Busy Bees

Oh my lanta...I'm a slacker. My dream of becoming the next Pioneer Woman is slowly but surely coming to an end because I just can't keep up. Between Andy's work, school starting, grad school, and working on the house, we have been busy bees.

Let me catch everyone up to speed. The house is coming together but slowly. We are crossing our fingers that we can be in the house by Christmas. Christmas?! I would absolutely adore this becaaaaaause I can decorate our house and for my favorite holiday season. I am already having dreams of a ginormous tree in front of our big window that lights up the highway!

Here are some pictures of all of the hard work we have been doing. And by we, I mean Andy and Greg... :) I really shouldn't even put my name into that equation.

The pantry has been complete! I foresee a shelf under the window where I can store our bread machine, blender, and toaster so they are not wasting space on the counter. The only appliance on the counter I want is our beautiful Kitchen Aide Mixer because it is heavenly looking and the coffee maker my Kinder teachers bought for us. They both get used often! We will lose some light having a pantry there, but we needed the extra storage. Living in the country, I will need to stock up since I won't be going into town all the time to buy groceries.

Here is the part of the bathroom that is getting insulated courtesy of me and partially Andy. That stuff is so stinkin' itchy.

Andy had to put this insulation up that will behind the bathtub and shower. We are truckin'! I'm not going to lie...that foam stuff is really fun to pick off. I know that's not Andy's intention, but it is.

So this. Yeah. There is a hole in the floor. This will be the upstairs bathroom. When I walked in and saw the hole in the floor for the first time, I almost had a heart attack and fell through the floor. Goodness! It had to be done for the plumbing to be run since there was a lack of bathroom upstairs. Andy and two of his best friends stayed up really late one night and put in 100 bags of cellulose insulation in the walls and floor.

Another pictures of the bathroom. It will be a full bathroom with a corner shower, vanity, and toilet. It will be used for kid's bathroom and a guest bathroom since three bedrooms are upstairs.

They drilled holes in all of the baseboards and blew the cellulose insulation. Andy swears that he is going to fix these baseboards by putting decorative trim and cover up the holes. (I'm thinking we need brand spankin' new trim.) We shall see.









I am hopeful for Christmas because we are working hard. And again, I mean we by, Andy and Greg. :)

Until next time,
Brittany

I am woman, hear me roar!

Wow, oh wow! What progress is being made in our home. I can't even begin to describe how excited I am to see all of the changes happening. I feel like we are finally getting somewhere!

First things first, "school's out for summer!" (sung to Alice Cooper's "School's Out") It feels wonderful to be out of school; however I am only out for a little over a week before I begin teaching summer school. Andy is also home during this time so we are taking full advantage of all this time we have together.

Andy and Greg have been working on the bathroom some more. I think it is safe to say that this has been the toughest job yet. The two of them have spent so much time and effort trying to level the floor joists. It is finally complete now they just need to lay the subfloor.

Here is an idea of what the bathroom will be shaped like! In the back left corner will be the jacuzzi bathtub (yay!), where the handle of a hammer is will be a walk-in shower (yes, I am aware that there are stairs right below...we are closing that off completely so there is no basement access into the house), and in the right corner-ish will be the toilet and vanity. I think it is going to look great once it is finished. Right now, it does look teenie tiny, but in person it is much larger!








While Andy and Greg have been working on the floor joist; we have had a good family friend, Jason, over to work on the wiring of the house. I will admit, it was difficult to decide where we wanted outlets and coax cables. Andy and I made some big decisions! We were not stingy when it came to outlets. I mean, if we are going to spend all this time and money on our home...we should get what we want. Right?

Look at this old wiring that Jason had to take out! He said this was probably here circa 1920s.

Here is some of the new wiring that is going in. Doesn't this look much safer than that nasty brown stuff?!














I'm sure you are wondering why in the world did Brittany entitle her blogpost "I am woman, hear me roar!" Well, while the boys were all working on their manly projects...I was upstairs texturing! Andy and I were originally going to hire someone to come in and do it for us but decided that we could save money and do it ourselves. We watched several...and by several I mean a lot of YouTube videos on how to texture walls. Andy got me started and low and behold...hot dog, I got it! (I ended up being better at it than Andy, hehe!) It is not very difficult to do, it is cheap, but it is time consuming. Which, right now...I have all the time in the world.

Here is a before of the texture that is on the walls as well as the ceiling. It is all over the house. I know you might be thinking that it isn't that bad and it truly isn't. However, there has been coat after coat after coat of paint slapped on these walls that they look old. So we thought that if we put some new drywall up, they will look brand spankin' new. Plus, there are spots that the texture looks really bad, and we need to cover it up,

This is the after. We are using a heavy texturing design so that we are able to mask some of the wall imperfections. (This is a different wall than shown before...it just had the best lighting at the time I took the photos!) I asked Andy what the name of the texture is and here is the answer I received, "Heck, I don't know...it is called the Andy and Brittany texture." We are definitely not professionals, but we like it! This is what I have spent most of my week doing besides getting prepared for summer school. We are still undecided about what to do on the ceilings. Currently, they are popcorn ceilings (yuck), and they must go! I will keep you updated.

Next up, Andy and Greg will be working on the sheetrock. This is when our house will truly begin looking like a home. I'm crossing my fingers that we will possibly move in by August...keep your fingers crossed with me! 

Until next time,

Brittany

Fence and the Ladies

Wow! It certainly has been a long time since I have posted, and I apologize for the delay. Andy and I have been incredibly busy with not only the farm but life in general.

As the school year is coming to a close, I have finally begun my Masters program, and it is safe to say that I am extremely overwhelmed. So far, I am handling everything quite well I believe. It is all about time management!

Not only is Andy working on our farm on his days off but as most of you know, he works on a rig in North Dakota. He is one of the hardest working men I know! Life as we know it is work, work, work. There is always something to be done.

Let me update you on the progress on the Jenkins farm! Andy and his dad, Greg, have taken a hiatus from working on the house to building the fence around the whole entire place to ensure that the cattle don't get out onto the highway or in our neighbor's pastures. I never realized but building fence is HARD! Oh my goodness. One day Andy drove 110 steel posts, and I thought by the time he got home, he was going to drop! Needless to say, he slept really good that night. We have also had Kaleb, a welder that Andy and Greg know, come and do some work for us. He has been extremely instrumental in getting the corner-posts built as well as the corral. All of the fence and corral has finally been finished and it looks awesome!

Here is a picture of the fence that is stretched across the first 40 acres of our land. After this was completed, Andy, Greg, and I spent a Saturday working cattle and getting them current on their vaccinations. Once that was completed, we moved 40-something over to our place where there is fresh pasture.

It took all of 30 seconds of being off of the trailer for the ladies to begin grazing. They seem to be enjoying their new home! One of the neighbor's bulls keeps crossing the fence (that wasn't replaced because it seemed to be in good condition). I think he likes this set of cows! But hands off Mr. Bull...they have a different man who will be coming to the farm shortly.

Now that the fence is completed, I will have a lot of painting to do. Yes, I am the lucky one who will get to acid wash the steel and then paint it. All in the name of beauty, right? We are going to paint it all white since we will be using white trim on the house. It is going to look great when we are finished...it is just the getting there part.

The Jenkins farm is coming together now if only I could say the same for the house! The last day of school is this Friday and Andy comes home that day as well. We will have a little over a week together at home before he goes back to work and I teaching start summer school...and you betcha we will cookin' and bookin' on the house!

Until next time,
Brittany

Day 8 of Renovations

We are officially have wrapped up Day 8 of our renovations. Some days I feel like we have gotten really far in the process and other days I feel like we have done nothing. It is a daily battle within my mind. I know it will get done...eventually. I think we can, I think we can, I think we can. This weekend everyone at work was sharing their lovely Easter weekend plans, and they would ask me what I was doing. My enthusiastic response (insert sarcastic tone here) is working on the house followed by some sighs of exhaustion. Isn't this sad? We are only on Day 8, I want the house to get finished, but I am already exhausted...this might be a bad sign. Maybe I should be saying I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

Let me show you the new things happening in the house!

Here is the shape of the bathroom now that the wall is knocked out. It will be shaped somewhat like a pentagon (not all the sides are the same length so it is not a true pentagon). The floor still needs to be brought up from the basement. That is a project that will be happening soon!

Andy cut the flooring all the way to the floor joist. (Btw: totally thought this was called a floor joyce until I Googled it. Remember people, I know nothing about houses. I'm just the help/labor.) Andy and Greg noticed that the floor in the bathroom wasn't level (I didn't- whoopsie) so they decided to cut it all out and do it right. Andy literally cut out 4 layers of floor. Woah baby! This was a very interesting project to watch. The whole time I just imagined Andy falling through to the basement and hurting himself. I was glad when it was over.

Andy and Greg also shored up the floor underneath the kitchen. Again, I also didn't notice that the floor wasn't level. However, the men were very proud of themselves for fixing the issue. The supporting poles are obviously down in the basement. We also have another room of the basement that won't have poles right smack dab in the middle of it. I am very excited about all of this storage space. To me this means room for: big Christmas trees, all of the trimmings, lots of wreaths for every season, as well as decorations for each season that can be used inside the house. I don't know how Andy will feel about all of this, but I love it!

Here is the picture of the staircase with the wall studs built that will be the back part of the master closet. Andy and I have discussed that this wall will more than likely (if all the furniture fits like we think it will) have our TV cabinet on it. The staircase will get the be the focal point of the room.

This is the half bathroom that is downstairs. If you notice there is an extra space built that will be my linen closet. I am super pumped about this! It will be pretty large and will house all of our extra sheets and towels. If we didn't have this, I don't know where in the house they would go. 

I wanted to add another picture of the half bathroom at a different angle so you could see that when you first walk in the front door, there will be a wall with a door to the right for the entrance to the bathroom. Where I am standing, the dining room table will go there. 

As I type, Andy is snoring on the couch. I think he might be a tad tired. I am exhausted and ready to finally get some much needed sleep. Day 9 will start bright and early tomorrow!

Until next time,

Brittany

We have some news to share!

Well Andy and I figure it is about time to share some exciting things that are happening in our lives...we have bought a farm house that sits on 80 acres of land! I know what some of you might be thinking- I thought you all bought a lot in town to build a house on? Well, you aren't wrong. We did about a year ago and had every intention of building; however this came on the market and was too good to pass up (obviously because three other people put in offers as well)! Unfortunately for them, and thankfully for us, we outbid everyone and closed last Thursday.

The house is located in Wentworth, Missouri...basically the middle of nowhere. In reality, it is about 20 minutes from Monett (where we live currently) and 30 minutes from Joplin. I am excited that I will be closer to a Target but my wallet is definitely not. I will eventually have to find a new nail lady and give up mine in Springfield since it will be much further now. This is slightly tragic, but I think I might live.

The house is said to be built in 1906 but according to Newton County anything built before 1900 was just given a year because it didn't have a recording system at the time...the house is an old broad! Don't get me wrong, this house was built to last and has much character and charm.

Here a picture of the house that I took during the middle of the winter!

The point of this blog is to keep all of our friends and family involved on the progress of our house. We know it will difficult at times to stay in contact with everyone since Andy works in the oil field and on the farm, I teach during the day and am about to start grad school, etc. Instead of having to call or text everyone...I will post on the blog and include pictures so you can ooooh and ahhhh!

We have a mountain of work to do. The people before us went in and started on some projects but never finished the work so that leaves us with cosmetic and layout issues to fix. Thankfully, my darling husband and father-in-law, Greg, are incredibly handy. Greg actually used to build houses so consider him our general contractor.

Enough of the jibber jabber and let me show you what a week's worth of work looks like...!

This is the master bedroom before. The door to the right is the bathroom and the door to the left goes straight into the kitchen.

Here is the bathroom. Ignore the disgusting toilet! This is what happens when a toilet is winterized...it looks like there is extremely dirty water in it. Gross.

The bathroom is obviously nothing fancy and quite small. We are blowing out the wall between the bathroom and the basement. Once this is completed we will close off the entrance into the house from the basement and raise up the floor to make our bathroom bigger. (Excuse me for the way I explain things...I am so not the contractor/handy type.)

After one week, here is what we have! All the walls are blown out that we need to be gone and Greg and Andy have built the walls that we are wanting. The right studs will be the bathroom and the left studs will be the front of the closet. The master bedroom was big to begin with and we were able to add these awesome shaped room accessories...and what girl doesn't want a big closet and bathroom?!

Look at this beauty! We are in LOVE with this staircase. It is in great shape and will only need a clear coat over it. As of now, we are discussing what kind of support pole we will have to add by the staircase. The bedroom right above this room needs some support, and we really don't want the guest bed falling through the ceiling onto our sofa while we are watching TV.

Check out those stairs now! This view is peering right into the master bedroom. Underneath the stairs will be part of our closet and the wall will completely extend straight across.







There are several more projects in the works that I haven't taken pictures of because I want them to be somewhat complete before I post. We are working hard in the house and around the farm. It will be a work in progress. I've asked Greg and Andy for a timeline and have yet to be given a date. They don't want to commit to something because they know I will hold them to it! One day at a time!

Until next time,
Brittany