This Week In The Stone House

I’ll be honest, I have been quite MIA these last two weeks!

I was so stressed over changing my blog name, really worried about what others would think of it that I completely locked up with being able to write any content. Ugh!

But I am feeling SO much better now, so let me catch you up to speed with how things have been going the last couple weeks.

Last week, we found an AMAZING old farmhouse that we absolutely fell in love with – me more than hubs, but that’s besides the point.

Almost perfect location, the house was perfect and would be able to accommodate our large family, AND there was land enough for us to have our cows! SWOON!

So why did we not move right in you ask?

Well, the house needed a lot of work. We’re talking 100k if not more for it to be livable.

We had fully accepted that part and were even going to put in an offer until we found out that the seller wasn’t even accepting the multiple cash offers it had received.

Obviously, with the work that the house needed, we were going to be lowballing and if they weren’t even accepting cash offers, there was no point in us putting in an offer. Que disappointment.

So, back to our home now.

We love our home, but we don’t exactly love the little half acre it sits on.

You see, we are in a little farm town that we absolutely love.

This town is a couple towns over from our hometown but it honestly just feels like home to us. We couldn’t see us moving from here and even if the farmhouse had worked out, we would have kept our kids in this school district and I would have drove them the 20 minutes to and from school.

We love the community, the school, all the programs our kids have been in, we love it. But, we don’t exactly love having just a little half acre of land.

Again, we live in a little farm town so we can do pretty much anything we could do out in the country with land, besides have my cows, of course, so it isn’t hindering us from doing what we want. But it’s just not enough land for us.

So, one day we may find our dream land where we can walk out our back door in the morning with our coffee and feel at peace. But until then, we are staying put and putting work in here to make this 70s era home ours.

DIY Home Renovations In The Stone Household

Alright, now that I have spewed about my feelings of our home, let’s get to our plans for this week.

Flooring

When we moved into our home, everything was carpet. The carpet on the first floor was all brand new and so squishy! Ugly, but squishy and like walking on a cloud! Ha!

Of course, the upstairs is another story and that all needs replaced, still.

Anyway!

The living room, dining room, and “family room” that is now a dining room, all had brand new carpet, but with 6 kids and two dogs, the brand new carpet ended up DISTROYED.

The living room had chocolate milk, coffee, marker, nail polish, paint, anything that shouldn’t be in the living room, ended up in the living room and covered the carpet.

Prime example of what I’m talking about below. Raymond was SO happy and proud of his little painting of the carpet, back then. I just showed him these pictures asking he remembered and his reponse? “Yes, that was fun” ha ha!

Anyway, so we have replaced both the old dining room, that had white carpet. WHITE! It would have been nice and pretty if we didn’t have kids or dogs, but we have 6 kids and 2 giant German Shepherds so that white carpet didn’t stay white long and was the first to be removed.

Next up, we did the living room because allll of the spills had left it stained and then one of our pups had gotten sick and I had just had it! So without a plan I tore up the carpet and couldn’t be happier!

Now we are onto the foyer, hallway, and dining room removing the carpet and old “hardwood” flooring and making it all match the rest of the downstairs.

Half Bath

The way the floors are laid out, the floors in the hallway are connected and floor into our half bath. Because of this, we are have to take out the toilet and sink to pull the floors out.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea about flooring or how it should be laid, but the toilet and sink sit on top of the flooring so they both have to be removed.

Because we have to pull them up, we are choosing to just replace everything and do a little half bath remodel while were at it.

I will be sure to share that little transformation when it happens. I think that may be the project I am most excited about inside the house!

Chicken Coop Run

Ok, so we went through what’s going on on the inside, let’s get to the outside.

So, I mentioned before we live in a little farm town, so we can have chickens living in the village no problem. Ours girls have been free-ranged basically since they’ve been able to stay outside and none of our neighbors have said a word.

However.

Our girls have become VERY brave and instead of staying in our yard or near the coop, they are traveling 3 – 4 houses down and I just feel that is extremely disrespectful of us. So we made sure as soon as the weather broke we would get our girls enclosed.

I would feel so bad if they destroyed one of neighbors flowerbeds or tore up their yard the way they have ours!

Chickens are very destructive with how little they are. They have completely destroyed all the work I did with our mulch last year AND ate everything in our garden. HA! First time chicken “farmers” over here.

So, we have our fencing up we spent yesterday putting up and now were just waiting for some concrete to cure and we will be finishing up their run this afternoon. Fingers crossed!