Meet the Jetsons

We've been in the farmhouse for three weeks now. As soon as we had a shower, a toilet, a fridge, and our trusty George Foreman we deemed the place fit to live. Some might question this. But the past three weeks have been supremely happy.

During our first week we lived off of paninis. By the end of that first week though we gained some appliances. Some really freakin' awesome appliances. All of them were deals; some more impressive then others. Without further ado, I present our Appliances...

 Quite possibly the pride and joy of the Kitchen, I give you our Frigidaire Professional Series, in-wall, combination Microwave/Oven. Let me tell you: this piece of awesomeness has had quite the journey before making it into the kitchen. Of course it was a deal and a crazy deal at that.

I was roaming through Lowe's last winter (gotta keep an eye on the deals) and low and behold I stumble upon the Micro-oven. Originally retails for $2600 (stupid money) and was marked down to $650. Found out that this wasn't just your average in-wall Micro-oven, it was a double convection Micro-oven (i.e. will preheat in less than 6 minutes). The only catch was, at this point, we still didn't have a house to put it in. So it was crazy to buy an oven for a house we didn't even have... or was it? We had them hold it for a couple of days so we could think about it. In the end the double convection was too hard to resist.

I called them up and was going to see if they could knock any more off the price and before I could even get out my best haggling voice the woman on the other end said, "Ok, that'll be $350." After double checking that we were talking about the same appliance... I enthusiastically agreed, "Yep. That's the one."

So for many months double convection Micro-oven hid out in storage in a basement, survived a small flood, and is finally here in our kitchen convecting and baking beautifully.

                                                                       It's Convecting!

 

                                                              First thing baked in our new oven!
                 Second thing? Cookies of course. What else is there, really? Pizza and cookies.

Whirlpool Gold Induction Cooktop. This is in major competition with the Micro-oven for Most Prized Kitchen Appliance because it has the ability to boil water in about 60 seconds! Did you catch that? 60 SECONDS! Which pretty much means relearning cooking altogether.

Be advised: if you stop by our house, compliment our cook top- you may be forced to watch water boil.

 GE French Door Refrigerator with water in the door- we got it for less than the price of the same Side-by-Side that we were planning on.

GE dishwasher on clearance PLUS we found a dent in the back of it and they knocked it down some more!

 Stacking Samsung, front-loading, steam-cleanin', washer and dryer. Not only do they wash and dry clothes, they sing you a song when they're done (you know, instead of that super-annoying Eeaarnah sound?)

                                                                           Pretty Buttons

Still, with all our futuristic appliances we still used the old-fashioned can opener to help with Curry last night.

                                                              I'm bored with this people...

We are IN!

The past few weeks have been crazy-busy... sorry we haven't posted in so long. We've been spending so much time on the farm that by the end of the night putting together a blog seems sort of impossible. But here it is, the long over-due pictures of the progress!

Celebratory Champagne (thanks Ashley and Patrick!): The first thing to go into our new and fully functional fridge!

Progress in the Bathroom!

             We got the cherry picker stuck trying to pull it around to the back of the house to paint. And by "we," please understand I mean Jeff.

 This guy worked so hard to get the house primed and ready for paint. Sooo much painting to do.

Progress in the Den!

Carpet in the den going in!

 We have a pellet stove! Craigslist Deals!

We're pretty fancy: our first dinner in our new home! Thank you George Foreman!

Lucy kept an eye on things

This is the backside of our wall oven/microwave combination (that we got for a crazy deal- more on that later) getting fanned off with the heater... it survived (hopefully) a small flood while in storage. We'll find out tomorrow whether or not it'll work: cross your fingers!

The Kitchen & Living room pre-paint

 Annnd the progress...

Many hands make light work. A cherry picker makes it a little easier too!

It's been quite a while since our last post and let me tell you, a lot has happened. Let's start with plumbing.

So Here is the new pressure tank and all the other bits. All of the supply lines and fittings are new. The tank is sitting on a galvanized steel bracket Verrill made for me and I tied it into the foundation wall so that puppy isn't going anywhere. The nice thing about having it all new is that I know where every pipe is run and how it's plumbed.  The not so nice thing about it is I put in every pipe in the house so it took a bit.

 Oh and if you haven't figured out by this point, this is Jeff. So prepare yourself for a bit drier of a post. But we'll see. Back to topic, the saving grace in all of the plumbing is the PEX tubing. This stuff is incredible. No soldering, preheating, or any of that. It's just a matter of getting your lengths of tubing straightened out from the roll, cut it to length, put a crimp ring on it, jamb a fitting on there, and crimp it. Amazing and scary all at the same time. This past Monday morning, I put the last of the valves on the system and double and triple checked that I actually crimped all of the unions. Not a leak to be found when I pressurized the system.

Next on to what everyone who only looks at the pictures has been waiting for. Drywall!!

Then

Now

 

I'd like to thank Patrick who helped me out last Monday. We put up all the rigid foam insulation and the strapping in the den and weren't out of the house until 1:30am. 5:30 the next morning cam a bit too soon for me on Tuesday. The drywallers are coming back on Monday (10/24) to do a final coat of mud and then sand it all down.  As long as it stays relatively dry the next couple of days we should be able to start priming everything on Wednesday night. 

This is a door we found in the attic that match another door in the house. This afternoon I stripped off the hinge plates and knobs and put the pocket door hardware on it. It sort of looks like it's floating in the opening in the picture but it is correctly installed.

I brought the lawn mower down with me today to cut down the jungle that's been growing. The area beside the road was bushwhacked down is little time.

Unfortunately, you can't go very far on a dead battery and turning it into a push mower wasn't going to happen, I tried. 

Advances in painting were made over the weekend as well. Our friends George and Sarah are quite a blessing. It just so happens George's father owns a cherry picker and they came over with it to lend a hand. It really made for quick work of the high spots.