Monday, September 27, 2010

A Camper at the land

Every weekend something new at the new homestead. This weekend: a very generous friend loaned us a camper, and a generator! The weather was so beautiful that we didn't need the generator this weekend, but what a blessing to have the option. Most importantly, one pregnant mom and 3 little bitty children now have a bathroom to use at the property! That means we get a lot more accomplished now. I brought our battery-powered vacuums and vacuumed out the mobile home until there was no juice left in them (still lots of "junk" on the floors, though). The vacuums at least got most of the broken glass up off the floors. I also got to clean one of the bathrooms a little, but the shower was pretty smelly (I think a vandal used it as a toilet), and I could only handle so much with my pregnant tummy! Outside, we got some limbs and brush that couldn't be used for firewood and made a huge fire pit...yep, we roasted hotdogs and marshmellows, too, and had some fun with it. We got part of one side of the house torn down, since it was close to the power pole, and not too safe for a bull dozer to get in there. Windows and anything else that we can't burn were also removed. We have no running water at the property, so we have to bring clean water to clean with/wash hands, plus drinking water, and we use pond water to flush the potty with! Our cooler is our refrigerator for now, unless we want to power the generator to cool the little camper fridge, but for now, no electricity is the least of our utility worries - we can always substitute with batteries, propane, etc.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Pics of our Mobile Home - Part 2











Here are a few more pics. The first is of one of the kids bedrooms. I'm not a fan of the teal carpet, but it is much better than the burnt orange of some homes we've seen! Other than it not being my fav. carpet, it is in decent shape, so we can clean it, and replace it as we have the cash. The next picture is of the walk-in closet in the master bedroom. Next is a picture of the master bedroom with a built-in that we may or may not keep. The doors are still there but just need to be put back on somehow. After that is the picture of the pantry, which is inside the laundry room (the last picture). Not planning on keeping the cow print shelf liner. :) Our current laundry area is in the garage, and I do tons of laundry, so not terribly convenient. I definitely plan to have a nice big laundry area in the house we build - right off the kitchen, like this one is. There is also another bedroom and bathroom that I didn't post pictures of, and of course the outside, but you get the idea. Maybe I'll post "after" pictures once it's clean and we're all settled in.




Pics of our Mobile Home












Blogger apparently does not want me uploading too many pictures at once, so here are a few! The first is of the hallway/front door, and part of the living room. The next is of the master bath; if you can't tell, the mirrors are missing over the sinks, and the mirrors over the bath are broken. This trailer is a blue light special people, so we have a few repairs to make! The good news is that we didn't pay extra for mirrors that we probably wouldn't like anyways. :) The next picture is of the sliding glass door in the dining area. No, the view is not of our property; these pics were taken before it was moved from the trailer park in Hutchins. Then we have a picture of the kitchen, where the fridge will go. We have an enormous fridge that I love, so I'd rather sacrifice some cabinets than have to give up my fridge, so which cabinets is TBD. The last picture is of the kitchen where the oven will go. This trailer was vandalized before we bought it, and some of the appliances were stolen; ironically, the appliances that were stolen were the ones we already have. We just replaced the oven in our house for when we sell it, and we held on to the old oven because, although old, it still works! We almost sold it on craigslist but we're so thankful we didn't. We can always upgrade later, but for now, it meets our need. The only appliance that wasn't stolen is the dishwasher, and that is the appliance that we don't have. I don't know if you can tell from the pictures, but the kitchen has an island - that is where the sink/dishwasher are, and there is a prep area next to the oven, and one next to the fridge.
We have lots of cleaning to do, replacing of mirrors, painting, and a few repairs to some cabinets, but all the important stuff is in good working order. I like the floor plan and that it has lots of windows!




Our Home Made it - In One Piece

This was a busy weekend at our place. Friday Jeremy took the day off and spent almost all of it taking down the neighbor's fence to make way for the mobile home. Jude helped Jeremy, and I spent most of the day sitting under one of the trees on our property, SWEATING (though not as much as Jeremy!), and keeping the 2 youngest entertained. Our nice neighbor, again, came out to help. Once that was finished, Jeremy had to cut down some limbs along the street, and I and the littles helped drag it into a pile or two on our property. It was REALLY getting hot and muggy, and the pastor's wife invited me in to put the baby down for a nap, while the boys played in her front yard with her grandchildren's toys. Not long after, Jude comes in to tell me that Jeremy took the van, and I assumed he went to meet the movers along the route. I found out that they have to post their route along freeways with the Department of Transportation, since it is a slow-moving vehicle, but once they were on the county roads, I guess no one was concerned with what route they took. There were two possible routes, and there were a few last minute changes. Unbelievably, it started raining! I'm so glad I do not do this for a living. I can barely park my minivan. I'd be sunk. But they were able to back this thing down the road about a mile and a half, until they got to our street. Then they had to swing wide through the neighbor's now de-fenced property (over the ditches and everything) and try to make it through all the tree limbs that we apparently did not trim enough! So, very slowly they went, while Jeremy and the neighbor cut down limbs as they went. It was stressful watching them drive through the neighbor's land, hitting the ditches, with the mobile home leaning one way, and the truck leaning the other! I wanted to watch, but I DIDN'T want to watch! The trailer's axles were exactly the width of the street with (small) ditches on either side, and then of course, the trailer itself is wider than that, so it was a tight squeeze. And we live on a dead-end street - so one way in, one way out! One of the neighbors actually drove up behind the trailer, and of course, couldn't go anywhere at that point, but fortunately the home was minutes from being out of the way. Since our home is to be moved again, once the house is torn down, it was just sort of parked where it landed - all the skirting and air conditioner still inside the house, the deck disassembled, and the cinder blocks still stacked on the property. It's hard to have it there and not be able to do anything with it (clean it, get it ready, etc.), but I know that will come soon.

One thing I know, my trips to the property are going to have to be fewer! As much as I hate missing the opportunity to be out there (it is so beautiful and peaceful), all the driving is really increasing my nausea. That and the long days (past 8 PM is a long day for my pregnant self!) means that I come home just so miserable! But, usually, once the nausea passes, I accomplish more during my second trimester than I do even when I'm NOT pregnant, so productivity is on its way! I'm really hoping we can be moved in and settled in to have our first Thanksgiving and Christmas in our new home, but I guess we'll see how things go. Next year, I want to raise our own Turkey or Goose for the holiday meals!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Mobile Home to be Delivered Tomorrow

Our mobile home is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. However, it is an interesting situation...

1. It will be parked in a temporary spot. In order to make things easier utility-wise, we plan to put the mobile home on TOP of where the current house is (my sister's very brilliant idea!)....so....we have to tear down the house before we can do that! However, the mobile home dealer was anxious to move the home out of the trailer park it is in, understandably so, since he is having to pay lot rent by the day. Apparently, moving the home to our site, and then coming BACK to move it to its final place, was cheaper. This guy is so nice and is really bearing with us through the whole process. We are blessed to have found him. Apparently, it is not legal to burn a house, but it IS legal to demolish a house and then burn the remains, so we plan to do that. Our neighbor (I told you, this guy is a blessing!) has a friend with a track-hoe who is coming out to do some dirt work for him anyway, and he's offered to demolish the house for us while he's out there. He said it'll probably take him like 5 minutes! The burning will save us in disposal fees ($400 per dumpster full!).

2. A neighbor's fence will have to be torn down in order to make the turn onto our street. Fortunately, the neighbor in question does not have any animals, and was happy to oblige, providing we put the fence back! Easier said than done, so Jeremy is taking the day off to make that happen.

I'm so very thankful to have felt reasonably well today and gotten some things accomplished (dinner cooked, laundry, dishes, a little bit of cleaning). The poor chickens have been begging me for food lately, and I purchased the grains and mixed them up today for them. They are much happier now, and don't peck at the door all day! I feel so unproductive lately because of feeling sick & tired, so it's nice to feel like I actually contributed to the household. :)

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

A Well and a Cow

Neighbors. We really have some great ones at our new place. Every time we come out to our property, our pastor neighbor comes out to greet us, always with an offer of help or advice. Last weekend when we were out there, he loaned us a chain saw and helped us cut some limbs down, to make way for our mobile home. He also helped us dig around our property to try to find the septic system (we were unsuccessful :( ). If I tried to list all the tools and ideas he's offered to us, I'd surely forget something, but he's just been a really great neighbor.

When we got this property, I thought it might be a while before we could get a cow for beef, and esp. one for milk, since that takes money, and know-how - two things we are a little short on right now! But, our neighbor has offered to buy a cow for beef and split it with us when it is time for processing. The price would end up being less than $1/lb. (that includes, ground beef, steaks, roasts, however we want it cut). 400 lbs. of meat would definitely set us up for the year, so that is a good arrangement. Buying a cow ourselves and raising it to butcher would be too much meat for our family. I was thinking I'd only get to do chickens this year (since I'm familiar with them, and they aren't too expensive), so this is great news!

Next bit of news involves our well. We found out from the neighbor across the street that it IS a working well, but it needs to be cleaned out (beer bottles and such down in there). We offered to share the well with our neighbor next door, and he offered to split the cost of a pump to pump it to our respective ponds. The well is 18 ft. to the water's surface, and our 25 ft. tape measure wouldn't touch the bottom, so it's at least that deep. It would be awesome in the future to use it as our water supply, but for now, Jeremy is just thinking of using it for animals. Such great news, as wells are hard to come by! Whoever sold the property certainly didn't know what they were selling or else we could have never gotten it for this price! God has truly blessed us.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Mobile Home Has Been Purchased

A few facts:
1. We can't live in the moldy, falling down house on the new property
2. We've never built a house before with our own hands, so it won't be finished tomorrow. :)
3. We can't reasonably commute over an hour to our property to work on the house and expect to be done this decade.
SOOOOO....the solution....we purchased a mobile home! Nothing big, nothing fancy. Double wides cost too much to purchase and esp. to move, so we went with a single wide. I'm pretty sure we paid more for our minivan than this home, and that's saying something, because we got a good deal on the van! It's smaller than our current house, but probably the biggest we can get in a single wide. It is adequate for our needs, and we have the cash to buy it - so that makes it perfect! The man we are buying it from is a believer, and he is fixing a lot of the things in the home for us and moving it for free. Vandals got into the home and damaged it, so there are a few cosmetic things we may have to deal with until we save up the money to fix them. It's not old, ugly, or smelly, doesn't leak, and hey, we actually kinda like it!! It'll be nice because it will be the first home we've lived in that is really and truly ours. We found a nice spot on our land, surrounded by beautiful, mature trees for shade. We just have to find that septic system and make sure we aren't moving in right on top of it! Can't wait to move into our new little home. :)

Friday, September 3, 2010

Survey is Done

Today we got to take advantage of this beautiful weather we had and go walk the boundaries of our property! The survey flags were out, and it was definitely bigger than we imagined! We got to look at whole other pieces of the property that we didn't even know came with the land. Our new neighbor, the pastor, walked the boundaries with us to help us find the survey flags and tell us what he knew about the land. We also met some of our other neighbors, one of whom loaned us his golf cart to drive around the land. Lots of it couldn't be driven, though, because it was so thick with trees! I'm just still so amazed. 6.99 acres is even bigger than the 6.88 that was last estimated, and of course, more than twice as big as the 3.44 originally listed. The neighbors have been so nice to offer to help us move, clean up the property, and loan to us their tractors, trailers, and all sorts of helpful things.

We also got to see the inside of the house for the first time since they've cleaned it up. Someone has attempted to board up some of the broken windows along with the back of the house, which was wide open with NO DOOR. My sister and I were laughing at their attempts to "secure" the house, though. We opened a back window, which my sister climbed through and unlocked the front door for us to come in. After walking through the house, I carefully locked the bottom lock and closed the door. A few moments later, Jeremy, who hadn't seen the house yet, just walks up and opens the "locked" door. LOL! We sure wasted our time climbing through that window. I think the lock box on the door is just for show. I doubt anyone has used it. :) We were hoping to be able to use the house for storage of tools and such for building, but it looks as though we can't even use it for that. There just isn't anything salvageable. Even the kitchen sink is missing a knob! Lots of mold/mildew throughout the house, thanks to the caved in and leaking ceilings, holes in the floor, just lots of yuck. So, tearing that thing down is probably our first order of business! We may be able to have the septic system pumped and possibly repaired instead of replaced, which would save us some money. Before we thought it couldn't be salvaged.

Our closing will be delayed until next week, since we couldn't do it today because of some paper delays, but overall, today has been a day of good news! The fresh air did some good for my nauseous tummy, too. :)