Tiling

So in the month or so since I blogged last, what I've done most is tile. There was a stretch in there that I tiled or installed cementboard for every day for 9 days in a row. As a friend told me, tiling is the quintessential project that you think will take a short time, and instead takes forever. 

This is the lovely floor tile that is in our mudroom, upstairs bathrooms, and entryway. It's actually the tile they use at Casey's General Store, so I felt like I got a good deal on it, and it's beautiful and durable. 

That picture is the only area of my house where the tile is DONE because I had to put a washer and dryer on top of it. But it is pretty!

My stepdad and I also put up 1/2" cementboard in the shower/bath surrounds (that stuff is the DEVIL. Worst substance to work with EVER. Dusty, hard to cut, fiddly, pain in the butt).

We also built in some wall niches to hold shampoo and whatnot. 

Then in the kids' bath I covered the seams with fibertape

And then painted over the whole shower with RedGuard to waterproof it before tiling. When they say RedGuard is Pepto Bismol pink, they mean it. And it does dry to fire engine red.

I have more tile than this on now, but this is what the kids' bath surround looks like. It's mostly off-white with a stripe of blue. I'm just going for simple and classic as much as I can.

We also got our cabinets installed, and really everything else. It's now a functional house and we've been living in it for about two weeks.

Here it is after countertops

Then we got carpet in the bedrooms

Even when I wasn't tiling, we were still laying drainage tile for our gutter runoff.

We've had several mishaps in this process, as you might expect.

Last night the septic alarm went off on our septic system, so we ended up reburying the electrical line. Having a backhoe on the tractor has been the BEST THING EVER while building the house. 

We also had issues with the bathroom vanities. We have three bathrooms, and we ended up with three failures on the vanities. The first had a drawer in the wrong place (our pipes come through the floor, the drawer needed the pipes to come through the wall); the second the countertop was too shallow for the cabinet; and the third the countertop was too narrow for the cabinet. Sigh. So after some rearranging, returning, and repurchasing, we finally had three workable bathroom vanities. That was a frustrating day.

Then we've had garage door issues. This is one of those things where if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. The garage doors were built too large (how hard is it, really, to build it the right size?) and I didn't catch it. So we had to add 2x6s to the edges until the garage doors won't gap.

Last, but definitely not least, we have the internet. We specifically sited our house because it was a location where there was DSL internet. We called the phone company, checked maps, and were told it was available. Turns out, that's a lie. The nearest internet lines are 2 miles away, and we are told it would be $6500-$10,000 to hook it up. I'm not giving up yet, though, because in my book internet is a utility like power and water. So we're pursuing options, especially since that hookup would put seven households online. Either way, that's one reason for more intermittent blogging (not that it's an excuse). 

In the sewing world, I actually did sew something this month. My niece had a birthday, so I made my kids and my nieces superhero capes. They were pretty easy and were a decent toy for the four of them.

I just used a knit fabric so I wouldn't have to hem (although I did zigzag the edges). 

Also on the kid front, H had a birthday earlier in the month.

She's doing fairly well with the move and everything, it's been harder that she's out of school now. She does better with the structure of a school day, of course.

I love this picture of her dancing in our new house just after the trim and cabinets were put in. It captures her attitude about everything so well.

I've also been trying to do more fun things with her, both because she's old enough and because I don't want to just be all work and discipline to her. So we went for a mommy-daughter pedicure date on the last day of school. She chose bright blue glitter polish and loved it.

We also went for sorbet on a separate occasion. 

Z is also growing up, we're working on his transition to a big boy bed. We'll also be doing potty training here soon, I think.

He really is such a curious and contemplative child, it amazes me. He found our box of magnetic toys and excitedly rushed to put them on the fridge.

But that wasn't the amazing part. The amazing part was that I told him we were going to go and get in the car. Thirty seconds later he hadn't come out to the car so I went back to check on him. He was hurriedly but carefully taking each magnet back off the fridge and putting it back in the box. He didn't want to leave until it was all "pick up put away".

He's not like that with everything (I definitely find toy cars EVERYWHERE), but I couldn't exactly tell him to stop putting things away and come out to the car, now could I? 

I'm still excited about the new house, and as I told Ryan, I'm excited about what we're building on the family farm.

Framing and Holidays

We finally have framing! Since it's winter here in Iowa (a fact lost on none of us here), things like home construction have a tendency to... stop. Because tools and people don't work well when the temperature is in the single digits. But it warmed back up and now we have progress again! In these pictures, the basement is up but I'm told we have more than that now. I just haven't been out to get more pictures. These were taken Friday.

And here we're looking at H's room,

and here's a pic taken from a spot where I'm trying to take pictures from somewhat consistently.

Before this, we had plumbing rough-in and concrete floor poured, as well as some fairly deluxe waterproofing. I don't know if we need waterproofing this deluxe, but I do know that I'd rather do it now than later!!

We also went out and put in some water lines one day, here is a pic taken from my "consistent spot" while Ryan helps hook the water line to the one in the basement before the concrete was poured.

And here are some pics of he and I digging trenches.
I spent lots of time working the mini excavator we rented.

 This is actually before we rented the mini ex when Ryan was putting some water lines in the FIRST time. Yes, I say that because we used plastic fittings the first time. Word to the wise: brass is worth the money. 

 Here's what my view looked like most of the day we put in water lines.

 Nice, straight, smooth trench. We had a funny moment when Ryan was trying to get the pipe to make the turn he's standing in below and couldn't seem to move enough dirt to get a good radius. So he looks at me and says, "I wish there was a lot less dirt right HERE" and I swear not 10 seconds later the trench collapsed in that exact spot. He didn't hit it or anything, it just decided to cut us a break. It was awesome.

 Yes, I realize it looks like I laid down in the dirt and took a picture. I'm standing on the bottom of the trench, you can see root sticking out of the trench walls beside me. So the trench was taller than I am.

I'm excited progress is being made on our house, framing is fun because it looks like so much progress so fast. 

On the crafting front, I haven't gotten much fully "done" recently. I did finish the quilt top I've been working on and reporting on, I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to quilt it.

I didn't make much for Christmas presents this year, but I did make my brother and sister-in-law some super-awesome hipster Hama (Perler) bead cassette tape coasters.

I love how they turned out, I just went off a picture I found on Pinterest and made them slightly larger so they have a chance of fitting a glass. I backed them in felt. My brother isn't really a hipster, but he lives in northern California and is just enough of a hipster that I like to tease him about it. :-)

In family life, since my last blog post we finished moving. Man, that was a huge stress on all of us. We moved not just a house with two young children, but also a farm. And Ryan wanted to save EVERYTHING. I swear, if it was "possibly useful someday", he had to save it. At least the farm stuff is at the new farm and I don't have to move it again. Hopefully not ever. All we have at the house we're living in is a bunch of freezers. 

Here some very wonderful people helped us move the chicken pens. 

And this was the picture I took to say "goodbye" to the old house. The new owner did decide to tear it down, he found the main support beam was cracked. I have mixed feelings about that. I am glad to have it sold and be moving forward, but it was our home for almost 7 years and I did have two babies in it. I'm sure it's a better house in my memory than in reality....

Speaking of my two babies, they continue to grow (as kids do). Here Z passed out, utterly exhausted on our Picket Fence Creamery turkey delivery day. It's actually quite rare that he sleeps in our arms; on plane flights to and from California after Christmas, he never once fell asleep in our arms despite a total lack of a nap. 

He also turned 2 shortly after my last post, I found this idea for a cake on Pinterest (of course) and it was perfect. Chocolate malt balls and chocolate frosting, and I didn't need any cake decorating skills at all. Although cake decorating classes are on my bucket list.

Since we also got some snow, I took the somewhat obligatory "younger child watches older child play in the snow" picture.

Since we are in Ames over the winter, we decided to get a membership to the Reiman Gardens, which has an indoor butterfly garden along with a conservatory. Z is so far delighted by the butterflies.

H is also doing well, she is getting closer and closer to really reading. She builds words at school, and recently at home with zero supervision made this picture of a prince from a kit from her uncle from Christmas. My favorite part of this, other than the awesome word building skills, is that I think it looks like Weird Al Yankovic.

H also got to take over her Daddy's haircut time (he decided he didn't need one, so she asked for one) and completely loved salon time. The stylist even put glitter in her hair, and I think she had as much fun getting her hair done as she did opening Christmas presents.

I also attempted to foster more of a spirit of giving rather than just receiving with her over Christmas this year, so we went to a building workshop at Lowe's where H built Z a train. He adores it, and she enjoyed making it. She's not quite strong or coordinated enough yet to really do a lot of it, but she and I worked together and I think it was helpful that she made him a Christmas present. I know it's no soup kitchen volunteering, but it's a step in the right direction, I hope.

With that, I'll leave you today with a (rare) full family picture. I hope you all have a great 2015!

Tiling & Pulling the Well Head

We bought our farm in December 2007. About two months later in February, the well pit collapsed and we lost water to the house in the middle of winter. We were still living in Ames, so we decided to sort of let the plumber cobble something together until April, when we hooked up the rural water lines. 
But, you see, we never did anything about that collapsed well pit. We pulled the tank and sump pump out, but there's about 12 inches of sand in the bottom of the thing and really the world had other concerns. Fast forward to today, and we had two VERY wet years in 2008 and 2009 (remember massive flooding in Iowa?) which resulted in water problems in our yard starting in 2010 (see this post). We had the county engineering office out at the end of last year to figure out how to fill our well so we could get the water table to behave itself again, and they told us we needed to tile all over the yard because without a sump pump working in that pit full time, our water table was always going to be high and would interfere with the septic system. So this weekend, we borrowed a mini excavator from Vermeer (still my favorite job perk!!) and put in over 300 feet of tiling.

Ryan spent the most time in the cab of the machine. You can't see Ryan's co-worker Doug, but he came out too and he plans tiling projects as part of his job. He spent his time in the pit mostly, got filthy, and was worth his weight in gold. Thanks Doug!

My stepdad also came down, here he is finding our power lines from the pole to the house (no, Iowa One Call won't find those for you because they're private after the pole) with a spade. Michael, how did you get the cruddy job???

Of course, the chickens were convinced all this dirt work was so they could find more bugs. They were pretty thrilled by the prospect.

Here is our "yard" after excavation. If you can see the little red flags behind the well pit, they are the power lines.

Here's most of the dig. 

Hazel loved watching Daddy and her "Bapa" all day from our porch balcony. She had a perfect view and was totally safe, so it worked great. Yes, I know she has something on her lip in this picture and no, I have no idea what it is. Food of some sort, perhaps?
My job while the men were doing this was mostly to cook. I turned a flank steak into fajitas and stuffed flank steak for lunch and dinner on Saturday, and we had skirt steak as kebabs for dinner on Sunday. I made waffles Sunday and Monday, and a pasta salad for a Sunday lunch cookout. Michael was a huge help with dishes!

So after Michael filled in most of the trenches with the Mini Ex while Ryan chored, today we had to pull the well head out. When the county told us to "pull out the well head," somehow I pictured something different than what happened. 
But first things first, we had to relocate the bull frog who had made his home for the past 3 years in our well pit. We know it was 3 years, because that's when we first saw him in there. He started out as a little frogling about 4 inches long.

Can you find him in this picture?
Ryan took him down to our mini-pond at the bottom of the draw in our property.

Then we had to pull the cap off the well. That was not easy at all. Ryan had to grind the heads of the bolts off, and even then it was some crowbar and hammer work. I will add here that a Google search of "how to remove a well head" was super unhelpful. No pictures, no nothing. Silly internet.

Ryan also collapsed the pit some, without obstructing the well itself that is in the bottom right of this picture.
So then we wrapped the power cord that descended into the dark oblivion around the backhoe bucket, and pulled up. I'm afraid I have no pictures of this, because I was too busy trying to tie knots in electrical wire to make sure it stayed attached to the backhoe.
The part that surprised me was that I thought "remove the well head" meant we would have to pull something out about 10 feet long and we would leave lots of stuff in the ground that the county would fill. No. Remove the well head means you pull and pull and pull and however deep your well is you end up with that much PVC pipe. Slimy PVC pipe.

Those of you who have been to our farm realize how far from the pit this is, and we had the line doubled up about a third of the way down. 
So finally, you get a thing at the end of the pipe. I assume this is the pump, but I somehow didn't think it was at the bottom of the well. Stupid me, I really should have! The number one rule of all pumps of any kind: Pumps Don't Suck. They push.

So apparently this is what a well pump looks like. Ryan was able to pull it out the last bit of the way, but he said it was very heavy. 

And voila! An empty well casing. Ready for the county engineer's approval. Hopefully he says, "Yep, looks good!" and fills it up with drilling mud and all the water issues in our yard go away.


I can dream.