Mirror, mirror finally on the wall

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

For the past few months, we’ve had a big blank unfinished wall in Matt’s bathroom.

Attractive, no?

It’s a small bathroom, so I decided that covering the whole wall above the vanity in one big mirror would help to make the space look bigger.

Me and my bright ideas.

We ordered the mirror just after New Year’s, and the supplier cut it right away. After a nerve-wracking evening of transporting the mirror in the back of Matt’s Dad’s truck, the mirror sat in the basement, propped against the wall just outside the bathroom.

The idea of actually hanging it was a little bit intimidating. I mean, it was more than four feet wide by four feet high. If we broke it, the bad luck would be exponential!

Plus the fact that it covered the whole wall and included a cut out for the light fixture presented some installation challenges. Everything had to match up perfectly and we had nearly no wiggle room.

Well, I’m pleased to say everything matched and, even better, nothing broke.

The mirror definitely brightens up the room–and gives you a sneak peek of the shelving unit.

We have a few more things to do before the final reveal:

Light fixture
Toilet paper holder
Trim for the shelving unit
Cabinet door for the shelving unit (it’s cleverly just propped in place in the picture above)
Hooks for hanging towels
Heat register

Fortunately, none of these is as intimidating as the mirror–and I don’t know of any bad luck curses associated with toilet paper holders.

The Dyson dilemma

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I love the new carpet in the basement. It’s cozy and warm and soft. Its light colour is nice and neutral.

What I don’t love is cleaning it.

Don’t judge

The fluff. Oh the fluff!

I blame Matt and his black socks. The fact that the basement stairs start at the front door, a major traffic point for the house and source of many “bits” and dirt, doesn’t help.

My parents loaned us their old vacuum (old as in purchased in the 1970s before they moved to a house with central vacuum), but its suction kind of sucks–not in the good way a vacuum should. Our shop vac does a slightly better job, but it’s not really skilled at cleaning carpet and doing the whole basement with it is a pain.

If I’d been thinking ahead, perhaps I would have put in a central vacuum system when we had the walls open in the basement. However, I didn’t think of it, so we didn’t do it.

So now, I’m dealing with a fully carpeted basement and the weekly sock fluff invasion. And all I keep thinking is “Dyson.”

I really know nothing about them aside from the marketing hype. In the informal polls I’ve done so far with people at work, Dyson comes highly recommended. We’ve looked at them in stores, where, of course, the price tag makes me blanch.

So now I’m turning to you. Is a Dyson worth it? What version do I buy? Is there another brand that works just as well?

We have a cut pile carpet in the whole basement (1100 square feet). The stairs are carpeted too, so the vacuum can’t weigh a ton, or it needs to have an attachment that lets me easily go up the steps. The biggest requirement is that it easily and cleanly picks up the sock fluff and all of the little bits that accumulate every week. Someday, it will likely have to pick up dog hair too. Oh, and I need a vacuum that lasts. I don’t want to have to buy a new one–especially if I invest in a Dyson–anytime soon.

Please weigh-in in the comments. Do you have a Dyson? How does it work for you? Is there another vacuum that you recommend?

Ice capades

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Our January thaw from two weeks ago gave way to a deep freeze last week. The result was a thick covering of ice on the pond, and the result of that was skating!

We’ve been keeping an eye on the ice all winter, and it was finally thick enough for skating. We headed out with shovels to clear the snow from our own private rink.

Shoveling the ice made us realize how big the pond really is. Matt finally resorted to just clearing paths around and across the ice. Fortunately, the snow was thin enough that we could skate right through it.

Some coyotes had tested out the ice early in the morning.

Here’s Matt’s version of an action shot:

Matt’s skates hurt his feet, so we reenacted Rocky’s and Adrian’s first date, making a circuit of the ice arm in arm, Matt in his boots and me in my skates. By Sunday, though, he decided to give his skates a try, using the “learn-to-skate” technique of a chair for extra support.

If I’m being honest, the chair got more use as an actual chair, as the skates were still pretty uncomfortable.

Another warming trend is forecast for this week, and it may be awhile before we are able to skate again, so Matt’s feet have plenty of time to recover. Sore tootsies aside, we each still enjoyed checking off another new experience at the farm.

Did you have a new experience this weekend? Have you been out skating yet? Any tips for finding comfortable skates? Did you push a chair when you were learning to skate? For those non skaters out there, what animal tracks are you seeing at your place? For those that prefer indoor sports, who else is a Rocky fan?

The doughnut tree

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Outside the front door, what looks like a regular maple tree is not. It is a doughnut tree.

Doughnut trees are sneaky. Under the canopy of leaves in the spring and summer, you forget that they bear a remarkable fruit. However, as the tree sheds its leaves in the fall, the doughnuts become visible again.

The question is though, how does one pick a doughnut?

Any suggestions?

The farm we almost bought 2

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

A few weeks after losing our first farm to a bidding war, another farm came on the market. It was just around the corner from the property that we had lost.

One hundred acres of forest, creeks, corn fields, one large barn and another medium, and an old farmhouse with numerous additions. A few features made it particularly notable. First was the pond. Or should I say lake.

I still think about this pond. It is massive and made me realize a pond was pretty much a must-have feature for me. In addition, several wide and deep creeks wind their way through the property, flowing to a large river.

Unfortunately, this was not the only water on the farm, which brings us to the second notable feature.

When touring historic farm houses, we were often advised to wear our shoes when we went down to the basements. We’d seen rubble foundations and dirt floors, but we’d never seen what we found in the basement of this house: approximately eight inches of water and a rubber dingy fully inflated and floating around in the cellar. Never mind shoes, we needed high rubber boots!

Aside from the water, the basement was in great shape for an old farmhouse: fairly generous ceiling height and a concrete floor–albeit under water.

Upstairs, the house had original door knobs and light fixtures in a few spots, although for the most part it was characterized by dated 70s finishes and bad additions.

Most of the original character had been lost, but the graffiti sprayed on the painted brick did add a certain… something.

It certainly had potential.

We made our offer that day. Believe it or not, we went in at full asking price, and we were the third offer.

We were only competing with two other bidders, which was one less than the last farm. But it was two too many. The farm ended up selling for $82,000 over asking.

We were nearly a year into our search, we’d seen only two farms that we wanted to buy and we’d lost both in bidding wars.

We were a little bit heartbroken–I still think about that pond. We were very frustrated. And we were starting to wonder if we were ever going to find the farm of our dreams.

Caulking within the lines

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Growing up, a pristine colouring book was a treasure. I carefully chose my colours and then filled in the drawings making sure to always stay within the lines. I started at the beginning of the book and worked through it page by page.

My younger sister on the other hand went through all of our colouring books putting blush, lipstick and eye shadow on all of the people–men, women and children. It was always a disappointing moment when I opened a book and found the characters covered with red, pink and sometimes even purple splotches.

Staying within the lines is still important to me, especially when it came to caulking the new shower. However, I am not a tidy caulker, so to ensure I had perfectly straight and even seams, I employed a technique I found courtesy of This Old House.

I laid two strips of painters tape on either side of the joint, squirted my caulking in between the strips, smoothed the bead with my finger and peeled off the tape.

The result was perfectly straight lines.

It’s definitely not a quick process to put on all of the tape, especially when the shower stall includes a niche and bench that all needed to be sealed, but the results satisfied my childhood hang up for staying within the lines.

Even my sister was impressed.

Gobble gobble

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

At the top of Matt’s list of animals he most wants to see at the farm is wild turkeys. Well, we still haven’t seen any actual birds on our property, but over the Christmas holidays we found definitive proof that turkeys come to visit.

(The larger tracks walking diagonally in from the left side of the picture are Matt-tracks).

In the deep snow, I have to look pretty closely to identify the tracks as turkey. They walk one foot in front of the other, and, if they plant their foot properly, I’m sometimes able to pick out their distinctive three-toed print.

According to the tracks, 11 birds came through our farm. In some spots, you can see where their wings dragged as they were walking along.

While lefty has to deal with droopy wing syndrome, the guy to her right obviously has his own problems. My diagnosis is likely too much Christmas cheer.

Back in the marsh, where the ice was covered with only a thin dusting of snow, the tracks were unmistakably avian.

I wish I had thought to put something beside the tracks to show their scale. These are some big birds.

Since the thaw last weekend, we no longer have snow to help us with tracking. Matt’s fingers are crossed that the turkeys weren’t just passing through and instead are ready to become permanent residents. We’ll keep our eyes and ears open for signs.

The farm we almost bought 1

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

The thing you should probably know about our farm search was that when we started looking, I wasn’t ready. My plan was to wait until we had paid off the mortgage on our starter house. But about five months before that, Matt started spending time on MLS and soon enough he was making appointments with real estate agents.

About a month into our premature farm search, Matt and I drove out to see a property. We were about 20 minutes early for the appointment, and as we circled the rural country roads peering out the car window at the farm I said to Matt, “How did you do it? How did you find the perfect place?”

A long gravel driveway bordered on one side by tall pines and on the other by a manicured meadow led to a small house perched on the top of a rise. Undersized dormers poked out of the roof and the weathered wood of a big barn towered over the ridge line.

The original farm house had been added to over the years becoming a hodge podge of traditional tiny rooms connected to larger open spaces including a big eat-in kitchen and a generous family room with windows on three sides. Bathrooms were classic 1980s: a vintage six-piece complete with pink jacuzzi tub and matching bidet and an avocado three-piece.

In terms of potential, it ticked the box. My vision for the reno included digging out the basement, building a full second story–complete with properly proportioned dormers, reconfiguring the main floor and adding on a garage.

Outside, acres and acres of manicured grass beckoned family barbecues. Rolling hills hearkened of winter sledding parties. A small creek winding around the house and barn, 10 acres of forest and more than 50 acres of corn fields (of the property’s total 94 acres) were exactly the atmosphere we were looking for. And of course, the big barn with its own fabulous dormer drew us in.

But they only drew us so far. Though the price tag on this first farm was less than what we would ultimately end up paying, it was so early in our search that it still seemed very expensive. My sticker shock combined with my renovation ambitions–plus some electrical issues, no proper well (cistern only) and baseboard heat instead of a furnace–made us hesitate to put in an offer.

We visited the farm a few times. Talked about it a lot. Thought about it almost constantly. And then we watched the listing expire at the end of the fall.

That whole winter, every night as I walked home from work, I thought about the farm. We decided that if the listing came back up in the spring, we would put in an offer.

We watched MLS, and sure enough a few months later the farm came back on the market. We went and saw it again. The issues were the same, but so was the appeal. We put in an offer.

When our agent called me to say that there were three other offers and we were all being sent back, I was completely stunned. How could this farm that no one wanted to buy four months ago now be selling in competition?

We upped our offer.

And that night as I climbed into bed I felt like we were making a mistake. After about six months of dreaming about this property, it didn’t feel right.

The next day, we found out we’d been outbid. The amount the farm sold for surprised me and was more than we’d have paid. Between the price tag and my misgivings, the loss didn’t hurt too much. Apparently, I still wasn’t ready.

January thaw

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

A thick fog on Friday night made for a hazardous drive home, and heralded the arrival of warm weather. Saturday afternoon found us outside without jackets. Saturday evening as we walked down the driveway in the dark we could hear water flowing in the creek.