Welcome!

I'm Tonia and this is my family. There's Hubs, my wonderful partner; Bug, my darling daughter; and Boo, my charming son. We are the Collins clan. We are a homeschooling family who try our best to live out God's will for our lives every day. There are lots of stumbles along the way, but we love each other and this little life we're carving out for ourselves. Recently we found ourselves called to make some big changes in our lives so we're packing up the McMansion and moving out to a little farm in need of a lot of TLC. We have tons to learn and tons to do and we invite you to share the journey as we turn our not-so-new heap into a home.

Monday, August 5, 2013

What Did You Do All Day?

One of the brutal truths of home renovation is that sometimes you can work like crazy and leave for the day with things looking completely unchanged. Last week I didn't post anything, not because we weren't working- we were at the Heap every single night- but because I was going non-stop. We did plenty of work at the Heap, but I also was organizing  camp for American Heritage Girls. Every night was so late that I just fell into bed without a second's thought for the blog.

It would seem reasonable then that I would have some amazing pictures to show our progress, but I'm afraid that's not true. We've made some important headway, but nothing much in the way of picture worthy stuff.

For instance:


I pulled about a million nails out of trim pieces that were taken out of the kids room. It's not exciting work and it's certainly not an impressive picture, but it has to be done in order for the trim to go back up. On a bright note- only one wall had to be removed and we quickly discovered that the insulation in the house is quite adequate and does NOT need to be replaced. Hooray! This little bright spot will save us many hours of work and quite a lot of money too.


I also pulled half a million nails out of the wall Hubs had partially taken down and scraped off as much of the glue and remaining paneling that I could. I don't have a "before" picture because, quite frankly, it doesn't look any different after a couple of hours of work on it. No big, impressive payoff here either, but if the work hadn't been done then when we put up new paneling or drywall it would buckle and show bulges...not exactly the look I'm going for.

We've also had plumbers out....who basically wanted us to sell one of the children to pay for their time. There is some work that we will have to have a plumber do, but Hubs decided he was perfectly capable of doing a large portion of it so he's been working on that for a couple of days. It's taken numerous trips to Lowe's, but he's getting there. We might have a working toilet before the week is out!

Two different guys came out to assess the floor situation. They did not agree on how they would do the job, but they did both have the same very high opinion of their services......again we opted to do the work ourselves. We won't get to them for awhile, but doing them ourselves will save us literally THOUSANDS of dollars.....kind of a no-brainer there.



I wiped out all of the cabinets in the bathroom. Again, no "before" pictures because it really looks like I didn't do a thing, but the disgusting water I dumped out says otherwise. Things also smell a bit better so I'd say the work was well worth it.



The Hubs was also able to get one garage door up and functioning. It took him a long time as it turns out it's a much harder job than expected and he nearly lost a finger in the process, but now we have a larger opening for getting things in and out. It also looks so much nicer than the previous door that was there. Garage door openers are still a future dream, but they'll happen eventually.

The electrician came out today as well and we got some more good news. Most of the current electrical system is in good shape and completely safe to use- we do not need to replace it. This is fantastic news because, again, it saves us many hours of work and a lot of money. There is also a possibility that we can move the meter off of the front of the house, which would be wonderful. He'll be able to wire the garage and chicken coop for us too and he didn't ask for any children to be sold so we pretty much love him. (Thank you Phil!)

This week is crunch time. I'll be spending my mornings getting things in the McMansion packed up and my afternoons and evenings working alongside Hubs to get the Heap habitable. Thank goodness we have wonderful friends who are taking the kids for whole days- that really makes this frantic time a bit easier. I can't believe in less than a week we'll be officially living in the Heap....this should be fun.


Tonia




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