DIY Home Improvement

Our home online business has slowed down now that the holiday buying season is nearly complete, so we will hopefully be able to write more often.  We make the majority of our income online with our handcrafted jewelry line.  We don't make a lot, but we enjoy what we do (most of the time), and it is much less stressful than my previous state education job.  Additionally, it allows us to 1) work at home 2) keep our own schedule 3) have time to continue our quest to build a more self sufficient life.  At this point, we do count on the holiday season for some extra income.  Generally, it helps pay taxes for the year.

HOUSE UPDATE
Our business, combined with continuing to work on the house, has kept us very busy.  I have been spending a lot of time in the bathroom.  Thankfully, not due to any unfortunate need to be frequenting it, but because we have been working on getting it in shape!  Yay!  I will be happy to not take showers while looking through the 6 mil plastic into the walls and finally having the ceiling insulated and enclosed!  No more worry of spiders crawling out of the ceiling down into the shower with me.

Rich has been working hard and aside from one breakage of a pvc fitting has done a great job.  It's now hard to imagine that it once had a rotten ceiling that had to be removed, holes in the floor, leaking pipes, and a disgusting toilet.  We still have a ways to go, but it's coming along.  Here are a few pictures:

Bathroom at the beginning - Deceptively "okay" looking

Torn apart and a new window!

Torn apart

Working on plumbing

Putting in a new ceiling fan

Lots of work

Getting there

Love having enclosed walls!

Almost there!

The House at Huckleberry Hill

House at Huckleberry Hill

We haven't talked much about the house other than little comments here and there.  Following is a list of some of the more negative aspects of the house that we are either planning to fix (or have fixed) or learning to live with:

• We hoped not to have such close neighbors
• Lots of spiders
• Roof was covered in moss and not salvageable.  It caused some damage to the inside of the house due to leaking.
• Dogs had run rampant in the house
• House was filthy
• House slopes a little to the back - not from slipping or settling it seems. They just didn't do a great job building on the back part of the house.
• Plumbing, plumbing and more plumbing
• Several windows were out and boarded up including the French doors
• Deck was rotten and falling down   
• All the floors need to be redone and lots of new sheet rock put in 

We've included some pictures of the house for this post.

Note the moss covered roof and the beginning of the debris pile from the inside of the house

French doors - We found fabulous new (to us) doors on Craigs List.  We'll show them on another posting.

Just some of the dirt and uck that was on the walls when we first arrived

My dad and Rich working on the bathroom - plumbing, plumbing and more plumbing

View from the bottom of the property when we first arrived

View after Rich pruned terribly overgrown laurel.

We will be posting some pictures of the work that has been done shortly. 

I had to include the following pictures of the maple trees leaves. They are beautiful this time of year.

Fall scene at Huckleberry Hill

 

Big Leaf Maples