Rain Delay

Digging the basement was supposed to start on Monday.
However Mother Nature has opposed the start of the excavation.

Luckily though we are not having Texas weather.

I took this photo on Sunday and walked into the frame and stood.
Shot in Infrared so the grass would appear white.

I had planned on taking a photo in this spot after the hole was dug or at least started.
However due to a rain delay, I will have to wait.

Excavator?

This is not the excavator.  It will come tomorrow sometime.

But I started things with my own little shovel by removing the blocks we've used for so many years as our stepping stones into the cottage.

The yard looks very strange without them.  But this is where the digging will take place.

In fact while doing chores yesterday I turned around while feeding Lil' Richard and thought that the house looked so terribly forlorn and barren.

All the plants and perennials have been moved over the past year from around the house.
Two of our beautiful pine trees are now gone.

Of course here is a view from 2010 when we had 3 more pines and from a different viewpoint.

I can't wait to see the 'new' cottage.  It sure does need an update inside and out.

Yesterday we spent time moving things around so when the heavy machinery is delivered they will be able to turn around safely and easily.
The horse trailer/mule trailer had to be moved, as well as the skid steer's implements.

Things have finally dried out enough around here so that we are not in 'mudville' any longer.

Let the Excavation Begin!

He said the tree has to go.

I didn't want to loose another pine tree, but I could see the sense in it.

So in the afternoon we proceeded with it.

I took video.

He lays it down exactly where he intends on putting it.  Between two other pines.

And now we had a big mess.  Branches all over the place.  We started to clean it up. We tossed the pieces we cut up to fit the bucket on the skid steer and Rich hauled it away to a brush pile out back.

The tree was truly too close to the house and if we'd had a bad windstorm he was afraid it would to damage to the roof as it was heavy with branches over the top of the house.

However I did enjoy having coffee in the morning and watching the silly squirrels and birds scamper up and down this tree for the past 20 years.

It looks rather bare right now but I imagine with a new porch near where hubby is standing will fill in some space.
We briefly talked about some shrubs or low lying plants to plant near the house.

His mind wasn't on it.  He was exhausted after that and went to lay down for a bit.
My neighbor came down because he'd heard the chain saw going.

Within minutes he pitched in and helped me stack up the rest of the branches so they could easily be hauled away.
New neighbor!  Talk about being blessed and lucky.

It only took us an hour this morning to clean this up.  The tree trunk is still there.  We will drag it away and hopefully sell it as a nice pine log.

And then Morris and I worked today on cleaning up the small stuff and replanting the hostas that had been at the base of the pine.
They would need a new home and I had just the place for them.

My helper.

This afternoon a couple of trucks pulled into the driveway.  It was our Contractor Kurt and his concrete/digging guys.
They came to look at where they were going to put the basement.

Kurt said he was looking at sometime next week to start digging.
We had a conversation about not having water as they will have to cut the lines and re-attach them.
We also had a conversation about not having electricity.  Hmmm.  

Where they have to dig, the electric and water must be cut off for obvious reasons.

I'm guessing we'll have an interesting time.
Hopefully we won't be without for more than 24 hrs as I will need to find places for my freezer and refrigerated food.  Also we will need to fill stock tanks and add more water to some of our old stock tanks.

It will be an exercise won't it?  So the tree went, the contractors are itching to start and things are looking good in the long range forecast.

Sounds like I best get busy and pack up the rest of the 'stuff' that will need to be moved inside the house.
Yikes, it is almost here!

Picking floor, cabinets, countertops, and doors!

I want to give Artie of Johnson's One Stop for doing such hard work yesterday.  His ideas were helpful and he kept us from making a mess of things.

We are going to go with the Light Hickory Cabinets with a rather simple front.
Here is a sample of what it will look like. Mind you this is not our kitchen design itself.

The flooring will be a lighter color as the countertops will be a dark color.  I went with a greyish colored wood laminate floor.

It will cover the mudroom floor, the kitchen and eating area.

There is enough warmth in it to pick up on the hickory and the designs in the counter top.

I posted this photo before. 

The bathroom will have a stone look to it. The shower and toilet will be white and I may even pick white for the vanity.

Again there is enough texture to make it interesting yet it will work with the colors I pick for accents.

However, the bedroom floor is my win-win. I saw it, I liked it and I always wanted something fun and interesting.  

Rustic!  Looks like a barn floor!

I think the flooring will make me a happy person.
Here is a sample of the old worn out kitchen floor.  
We have peeled all loose stick 'em tiles and in my opinion it was always ugly ugly. But we knew we'd eventually change it.

I'll see if I can find the doors that we'll be putting on the house. Rich had decided green, I wanted barn red.
Guess who won?

I like barn red, I like red. The gables on the house will have barn red shakers.  Isn't that cool?
I hope so.

I'll be living here a long time I hope!

Closer!

The date for remodel is getting closer!  It looks like there may be a start date of ... about April 15th.

We spoke to Kurt yesterday and that is when the road bans are due to come off.  Road bans are put on to prevent heavy vehicles from traveling on county and township roads that do not have the same good road base as the highways.
As the frost comes out of the ground, the road bases can be soft and heavy loads will damage the roads.

We've pretty much finished deciding on what the siding colors will be as well as the roof.  We only need to go in and finalize that.

Now I begin in earnest to clean out the back entry way so that when the construction does begin I won't be in a rush to toss everything into boxes 'willy nilly' and hope to be able to find things after the remodel.

Here is a photo of the house that I'd done for artistic value.  I wanted it to look beautiful.  Photographed last summer in Infrared.

This is the south facing part of the house.  When finished, it will have a porch extending 9 feet from the house as it is pictured here.

This is a photo of the roof of the south facing part of the house. Pretty sad right?  We intended to get things taken care of long before the shingles got in this shape.  The hole in the roof that is covered, is where the chimney used to be.  We never had a wood burning stove in the house and the chimney was never in use.  It had to come off before the remodel.

South west facing corner of the house. I dug out all of the flowers and plantings around the house last fall so that the guys working on the house wouldn't be stepping on them.  I relocated what I could and hopefully some of the plantings will survive to be moved back.

This is the north side of the house.  As you can see, this is a Tiny House.  We call it a cottage.

There will be a basement and an addition put on this side.  It will extend the house 10 ft out from where it is now.

The new space will give us a slighty larger bathroom, a mudroom, a real kitchen and a downstairs bedroom.

And here is the view from the the bottom of the driveway.  The driveway extends quite a ways up towards the ridge top.

The look and feel of the place will change for the better we think!

Picking out colors

My remodeled house may be a spectacle or it may be cute. Hubby and I went to pick out our siding and roofing colors.  Of course we didn't agree on the color of the siding.

So we will compromise.  The majority of the house will have a wheatish-tannish kind of color.
The gables will have barn red shakes or 'fish scales'.

Our roof will be Forest Green.

Windows and trim will be white.

The porch entrance door will match the green roof.
The north side entrance door will match the barn red gables colors.

From what I am reading about proper colors and designs, I need to go for more boring stuff.  Like muted matching greenish stuff or more retirement tan colors.  
Hold on a moment while I go gag.

How about a nice grey tone with white windows and trim?
Nah.

I wonder if people will come down my driveway and see my house and pause.  I don't mind making a statement.  I've decided that the colors fit the personalities of those living inside.

We used the other day to look at countertop colors for the kitchen.  I found some colors that I think will work with black appliances and Hickory cabinets.

This is nabbed from the internet and looks interesting.

The kitchen won't be set up this way, but this is the colors of Hickory matched with the colors of the counter-top I'd like to have.

However the flooring is pretty close to what we thought we'd like and...and... the cabinet on the side of the fridge was something we also talked about.  I love the idea of having a place to put my broom and cleaning stuff!

I've been thinking about the bathroom.  Fixtures [toilet and tub] will be white. But I want some bluish tealish sort of muted colors in it somewhere.  I think I can design a shower curtain to those colors.  

My house would be a rainbow of colors if I could manage it.  I've lived with icky dark brown for too long.

The only brown left will be in wood, natural wood and not this horrid dark paneling we've lived with for so long.  I want light and bright.

Eating Area and Wallpaper...ugh!

Today we started on the 'eating' area of our little house. I took a break from removing wall paper as I'd gotten to Rich's corner and stared at his stuff.

What on earth would we do with all of that stuff?

It is piled in broken down boxes and no matter how I tried over the years, I could never get him to totally clean up and put away the Stuff.

Of course we live in a Tiny House and when stuff accumulates, it needs to be weeded out and put somewhere.  However, this tiny house has no extra storage.  
For the remodeling, I started last year packing away any extra Stuff that I could.  
I stored it in a shed in plastic tubs.

Yesterday I handed Rich a large plastic tub and let him go at it.
He cleared just enough Stuff so that I could move the table and get at the wall.

You are looking at an area where the flooring will be replaced, ... we are pulling up the old tiling as we go along.  The brown wood will we replaced with a very light colored almost blonde wood.
The windows of course will be replaced and ... AND! No wallpaper!
I'm considering colors for the walls now.

The Stuff will reside somewhere else and I am thinking of getting a corner cabinet of some sort for Rich to put all of the paperwork Stuff that he keeps [and rarely looks at] into and out of sight.

We are doing a wood laminate floor and there will be so much more storage once the remodel is done.

So there it is.  Ugly as all get out right now, but perhaps cute as a button once it is finished.

The cabinets will be hickory and I would like a very very light light green for the walls.

When I was a kid we rented a house that had a putrid green paint on the kitchen walls and white cabinets.  I recall washing those walls and wishing the paint would fall off.  It never did.

So why would I even consider it again?  I think I can find a nice light green/grey color.  I don't think I want white in the kitchen section.

Maybe off white in the eating section?  That sure would brighten things up!

Well off to peel more wall paper and sort through more stuff.