due to being totally burned out on house remodeling, has been the rest of the property. There was junk everywhere! I'm not sure other owners ever threw anything away. Everything from old feed bags to lumber to metal scraps to just plain junk! We have made tons of trips to the junkyard and the dump. Old buildings in need of repair or torn down and pastures that grow mainly weeds. The fences are terrible so we have replaced a few but it's an expensive endeavor with funds still limited to what is left from our paychecks after bills are paid, so that is a slow ongoing process. Often I wish I could win some lottery money just to get the place all the way done and have some time to enjoy it before retirement or before all our children are gone away to college!
My hope for the future after all the updates are made is that our farm animals and land can financially sustain itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment