Homemade Sometimes Better But Never Quicker

 

For the last 2 weeks Crystal and I have been battling Covid. I tested positive within a day of having symptoms. My first symptom was very weird. I could not lift my right leg to step up on a chair or climb into my truck. Well, I thought it was just my MS acting up. I had no outward signs of anything. Fast forward 2 days and I had all the flu like symptoms. We have had all the booster shots available. We even got our flu shot already this year. So I decided to use one of those rapid tests. Sure enough I was positive for Covid 19. Thank goodness it has not been much worse than the flu except for the lingering fatigue. It put off our family Thanksgiving. It has also put off some of our building projects.

Now I don’t know if I am just getting older or if I am accumulating a level of disability that makes me exceptionally slow at building. However, I have come to an excruciatingly slow pace at building this year. Just 5 years ago I know the pace would be much greater. We bought this homestead in November of 2014. The first thing we did was have the roof fixed and a new heat pump installed. Those were two tasks that just needed to be left to the pros. There were other tasks that we probably should have left to the pros but we didn’t have enough money to do so. The rest has been done by Crystal and Myself. After the purchase, we discovered that the previous owner had installed a new electrical entrance but had just connected it to the old wiring that was in the house. We knew this going in because we got a home inspection. It was a mix of 2 wire romex from the 50’s and knob and tube from the 30’s. The entire upstairs was on a single 15 amp circuit that was knob and tube.

I loaded my trailer and my dog onto the truck with most of my tools and headed for Paint Lick. We purchased a 6 ft folding table, 2 rolling chairs, and a queen size bed and mattress for an upstairs bedroom and started working on the electrical. In the mornings for breakfast we listened to the Spurlin Funeral Home General Store on the radio and ate our meager breakfast. We quickly outgrew our desire to eat microwave meals and brought our grill and put it on the front porch. One Month in and we were probably one third of the way done with the electrical system. The house was lathe and plaster and we worked around 90% of that by fishing wires behind or through moldings and under flooring. We did not want to hire anyone to come and do the work. I got an estimate for doing only the electrical and it was $18,000. This was nearly all Crystal and I had for the entire renovation. So DIY was the name of the game.

Just so you don’t think we are typical DIYers, I went to vocational school in my youth and got a diploma in residential electricity. I also have a degree in physics and taught such courses in college as Applied Physics, robotics, flexible manufacturing systems, hydraulics, electronics, basic electricity and pneumatics as well as blueprint reading. So I had a leg up on the average DIYer. Mom was a carpenter and dad was an electrician and I helped them with house construction growing up so I had some experience. Also, I was fluent in youtube and a graduate of youtube DIY University. When we bought the house I had told Crystal we could accomplish everything in 6 months. Boy was I a big fat liar, even if I didn’t know it myself at 51 years old.

We completed about 90% of the electrical system in 3-4 months. We started there because the electrical was in such poor shape we were afraid the place would burn down if it wasn’t the first thing tackled. I say 90% because we were still going to move the laundry downstairs to the basement which was unfinished with a concrete floor. Next we turned to the upstairs bathroom. The bathroom had not changed from when it was installed back in the 1940’s. I had jury rigged the bathtub to use while we were doing other things. We had hung tarps over all the windows in the house so that it looked like a scene out of the Walking Dead. It took us 5 weeks to rip everything out of the bathroom including the massive cast iron ugly tub and get it built back. We were fully into spring by this time and had graduated to a full size flea market fridge in the living room floor and cooking on a commode box with a double burner plug in hotplate. In order to install the plumbing in the bathroom we had to rip out the ceiling in the kitchen. This made for the perfect time to start working on the kitchen as the 3^rd leg of the project.

The Kitchen took way longer than either of us had imagined. We had to tear out all the old kitchen and in the meantime I made a makeshift kitchen on an enclosed back porch. We repurposed all the cabinets that were available. We closed in one of the 6 doorways into the kitchen. We redid basically every wall surface. All of the moldings had been removed by the previous owners. We sanded and painted all the cabinets and bought a few more and repositioned everything in the kitchen. This is no small feat especially due to the cast iron plumbing risers. We had to adapt the kitchen to the antique stove we had selected which was not a standard size so everything had to be custom fit. We even redid a family heirloom Hoosier cabinet as part of the antique décor. We spent the better part of 3 months on the kitchen. So, by June of 2015 we had renovated 2 rooms of the house and the electrical system. Drywall dust was a condiment with our morning coffee. We had to learn how to lay ceramic tile – which apparently we failed at because it is cracking all over the kitchen and will need to be replaced before long. But we finally got done and they placed the marble countertops in time for the 4^th of July.

Now at the same time this is going on we are trying to decide what to do with our other 2 houses in Evarts. We had been making weekend trips to take the time to cut grass and wash clothes. Then over July and August we did all the walls in the dining and living rooms. We replaced all of the water damaged surfaces with new sheetrock and enclosed the chimney. Finally we painted the walls, trims, and installed all of the moldings. Then we sanded and finished the floors. We were done with this before the end of October and we brought our furnishings from the Evarts house here. We had our first Thanksgiving with family that year in the new house. We finally had the bottom floor mainly done, at least done enough to have soft chairs. We brought everything from Evarts and then were ready to start on the stairwells and start with the bedrooms upstairs, moving all the furniture around one room at a time.

But, life doesn’t wait for you. During this time Crystals mother died, my son moved home with his wife, and other life events moved right along. Each thing detracts from what you can get accomplished. I think it was nearly 2 yrs later when we finished the last surface upstairs. We moved all the laundry downstairs into the basement. We added a first floor bathroom just about 2 years ago. I still don’t have a full coat of paint outside. I got one coat on everything except the eves. Now nearly 8 yrs in and I still have a few minor things to do inside. The outdoors had to take a backseat to the house. Well I say this but while all this was going on we built 2 outbuildings and a workshop outside as well as established a hay field and 3 garden plots.

But we are back at doing things outside. I started the youtube channel in 2018 to chronicle our life of establishing a homestead. I didn’t know that it would morph into a channel about living with and overcoming a disability in order to establish a homestead. So we as of November 18^th will have been on our homestead 8 years. Video and editing slows everything down. If we had started the channel back in 2014 the inside of the house would just now be getting done. It seems like a blur. 8 years and I am still not done with the house much less the property so when I tell you that “Homesteading is a Marathon not a Sprint” I do know what I am talking about.  I think about my grandfather and his homestead and think about it in my youth. He had 2 barns and all this infrastructure. Well, he had worked on that for 25 years by the time I came along. So, I still have 18 yrs to go and if I die when I ought too then it won't get done.

So, don’t get caught up in what I am going to get done this week, month or year. Concentrate on what you are gonna get done today. Today turns into a week, months, or yrs very quickly. Any job will be longer that you think, especially if you are living at the job site. Homesteading is just a series of emergency things that had to be done today causing you to put something you needed to do on the back burner. Take setbacks in stride, they are part of the everyday things in life that happen on a working homestead. The big lesson that I had to learn is the Good Enough is Okay. Perfection is for the wealthy with plenty of time and money on their hands and a crew of young men at their disposal. Also, try to remember that Homesteading like Life is a Marathon not a Sprint – Slow Down and Enjoy the Ride.   

Be Certain to Visit our Homesteading Channel on Youtube at http://Youtube.com/c/collegehillfarm  as we create and live on a modern homestead like our ancestors before us. Also check out and add your name to follow our weekly blog channel at https://collegehillfarm.blogspot.com so you do not miss our weekly ponderings on the past, present and future and on our Facebook page at  https://www.facebook.com/College-Hill-Farm-295659074295747