Since it is taking hours upon hours to paint all of the wainscoting in the Not-Pink Parlor and I needed to be able to check a couple of things off my list in order to feel right about the universe, I decided to take some time this week in between rounds of painting, calking, and swearing about getting joint compound in my eye to tackle some smaller projects around the Liberty House.

First up on the list was installing new door hardware on the back door, garage, and barn so that all the locks can be opened with the same key. This is the back door of the house:

This mismatched set of hardware is a holdover from something less-than-legal I may or may not have done before I officially owned this house. If you read this novel of a post about my home-buying experience then you know that after I wrote a big old check as a deposit and signed the purchase agreement, I was basically “on the hook” for the purchase price of the house, whether or not someone broke into the house and stole all the appliances and copper pipe before I closed on it. Normally something like that would make me a little queasy but probably wouldn’t cause me to break out in hives, however at that time the house had a similar keyless deadbolt and anyone who had access to the MLS system could see the code and get in. Add that to the fact that on a second walk-through of the house–after I’d signed the paperwork–I found someone’s flashlight and work gloves in the kitchen (that hadn’t been there two days before) and you basically have a recipe for a semi-permanent twitch in my left eye and at least five new gray hairs.

The way I see it a girl has two options in a situation like this: 1.) hope for the best, or 2.) surreptitiously unlock a ground floor window then break into the house later that evening and change the locks, ensuring that no would-be copper thieves can get their grubby little hands on the plumbing in your future kitchen.

And you guys know me, I’m definitely a sit-around-and-hope-for-the-best-while-not-taking-action kind of girl. Plus I would never do anything illegal. So. Yeah. About that door hardware…

The door is still ugly and needs to be replaced, but in the meantime at least the deadbolt and handle match. (For a complete how-to on changing door hardware, check out this post.)

And since I’m on the subject I have to say that I absolutely love the keyless entry deadbolt. No, it isn’t the prettiest thing ever, but for someone who once locked herself out of the house in her pajamas in the middle of winter, function definitely trumps form where door hardware is concerned. I also prefer the lever handles to knobs because they are way easier to open with a toe when hauling eight bags of groceries in to the house at once instead of walking the twenty steps out to the car again for a second trip.

One of the doors to the garage also got a new knob…

That’s another door that needs to be replaced eventually. And then there’s the barn…

It’s kind of fun to open the “big” doors every time I want to go in there…

But perhaps not as efficient as this:

It feels good to have consistent locks on everything and to have freed up a little more space in the mudroom where I’ve been storing that hardware and 75% of the rest of my belongings for the last month.

I also finally got my hands dirty with a little cleaning project I’ve been telling myself I needed to tackle for the last couple of weeks…

I thought, oh, it’s just a couple of logs and a little ash. No big deal. Okay, first of all, that was an entire paper grocery bag full of ash.

I don’t know much about the cremation of bodies, but I do know the ash from one human fits into like a quart sized container. So basically I shoveled twelve bodies out of my fireplace last night.

It took slightly longer than expected. The good news is that the entire house no longer smells like you shoved your face into a campfire, so that’s nice.

And, one more thing to add to my list of small wins… even with all of stuff that needs to be done to the Liberty House, I’m really making an effort to maintain better work/life/house balance than I did while working on the Memorial House. One of my good friends convinced me to run 3 races with her this summer as a way to keep us motivated to stay active.

We tackled the first one last weekend and I did not a.) puke, or b.) die, so I’d consider it a successful run. And yet another thing to check off my list for this summer.

There are a lot of times when I start a big project on my own and then at some point–usually when I find myself wedged between a large piece of lumber and my garage, flailing around helplessly and hoping a neighbor will come to my rescue– I decide that things might go a little more smoothly if I have a little help. In those instances, the first person I call?

The woman with the hatchet.

I’m pretty sure (judging by the fact that she dressed me in pink saddle shoes when I was a kid) that my mother thought birthing a daughter would mean things like shopping and pedicures and not building pergolas. She also probably never suspected she’d get to dress up miniature donkeys on a regular basis..

So I’m going to say it all balanced out for her in the long run.

My mom is without fail my staunchest supporter. She’s the first person to volunteer to help me move, to help me set hundred-pound pieces of flagstone for a patio,  to spend her summer break painting my house, and to immediately and continuously pray for me when I have a crazy moment and decide to buy a 150 year old farmhouse while sitting at a bar on a random Monday night.

So when she said she wanted to come up and relax at the Liberty House for Mother’s Day, I had a great plan. It included mimosas:

My new favorite breakfast– open faced egg-on-a-muffin (recipe here):

And a dressed up fruit salad (plain greek yogurt, honey, cinnamon, cardamom… awesome over any type of fruit):

Of course when we were done with breakfast, what did she want to do for her relaxing day at the Liberty House?

That’s right. Drink mimosas and weed my garden. (Hey, who am I to argue?)

I’ve been putting in a good hour or two per day just trying to get my acres of jungle under control with the mower, weed whacker, weed spray, bug spray, and various clippers, snippers, shovels, and saws. It’s fair to say I’m not winning that battle, but I haven’t given up yet.

So here’s to my mom, the wheelbarrow full of weeds we picked this weekend, and all of the other projects that wouldn’t have gotten done without her!

You may have noticed on my Master List that there are at least three rooms in the Liberty House that will eventually have built-in shelves and storage. I need places to put things, otherwise I set them down in the middle of the room and they stay there, um, forever. Now, the future study and the cupboard-under-the-stairs are places you may expect that kind of thing, but the bathroom?

Well, here it is in its current state:

This is, by the way, is the first floor bath and has the distinction of being the one functioning bathroom in the house right now.

Other than a small spot in the ceiling that needs to be patched (and the shower trim I replaced before moving in), it’s not in bad shape from a functional standpoint.

The tile is ceramic, and the fixtures are all higher-end, but the whole thing is very… vanilla. And with the pedestal sink instead of a vanity there is exactly zero storage to speak of.

I actually bought that cheap little shelf from Target and a few $7 baskets from World Market just to hold the basics while I figure the rest of the room out. Here are some things I’ve considered:

1. Ditching the pedestal and putting in a larger vanity
2. Knocking out a wall between the bathroom and downstairs bedroom (aka future office) to make a linen closet
3. Creating built-in shelving around the sink and toilet
4. Training the cat to fetch my soap, shampoo, and freshly laundered towels when needed.

Yeah. Scratch that last one.

One of the things that I don’t love about this room is how the toilet feels like it’s just hanging out in the middle of the room. (Something I articulated really well in this video.) I’m afraid just sticking a vanity on that wall will feel even more awkward in what is already fairly narrow but oddly open space. Switching the positions of the vanity and toilet is also an option, but not until I have one or two more working bathrooms in the house.

While adding a closet by messing with the wall between the bathroom and bedroom isn’t impossible, it would definitely feel a little “tacked on” to one room or the other.

Which leaves me with this idea…

Try not to fall out of your chair in awe of my drawing skills. Or because you’re laughing so hard.

The truth is you don’t often see built-in shelving in a bathroom around a pedestal sink and toilet. I’m still trying to decide if it would fit or look completely awkward.

Here are a few of my inspiration images for this bath:

Yep. That’s the Rustic Beachy Bath from Memorial. Haven’t quite got enough of it yet. Also, that mirror was one of my irreplaceable finds, so it came with me to the new house.

Love the shelf above the pedestal sinks for some additional storage.

And the shelving with the vertical paneling behind it in this image, which I showed you yesterday as proof I’m alive…

As one of the two often-used and mostly-functional rooms in the house, this shouldn’t be high on my priority list, but building the shelves feels like it would be a fun project and a fairly quick win  (and I mean that relatively speaking… as in, quicker than demolishing and rebuilding the entire master bath.) Those ceramic tiles will go eventually too, but not until I’m ready to tackle the whole kitchen, and that will be a little farther down the list.

So, built-ins in the bathroom? What do you think?

I know that all of you think I took one look at that bigass list I wrote, fell out of my chair, and have by lying on the kitchen floor contemplating the purpose of linoleum and how the hell I’m going to get all that work done ever since. In fact, my mother finally called me last night and said basically “Listen daughter, I know I go into crazy mother mode, but you haven’t posted anything on your website or facebook for like a week. The only reason I knew you were alive is because you repinned something on Pinterest nine hours ago!”

Yes. Pinterest is not only a good place to keep track of inspirational images, but is also a good indicator of whether or not I’m still breathing apparently. Thank you to this image for keeping my mother from panicking:

The truth is I’m not overwhelmed by my list, but I’m just in one of those adjustment periods where I’m figuring out how to balance the time takes to maintain this house and property on my own, along with two hours in the car heading to and from work every day, and then trying to make headway on my projects, picture taking, and writing about everything.

Sometimes I have awesome days where I feel like superwoman, and sometimes I struggle with things like remembering to put pants on before I try to fix the boiler.

But, hey, if there’s one thing I always say about DIY: It’s not easy. It’s dirty, frustrating, difficult, inspiring, awesome, and fun. Sometimes you bleed, sometimes you laugh, sometimes (a lot of times, if you’re me) you swear, and sometimes you stare blankly at your computer screen for an hour before going to bed because you can’t articulate why it’s taking you three effing weeks to paint one room in your house. That’s just the way it goes. After years of this kind of chaos, I’ve learned that you’ve got to coast through the lulls without being too hard on yourself. Which I know is good for my mental health and all, but not nearly so entertaining for those of you reading this website, right?

So instead of waxing philosophically about my inability to properly dress myself any longer, I thought I’d take you for a little trip down memory lane and look at some of the things I was doing during the month of May over the last seven years.

May 2011

This time last year my focus was entirely on the Memorial House bathrooms.

I built this vanity:

Put my mom to work installing some radiant floor heat:

And lost my shit over some tile:

May 2010

Two years ago, I was closing on the sale of my first house and the Memorial adventure was just beginning.

The first month of the great DIY House Addition Adventure wrapped up, but the real work was just getting started:

Added to which, I traveled from Texas to Michigan with two donkeys in the back of a pickup:

May 2009

2009 was the Spring of two houses. I was dividing my time between my getting my first house ready for it’s future owners, and starting to make my mark on the Memorial house.

For example, I built some raised cedar beds for the garden at Memorial (note to 2012 self, make some more of those):

And back on Garrison road, I was finishing up some miscellaneous kitchen projects:

 May 2008

Four years ago most of the “big” projects were done on my first house, and I was keeping myself busy with miscellaneous projects.

Like crookedbrooms in pink-on-pink and leopard print. (It’s been at least two years since I’ve made any broom handles, but I wouldn’t say I’ve given it up for good):

And I proved yet again how “cleaning” never works out the way I plan:

May 2007

There was just one big project completed in May of 2007, but you can’t argue with results. The badass pergola:

May 2006

It’s hard to believe, but it was six years ago when I first said, you know, I have a crazy idea… and then grabbed a sledge hammer and started turning it into a reality despite quite a few people who told me it wouldn’t work. It took me a year to complete that pergola and stone patio, and here’s where it all started:

May 2005

In 2005 I’d been a homeowner for a little less than a year, and had started making my mark on my first house with projects like this basement makeover. Yeah, it’s not exactly jaw-dropping, but I was a newbie.

So what I can stay for sure is that May is historically a good project month for me, and those projects have just gotten bigger and bigger over the years. No reason to break tradition this year, I suppose, so I better get started on that list.

While I’m only making incremental progress (read: just barely keeping things from falling apart) on the Liberty House, I dream of a day when I’ll be checking things off my list left and right. Since I’ve had almost no success in keeping the house organized, I thought I might have better luck organizing my brain.

One hundred and sixty items later… yep. Still crazy. This list is easily the next two (and probably the next three or four) years of my life. So basically I’m in project heaven. I also haven’t quite gotten over the exhaustion from 1.) not sleeping for six weeks while buying this place, and 2.) moving all of my belongings twice in 6 months.

So I’m taking a nice long weekend away to see some old friends and will probably pace myself with some more easy (but time consuming) patching and painting in the parlor next week. Then I’m diving headfirst into this list with things like new appliances and countless hours of quality time spent with a drum sander. It’s going to be awesome.

General Electric

1. Fix all non-working outlets (kitchen/laundry room specifically)
2. Figure out outbuilding electric
3. Redo diagram at main

General Plumbing

1. Fix slow drain/water backup done!
2. 2.   Fix low pressure to kitchen sink done!
3. Get rid of black residue in water (bleach pipes)
4. Cap open line at old barn
5. Get exterior spigots working

General HVAC

1. 1.   Get boiler working done!

Exterior- High Priority

1. Replace roof done!
2. Cover holes in brick exterior on second floor
3. Replace missing gutter/downspouts
4. Install rain barrels
5. Fix soffit
6. Power wash and scrape wood siding
7. Remove all flower boxes
8. Replace rotted wood siding at back entry
9. Repaint wood siding
10. Repair/ Rebuild back deck
11. Repaint front/back deck
12. Get rid of chipmunks
13. Get rid of Ricky the Racoon

Exterior – Eventually

1. Replace back door
2. Fix front door
3. Plane bottom of french doors in kitchen
4. Add pergola and built-in grill to existing patio
5. Add lower level and fireplace to existing patio
6. Build swing/bed for front porch

Yard/Property – High Priority

1. Remove debris pile
2. Clean out donkey shed
3. Replace roof on donkey shed
4. Put up donkey fence
5. Check/fix electric at donkey barn
6. Put up clothes line

Yard/Property – Eventually

1. Landscape around house
2. Plant vegetable garden
3. Plant grapes/vineyard
4. Build chicken coop/garden shed
5. Create walkway to bonfire pit and tent area
6. Build pergola off of garage
7. Fence in propane tank off of garage
8. Build hermitage
9. Repaint mailbox

Kitchen – High Priority

1. Replace dishwasher, fridge, stove
2. Replace recessed light bulbs
3. Storage for garbage/recycling

Kitchen – Eventually

1. Paint wood walls
2. Stain or paint ceiling
3. Install trim around windows
4. Add beams
5. Paint recessed light trim
6. Install new lights
7. Replace counters/backsplash
8. Replace floor
9. Paint/Reconfigure/Replace kitchen cabinets
10. Buy stools for peninsula
11. Install woodburner in nook

Kitchen – Maybe

1. Remove archway
2. Widen doorway to hall/bathroom

Parlor – High Priority

1. Fix holes in ceiling – in progress
2. Paint ceiling
3. Clean out fireplace
4. Refinish floor

Parlor- Eventually

1. Paint room – in progress
2. Replace glass on broken widow
3. Fix mullions on broken window
4. Replace glass block
5. Install new light fixture
6. Buy rug
7. Buy couch, chairs
8. Buy TV
9. Build random-drawer entertainment center
10. Build mirror
11. “This little house of mine” painting for above fireplace
12. Replace outlet/switch covers

Parlor – Maybe

1. Remove archway

Entry – High Priority

1. Refinish floor
2. Refinish/paint stairs
3. Remove wallpaper
4. Patch drywall holes from skylights

Entry – Eventually

1. Remove wainscoting
2. Replace bottom part of window trim
3. Install horizontal wood paneling
4. Paint french doors to study (Red or black)
5. Remove door to closet under stairs, add built-ins
6. Figure out what to do with beam
7. Replace light fixutres.

Study – High Priority

1. Refinish floor done!

Study – Eventually

1. Remove wallpaper
2. Tear out closets, replace with built-ins
3. Paint walls/trim
4. Replace light fixtures
5. Figure out what to do with beam

Office (4th Bedroom) – High Priority

1. Remove closet
2. Reframe/drywall closet
3. Install luan, hardwood
4. Stain/poly hardwood
5. Paint
6. Install new light fixture

Downstairs Bath- High Priority

1. Replace shower trim done!
2. Replace shower head
3. Remove baseboard
4. Install wood paneling, paint
5. Build/Install built-ins
6. Move outlet by mirror
7. Replace mirror
8. Replace light fixture
9. New shower curtain
10. Get rug

Downstairs Bath- Eventually

1. Replace floor
2. Replace shower surround with tile

Laundry Room – Eventually

1. Remove bi-folds
2. Move doorway to left, replace with barn door
3. Replace sink
4. Add counter over washer/dryer
5. Remove cabs/ counter on south wall
6. Add cabinets to North wall
7. Paint
8. Replace floor
9. Add hanging totes for separating clothes

Hallway – Eventually

1. Paint
2. Paint basement door
3. Replace floor
4. Add new light fixture

Mudroom- High Priority

1. Better organization for coats, shoes tools
2. Paint

Mudroom – Eventually

1. Replace floor
2. Build benches and lockers for storage

Basement- High Priority

1. Replace broken (or all) basement windows

Basement – Eventually

1. Remove bags of dirt/dead bodies
2. Clean off storage shelves on stairway
3. Figure out random pump in storage room
4. Put storage shelves in storage room

Master Bedroom- High Priority

1. Paint trim, walls, ceiling, doors
2. Replace closet doors
3. Replace closet shelves
4. Remove “gas” from fireplace
5. Build hearth

Master Bedroom – Eventually

1. Remove carpet
2. Install hardwood

Master Bath – High Priority

1. Patch ceiling
2. Replace missing section of window

Master Bath- Eventually

1. Demo everything
2. Move wall for toilet
3. Install door
4. Replace everything (toilet, tub, vanity, floor, fixtures)

Bedroom #2 – Eventually

1. Remove carpet
2. Install hardwood
3. Remove built-in desk
4. Paint
5. Update light fixtures
6. Furnish

Bedroom #3 – High Priority

1. Replaced cracked glass in window

Bedroom # 3 – Eventually

1. Remove carpet
2. Install hardwood
3. Paint
4. Update light fixtures
5. Furnish

Upstairs Hallway – High Priority

1. Patch drywall

Upstairs Hallway – Eventually

1. Remove carpet
2. Install hardwood
3. Remove transom in hallway to master bedroom
4. Do something with linen closet in hallway

Upstairs Bath- High Priority

1. Replace toilet
2. Replace sink faucets
3. Fix peeling paint on walls/ ceiling
4. Paint walls
5. Paint cabinet
6. Get mirrors

Upstairs Bath- Eventually

1. Replace tub surround
2. Remove and re-tile floor
3. Build new doors for vanity

I’m trying really hard right now to write this posts without using excessive exclamation points. It’s a struggle because one of my coworkers recently sent me what I’m pretty sure is the coolest app ever invented!!!

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. But this is actually pretty sweet, and nobody paid me, emailed me, strung me up by my toes and made me listen to pop music, or otherwise tortured or coerced me into to saying this.

The app is called Magic Plan, and it’s appropriately named, because as anyone who has ever spent 15 hours with a tape measure and some graph paper trying to get an accurate floor plan of their house will tell you, to be able to accomplish this is 15 minutes is pretty freaking magical…

That’s the first floor of the Liberty House, by the way. And I created this floor plan on my phone (which is also downloadable as a PDF, JPEG, DXF, or available on the web) by standing in the center of each room and taking pictures of it.

For real, people.

I don’t know how the magic of it works (I mean I have some thoeries that don’t involve magic pixies) but frankly I don’t care. You just stand in the middle of a room and virtually “mark” the corners, then assemble the rooms for an entire floor…

If things are a little “off” the app understands and adjusts doorways to fit, etc. And you can go into any room after the fact and quickly adjust the sizes if something isn’t right, plus add windows, closets, stairs, etc.

You can also snap a picture of each room for reference.

Would I build a house from these plans? Well, this is me, so yes, but obviously it’s not totally foolproof. As you can see above I need to do a little adjusting for some thick walls and ductwork. But just to have as a reference on my phone for figuring out things like if I have room for a piece of furniture, or how much flooring I need, this is invaluable. Because before Magic Plan, this is how I kept track of  room measurements on my phone…

Right? That’s not a joke. That’s seriously what I’ve been using as a reference for the last two months. So you can see where the compulsion to end every sentence with a lot of excitement is coming from!!!!!!

There are video tutorials built into the app (which runs on iPhones and iPads with a camera), but here’s a little sample of how it works.

Seriously, I haven’t been this pumped about my phone since I dropped it from a first-floor ceiling joist all the way down to the basement floor without it breaking. AND, the app and downloading a watermarked JPEG or PDF is completely free. For a non-watermarked version or other file types it’s only $2.49 per plan, which again, totally worth it. S0, all I’m saying is, probably you need this. I sure did.

First of all, totally unrelated to the topic of this post but as a follow-up to my last one, guess who successfully mowed all two acres of her lawn today without cutting off a toe? Yes. Yes, I did. And I am so sorry that the first 20 minutes of that adventure wasn’t captured on camera for posterity– particularly the part where I came thisclose to running the mower through the closed garage door.

It has been a long time since I laughed that hard at my own ineptitude, but I will say this… mowing the lawn may actually be the one household chore that I love to do, and it was a nice way to decompress after what ended up being a particularly crazy couple of days.

You may have gotten the impression over the last couple of weeks that I wasn’t completely moved out of the Farm House rental. My lease is actually up at the end of May, and while the landlord agreed to let me out of the contract early if they found another renter, up until Friday it looked like I would still be on the hook for another month of rent and maintaining the grounds and utilities at two properties. (Which is not stressful or financially taxing at all, right?)

Then Friday at 9:30 AM I found three frantic messages on my voice mail. Apparently they found a renter who had signed a lease and wanted to move in rightthissecond, which, on one hand, Yes! On the other hand, I still had about four carloads of junk in that house. You know, all that big awkward stuff that was both difficult to move and that I had nowhere to store at Liberty.

For example:

That, for the record, is one mini-fridge, one microwave, one full-sized Christmas tree (boxed), one bar stool, one dining room chair, one ironing board, and four boxes of miscellaneous junk.

Now 330 days out of the year I go to work in some variation of jeans-and-a-tshirt, which would be totally fine if I had to unexpectedly take an afternoon off work to move large and unwieldy objects by myself, but oh no, not Friday. On Friday I was wearing a dress. So, add to the list of things I never thought I would do, but did: “load minifridge into back of SUV wearing cute red flats and making very unladylike grunting noises.” Check.

It took four loads and eight hours, but by the end of the day Friday I was able to close the door on this house for good.

It was never “home”, but I’m grateful for this little place because if I hadn’t taken a leap of faith and moved here five months ago, I never would have found The Liberty House. (Okay, that thing with the sink I would rather forget about, but everything else I’m grateful for.)

I also figured out what the World’s Largest Mudroom is good for…

Yup. That’s only three carloads of stuff because the fourth one is still in my car. And, you know, usually I’m all about breaking out the fancy camera out so that you can have a really sharp image of all of the crap I’ve managed to accumulated over the last decade (and have moved twice in the last six months) but I have a sneaking suspicion that the camera is located at the bottom of that pile of junk right now so the iPhone pics will have to suffice.

Now the ironic thing is that it really only took eight hours to move all of this because I had a half hour drive between houses each time I took a load, and when I mentioned this to my Grandpa over what has become our weekly Sunday breakfast, he looked at me quizzically and said, “Honey, why didn’t you use the trailer?”

Oh, right. Look what I forgot was conveniently sitting in my barn:

So clearly I’ve moved beyond a point of rational problem solving in my life these days, because that would have been a hell of a lot easier.

So, there is just one thing on my to-do list for the house this week: Regain control of my sanity and the mudroom. And the kitchen. And the front entry. Okay, so like four things, actually. One day I’ll be able to get back to building stuff and making big messes, but apparently this is too much chaos, even for me.

You know that phrase generally used after eating three pounds of pumpkin ravioli with a handful of buttered rolls and then washing it down with half of an apple pie about your eyes being bigger than your stomach? Clearly I would never do that with carbs and dessert–ahem–but I think the phrase “her eyes were bigger than her lawnmower” might be appropriate here.

That’s picture was taken from the back of my property looking back up towards the house. As you can see, the back field is a little, uh, wild. I have somewhere between six and ten acres of property to maintain (long story) and about two of that is nicely mowed lawn around the house and barns.

Here’s where I have to pause in our regularly scheduled programming and tell you guys my dirty little secret… I have never really mowed a lawn before. Yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong, my first house had a yard just larger than a postage stamp and I ran my manual reel mower over it like 3 times a year, and at Memorial I made a good show of week whacking occasionally, but  “mowing” wasn’t on my list of chores… that’s why I had donkeys, after all. So I’ve never once had to fire up a gas powered mower (rider or otherwise) and spend a significant amount of time maintaining a lawn.

It’s possible I didn’t take all of that into account when I saw the Liberty House and the rolling fields that surround her, but just after I moved in things started greening up and I realized that sooner rather than later, something would have to be done.

So I did what any fully-grown fiercely-independent licensed contractor would do in this situation… I called my grandpa.

It was supposed to be strictly a consultative call. You know, should I buy a new mower or a used one? Does it make sense to hire someone? Do I need a bush hog for the back field or should I do a controlled burn?

As you might imagine, I don’t make these calls often, and perhaps my grandpa sensed a note of panic in my voice because the next the next thing you know I’m surrounded by a whirlwind of grass clippings and dish soap– he and my grandmother came up on a Saturday morning and managed to mow the lawn, do the dishes, unpack most of my kitchen, and in general make more progress on the maintenance of the Liberty House in two hours than I had in two weeks. Let me just take this moment to say how beyond lucky I am, particularly in the grandparent department.

Then, as if just getting the two acres of lawn under control wasn’t enough, I drove up to Liberty House after a couple of long days on the road for work last week, and saw this…

Yes, the very same tractor that was once wedged into the back of my postage-stamp sized lawn for this project.

Even more exciting than reminiscing about that buzz cut I used to have six years ago…

Here’s a little before and after for you:

I might have been a little disappointed that I didn’t get to drive the tractor myself, but I’ve got it stashed in my barn for another week or so and there are still a few acres to the north that I’m going to try to tackle on my own this weekend. That’s right… I’m planning to take my mowing experience level from manual reel mower to tractor in a day. Hey, go big or go play with your barbies, right? I’m also hoping to make a little progress on the rubble pile while I’ve got the big toys to play with.

As far as maintaining the field, the neighbor tipped me off that the previous owner tended to just knock the field down once a year instead of keeping it mowed, which sounds like a good plan to me, at least this year. However I’d love to find a second-hand rototiller somewhere and till up a patch of land out there for a big old garden… I’ve still got a few weeks until planting season, so it’s not outside of the realm of possibility.

Long term, some of the area to the North will be fenced off for donkeys (though I’d need a dozen of them to keep this much acreage clear), I’d like to have that big garden, and a couple of rows of grapes and/or fruit trees somewhere out there. It would be awesome to be able to maintain a wildflower meadow with the rest of the area, but apparently that’s not as easy as it looks.

I figure I’ve got years to plan out how to best use all this land, and in the meantime I just have to make sure it doesn’t turn into a small jungle.

All I have to say is, amen for grandparents and tractors, neither of which I could survive without.

You know how sometimes you go to blogs or turn on the TV and you see a gorgeous and completely finished before and after? Yeah. That’s not what this is. This is the chaos in the middle…

Where the old, and apparently purple, trim is still showing through the white paint:

Where the ceiling isn’t cut in (or even completely patched):

Where I haven’t even started priming the trim on those thousand foot tall windows:

It’s not a lot of progress but you won’t hear me complaining about the slow but steady exorcism of pink from this house.

I predict that there will be at least a few more days where I show up to work with caulk in my hair before this job is done, but hey, that’s normal. After a couple of false starts with paint color I went with Benjamin Moore’s November Rain on the walls and just your standard white paint on the trim. Well, at the moment it’s ultra-white paint but I think I’m going to tone it down a bit for the final coat.

There are also 15 holes in the ceiling of this room (improper radiator winterization rears it’s ugly head) that are in various states of being patched. Something that would normally be smart to do before you start painting the walls, but I gave myself leave to do things out-of-order on this room, because you know what? Sometimes it just feels good to paint something.

In other rather-unimpressive-but-still-feels good progress, I finally managed to locate both the envelops and the stamps and decided to celebrate that milestone in the unpacking and bill-paying process by doing a little dance and then dragging my old farmhouse table into the kitchen to set up a temporary work space.

At first I was all, “Really? There are fifteen rooms in the house and the only one you live in is the kitchen?” But I just can’t tear myself away from this view…

And really… why should I have to?

Now that I’ve got a sink that drains, a boiler that (cross-my-fingers) isn’t locking out every five minutes, and two solid weeks to get my feet back under me, I’m hoping that progress will start to look more impressive.

I’ve been living at the Liberty House for almost a month now, and like newlyweds just back from a honeymoon all of the rainbows and roses have started fading from our relationship and shit is getting real. Like when I wake up in the morning and instead of bringing be breakfast in bed my house is all, “Morning Sunshine! Hope you didn’t want to take a shower today cause there’s no hot water, and when you get out of bed– Surprise!– it’s only 55 degrees in here! Have a great day!” And then flounces out the door to rack up thousands of dollars worth of charges for designer handbags on my credit card. Except instead of designer handbags we’re talking about miscellaneous boiler parts.

I don’t know if this has to do with the fact that the Liberty House is 150 years old, or if we’re still working out all of the kinks from being improperly winterized, or if it has wicked sense of humor and is just screwing with me. Probably all three. What I do know is that this house has given me more fits in the last month than my other two houses did in the combined seven years I owned them.

Before I moved in there were a few things that I knew had to be taken care of:

• Fixing the broken radiator pipes throughout the house
• Replacing the leaking faucet and shower trim in the kitchen and downstairs bath
• Replacing the element in the hot water heater
• Having the softener and iron filter checked out and installed

That was a fairly manageable list and I was all over those items almost immediately after closing, but instead of giving me a chance to catch my breath, the house has been throwing me a curve ball every few days, just to keep me on my toes. Here’s a little bit of the fun I’ve been having.

#1 Drainage (Or Lack Thereof)

 Shortly after I moved into the house I noticed an odd gurgling noise coming from the kitchen sink whenever I would take a shower, which, on those rare occasions when I’m doing laundry and the dishes at the same time, has escalated into a fully backed up sink. It does drain eventually but it’s clearly not happy about it. I am by no means a plumbing expert, but I know enough about the water flow in houses to have guessed that the problem is either caused by:

1. A full or backed up septic tank
2. A clog in the waste line somewhere beyond the juncture of the sink, laundry, and shower lines
3. A blockage in or improperly installed vent stacks

Crossing the first one off the list was easy since I had to pay to have both 1000 gallon septic tanks pumped before I even owned the house (to have the system checked and certified by the county before the title could be transferred.)

Then I spent a little more time under the sink (my favorite place) with a 20 foot drain snake to see if I could address any clogs that might be in the interior lines.

I snaked the drain as far as it would go but still noticed the slow drain, which means I didn’t hit the problem area, if there is one.

Then I considered that something could be clogging the vent (aka “stink stack”) so I headed up to the roof for a little look-see.

Vents are clear as far as I can tell, and yep, that’s still a bigass barn in my back yard. I also found a couple of other disturbing things (see item #4) up there, but nothing to solve the drainage mystery.

So, I feel like I’ve exhausted all reasonable DIY efforts and have called in the big guns to clear out the pipe that runs from the house to the septic tank about 250 feet away. I’m hoping it’s just a couple of tree roots or something blocking the pipe and not anything more serious.

#2 Hot Water

About two weeks after I moved in I got up one morning, turned the water in the shower on, waited a reasonable amount of time for it to heat up, jumped in without testing it, and then basically got in a fist fight with the shower curtain trying to get back out again posthaste. Apparently my capacity for rational thought and/or wrestling with inanimate objects is severely limited when doused with ice-cold water.

I started my investigation to this problem by doing can best be described as “ignorantly poking around in things I don’t understand.” The water was on and running through the tank, but not being heated. It’s an electric tank, so the pilot couldn’t be out. I checked the main electrical panel (nothing was tripped) and then happened to see two separate breakers that looked to be about 80 years old next to the main panel labeled “water heater” that were off. Not tripped, but straight-up in the off position. So I turned them on and voila! Hot water.

The perplexing thing was how they got switched off in the first place… the best I can figure is that when the guys came to install the water softener a week earlier they switched them off for some reason and never switched them back on. The tank must have just held the heat so well (or I shower so infrequently) that it took me a really long time to notice. That, or between the house and the cat, someone is just plain screwing with me… and I wouldn’t put it past either of them.

#3 Electrical Mysteries

For the first week or so that I lived here (and before when I would come by to visit) I would plug my laptop into a certain outlet by the peninsula in the kitchen. One day that outlet stopped working and no breakers were tripped, so I moved my laptop to the kitchen table and continued about my business.

After that I noticed the roofers using one of the exterior outlets on the outside of the laundry-room wall (no word on whether or not it worked for them, but I’m assuming it did) but recently I tried to use that outlet and it didn’t work for me. I’ve now identified 4 outlets between the kitchen and laundry room that either have no power or intermittently have power.

This does not bode well for the house not randomly burning down due to electrical fire, probably. I’m assuming they’re all on one GFI protected circuit that’s on the fritz, but that’s as much thought as I’ve put into it. I’m lamenting the fact that I lost my Chief Electrician back when I lost the Memorial House and have the feeling there will be a lot of Googling of electrical issues in my near future. Or I’m just going to restrict my dating to guys who are best friends with an electrician.

#4 Holes

Luckily, my drainage issue (#1) led to a short escapade on the roof, otherwise I never would have found this…

Yes, those are missing shingles on my recently re-shingled roof. I sent this picture to my roofer (who’s about used to smartass texts from me by now) with the note “Something ain’t right…” He agreed and came back to fix the problem, but I’ll be doing periodic spot-checks on the roof now since I’m losing faith in the quality of workmanship.

And then there was this…

That’s actually the inside of one of my bathroom walls, where there is clearly no insulation. I’m assuming there used to be some kind of vent here, and now it’s just easy access for birds and bugs to make their way into the house. So I’ll be patching that with spray foam and some kind of metal cover, uh, immediately.

#5 Water Pressure

While I’ve been having a ton of fun “touching” my kitchen faucet on and off ever since I installed this baby I also have been noticing the water pressure to that sink slowly decreasing each day until this weekend when I was left with a poor trickle of water dripping into the basin and decided to do something about it.

I had a sneaking suspicion this could be due to the black residue I keep seeing in the sinks and shower getting caught up in a filter on this fancy faucet. So it was back under the sink for me, to pull apart the solenoid and see what I could find.

What I found was a little bit of this:

And then when I removed the filter:

Um, yeah. I think I identified the problem.

This is what it should look like:

Good news is I’ve got way more than seven drips per minute of water coming out of the faucet now. Bad news is that either the softener (which is supposed to act as a filter) isn’t doing its job or the black plague is coming from somewhere in the pipes. Either way I’m going to have to deal with it eventually, or continue to clean the faucet filters every couple of weeks and hope that residue isn’t something toxic.

#6 Heat

Having a boiler and baseboard radiators is new for me, and I admit to being less than savvy about how it all works. For the first few days after the pipes were fixed I couldn’t figure out why the kitchen was getting up to temp but the rest of the house was freezing… turns out there are five zones and five thermostats in this house and– ha ha– you have to set all of them to a higher temp if you want it warmer in the whole house.

That bit of brilliance aside, I haven’t had to worry much about heat because it’s been unseasonably warm. Until two days ago when I woke up and the temp in the house was hovering around 55 degrees. Then I knew we had a problem.

I went with the “ignorantly poking around in things I don’t understand” method again, which started by poking a long stick down into the fuel tank to make sure I hadn’t run dry. Everything checked out there so I started poking at things on the boiler, like the big red button on the front of it that wasn’t labeled “self destruct” or anything similarly worrisome.

Turns out that’s a reset button for when a boiler “locks out”. What I’ve learned is that fuel gets injected into the boiler to keep feeding the flame so-to-speak, but if for some reason the flame goes out the unit will automatically lock out to prevent fuel from going everywhere. (Indicated by a little red light on the panel.) This seemed like something I could literally blow up the house poking at, so I called in the professionals, but as it turns out my boiler’s erratic behavior is pretty unheard of– sometimes it will run for 15 minutes, sometimes it will run the whole day– but eventually it will lock out again, with no clear reason why. Other than it’s just messing with me, of course.

So the best thing we can do is to just start replacing parts on the pump and see if one of them fixes the problem, which I have a feeling is going to be just fantastic on my wallet.

#7 Bugs

I’m not sure if I ever shared this, but if you saw this video with the plague of flies in the garage? Yeah, when I first moved into the house that scene was pretty much repeated in every single window in the house.

It was all very Amityville and I handled it by speaking in my do-not-panic voice at all times,  sealing off rooms wherever possible and chasing hundreds of flies around with the shopvac each night. Either that insanity worked or the natural end to their life-cycle came about a week after I moved in, because the flies eventually disappeared. Only to be replaced by hundreds of Japanese beetles. Oh, and ants.

So I still run around like a crazy woman shopvacing things out of the air every night. The cat finds it entertaining. (A beetle literally just divebombed my head as I was writing that sentence. So awesome.) I’m hoping to seal up any exterior cracks when I repaint the wood siding, but the truth is a 150 year old farm house is never going to be air-tight, so I’m going to manage where I can and try to keep a sense of humor about the rest.

People often ask how things are going with the new house, and my standard response is “it’s going”, except it’s more like “just barely keeping up” than really going anywhere. I’ve made a little progress here and there but most of the hours I have to dedicate to working on the house are divided between dealing with the Crisis of the Day and continuing to move sporadic loads of stuff out of the rental house (and, yes, Memorial.) I’ve got my fingers crossed that as the Liberty House and I get to know each other a little better there will be fewer surprises and more time for fun stuff like tearing out walls.  If not, we may need to consider couples counseling. (I hear the first year is the hardest.)