Blog Archives

the barn...

2/28/2020

The farm has a barn...

The current barn was constructed in 1966, at least according to the date etched in concrete outside the door. It came into being roughly the same time I did. This is not the property's first barn, however. According to the story, the current barn was built to replace a barn that burned down. According to some deeper story I might have heard somewhere, there was some illicit smoking involved...

You can just make out the barn in this old photo. I've got to admit, I think it is much prettier than its replacement. But that's just me.

Some "before"s of the "new" barn. Laugh not at the "new"--remember it's the same age as me. I think I've held up slightly better:

As we posted before, we had done some cleaning up when we hosted a wedding there (remember?). There was still a LOT to do after that, not least of which was repairing the roof, which you can see in the photos above, is really a loose term for what sat on top of the barn. If you're very clever, you'll see lots of windows stacked up there; I'll write another post about when and how that happened.

When we were finally able, we decided to get a quote on the roof repair. Here's the funny part of that story: the upper doors were long gone from the barn and the pigeons (oh the pigeons!!) had taken up residence. It wasn't any use boarding up the doors (we tried) if the roof still had huge holes. We got to the "one bird poop pile too far" point, and that's what made me call the roofing people for a quote. That, and the rotting floor that Nate's leg went through one day, but let's not dwell on THAT memory...

So, the roofers came and put a new metal roof on the whole thing. "Go big or quit," remember? My kitchen budget shrank that day. Significantly.

It turns out that the purlins were rotting. (You can look it up, I'll wait.... or just tell you that these are the cross pieces that block between the rafters and hold up roof sections. Now you have a fun party fact).
A heavy snow, which we ended up not having this winter, but which would eventually come, would have collapsed at least part of the roof.

So, because we can't seem to find the photos we know we have of those rotten pieces of wood, here is an anxiety-inducing photo of guys on ladders Nate doesn't even want to think about:

And the finished roof! There had been concern at the beginning that there might have to be a horizontal seam about halfway up, because they were unsure they could bend it to the curve of this roof. But they did it, and there is no seam. I do miss the "windows," though, because it is now VERY dark up in there. We were very pleased about that. Now, we just have to work on the rest of the barn. Sometime. When they add the 8th day to each week... or when we don't have day jobs any more.

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more on the Carriage House...

2/23/2020

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The Carriage House was the location of the former veterinary office and kennels, with an apartment for a tenant upstairs. You'll have seen the posts on the restoration of the apartment, and there will be future posts on the transformation of the downstairs area into workshop/retreat space later, but there was more to do outside. We had promised our new tenant a new carport asap, as the old one was, well, past its prime. (I say that with my tongue in my cheek). Here are some "before" photos:

In the summer of 2019 we hired a carpenter to frame out a new carport. Again with the "as long as we are doing this" logic, we added an upper deck. Someday we might want to retire just to the apartment-who knows. Anyway, he was so amenable to our crazy idea that he would frame and we would finish. In all our spare time. And because there are never photos of me, because I may in fact be the only one who considers taking them, here are two for good measure. This was a LOT of decking, but good practice for the porches and deck on the house.

Here are photos once the roof was up and we did the railings. Gratuitous pic of Nate, there, hanging out on a ladder-not his favorite.

Winter beat us, though we did get risers and railings on the stairs, which, by the way, we are NEVER doing again. Way too much geometry, offset by funky quirks of landscape and construction. We had the electricians out to move the porch light and add a couple of outlets and a floodlight, but there is more to do this spring and summer, including finishing the tenant's entryway and recladding the siding-you can see some of that current ugliness above. The entryway is currently functional, but, er, aesthetically challenged, as you can see. There is also quite a bit of trim work I would like to do on the deck and posts, to dress it up a little.

Gratuitous distance shot, through a black walnut:

Updates as we do more...

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oh, the kitchen...

2/21/2020

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Now, this is going to be a multi-part, multi-year post, my friends. Fair warning.

The Kitchen. Heart of the home. Hope of my heart. I've never had a kitchen that was everything I wanted it to be-yes, that is a first-world issue, and I am completely aware of it. That said, the opportunity is here to create something functional that I will also love. It needs to have (according to my very long wish list): plenty of light; an island; a glass cooktop; plenty of storage; a baking cabinet; [marble countertops--impossible with the coffee-hounds in my family because I do not intend to bleach and scrub every day and a half]; the ability for many people to be in it at the same time, because this is where people just end up, isn't it?

High expectations. And with our budget.... well, not so easy.

First, though, the "where we started." This is the kitchen and butler's pantry--two adjoining rooms. I give the former owner a lot of credit for raising a large family using this kitchen. Here are photos from our first walk through before we bought the house. Let me just say that the photo on the top left is the built-in butler's cupboard, and it literally is what made me fall in love with the house. The top middle photo is the rest of the butler's pantry, with its newer cabinets, the huge freezer, the washer and dryer which were on the opposite wall, and the realtor showing us the place. The top right photo is the sink/radiator wall, which adjoins a wall with door into a full bath (that has two doors! one of them with a glass window!). Bottom left, you've seen this in a previous post, and bottom middle and right continue the sweep around the room-the door next to the stove leads to the butler's pantry.

What the photos don't show: under that wall the sink is on is a half-wall foundation, and the issue was that this little wall was collapsing and this whole addition to the house was slowly sinking into the sunset. When it became clear that it would need to be rebuilt, not just shored up, we thought long and hard about what to do, and decided that if we were going to have to dig a new foundation, we might as well go big or give up. We decided to expand the kitchen to include a sunroom, and take out the wall between the kitchen and butler's pantry. Cha-ching.

It took more than a year, but here are the pics from that process. The digging was scary; what was scarier was the way the back of the house was suddenly suspended over...nothing. This is the stuff you never see afterwards, the stuff that takes all the money and sucks out all the enthusiasm before you ever get to fun things like cabinets and countertops. Some photos of the excavation and setting/pouring forms:

What I do not have are photos of the glee on the guys' faces as they were running big machines! Digging! Power tools!

Some more photos of the scary part. That white door is the door from the old kitchen into the bathroom-yes, the glass door somehow survived all this.

So, this isn't scary.... nothing to see here. Just the second floor hanging out...on a toothpick. For a few months. If you peer very carefully at the bottom right photo, you'll see the freezer hanging out exactly where it started in the butler's pantry...

Once this was set, we could start rebuilding the kitchen. The top photos are the addition, topless and roofed. Then a couple of "inside" shots. Yes, the windows are going to be six feet tall. They match the rest of the windows on the first floor of the house. This new corner of the kitchen points southeast; you can imagine the wonderful light in there, particularly in the wintertime.

Once we got it closed up, we had windows installed and then hit a bit of a stall. Until the middle of the house is jacked up and stabilized, we can't put flooring or ceilings in to the kitchen without risking them getting knocked out of whack. So, we turned to some other work, including the clapboard project on the front of the house, as well as finishing the new carport/deck on the Carriage House (tenant's apartment). But here's some photos of the kitchen in its holding pattern over 2019. It was a fabulous place to set up worktables for painting clapboard and the beadboard for the future ceiling. Nate's Mom, Alice, is a trouper--she's game for painting anything, anytime, especially before her broken arm in September 2019. And clearly, as long as she can have coffee.

We have bought most of our appliances, and they are being stored in the Carriage House. We have purchased ready-to-assemble cabinets, which are currently in the living room. I am ready to GO, once the center of the house is stabilized. Getting that going is taking far longer than expected--I had planned to be installing a kitchen by now! Oh well.

More posts as more happens...!

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for the love of trees

2/13/2020

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I love trees.

Trees BY JOYCE KILMER
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

The farm has wonderful trees, loads and loads of trees. The whole driveway is lined with sugar maples; they were tapped for syrup for many years, and have the scars and leftover metal bits to prove it. There are a couple that even predate the house--one we estimate to be nearly 200 years old. Our friend the forester walked it through with us, and identified the age of many of them.

Unfortunately, trees are not permanent. Many of them were dead or dying, or had seriously weak spots through the middle. We knew there would be issues down the road.

Our first tree experience (July 2017) was with the tree directly in front of the house. It was clearly dead, and leaning entirely the wrong way.

As you can see, we enlisted our friend with the forestry knowledge to take it down. With his dad and some very serious looking chainsaws, he took it right down. It was sad, but necessary. Rotten through.

It is truly amazing how much wood is contained in a tall, skinny, dead tree.

In 2018, we had an issue with storm damage. Not only did our driveway wash out, but a tree split in half and brought down the power lines. Do NOT get me started on NYSEG and their utter unhelpfulness. Friends of friends took some of the wood away, and the rest remained in a brush pile alongside the driveway for the next year. (That's the pile they are removing in the first photo below)

Then in 2019, we finally had enough money available to hire a tree company to remove the dead trees. The estimate was astounding, but worse than the cost, was the fact that we were about to lose 12-14 trees, including the 200 year old monster by the house. Broke.my.heart, y'all. I knew the big one was going to have to go--it was dying more each year. But some of the others, including the one to the right in the picture just above, i wasn't prepared to lose. One foggy, cold day in September, the tree service showed up with some uber-serious equipment, including a crane, a bobcat, a flatbed, and things I don't even know the name of. There was one guy on the team whose job, it seems, was only to sharpen blades. These guys were amazing, even if they were breaking my heart.

But the heart-breaking-est moment was the dropping of the bicentennial tree. I couldn't watch. Nate and I went the next day to see. We left the stump tall because I really want to build something around it. She really was regal. That's me, next to her diameter.

While the guys were there, we had them prune the overgrown apple trees in hopes that we can restore their health and fruitfulness. You know, as long as we were hemorrhaging money... I'll show you pics when (that's hopeful) they bloom this spring.

In one week, they removed dying or dead trees, did a lot of trimming in the remaining trees, moved stumps and chips to a corner of the upper field, and ground the stumps for us. The house looks a bit naked now, and forlorn without her tree buddies.

We will plant a couple of new trees along the driveway to preserve some symmetry, but we won't replant them all--we'd like the trees to be able to spread. The remaining trees are a mix of ages, so we hope that this legacy lasts a couple of generations without having to make someone do this again.

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the house: front hall edition

2/10/2020

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It's been way too long since a house post. I know. Truly, I know.

It has felt like a glacial pace, but we have gotten some very good things done over these four years. A LOT happened this past summer, and I did not have the time to blog it. I don't really have the time now, but I am excited to share with you! I'll do a post for each project we started this summer, because otherwise it would be the longest post ever.

But I'm very excited about what we did this weekend, so I will start there. It's the front hall. We started with this:

I know you are coveting that gorgeous red carpet. The area I want you to focus on is on the right of the photo--the blank wall under the stairs.

I feel in my heart of hearts that this was open, once upon a time. Whether or not that was the case, it is part of the dream for the future of the house. We want to open that up so we can ultimately walk through the center of the house into the kitchen. It is also part of the next contractor job. The center of the house is sagging into the foundation and needs to be jacked up and stabilized. There was going to be demo of this area as part of it, and we wanted to save some time (and money) by doing it ourselves and seeing that our plans for the finished space would actually work.

So, on Saturday, armed with dust masks, breaker bars and a reciprocating saw, we went at it. Because my dear hubs is a go-getter when demo is involved, I do not have a photo of the first, big act. I only have this:

This is what the closet looked like before:

This, my friends, is super exciting! The doorway you can see ahead to the right is an entrance to the dining room-which functioned as the door into a closet under the stairs. I expect the Benson kids all spent time in there at some point or other--it was big enough to be a fort, or even Harry Potter's room. The graffiti was interesting...

Once the big wall was down, and Nate was instructed not to let big things happen without a camera nearby, we moved forward. That wiring is pretty interesting--wire up through the floor to the left, over the drywall ceiling, down into the bulb fixture, with wires out from there down to the switch on the wall.

Next was the far wall, once we got the shelf cut out of there. A hole was poked through. No, that is not a pair of glasses I'm wearing. It's light shining through from my kitchen. (And, by the way, this particular shirt is huge on me--and evidently very unflattering in profile! yikes!) Note the husband had the camera! Also note the wistful gaze as I dream of kitchens to come!

To my left, you can see the depths of the closet. The bit within the 2x4s you see will be the back end of a future powder room. To the left of the 2x4s is the future coat closet. You have no idea, y'all.

Under my feet is original wide-plank wood floors, also immensely thrilling.

Next, more demo. Note the cute guy with the tools.

We left the uprights (it's a little odd to call them studs, as they are just...boards. Yup, boards, holding up the stairs. Nothing to see here...

When we looked at the house, this wall was a wall of closets in the old kitchen. With lots of wonderful family handprints taped on!

The radiator was removed from the old kitchen; it is not currently connected. It will be in the southeast corner of the new kitchen, under the big windows, which you can't see here. No, I am not a single bit ashamed of the fact that I happen to be creating a heavenly spot for my cats, at the same time as we are creating heat for us.

That big space beyond the opening. THAT IS THE KITCHEN! Once the "studs" come out, there will be true awesomeness. If you look verrrrrry carefully in this photo, you'll see the (cloth) wire for the light fixture climbing the 2x4 next to the opening.

More to come. Lots more to come. We're going to forget chronology for a while, and the posts will jump around. Just an advance warning for you. Stay tuned.

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Author

Welcome! I'm Michelle, a gardener, a soul-tender, a wife, a mother and a pastor.
Lavender Fields Farm has filled my imagination for years, and we are working to build this dream. I am passionate about people, community, gardening, and old houses, and the beauty and strength they represent. I am skilled at event planning and ceremony-crafting, and am trained in spiritual direction. I can create a ceremony for any milestone or transition in your life, and provide the place to observe it, whether by yourself or with a couple dozen friends.

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