The Animals of Wieda Farm

Maggie - Head Dog and Home Protector. 

• Keeps strangers at bay 
• Fearless while confronting the UPS man (especially from behind a closed door)
• Keeps Bella from wandering too far from the house 
• Sleeps on the couch when nobody is looking

Bella - Rodent Hunter Extraordinaire. 

• Angers birds
• Keeps mouse population down (we think)
• Sneaks in the house to sleep on Cassidy's bed (or Karryn's bed, or under the guest bed, or under the dining room table, or under my desk, or in my closet.......... she's pretty sneaky)

Snuffles and Captain Davy Jones - Chickens at Large.

• Squeak - cluck
• Eat and poop

Pirate Freckle Pants - new member (no title yet)

• Super cute
• Wiggles nose and hops

Tiggs (short for Tiger) - Mouse Hunter in Training and Barn Guard.

• Found his litter box already (YAY!)
• Your guess is as good as mine......



Coco - arriving TODAY!!!! (June 26).

• Rocky Mountain horse from East Kentucky.
• Still in training (more to come).

Brennan on our "Wild Horse" - he's a crazy man!

Frito - The tank on legs! 

Frito was kind of a surprise - When I called Don (the horse whisperer) to check on Coco's progress, he told me about Frito.  He's a Tri-colored Paint horse with a gentle spirit.  He's about 15 hands and built like a tank, but seems to be a gentle giant.  So we had to make a deal on both of them.  We feel sooo fortunate to have met Don and to learn from him.  He has such a way with the animals and is a great teacher.

Frito & Don

The Wild Animals

The Killdeer - made a nest out in the middle of the old burn pile.  If you look close you can see the speckled eggs under her - she was yelling at me for getting so close.  To protect her nest she would run a few steps away from the nest and pretend her wing was hurt.  It took 4 weeks for the eggs to hatch and when they did we happened to be near by.  As soon as the babies were hatched they jumped up and ran around in circles - then the parents moved them to a new location. 

The Love Doves - enough said.

One day this spring there was a parade of 4 pairs of geese parents with their babies walking across our field to the lake behind us (evidently it was time for a swimming lesson).

The animal population on "the farm" is growing and the kids are happy with the new pets.  I'm just hoping the excitement continues as they care for them!  (The wild ones are on their own)

Summer's Here!

Kids home from school, roses blooming, pool parties, weedy gardens, overgrown trees..... we love working on all the things outside, but it stops the progress of the interior. 

Our big project so far has been the deck.  Jim started by powerwashing the deck... which is how we discovered that we have a redwood deck.  The first rule in redwood decks (which we then learned) is "never powerwash a redwood deck".  Powerwashing raises the grain and then you have to sand it before you can stain.  First of all, we didn't know it was redwood and second, we didn't know rule number 1!  Our weekend project quickly turned into a week and a half project.  After sanding and re-securing the floor we stained the floor, painted all the railings, stripped the top board of the deck railing and stained it.

Jim had the great idea of "carving" a horse into the floor of the landing - so, Karryn and I got creative with the Dremmel.

We decided that a lonely umbrella in the middle of the table wouldn't be enough, so we found these three matching umbrellas.  They weren't tall enough to walk under so we built little bases and attached them to the railings with copper plumbing straps.  I'm not sure how affective they are in giving us shade, but they look nice.

The Barn..................................

The barn is FINALLY finished!  They started construction in October and they finished this week.  We decided to go with a Kentucky black barn and fence.  When they were putting the roof on we changed the plan - lifted up the center and added the clearstory windows. 

It looks soooo cute from the house.  Jim and I made the bench in front of the fence.  When the contractor picked up the wood for the fence from the mill, they threw on a half log - so we made a bench.  We put it by the fence so the little kids could stand on it to pet the horses without having to climb on the fence.

We still have a little dirt work to do - and a lot of grass to replace.  The lights on the front are from Ebay (of course).  Jim really wanted vintage lights.  These lights are a green color - we didn't want the door color to compete so we went with a gray and white color scheme...

and painted the shutters to match.  But when we went around to the back...............

it looks like a party barn (kinda like a mullet - business in the front and party in the back).

The 3 dutch doors under the porch go right into 3 stalls.

The stall doors are from out neighbor, Toni.  She wanted to turn her barn into a garage so she gave us the doors, hardware and bars. 

There is a center aisle with the tack room shown on the left and the stalls on the right.  The big windows in the front doors and the clearstory windows make it pretty bright even without the lights on. 

The door for the tack room was our laundry room door (remember the barn door project?)  Beyond the tack room is the wash bay.

Jim came up with a brilliant idea for the lights and basically married 2 light fixtures together to make these "designer" lights.  (I painted everything black)

These fans may not look that big in this picture - but they are each 72" - and remote controlled (also a Jim thing). 

And..............there's indoor plumbing!



Now for the livestock.................

These little guys were all that Karryn wanted for her birthday.  Their names are Snuffles (on the left) and Captain Davy Jones.  So far they're living in the bathroom - but I'm hoping to promote them to the barn soon!   

The Hallway in Progress..............

As you all have seen in past posts, El built a closet in the hallway, taking a small corner of the family room, which we access from the hallway.  We then used the laundry room door for the tack room in the barn so we built a "barn door" for the house (to hide the mess and non-painted laundry room).

  The opening on the left is the laundry room and the unfinished opening is the new closet.

Again, the door on the right is the new closet and the barn door hides the laundry room.

The barn door was distressed during the "family beating" (of the door, not the kids) and a good time was had by all!  Maybe it was wrong to give Brennan the heaviest hammer...............  We stained it black then put a walnut stain over top to "warm it up".  2 coats of sand sealer then 2 coats of poly.  The door hangars are from Ebay, the rail is from the farm store, the handle is from Hobby Lobby and the corner braces are from Home Depot.  All hardware except the handle was painted black. 

New Kitchen (or at least half of it)

The kitchen is another one of those rooms that took a lot longer than we thought it would - but, then again, haven't all the rooms taken longer that we'd planned?  We have the work area of the kitchen done and now we're working on the eating area. 

Right after we moved in we removed the upper cabinets above the penninsula, and were left with just the soffit.  At Christmas El helped us remove that soffit and the soffit above the sink.  Another problem was that the room was really dark, so Jim took down the box light and installed recessed lights, undercounter lights, lights in the corner cabints, a new light above the sink and the big carriage light above the penninsula (yes, we do own GE stock). 

After we patched the ceiling, we added moldings on the soffits and on the penninsula base cabinets and installed a second-hand trash compactor from Craigs list.

All of the cabinets were primed, painted, antiqued and polyed inside and out.  The hinges got spray painted and the rest of the hardware was replaced. 

Next we tackled the backsplash.....

We had a large blank wall - so of course we had to put moldings on it............

We're still working on the eating area of the kitchen.  We've installed the base cabinets and added a bench seat.  We want to add shelves above the cabinets.........when we get to it.

Family Room Complete: Dec 23, 2011, 4:00 am

Just in time to hang up the stockings...................  Our family room project was complete!  Surround sound speakers (13 we think) were installed, ceiling was "dressed-up", moldings (lots of moldings) were applied to the walls, EVERYTHING was caulked, primed and painted, and the mess was cleaned up (just hours before Dot and El Gertner arrived for Christmas). 

 Isn't that the coolest ceiling fan?

before


(curtains were taken down - too bad I don't have pictures of the original lights - very 1970's - not sure why, the house was built in the '80's)


before   
(notice the wall to the left of the fireplace - that's the closet that El built - and the ONLY straight wall in the room!)





now

 The painting on the far wall is from the art shop in St Charles - kind of a "starving artist" painting shop - but don't say "starving artist" to the owner..............


now



                      

We have been vegetating in front of the TV ever since - we call it recuperating.

Now, on to the kitchen............................................

Merry Christmas from Missouri!

     We can't believe it's Christmas time already!  The season has really snuck up on us this year.  The weather has been pretty good (so far......)  Last Saturday I finished putting up the garland and lights on the front porch and didn't need to wear a jacket - it was 60 degrees!  We've had a few days of waking up to some snow flurries - the kids run outside to try to catch a flake or two on their tongues, then it warms up to about 45 degrees.  So far, so good.

We've spent the last couple weekends decorating for Christmas - we thought that we owned a lot of extension cords..... now we have more.  It takes many, many cords to get the lights out here.  We put a lighted horse and carriage out in the field - that alone took about 250 feet.  Every time we try to put up some lights we realize that we need to go to the store and buy some more cords.  Now we have a lot of extension cords.

Brennan thinks it's time to concentrate on putting presents under the tree (notice his little stocking filled with Hot Wheels cars).  Jim, however, thinks it's time to tear apart out family room....  Last weekend he installed 10 (yes, TEN!) speakers in the walls and ceiling.  (Hopefully it won't be too long before we post the after pictures of that project.)  As stressful as all that sounds, we really haven't given ourselves any deadlines, so we're enjoying the whole process. 

We hope that everyone has a very wonderful (and stress-free) Christmas.