Learning the Hard Way

There is a door to enter the building, but how shall we approach that door?  If only there were a path to follow, I said... 

As might expected, working on an old place like our house often involves learning new things. Sometimes this is just a matter of doing research, investigating how to do something correctly before undertaking the task. Other times it involves learning things the hard way.

The garage we have on our site is a later addition to the property. It is, in fact, a transplanted building. It was moved from the property that I grew up at, across the field. When my Dad decided to build a barn at that site, my uncle chose to move the existing building over to this property in order to provide a garage for my grandmother. Since it was a later addition it doesn't really fit into the existing landscaping and, in particular, there was no formal walkway from the house to the garage. In the dry height of summer this is no big deal, of course, but for the rest of the year - when it rains, when it snows - this meant we were tramping through, or shoveling over, bare grass. This probably wasn't that big a deal when my grandmother lived here alone - she didn't leave the property frequently enough to make a track between the back door and the garage, and likely chose not to leave at all if it was snowing enough to make travel challenging. We are considerably more mobile.

We needed a sidewalk.

There are lots of ways to go about this, of course. Lay down cement, hire someone to lay down cement, get paving stones for your local landscaping company or big box store. But I had heard about an acquaintance in the area that had a large number of flat rocks stacked up in their backyard - rocks that had previously been part of a stone home foundation - that they wanted to get rid of. This seemed perfect to me: the ultimate in recycling and the price (free) was right. I just knew that Henry David Thoreau would be proud of me.

I laid out a small patio to come off the existing sidewalk and go around our old bell - there had been something resembling a patio there before, as stones were already in the ground - and then a curving pathway between two smaller trees out to the garage. LB and I cut out the pathway in the sod by hand with a spade and shovels. I did research on the depth that it should be, and what the bed for the pathway should be made of. I laid down sand and then gravel for a foundation before laying out the stone.

Laying out the stone - which we also did by hand - was really kind of fun. It was challenging, working with found materials, to put things together in a fashion that worked as a pathway. It was a little like assembling a real-world jigsaw puzzle with no picture to follow. The project took several weeks to complete, but when it was finished I was really pretty happy with the results:

One happily pictures years of walking along that path, sitting on that patio enjoying drinks, listening to the birds, taking in the view and the smells of country life.  

I am not exactly sure what the differences are between the paving stones one buys from a landscaper or big box store and the ones that were used a hundred years ago or so to make a basement, but whatever that difference is, it's apparently kind of important. The patio and sidewalk were completed in August of 2010 - less than five years ago. This is what it looks like today:

This picture was taken this Spring, the ravages of winter apparent in a number of areas. I'd like to say it was just a hard winter that took out the sidewalk, but it's been working towards this condition for longer than just the past season. 

Now, as I've detailed before, I'm not necessarily the handiest guy in the world. To be clear, though, this isn't my first stoney-things-in-the-ground rodeo. I've actually laid down several brick platforms in multiple locations - solid places for grills, garbage cans, and a guy changing his oil (that guy was me) to stand on. I've never had this type of problem before, so I am left assuming that it's the materials I used. 

Stupid Henry David Thoreau. 

IKEA!

Believe it or not, there's an entire bed there.  

IKEA may seem like an odd fit for an old Victorian-era home, with its emphasis on modern design, but in many ways, IKEA has a lot to offer. 

First, not everything they sell is ultra-modern in design. While everyone is familiar with the classic Poang chairs (which I personally love), IKEA actually carries a number of different design styles, some of which fit into the design of our house quite nicely.

Part of the bedroom set we got from IKEA.  

The other major benefit, however, is packaging. Most everything comes flat-packed in boxes (with Allen wrenches), which is sometimes the target of IKEA-based ridicule. But the reality is that old homes were not designed around the idea that anyone would actually be moving large items into and out of them. The hallways and doorways are narrow, with tight turns to be navigated. In a house like this, furniture in a flat, slender box is a godsend.

All of the materials needed can easily be moved into the room where it is to be assembled. Then it only becomes a large item when it's already at its final destination. This stands in stark contrast to moving an innerspring king size mattress up the stairs for our own bed - an activity that required three people, a lot of pushing, pulling, and bending.

Thank God it didn't require a box spring.

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It took most of the day on Sunday to put together the furniture for LB's room - the loft bed, a loveseat that converts to a bed, and a side table. But once it was all done it looked very nice.

LB's first night in the room represents the first time that room has been inhabited by a human being in over seventy years.

The two front upstairs bedrooms were, for the entirety of my life and, it turns out, my mother's life as well, full of generations of prior family member's... Well... Stuff[^1].

The rooms were technically off limits - we were actively discouraged by Grandma Marie from exploring any part of the upstairs. She and my grandfather had primarily lived downstairs. When they had children my grandfather went to the trouble of running heat to two (and only two) of the six upstairs bedrooms for my mother and my uncle. The others functioned essentially as unpaid rental units for previous generation's cast offs. But to the pre-teen me these rooms were an exploratory extravaganza - a veritable cornucopia of interesting stuff.

Being actively discouraged meant, of course, that I had to find ways to get up there. During family gatherings, when the adults got into long conversations was often a good opportunity to quietly sneak my way up the steps and have a look around. In addition, both my brother and I stayed with Grandma Marie often when our folks were away, and that afforded exploration potential as well.

Until now, though, I don't know that is ever really even thought of those rooms as a place where people would live (except in the abstract). And now here we are, decades later.

Pictures of the completed room should be coming in the next week or two.

[^1]: I wanted to go for the word crap here, but some of it was really cool. Among the items in the mix of stuff was an old Victrola and an Edison Wax Cylinder phonograph, the latter of which was the item I chose to keep when the estate sale was held for my grandmother's care.

Asparaguys!

They say that it's the little things in life that really matter. Living out in the country offers a lot of those little things, and one of them shows up for a brief period of time each Spring.

I remember my Grandma Marie walking through the ditches picking her asparagus. It was never shared with me, I suspect because it grew in small batches, too valuable to waste on a child who might not care for it (it's one of the few vegetables that LB doesn't care for). But as an adult I truly understand the attraction.

With so many fruits and vegetables nowadays, we've largely lost the understanding of eating things that are "in season". If you go down to the local outlet for any major supermarket chain and search through the produce section you will, now, almost always find asparagus. This is of course because, like so much produce in the grocery store, it is grown in warmer climates and then shipped to the U.S.

As with so many of those other fruits and vegetables, it is different when it is grown at home. One of the most notable differences is size - when you pick up a bunch at the supermarket the spears are typically about a pencil size in both diameter and length. The home grown variety is typically as thick - or thicker - than my thumb, and they can get to nearly a foot in length (or longer, if you don't pick them quickly enough).

At this point we've had two batches out of that patch, with a third to come in the next day or two (they grow so quickly you have to check on them daily to see when they are ready to go). The first batch we roasted in olive oil, as a side to hamburgers. The second batch we did in garlic marinara over pasta. They were delicious both ways.

There is, of course, a somewhat unusual side effect to consuming asparagus. The NPR program How to Do Everything did an episode on this phenomenon. It turns out that it doesn't happen to everyone, and that not everyone can smell it. Kind of fascinating and well worth the listen.

Cat and Mouse

I was going through my iPhoto library the other day and came across this video of one of our cats - Basil - playing with a deer mouse in the yard:

The video is a fond memory for a number of reasons. None of the cats in the video (there are at least three) are with us any longer. The reality is that the life of a farm cat is considerably shorter than that of an indoor pet. And to be clear, while we enjoyed the company of these cats, they were most certainly not pets. They were working animals.

What Basil is doing in this video was their primary job. Well, batting the mouse around for several minutes isn't really part of the job description - that's just a cat taking extra pleasure in his work - but reducing the mouse population is their main purpose on the farm.

While there are certainly mice everywhere, they are rampant out here. We are surrounded by fields. They are usually planted with corn, sometimes with soybeans, but in either case they provide a haven for rodents of all kinds - mice, shrews, gophers, groundhogs - we see them all. But when the corn comes down in the fall the mice evacuate the fields in droves, looking for winter shelter.

A big old house with lots of routes of entry (from a mouse's perspective, anyway) must look like heaven to them. Which is why it's important to ensure that the road to heaven is paved with feline fangs and claws.

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I would imagine there are people out there who will think what they see in the video is cruel - cats killing mice, torturing them for extended periods of time. I submit that anyone with that perspective hasn't really had to manage living with mice. They are filthy and destructive animals when allowed to live, unchecked, as a pest in human homes and buildings. You only have to have a mouse leap out of a kitchen drawer you have just opened one time to truly appreciate the presence of the cats.

Wind Turbines, Storms & This Old Lady

Winter walk selfie on a wind turbine service road. 

Thursday a devastating tornado hit Rochelle & surrounding towns.  Friends & family were concerned that we took a Wizard Of Oz ride.  Thank you, but actually Rochelle is about half way between here & Rockford.  Somehow it got reported that the Compton area was near a sighted tornado.  I believe the misunderstanding occurred because the person recording the video along I-39 was from Compton, IL.

Erin's Aunt Jill, who grew up in this house, pointed out how she hated storms out here especially at night.  A completely understandable point of view.  Our friend Carl posted a video to my husband's timeline of what a wind turbine does under extreme & rare combination of conditions.  So what a wonderful & interesting topic for our blog.  Part 2 & now part 3 of Lessons Learned From This Old Lady will continue next week.(Apparently this Old Gal has taught me way more then I originally thought)

This Grand Old Lady on hill sits in the middle of one of two large wind farms in the Paw Paw/Mendota area.  The wind farm closer to Paw Paw is called Mendota Hills Wind Farm, comprised of 63 wind turbines.  The one near Compton & the one we are in the middle of is called Shady Oaks Wind Farm, with 71 wind turbines.  When we first moved here I took a look at these big fellows & wondered what would happen in a tornado or gale force winds?  I searched the web & found several videos like the one below.

I've seen videos of wind turbines extremly close to or in a tornado & left untouched.  The fact is, these wind turbines are engineering marvels.

When you live in the middle of a wind farm you notice that during very high winds they shut down.   If you are real observant, one can see the blades turn to not catch any wind.  You also notice the fleet of trucks that are at one or more of the wind turbines on any given day, doing regular maintenance.  In fact one of these turbine workers stopped to help my husband get out of our driveway that became covered with drifting snow.

Turbine worker giving a helping a hand before continuing to his regularly scheduled duties.  Thank you! 

I have stood sipping coffee, watching one of the wind turbine trucks pull up to one on more than one Sunday morning.  The workers are like ants, busy at a turbine or moving between turbines.  Sometimes working as a team on one or working separately on a couple. 

Taken from the base of a ginormous giant.

Could one of these spinning giants come crashing down & hit our house?  Sure, but I'm more likely to be killed in a car accident then by an out of control wind turbine.  In fact, in the first couple of months of living in this Old Gal, I heard a window break during a storm.  A random branch broke off  & hit one of the upstairs front bedroom windows.  The wind was so strong it took all my strength to open the bedroom door to investigate. It has never happened again in the almost 6 years we have lived here.

The wind has been so strong I have been knocked flat on my ass by it.  A trip from the house to the garage can turn my pixie haircut into Eienstein hair.  We've had our deluxe Weber gas grill knocked over by angry wind.  The blustery wind provides many challenges out here, but to know that Mother Nature's energy is being harnessed by one of these white, mesmerizing towers makes it all worth it.

Took Calamity Jane for a walk & Bandit decided to join us, we apparently needed his supervision.

To our family they provide extra beauty to the landscape, no matter the season.

These giants make interesting focal points in pictures.  Erin, my husband, took this grouping. 

Can you hear them? Yes, but the sound is no more bothersome than the gusty wind out here.  When the windows are open in the summer you can hear the hum of the blades if the wind is calm.  Love falling asleep to that sound.  I have many times been lulled to sleep by watching the spinning blades.  Love it when the sun casts shadows of the turning blades on the walls of this Old Lady.

This Old Lady, wind & storms can provide scary fodder to overactive imaginations.  Moya & Erin like to joke that I have bat hearing, which is not far off.  I often hear sounds others can't & go investigate the source.  

When we first moved in, this Lady on the hill sent me in search of many "unexplained" noises.  When the wind comes from the south, Julia's old bedroom door rattles like someone is locked in & trying to get out.  If the wind is coming from the west & you haven't properly bolted the front doors they will burst open.  

My niece, Savannah, spent a night while dog sitting.  She went home after the wind shifted directions & Moya's closed bedroom door opened by itself.  In fact we have several doors that will open by themselves when the wind comes from certain directions.  

In Moya's old room & new room, the doors will open by themselves if she steps on certain floor boards just right.  She loves to freak her friends out with this trick when they spend the night.  Her friends are easy prey because they are sure this Old Lady is haunted.  Thanks to my Mother, who loved to scare the crap out of my sister & I as children, we have passed that on to our children.  Only Moya has the perfect back drop for such shenanigans.

Certain windows rattle in their frames, while other whistle when the wind hits them just right.  Any simple changes to the inside or outside will bring on new sounds.  There used to be tall bushes at the front of the house.  Erin & his Dad, Jim, cut them down last fall.  They were no longer there to block the wind so the windows began to rattle.  Luckily, I had told my daughter that our own Master bedroom windows did this, so she quickly processed the noises.  She prefers the rattle over the branches of the bush scrapping the window.

Top picture with bushes & old living room windows.  Bottom picture without bushes, but new living room windows & no storm windows.  We are waiting for Moya's new windows, which will be on second story right side. 

In the above picture you will also notice the new windows on the bottom left side, which is the living room.  Custom made by Marvin Window & installed by local Tod Schlesinger.  We just recently removed the old storm windows causing new noises to get accustomed with.  

The living room window on the side of the house has a tree outside it that is constantly in motion.  At night that moving tree will cause a reflection in the glass that could make one believe a ghostly form is moving in the main hall.

Rattles & bumps come from inside the walls as this Old Gal fights her on going war agaist the unpredictable wind.  Just follow the noise & she'll show you the logical reason for the "unexplained".  Trust her she's been here for 150 plus years & will be here when we are long gone.

The Lessons I've Learned From This Old Lady: Part 1

Moving from a 900 square foot city home to a huge country home has taught me a few important things along the way.  This Old Gal has forced me to be creative, productive & increased my knowledge.

As my husband pointed out in the last blog there are a lot of old and drafty windows here.  This makes for cold winters.

One year the birthday theme was to keep Marnie warm.  My Dad got me a Ciny Lou Who outfit from Pajamagram.  My sister got me an iderdown robe from her job at Lands' End.  I bought flannel nightgowns, shawls & a granny cap.   

Other ways to stay warm were to utilize The Hudson Bay Blanket, given to us as a wedding gift from my Grandparents.  Granted it keeps you warm, but is heavy making one feel like they are in a tightly rolled burrito.  We also have several oil filled electric heaters in use throughout the house.  My husband & I snuggle under an electric blanket while watching T.V..

Never underestimate the power of tea!  The family favorite is a blend of Samurai Chai Mate & Maharaja Chai Oolong from Teavana. 

I also have had to get used to the revolving door of cats & dogs on the property.  We made a decision to have no inside animals once Dax & Sisko passed when we first moved to the farm. 

Our first visitor, Bane whom we call Bandit because he would carry off packages &  other items from our yard or garage.  He also brought items such as a stuffed ape & a kitten.   He belongs to a farm down the rode & is HUGE!

A variety of other furry friends have come & gone from Serenity Homestead.   The roads, winters & coyotes have not been kind to our barn cat friends, all apart of country life as I have learned. We have an invisible dog fence which keeps our girls close & safe.

Top to bottom:  This orange Tabby was named Dexter because of the sheer volume of birds, mice & moles he killed.  Also the best tree climber ever, my husband once found Dexter watching him as he worked in his office.  My husband's home office is on the second floor of our home.  Basil a kitten from the first batch of farm cats & a younger Moya.  Jake was given to us by friends, but felt wondering the country side was more for him.  Dax came with us from the city to the farm, here he waits for Moya's school bus with Erin.  Bane/ Bandit again.  Our Cattle Dog, Calamity Jane snuggling with Pip, a barn cat.  One of Pip's kittens on the way to the vet, Unfortunalty passed shortly after.  Freyja, a Rottie/Boxer mix who just showed up on our doorstep. We've added a crazy Australian Shepard/Border Collie, Rosie to the mix. 

We have also had a number encounters of the wild variety here on Serenity Homestead.  One night my daughter & I returned from Gymnastics. I saw what I thought was a cat eating out of a food bowl by our door.  Lucky for me, my eyes adjusted to night vision before I had petted what was actually a possum.  The little guy slowly moved along as I recovered.  

I was feeding a new batch of farm cats in the Morton shed one night when a skunk decided to join the group.  The cats didn't seem to have a problem with it, but I stood still while it came & went. I was both amazed & freaked!

Lost Toshi, a pet rat, who got out of the rat play pen while outside.  Toshi went under the back step so we set a trap.  We SO didn't catch Toshi.  Skunks not only like cat food but seem to think Cinnamon Toast Crunch is yummy too.

On a side note, you know how Pepe Le Pew bounces along in the cartoons?  I actually looked up from doing dishes one day to see a skunk doing that very thing in our back yard.  We didn't have dogs at the time which was lucky for the skunk, dogs & us.

If any of you have been following us on Facebook, you know we have had a dog & raccoon war taking place here on the farm.  I used to think raccoons were cute.  My time here on Serenity Homestead has taught me otherwise.

Tearing through the porch screen door to get at cat food, not cute.  Notice the very still barn cat squeaky, in last pic.  When I turned on the porch light, it didn't bother them a bit.

Calamity Jane had the farm to herself until Freyja came along.  Calamity would bark at wild life if they dared set foot on her property.  This would bring Bandit from the farm down the road & together they would chase the trespasser away.  Then Freyja came along & violation for trespassing is death not annoying barking.

Freyja with one of the violators, then one of five coons she executed.  Yes, that is me taking a selfie with a dead raccoon with a crazy antler, Christmas hat.  Time out in the country has taught me to be less squeamish & apparently less fashion conscious ;)

I have learned the difference between random barking & raccoon barking.  One morning I found myself running to the barn to find the above scene. Freyja was there, but she is pushing against me to keep me out of "harm's" way.  That is the highest I have ever seen a Cattle Dog jump.  I removed my pack of girls once Rosie the Border Collie used the sturdy Calamity as a vault to get at the Raccoon. One more try she would of had it & chaos would have ensued.

Unfortunantly, Freyja's fight response instead of flight has taken a toll on her & our vet bills. 

Freyja now spends her nights in an outside pen while the other 2 dogs patrol the property & alarm bark at a safe & cheaper distance. 

Join me for Part 2 as I talk about battling rust while cleaning, doing laundry with well water & lessons learned while refurbishing our Old Gal. 

Windows...

This house has a lot of windows. I mean a lot.

See - a whole bunch of windows... 

...and some more windows... 

...and still again more windows...

...yup - more windows still.  

There used to be a window on the lower left, but it was removed when the bathroom was installed there. Apparently the silly folks decided they wanted indoor plumbing. 

Depending upon what you decide counts as a window, the total number can reach as high as 54 - that total including the basement windows, windows in the doors, and so on. The majority of those windows are original to the house.

More than anything else the windows, and what to do about them, has been the most perplexing problem we've faced in deciding how to address improvements. It wasn't a question of whether to replace them - die hards for historical accuracy will sometimes insist upon keeping the original windows in a classic home at all costs(1), but we haven't been cursed by that particular bug. These windows were made out of pine over 150 years ago. They were undoubtedly fine pieces of work when originally put into place, but many of them have deteriorated to the point that they cannot be opened without falling apart (and some of them just fall apart on their own at times) and, as best I can tell, not a single window still has the counterweight system still in place. And besides, it's clear that each successive generation of family living in the home has chosen to make changes; to continue that tradition seems right.

As you can probably imagine, the windows in our house are not of a standard size. They also are not a standard shape. While the sashes are rectangular, the outside presentation of the windows is arched at the top,and the glass in the upper sashes are arched to match. This is not typical for modern construction, but it's relatively common for homes of the era in the area - you see these arched windows all over the place.

On the inside it's clear the windows are rectangular at the top, with the glass sections in the upper sash arched (the window on the right has a storm window over the outside).  

On the outside the windows appear to be arched, with the opening matching the radius of the glass curve on the top sash.  This is shown on the outer upper-story windows - the bottom windows, and the top center window, are covered with storm windows, but they are the same underneath. 

Because it's not common in modern construction, replacing the windows leaves the homeowner with a difficult decision: do you pay extra to replace the window with a custom unit, or do you modify the window to accept a standard replacement window.

Looking at homes in the region, most people have understandably gone the second route. I've seen this handled in a number of different ways. Some folks appear to have ordered a standard-shaped window that mostly fills the opening, while others have modified the window portal itself to fill in the arch. As one can imagine, there are more and less successful versions of each approach in the area.

After considerable deliberation we decided to go the other route. We wanted to preserve the historical appearance of the home, and that meant going With custom windows(2). This meant making other sacrifices - in particular, doing windows one room at a time, thus far with at least a year between window projects to manage cost. We started with the living room, where we spend the majority of our time in the house, and where the thermostat happens to live.

We did the project for the living room windows over a year ago. The windows looked great from the inside, but we had no idea what they looked like from the outside. My grandfather, when he had lived here, had covered all of the first story windows with storm windows. These appear to have been tall, store bought items that he modified by attaching a handmade arch to the top of each one (my Grandpa Ray was a pretty handy guy). The storm windows covered the first story windows for (as best I can tell) my entire life. My grandparents simply never opened the windows(3).

This past weekend I finally got around to taking off the old storm windows. This is more of a project than you might think. In an effort to improve the energy efficiency I had caulked most of them with silicone sealant, and the height of the house puts the tops of even the lower story windows well above the height of a standard stepladder. This means extended periods of time cutting away caulk while standing (in my case) on an ancient wooden ladder and then pulling off a very heavy, very tall storm window.

It was, I think, worth the effort.

There will be more on the windows - they are clearly a large part of the story of the house.

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(1): And I really do mean at all costs. These old windows are an energy suck. You can stand in front of a closed window in the house and easily feel all of the outside air moving through it, even from a couple of feet away. They are single pane glass, and the pockets on the sides where the window counterweights used to be might as well be an open hole to the outside as far as the wind is concerned.

(2): We found that Marvin Windows was able make a window to fit our application. I contacted the Pella folks in our area as well, but they simply didn't call back, so...

(3): Understandably so. When we tried to open some of the windows shortly after moving in, many of them started to come apart, and we cracked at least one pane of glass in the attempt.

Let There be Light

Drafty.

That's one of the realities of living in a 150+ year old house - the wind cuts through in a thousand little places, and a few really big ones as well.

This old house has a beautiful set of double-doors at the front of its formal entryway. As with many of the windows, they appear to be original to the home. And, as with most of the wood in the house, they appear to be made of pine. There is a lot of charm to the pine(1) in the home. It's a very warm wood when treated with stain, and the original pine floors carry incredible character - unlike with a modern, smooth floor you can feel the individual grain as you walk through the home in bare feet, see the evidence of traffic from generations past(2).

However, even with proper care, the pine pieces that have been exposed to the elements have aged less well than other materials might have. This is true of our windows, and certainly true of the front double-doors(3). As a result, a big part of each autumn has been going through and winterizing the areas that we can identify as major points of heat loss. This involves a lot of plastic window kits (I can officially verify that the off-brand kits are just as good as the ones from 3M, at significantly less cost), and closing off parts of the home that we are not yet using. Because we have a second, back stairwell and were not using most of the rooms upstairs, this included completely closing off the front formal entryway in order to keep from having to heat the space with the double-doors. While it is a beautiful entryway, the doors face west, the predominant wind direction in our area, and in winter you can literally stand in front of them and feel the wind coming through. Occasionally one would need to go into the front hallway to go upstairs and get something after it had been closed off for the winter. It was like stepping into a walk-in freezer.

This winter was different. For the first time in the five years since we'd moved here we had a reason to be upstairs: we had finished the master bedroom. This meant that we either needed to become immediately independently wealthy to afford the increased heating bill(4), or we needed a different solution for those doors.

I've tried a variety of ways to address the doors over the past five years, with varying degrees of success - closing off the hallway is always a part of it, but decreasing the airflow through them is always better even if we aren't using that space. Most of those attempts have involved heavy-duty plastic sheeting. My earliest efforts included putting plastic over the outside of the windows, with the reasoning that the ideal approach was to keep the wind from entering the house at all.

Putting plastic up over the outside of the doors took me hours to do(5), and involved a lot of moving a stepladder around on steps in a fashion that would likely have made an OSHA investigator break out into cold sweats. Once finished it would certainly not have been considered an enhancement to the attractiveness of the house, but I was ultimately pretty pleased with the results.

It lasted about a week. Mother Nature is a harsh mistress.

Subsequent efforts have typically involved putting plastic over the inside of the doors, which does work (and takes considerably less time and requires no questionable ladder-dancing), but the volume of wind coming through the doors is so great that the plastic often billows out several inches into the hallway at the center of the doors. It also has to be checked and re-taped periodically, as sections fail due to the ongoing stress. If we were going to be leaving the entryway open and moving through it regularly we needed a better answer.

Where I ended up with this was taking rigid foam sheeting - the insulated panels used underneath siding - cut to size to cover the doors. The idea here was that the foam would both cut down on the temperature exchange better than the plastic, and would stand up better to the onslaught of the wind.

I cut the panels to size and secured them to each other with Frogtape - this is actually a painters tape, but the important property here was that it is designed to be gentle to painted surfaces, and I was going to be connecting this contraption to wood that had last been painted many, many years ago. I wasn't sure how it would manage the cold, but it seemed like it was worth a try, and if it failed I always have duct tape(6).

When I first put it up, I covered the entirety of the door opening, including the transom window. However, this made the front hallway utterly, depressingly dark, so I compromised and put a sheet of plastic across the top to let in light.

Not a work of art. Some idiot couldn't even make sure that the foam panels were both right-side up.  

It wasn't pretty. Not even a little bit. Over the holidays MLW and LB tried to make it a little better by decorating it in extra ornaments.

It was effective though - it worked far better than I'd hoped (I get lucky once in a while). The rigid panels did bow out a bit on windier days, but they held and did not intrude into the hallway in the way that the full sheet of plastic did. The Frogtape held nicely. And our heating bill, though up somewhat due to the general increase in heated space (adding the entryway and upper stairwell about doubles the area of the house we were using in the winter), did not bankrupt us.

The weather over the past week or so has reliably been in the 50's and 60's during the day. As effective as this was, this solution was not something we wanted to leave in place any longer than absolutely necessary. So, yesterday it came down.

As in previous years when we decided it was time to open up the central hallway, removing this contraption seemed to cause the entire home to breathe a sigh of relief. The light coming in through the doorway effectively triples, and the hallway becomes a place you actually like to move through, rather than something you scuttle through as quick as you can. In a lot of ways, for our little family this heralds the coming of Spring.

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1: Homes of this era were often built from locally sourced materials. Pine everything was a pretty common thing in our area.

2: Many would see these as flaws... "Character" includes the drag marks from furniture that was moved, and the wear indents from years of foot traffic. To my mind it simply tells the story of the house.

3: These large, formal double-doors on the front of older homes are sometimes referred to as Coffin Doors, with the idea that they afforded the opportunity to easily remove the occupant from the home in his or final box. However, this person suggests that this term may actually be a myth.

4: Didn't seem very likely.

5: As I mentioned in Adventures in Plumbing, I have learned how do do this sort of work, but I am nothing like fast at it.

6: Always. Literally.

Adventures in Plumbing

We rarely go into the basement.

One of the things that can be said about a 150+ year old house is that there is often little reason to want to spend time in the basement. We are fortunate in that it has relatively high ceilings for a structure of this age, and that a prior generation was kind enough to lay down cement over the original dirt floor. Despite these facts, it's not an inviting place. It's damp, dirty, and mostly empty, except for the utilities.

It was a fluke that I went down there. We'd looked everywhere else for a particular dog coat, and I ventured down the very steep steps to see if, perhaps, it had been left down there last winter.

I found the coat.

I also found a huge mess.

There was a stream of water running from the southeast corner of the basement towards the drain on the north-central end. That stream was being fed from a spray coming out of the pipe that exits the pressure tank. Prior to this I had been wondering how I would spend my Sunday off.

Now I had my answer.

This is not a welcome sight... 

It is amazing how much water a tiny little spray can generate

As with most rural homes, we are on a well. The well feeds into a pressure tank, which in turn provides water to the rest of the home. The well is, of course, under ground, and the water enters into the house in the basement. Since water doesn't especially enjoy going uphill, the pressure tank's job is to encourage it to do so, ensuring that one's daily shower is a successful affair instead of an exercise in disappointment.

Most of the water piping in the house is copper. However, the segment of pipe entering, as well as the segment exiting the pressure tank is galvanized steel instead. Galvanized steel eventually gave way to copper in most applications, but hybrid systems like ours - a legacy to the age of the home - are not unusual in homes of this age. Galvanization allows the piping to last considerably longer than untreated steel would, but it does eventually rust and rot away.

In this case, it had rusted sufficiently to result in a hole a few millimeters across, just above a T junction, and it was spraying across the floor. As a bonus the spray was almost perfectly aligned with the side of the dehumidifier. We have the dehumidifier set up with a hose so it runs continually, but the spray had managed to fill the device's bucket, so it was not running either - the water had free reign over the basement.

I have the unusual good fortune to have been raised in a family of plumbing/heating and cooling experts at Triple Service in Mendota, IL. I spent many a summer - often against my will - serving as gopher and ditch digger to men very skilled in the black art of plumbing. In that time I did manage to learn a thing or two (thanks Dad!).

A thing or two. To be clear, whenever I would make mention of anything suggesting I might be considering going into the family business my Dad would look thoughtful for a moment - I believe he was thinking back to the quality and speed of my plumbing work to date - and say "yeah - you ought to go to college".

(Thanks again, Dad!)

Fortunately, this repair was within my less than artisanal-level skill set (with tech support from my Dad and brother). It involved only off-the shelf parts, and Stephenitch Do It Best Hardware in town had everything I needed. It did take me the better part of four hours to complete - I had to drive out to get the parts and move the water softener to get the pipes apart (and the whole time I'm painfully aware that my Dad and my brother could likely have done the whole job inside of an hour), but it all came together just fine.

It all makes me reflect - as I have many times in my adult life - upon just how valuable that time working as a plumber's helper truly was. I did go to college, and in fact ultimately spent a ridiculous amount of time there. Much to the dismay of my former teenage self my Dad proved to be right on this, as on so many other things.

And he clearly also knew that, no matter what you do in life, having some skills surrounding maintaining and repairing your home will always be valuable. My hands aren't plumbers hands - I have learned that I have to wear leather gloves every time I tackle a project like this for that very reason - but I can still handle projects like this, and that is an incredible bonus.

This event - and a part of our adventure with our extremely windy day on Valentine's 2015 - also illustrates a more practical concern. We are a small family, and this is a very big house. As such, there are areas that we rarely go into. Given the age of the house, this presents the very real risk of something failing and it being some time before we detect it. Clearly, we need to simply plan to check the "uncommon areas" periodically to make sure everything is okay.

Complete and leak-free. And yes, I did wipe off the excess pipe dope after I took the picture.  

The Wind

As I write this it is a beautiful, sunny (if cold), calm day out here on the Prairie. As I sit and write this in my old wingback recliner, looking out the window past the frost on the old panes of glass, it seems an almost idyllic winter day.

This was not true on Valentine’s Day.

One of the things that people may not realize if they’ve not spent time on the open prairie is the effect of the wind. Oh, people are aware of the existence of tornados - The Wizard of Oz (1) is still pervasive enough in our culture to see to that. Tornados, such as they are, are comparatively rare and generally localized phenomena.

The wind, on the other hand, is a near constant on the prairie.

In particular, from Autumn through Spring, the number of windy days far outstrips the number of calm. The average wind speed in our area between December and February is about 8.5 miles per hour. This may not seem like much, but that average is a collection of highly variable days, and amplified by the fact that, on the open prairie, there is often next to nothing to block the wind - it’s very different than a windy day in town. Our dogs sometimes spend virtually their entire day on one side of the house just to stay in the lee it offers.

February 14th, 2015 was special. For Valentine’s Day we were given the gift of prevailing winds gusting between 20 and 30 mph. Things get interesting when it is that windy for an extended period of time. You hear the house making noises you’ve never noticed before (2), and you begin to seek out portions of the building that are opposite the bluster, because the heat simply cannot keep up with the draft in this old house. There were moments, as I sat working at my desk, when I suddenly realized that I could not see anything out the window beyond the border of the yard for all of the snow picked up by the wind.

Later you go out and pick up the pieces. Literally - it’s necessary to go out and see what has blown over and/or has started to blow away. Often our bird feeders are victims of the wind - the gusts catch them and get them to spin so that they eventually unwind and come off their hooks. I tend to buy heavier feeders so they don’t travel so far once they fall - otherwise I will sometimes find them out in the field… or find them not at all.

It was, in fact, windy enough yesterday to actually blow over the steel doors that I had set against the house in preparation for installing them on our outside basement steps.

I realize as I look back over this that it may seem like I’m complaining about the wind. This is not the case. I grew up out here, and I was well aware of this phenomenon - had not forgotten it - before I moved back. It is a part of life out here, but one that I don’t think often gets related in literature or entertainment set in the rural Midwest. Wind gets used for dramatic effect, to be certain, but the reality is that it is really just a part of the every day. Many of the older properties in the area have the remnants of tree lines planted as wind breaks, and, in fact, looking at old pictures of our place often finds large portions of the home obscured by the pine trees planted for that very reason. Our ancestors knew about it, and accommodated to it accordingly.

Probably I should be thinking about planting some trees myself.

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1 - Just for the record, I do not love this movie. Yes - it was an event when I was growing up, showing up on the TV once a year. My mother was always thrilled to see it. Popcorn was popped, excitement was felt by all… Except me. When I was little the movie terrified me. And no, it wasn’t the flying monkeys (which everyone assumes). I never got to the flying monkeys. It was that creepy Wicked Witch. Of course, I’m a grown-up now, and now I’ve seen the entire movie all the way through. On DVD. It may have been great production for its era, but now all I see is actors walking through painted sets (you can see their shadows on the backdrop), and what appears to be a steel cable holding up the lion’s tail. But perhaps I digress…

2 - MLW, who has excellent hearing, actually picked up a shift in sound that turned out to be one of the old windows failing in a room that we don’t actively use. The wood at the bottom of the top sash of the window had started to separate, and the pane had dropped down, leaving a quarter-inch space open to the out of doors.

Grand Old Home Seduces Her New Lady Of The House

The first time the Old Lady (my nickname for our home) and I met was a Johnson/Wade family Christmas Eve.  Erin and I were engaged as he drove me into the dirt driveway of what he called Grandma's old farm house.  I had pictured a quaint farm house, not the Grand Old Gal you see below.  I was welcomed with open arms by the lady of the house, Marie Johnson, never imagining I, a city girl, would be the next lady of the house.

I would be remiss in not talking more of Grandma Marie as I came to call her. Marie was a small woman and truly a lady.  My own Grandmothers didn't have Marie's gentle nature.  My Grandma Muriel was a tough as nails, tell it like it is retired nurse of Scottish descent.  Baba (Ukrainian for Grandmother) Olga was taken from her homeland by the Germans during WW II.  She was a woman who believed everything had it's place, especially children.   

All my husband's cousins, who were teens at this point, respected and truly loved Grandma Marie. When Grandma Marie spoke in her dulcet tones everyone listened.  Which is very contrary to my Grandmothers, who spoke in a drill sergeant's cadence.  Grandma Marie took pleasure in having her family around her.  She was happiest listening to her children, their spouses, and her grandchildren fill her house with laughter and lively debate.

Often times you would find Grandma Marie on the periphery of the action of debates, memory filled conversations, or game play.  It wasn't until I became the lady of the house I truly understood what Marie was experiencing.  We have had a few family and friend gatherings. Also energetic gymnasts running through the house reveling in all the Old Lady's wonderful hiding spots.

In the times the Old Lady has been filled with reveling is when I find myself on the periphery as well.  Just enjoying other people's joy or fun, but mostly feeling the Old Lady's energy of contentment. The Old Gal is happiest when rambunctious children run through her hallways.  In those times, if I am quiet enough, I can almost hear the echoes of previous gatherings in the Old Lady.  So I too, like Grandma Marie, just quietly enjoy my family and friends' voices and allow their energy fill my heart and soul.

I looked forward to trips to Grandma Marie's, but never for moment even entertained the thought of moving to the country, from the city.  As many previous family members in this home it came time for Grandma Marie to move into Mendota.  Alzheimer's robbed her of her memories although I am sure this Old Lady did its best to comfort her lady of the house.

Once Marie had moved to Mendota Lutheran Home, this Old Lady was left empty once again, something that has happened several times in her 154 year life span.  Marie's son, Joel Johnson, set about painting, wallpapering, updating electric, uncovering old pine floors, and many other needed tasks.  With heavy hearts the Foulk decendents put the Old Lady on the market, a first in her history. There was interest, but no buyers. 

The one bathroom to six bedrooms with it's green fixtures probably didn't endear the Old Lady to prospective buyers.  I will admit the green fixtures have grown on me (but not enough to keep them).  The bathroom walls when remodeled will be a shade of green in homage to the 1970's fixtures that have held up unbelievably well over time.  

After not selling the Grand Old Gal for sometime it was suggested my husband and I take a look at her.  Well I won't lie and say I was excited at all, but it was a house my husband spoke fondly of and what harm would come of just looking?  Silly me, it was like going and "just looking" at a puppy and thinking you are not going to take the puppy home.

As we walked through her empty rooms once filled with family treasures I watched my husband's excitement grow.  As I tried to see what he saw all I could see were cracks in the walls and Japanese Beetles on the walls, floors and ceilings; an old bathroom & an old kitchen when I had newly remodeled one in our current 900 square foot home.  This Old Lady had 6,000 square feet for our small 3 person family.

In our Rockford home we had just replaced a drafty old picture window banishing drafts forever.  As I looked around there were about 30 154 year old windows, not to mention the drafty doors. She had no air conditioning and the upstairs only had heat running to two of six rooms.  No way was I going to move here!  

The kitchen alone made me want to cry.  I had a newly remodeled open concept kitchen with roomy counter space, plenty of storage, a breakfast bar, and it was painted in the warmest red.

Yet, I could feel my husband, Erin's growing excitement, which I couldn't blind myself to.  I could hear Joel talking with his sister, Julia, my mother-in-law, about all the memories The Old Lady held for them.  My daughter, Moya, 7 at the time, was happily exploring all the rooms, closets, nooks, and crannies.  Her favorite spot was the steep, somewhat hidden, back staircase.

Then this Grand Old Lady worked her magic.  I'm pretty sure she reached out and grabbed me as I went up the front staircase, which I had never been up before as Grandma Marie kept to the first floor only.  My hand touched the worn walnut banister, that had blistered in spots from time, and an unbreakable connection formed.  A sudden picture formed in my head of that very same staircase only in the future.  The staircase was refinished and was decorated with pine garland with white lights for Christmas.

Then my eyes and heart were opened to all the possibilities.  The Old Lady filled me with a sense of responsibility and purpose.  The Grand Old Gal was challenging me.  

Erin had worked long and hard to get his PH.D in psychology and had become sought after for his talents.  Moya was a rising star in gymnastics, therefore our family was always on the run. Our small city home didn't provide the space or the serenity needed to recharge.

The Grand Old Gal sitting on her hill whispered to me "if you don't take care of me, who will, what will become of me?"

I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.  My father moved us to the States for a job when I was 7.  We lived In a mobil home, a duplex, and apartments until Dad finially bought a home when I was in high school.  I went from living in a big city to a small town, to a medium city, then to a college town, then back to Rockford.  I saw my Canadian relatives on rare occasions and missed the big family gatherings with the food and laughter.  The Old Lady reminded me that the first time I felt that again was with Erin on a visit to Grandma Marie's old farm house.

I was a gypsy, for lack of a better word, and the empty Grand Old Gal embraced me and in my heart and soul I heard her say welcome home.  I am a romantic while my husband is a realist.  As we walked through the Old Lady that day he was dreaming of what we could do with the Old Gal, but I knew his sense of responsibility would snap him back to reality.  So the Old Lady and I conspired to make her the Wade home.

Five years later here we are, still with the old bathroom and kitchen, but no regrets, even on the most cold drafty days that require extra clothing and an electric blanket.  Now that Moya is no longer doing gymnastics 25 hours a week an hour away, we have made some head way.

Our Master refinished just before Halloween 2014, started in July 2012

Current work in progress Moya's new upstairs bedroom, she's currently on the first floor.

Just before we moved to this Old Lady I became a stay at home mom and two years after moving Moya began to do online schooling from home.  I have more projects than I know what to do with, but I'm giddy with challenge of it all, which keeps my sanity intact. So not only did the Old Lady become home but she and I are taking care of each other. We are also preserving a family legacy and taking her into the next century as Serenity Homestead.

The old Barn

The old gray mare ain't what she used to be... 

The Old Barn

At the Homestead we have a barn. It's an old building, and photos of the property suggest its age is probably similar to that of the house. As barns of the era go, it's in relatively good condition. But it's important to understand that relative here refers to the fact that many barns of the era, in our area, have fallen down.

This home, as I've detailed before, was my grandparent's house, was the house my mother grew up in. Some of my earliest memories involve being inside of this house, playing here. I do not have the same relationship with the barn.

As a child growing up in intensely rural Illinois I spent a great deal of time in barns. Although many of them were quite old back then as well, thirty-plus years accounts for a lot of deterioration. Most of the places I went out here, friends had barns that were old, often in limited use, but still sound structures. Many of them still had hay and straw in the loft, put there for a previous generation's animals, left behind when their families decided to move away from cattle in favor of corn and soybeans. They had multiple levels to explore, ladders to climb, ropes to swing from; in some cases there remained the pulley and track systems used for getting bales out of the loft and through the upper-story door. As a child those doors seemed a mystifying and amazing thing, doors to the sky, doors to nowhere.

Frankly, it's a wonder we weren't all killed playing in these places.

My relationship with our particular barn, however, is nothing like this. I spent a great deal of time at my grandmother's home, and played here often. But while the barn is on my property now, it wasn't on Grandma's property then. The building, and the land it occupied, belonged to my (Great) Uncle Bud; my grandmother's brother, who lived just down the road.

At the time Bud kept cattle, and the barn was at the edge of a pasture. Perhaps that was the reason, or perhaps it was something about the building itself but, as much fun as I knew barns could be, I cannot ever recall going into the building before moving here as an adult.

The building itself is quite old, but its appearance is a mashup of generational modifications. When you walk inside you can see the old wooden structures, the mortise and tenon joints. There is ancient, decaying animal tack hanging from the wall - old leather yokes and harnesses, bits of bridles. But at some point, perhaps twenty years ago or so, the center of the barn was modified to make it a grain bin. From the ground floor the new construction is almost a little hard to see if you don't know it is there, but it occupies about a third of the center of the building, as well as taking up the lion's share of the loft, dividing that space into two narrow rooms.

Perhaps the most striking generational change - and the one that makes the building uninviting - is on the outside. This was an entirely wooden structure when it was build, with the traditional vertical wooden exterior panels found on most barns of the era in the region. At some point, probably more than forty years ago (as I cannot remember the building looking any different than it does today), someone elected to cover the building in large, white panels of cement board. These were placed over top the existing, albeit decaying vertical wooden siding where it still existed. In truth, those panels probably deserve a large portion of the credit for the fact that the building is still standing and structurally sound.

They are also ugly as sin.

The barn is on my mind at the moment because it has begun to decay more rapidly over the past year. Early this fall I noticed a hole in the western roof of the building. It's been a home for wildlife - mostly raccoons (and believe me, we will have more to say about the raccoons) and birds, though there were also foxes living in the barn when we first moved in. The raccoons are particularly problematic here, as elsewhere, as the building is full of mounds their leavings. It is clear that, whatever else might be said for the life of a raccoon living on our property, they don't appear to suffer from constipation.

Cleaning up, and then doing something with the barn has been on the long end of my to-do list since we moved in to the place. I am honestly not sure what that something is or should be. We don't really need the space for storage, for example. I've considered taking out the grain bins - a necessity for virtually all barn scenarios - and returning the loft to full-size. At that point there is a large open space that could be used for... exercising, perhaps? Open space like that is very nice for things like martial arts. But the list of realistic uses is short, too short to make it worth deflecting the type of time and attention it would take to work on it away from other things.

So I'm left in a bit of a quandary. I don't want to simply allow it to slowly tumble down. Benign neglect is the most common course for dealing with these buildings. Driving around the countryside here offers multiple opportunities to see this very approach in action in multiple locations; barns in various states of decline, ranging from those with roofs slowly caving in to those which are just a pile of wood laying on the ground. It is sad to see, but also perfectly understandable. Taking them down, repairing them, either option is a huge project for a building that is no longer in any sort of use.

At the moment my best consideration is to see if I can find a way to inexpensively patch the roof and slow the decline. I've purchased a book on barn restoration, not because I think that's what I'm going to do, but to see if I can better understand what is involved so I can decide whether I think it will even be an option.

The List

Almost exactly five years ago now we moved into what I like to refer to as The Homestead. This is the house my mother grew up in, her parents lived in for a large portion of their lives. It was built by John Foulk, my Great-Great-Great Grandfather in 1861, and has been in the family ever since. 

The move here was a romantic rather than rational decision.  There were times, especially early on, where I had significant doubts about the decision. The doubts are better now - for the most part - but The List remains.

It's not a physical thing. In my head there is an ongoing roster of things that need to be done with the property. And due to pressures of both time and money, progress on that list is very, very slow. 

We put new windows in the living room last fall. More are needed - virtually the entire house. But windows are a very expensive proposition here, as the house requiring specialized, curved-top glass in order to match the original look. We could go with more typical windows - they would be cheaper, and this has been done on similar houses throughout the region - but this led place has seen more than it's fair share of "make do" repairs over its life, and I would like to do better by it if we can. 

But this means everything takes longer, and so The List remains:

- Replace Windows

- (Finish) redecorating our bedroom

- Redecorate LB's room

- Remodel the kitchen

- Make the Library off the living room

- Redecorate the living room

- Add a garage to the back of the house

- Redecorate the dining room

- Re-do the gardens

And I'm quite certain there is more. These projects are easy when one has an abundance of time and/or money. We have neither, and so it frustrates me considerably. 

Note - this was a journal entry originally written June 1 2014.  I'm pleased to note that some progress has been made on this list, particularly on our bedroom. More on that to come.  

And So It Begins...

It's not a little house, but where it sits used to be prairie.

It was build in 1861 by John Foulk.  He intended it to be a statement, placed at the top of a hill (such as they are in Illinois) on a main rural thoroughfare.  He'd arrived.

Built as it was - huge, at the top of a hill, in the open wind of the prairie, it wasn't viewed in the same way by successive generations until my grandparents moved in.  They lived here first on agreement that their maintenance of the home would serve as rent, and later bought it outright.  My grandmother lived here until she moved on to the nursing home, Alzheimer's taking her away from her home.

John Foulk was my Great-Great-Great Grandfather.  He left this legacy behind for us.

This is the story of our journey as we move from the "big" city to this family home in very rural northern Illinois.