Before and Almost-After

How about a little mid-way comparison!  We still have to finish off the fireplace and the floors.  But this dining room is coming along!

April Weekends!

I can’t believe April is almost gone! We’ve got 3 more months to get a ton of work done at the farmhouse before my MBAs come back for Launch (orientation) in August. At that point, we hope the real professionals will be able to take over and get the big jobs done – roofing, the addition, new siding. That part will be awesome!!

We had a FULL weekend with A-Day activities, so farmhouse progress was a little light this weekend. But we have plenty of new things to share, even so!  First… A-Day!

This was fun and the Tide won! Manderson had an alumni breakfast before the game so we mixed work and fun with Mavinee!

Here are a few of the new things that happened at the farmhouse this weekend:

The first magnolia blooms!  I’ve enjoyed the blooms on this magnolia tree for 20+ years, but this is the first year they are MINE!  There are buds all over the tree, so I can’t wait to see how gorgeous this is going to be!

 

I got in the memorial stone for my Dad’s tree.  It’s a little bigger than I expected it to be, but one day this tree will be really big, so that’s all good.

 

Dining room chandelier came in! Eric picked this out and I love it – I think it looks exactly like a farmhouse light should look!  It even has those Edison bulbs in it, although you can’t tell from the photo!

This child!  Seriously, Mavinee is a gift.  She has worked so hard every time she has been at the house – and God bless her for the fact that she keeps coming back!!  She painted a ton of trim…

…and she mastered the wire brush on the drill, polishing up the door knobs.

See…

Here’s a funny one from the weekend…  What do you do if you have rose-colored antique brass door hinges, but the only screws you can find in the whole town are yellow gold?

You screw them into a scrap piece of board and spray paint them with the right color!  Totally worked…

 

Remember this door?

Well, now it looks like this…

I’m kinda obsessed with this door – and the hinges, and the knobs, and the face plates.  We are so in love with this house. And every time we get a little more sweat equity in it, we’re just in love that much more!  Come see us!

Easter Weekend

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!  Casablanca had lots of activity this weekend.  Eric and I both had Friday afternoon off, so we got straight to work.  We even met some neighbors!  The man across the street, Mr. Averette, said he grew up spending the night in our house – sleepovers, etc.  He had great memories of the house and is glad we are working on it.

Eric got almost all the baseboards down in the dining room this weekend, but I somehow failed to take a photo of it – probably because there is still just so much dust and equipment in that room.  But here he is working away, per the usual…

I won’t bore you with the endless pictures of us priming, painting, cutting and nailing trim board after trim board.  But we did have a few fun non-trim-board happenings this weekend at the farmhouse.  Here are a few of them…

My Manderson family blessed me with the gift of a tree in honor of my Dad after he passed away last September. We finally got to plant it at Casablanca this weekend! It doesn’t look so impressive right now, but it’s called an October Glory Maple and I’m given to understand it will live up to its name. Beth and Fleet used to have an enormous tree in this same spot and it was taken out by a tornado. For Resurrection weekend, we were glad to get another tree started in its place. This tree is surrounded by our Ozark rocks – yes, we really do bring home mountain rocks from Arkansas every time we go!

We unearthed the well!  This well has been completely buried by a bush for about 20 years. It took a few weekends of diligent trimming, but we hope to someday have a working well for all our outdoor gardening needs!  If any of my blog followers happen to be an expert on how to resurrect this particular country necessity, please email me!!

Here are a few sights around the property from the weekend – pretty flowers that popped up, our friendly lizard that Eric named Liz, of course, and a shot of the peeling paint on the side of the house that I was hoping looked artistic.  🙂

Now HERE is something awesome from the weekend! All of our old, huge, heavy doors have either ceramic or metal door knobs. The metal ones have been completely covered in paint for who-knows-how-long! Eric used some of my handy Goof-Off that I’ve been using to strip paint off the doors and applied it to the metal hardware.

LOOK at the treasure he was able to reveal!  I cannot wait to show you what these look like when they are finished and back on the door!  (Maybe next weekend!)

We love the little crown detail at the top. Researching to find out what that could have meant – company logo, maybe? Not sure.

On Easter afternoon we got to just hang out with Dani, Nicholas and the horses – Duchess and Buckskin. It was a great weekend! I hope to have “after” pictures of the dining room next weekend!

 

Do You Have What it Takes to Take On a Fixer-Upper?

Against ALL odds, we finally closed on the Coaling House last Wednesday!  The tornadoes threatened to take us out, but we prevailed against Mother Nature!

I was kinda like this…

Eric was kinda like this…

And then I ran out of town for the SEC MBA Case Competition in Florida…

Eric and Mavinee cut grass, trimmed hedges, and changed locks while I was gone.  I’m sure it was extremely exciting!

Mavinee was probably like…

because she’s pretty cool.

Thank you ALL for your prayers on this crazy train!  There is so much more to come, but at least we are now officially the owners of the fixer-upper we are trying to fix up!  Drop us a line at:

15491 Wire Road, Coaling, AL 35453.  ❤

 

 

 

CLOSING!

Well, Friends, through the most unbelievable of circumstances, we are scheduled to close on the Coaling house this Wednesday at 3:00 PM.  I’ve prayed many times for God to work this out so that He’s the only One who could claim any credit.  And He did.

Can I get an AMEN?

This weekend’s work progress was good.  I wish I could snap my fingers and have it all done, but then think of all the mistakes I wouldn’t get to learn from… ha!

My project for Saturday was to get paint off this window trim:

It took basically the day, but those 40 layers of paint were no match for my skills!

Next I tackled the paint on this door:

Seriously, paint sees me now and starts running, so don’t invite me over if you like the way the paint looks on your doors right now!

Then this happened…

We have us one happy farmer right here. And I’m pretty happy the grass is getting cut.  I think his tractor’s sexy.  That’s a country song reference for all you head bangers and EMO folks.

And maybe the best part… I got mail!  Here’s our new Coaling address.  You don’t even have to call me Mrs. if you don’t want to!  (15491 Wire Road, Coaling, AL 35453).

We’re still painting and putting up trim, so it’s a great excuse to decorate our house with more blessings.  This is one of Eric’s favorites:

Thank you so much for your interest and for your prayers. HGTV still hasn’t called, but we are carrying on without them!  ❤