A quick update

Hubby will be getting a mobility chair from the VA. We wanted a cart, but they say he needs a chair.
And before he gets the chair, we had to have a new door, which they paid for.

So, our old door, and the new ramp they paid to have built.

And the new door. Turns out I took a crooked picture. Typical for me, haha.

Fifty-five here for the first official day of winter. Depending on which weatherman we listen to, Christmas will be anywhere between 69 and 74. Good weather for more painting!

Happy Winter Solstice. Merry Christmas and God bless. :)

Spring?

Rain tomorrow. Cold. Freezing nighttime temperatures.
I think spring is not here just yet.

We've been doing odd jobs around here. Took down the heavier 'heat block' curtains (they stuck to the windows on hot days!), and put up blinds. Hubby said the windows had them when he was growing up.
Makes more light in the kitchen.

We put up shelves, too. I'm going to put some pots of herbs on the shelf of the South facing window. Learn how to cook with fresh herbs, maybe.

God bless. ♥

July is almost over.

Thought maybe I should try and do a post. May have already said all this, but oh well! ;-)

Just as hubby was getting used to walking normally again, his shots are wearing off. He talked to the doctor and they are going to look into getting him another series. They wanted to do it when he called in last Thursday, but he felt really good and didn't think he needed to.
He should be getting his pacemaker around the 4 of September...

Hubby and son found these up in the attic while fixing a window.

Many of the original cypress or cedar shingles are still there under the tin. These square nails were what they used to hold them on.
Hubby has done some research and the last use of these nails was about 1920. While talking with some neighbors down the road, they told us way back when people would burn down abandoned houses and then sift through them to get the nails.
That was before the time of the easy to manufacture wire nails, of course.
It lends a bit of further credence to the estimate of the house being built around 1880.

A few pictures.

The window hubby and son repaired.

Hubby put plywood on that window back in 1994. The large glass had been broken, as had two of the smaller panes. The plywood was still there when we bought the property from BIL. There was a lot of caulk and stuff-it used. And the place that did the glass did not have the old style lead type glass or whatever it is called, but it still looks okay. Hubby wanted to install a sash lock, but the windows are not modern enough for that. The upper window actually presses into a slot that holds the window closed; but hubby put a couple screws in for my piece of mind.

Green beans. Not the quarts and quarts some people can, haha. I am finding that I don't think I like canning, but at least I am learning how to do it.

Found these mushrooms hiding in the cantaloupe patch.

A slice of yummy cantaloupe...

A shirt I saw in the local Hobby Lobby...

Take care and God bless. ♥

I had a lot of things to talk about

But decided I won't. Ha. Not writer's block more that I just don't feel like writing.
We are doing well.
Youngest boy got his disability. Now perhaps if he wants to spend 30 minutes helping a customer, he will be allowed to do so without getting a black mark for it.
The year is half over. I am tired. I haven't painted in weeks. Bad me.

We celebrated our 40th anniversary with hamburgers and hot dogs. :-)
We have melons growing.

The garden isn't nearly as neat as it was back the beginning of June!

I do try to read your blogs, but when I don't get online before 10 PM, it's not easy.

Hope you are all doing well. Happy July! ♥

Paint sets too quickly in the heat.

Way back when....

This is a picture from '94. We lived here a year before we went to North Carolina.

This is now. We didn't do the steps. Someone else did. We did do the handrails. I've started painting. I figure it might take me a year or two, depending of if I can get up the courage to climb a ladder to do the 'upstairs part'.

Have a wonderful, safe weekend. ♥

Pea inspector

We appear to have a lot of inspectors on the farm.
This little fellow has shown up a couple of times while I picked some fresh peas. (Note to self. Plant more peas next time, silly!)

Can you see him on the stick left of center between two pea stems? I am guessing he's found a good spot for bugs, since I've seen him a couple of times now.

Hubby is slowly working on some of the tongue-and-groove siding, digging out the dry rot so he can re-board it. While doing so, he found these old, square head nails. :-)

They have been added to my collection of (small) old things we've found around the farm.

I can't remember if there was anything else I wanted to add or not. Ha!
Weather is really nice today. The end of our cool weather (all two days of it) is here; but I expect the garden will finally dry out so we can weed have fun!

Oh, I remember. An AG picture to share...

Hope you all have a wonderful, safe, blessed weekend. ♥

Paint inspector

Saw this when I looked out on the porch. In the corner where I painted yesterday.

Stupid bug. I had hoped when I took the picture earlier that it had landed there after the paint had dried; but when I went out to paint a little more about an hour ago, the stupid bug was still there. Too bad an egret didn't get it before it landed there.
I'll let someone else get it off the paint. Because I really really do not like bugs!

Berry season. :-)

Hope all the 'Mothers' out there have had a wonderful Mother's day. Have a blessed, safe week. ♥

So we put in a new vent

for our stove.

We looked long and hard for a vent like the old one when hubby grew up in this house, but they are just not made any more.
So we bought a new vent to go with the new hood we're going to be putting in.

Hubby had to cut through the wall of the farmhouse, of course. I managed to save two pieces. The third fell between the walls.

The reason so many old houses survive so long? They are made with double walls. Double wood walls. Walls on the inside, and walls on the outside. When my brother came out to help us last time, he said he couldn't build a house like ours. The cost would be prohibitive.

I should have taken more pictures, but I was busy helping hubby. I did take a few though.

This is what 100+ year old cypress wood looks like. :-) The wider piece is from the outside. The narrow piece is from the inside.

They used tongue and groove back then. Stupidly, I forgot to take a picture of the 'tongued' wood;

But I do have a couple of pictures of the grooved inside wood.

Doesn't it look amazing? Very well cut, I'd say.

The outside is... lap board, I think it was called? The boards were placed bottom to top, each board overlapping the previous one.
They were ... sorry. Words don't come as easily as they used to. But here's how the outside boards were formed.

That looks pretty well done to me, even without modern routers.

Hope you all have a safe New Year's Eve, and a wonderful New Year. ♥

Now we know the rest of the story.

Hubby told me this morning, as we were waking up, that BIL remembered that the... whatever the pipe is called that goes to the leech field -- well, BIL remembered that the pipe from septic number 2 runs out back alongside the out building.
So I said, "Oh. You mean it was put in when your family still owned that property."
Hubby said yes.
So that explains how it could get muddy and get a tractor stuck, I guess.
I told him we'll just have to keep an eye on it then; and if it starts getting muddy when there's been no rain, I suppose that tank will have to be pumped.
We also need to fill in the hole, and then mark it somehow so we remember where it is.

I don't really know how big that property is back there. But the FIL lost it many years ago due to drinking and gambling. That's how 'the farm' came to be the 6 or so acres it is today.

Hope you're all having a good day. I suppose I should go out and weed. Ugh.

See you later!

Fact is stranger than fiction.

Blogger is being a brat and keeps logging me out when I try to post; but yet lets me comment on blogs. >:-/

We went and bought a couple hundred dollars worth of PVC to reroute the bathroom plumbing. After we got home, Hubby decided to check the pipe the way the plumber suggested, and it seems the second septic system works.

So, we put in a patch pipe. A temporary fix until hubby is at 100%. We'll find out tonight if it works or not. And we'll keep the extra pipe just in case.

Anyway, BIL called after hubby emailed him.
Seems he remembers their father and an uncle - a licensed plumber - putting in the second septic tank and leech field.

And he also remembers the second leech field apparently leaked under the access 'road' of the property behind this one. It's a dirt access way that exists by being driven over a lot.

That property used to belong to hubby's family, but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, apparently the farmer's tractor got stuck in the mud created by the leech field. So the story goes.
Now those are big tractors that farm that field, so that kind of surprises me. I don't know what that says about the leech field, because it could not have been put back there, it must have leaked?

So, the BIL said, in a fit of anger, their father dug up the sewer line and broke it, right where the missing pipe is!

Now, as far as I know, that bathroom has always been used.
And FIL passed away in the late 70s or early 80s. My memory fails me yet again, sorry.
But still, that is a LONG time for that bathroom to be...working like that.

It might explain why, though, when we got here, the bathtub in that bathroom was just allowed to empty onto the ground under the house.

Ugh.

Ah well. Moving on. Hopefully it will work well enough for the reunion next month.

Take care! ♥

So it was only $75....

Thanks for your comments, everyone.

We did call a plumber, and he came out. They were here about an hour or so. And do you know what we found?
We have two septic tanks.

It gets stranger.

The reason hubby's sewer snake came back dry the first time? It was going to the second septic tank that they found in the middle of the back yard.

The reason the sewer snake couldn't get through the blockage? It was capped off!

Remember the leaks I mentioned? Well, apparently the Rid-X would do its thing, and because the pipe was blocked off, the only place left for the liquids to go was out the leaks.
Just think about that for a while.

Apparently whoever did the 'plumbing' work (I use that term loosely) capped the lines off in two places with some sort of rubber and hose clamps.
The cleanout plug under the house, where one of the smaller 'caps' was done, had basically rotted through. If hubby hadn't noticed the smell and gone under to find the problem, well, I don't like to think about it. We're hosting a reunion in about 6 and a half weeks.
That's why hubby put off surgery.

Anyway, the plumber said the second tank - which is about a foot underground, is probably fine to use - he told us a simple way to check it; but without knowing why one bathroom was cut off from that tank, hubby is not willing to use it.

The plumber wondered why the tank was so far out in the yard, until we explained to him that the out building used to be part of the house, too.

Anyway, apparently at one time, both bathrooms were connected to this second tank; while the utility room and kitchen went to the tank closest to the house.

Seventy-five dollars was worth finding out this information, because the pipe going to this septic tank was ceramic. We would never have found it if not for the knowledge of the plumber in tracking down curious problems.

So now hubby will draw out a blueprint, buy PVC pipes, and join the first bathroom to the sewer line for the utility room.
It means taking the new toilet off, buying a new collar for it, and taking out as much of the old cast iron sewer pipe as he can get out.

Things were going to well, but it could have been a LOT worse, so we thank God for small blessings, and for cast iron pipe to go to the recycle. :-)

Hope everyone is doing well. ♥

I knew we'd be doing a lot of work,

but we found out today it will be a lot more.

We thought we had a plugged sewer line.
Rented a snake and put it through two different... clean out points.
One run came back completely dry. It didn't get to the septic tank, which it should have done easily.
For the second run - where hubby has to get under the house (he can get on his hands and knees once he is completely under it); he hit a block he couldn't get the snake past. (He also tried some sort of rubber thing which expands to the size of the pipe and shoots pressurized water at the blockage.)
And while he was there, and having me run some clean water through the lines, discovered that there are three different leaks, in addition to the blockage.

And because this house is 100 years old, it not only has PVC pipe from when hubby fixed the washer drain line and the main bathroom lines; it also has cast iron pipe and old ceramic pipe for the plumbing.

We decided we had to call a plumber.

And we're back living in the trailer because only the washer and the kitchen lines are uncompromised.

We figure any plumber that comes out probably won't touch it, really. It's not going to be an easy job.
We're expecting easily a thousand dollars or more for an estimate.
*sigh*

Oh well.

Hope you all have a blessed week! ♥