An Inside Job

We'll get the important news out of the way first.  Lulu Belle is adjusting nicely.  She and Sammie have had their ups and downs.  At worst they tolerate each, meaning that Sammie wants to be BFFs and Lulu Belle either isn't interested or gives a grumpy, "get away from me" growl while Sammie slinks away dejected.  Most times they're fine.  Sometimes it's just a quick sniff between them, which Sammie takes as a sign of being buddies and is happy to no end.  A few times Lulu Belle has even given her a sniff and a lick despite Sammie's excitedly wagging tail smacking her in the face.  But when it's time to "go outside", they bound out the door together like kids heading to the playground.  They're figuring out.

Moving on to the house...

The trim work has started!  What?!!!  Already?!!!  Yeah...that's what I thought.  I figured that came last, but it doesn't.  It's got to be in place before the painters move in.  So all of our interior doors and their accompanying trim have been installed.

For the upstairs we stayed with the standard trim that comes with the doors and also added it around the windows.  Standard baseboards as well.  Downstairs we wanted a little more "farm house" look and feel.  We also decided to go with a non-standard, five-panel door throughout the house.  You used to see them a long time ago, but you don't see them much any more.   We love the old-fashioned look.

Plain trim for downstairs.  Four inches wide on the sides
and six inches across the top with a slight overhang.

One of the kitchen windows with added trim for the overhead lights.
Same as the doors, but with eight inch wide trim on the bottom.

Another part of the trim is the wall of reclaimed wood that we mentioned a few posts back.  The big barn was built out of cypress that was milled locally...a long time ago...and the loft was built with plenty of long, straight planks of it.  All we had to do was pull it up and get it down.

Long story, short... Working with my crowbar and hammer in the loft of the barn, under a metal roof in the hot Georgia sun, I not only managed to "reclaim" about 400 board feet of cypress planks, I also reclaimed every bit of dust and dirt (from thousands of critters over the years) up there because I was soaked in sweat.  Funny how the sweat runs off of you, but the dirt doesn't.  Lucky for you, there are no pics...that I'm allowing.  But here are some pics of the "reclaiming operation".

We were going to leave the nails, but the underside of the boards were better looking.

Removing the nails.  First time using our carport for something!!!

Using the drill with a plastic brush to get the dirt off.

The man of the hour!

The (mostly) finished product!

Along with the trim moving along, the bricklayers showed back up.  After the beautiful job they did around the house, I was looking forward to seeing what they would do with the front steps.

Ta dah!!!

Nice and wide!

And that's not all...

Our step out from the mud/laundry room.

But wait...there's more!

Stone, bricks and shiplap!
Chip and Joanna Gaines would be so proud!

There you have it so far.  As you can see, things are coming together.  We've got more reclaimed wood that we've been cleaning up for the dining room doorway frame and the fireplace mantle. That'll have to wait for another blog entry.

A tale of two dormers

Progress continues in fits and spurts, and the siding is finally *done!

The storm clouds in the background add a dramatic flair.

*Except for some trim pieces that go on last and therefore don't count, except to the county inspectors who wouldn't issue a certificate of occupancy for the cabin until the vent cover was put on.  Those guys are very thorough, and that's a good thing, just a bit frustrating.

The siding team got started week before last and had 2 sides completely done in 2 days. They were going so fast we expected they'd be done in just a few more days and we'd be able to share some pictures.  Ha, ha...no.  Days went by with no progress at all, and I think they were deliberately leaving the front of the house unfinished just to mess with me!  Why else do just one dormer and leave the other?!!

Before and after in one picture

I really can't complain, I know those guys are working hard (and we're well into 50+ days of 90+ degree weather).  They work multiple projects at a time and we've had afternoon storms that delay them, too.  They have been working long days and weekends to get caught up.  I'm just impatient for it to be done, but I'd rather them take the time to get it right than rush through it.

One of the delays was because they were waiting on a delivery of hardie board for the porch and carport ceiling, which arrived late Thursday afternoon (at the same time Lulu Belle made her entrance). Last Friday and Saturday the ceiling started going up.  At first it looked pretty much like what we were expecting - a plain ceiling.

Ceilings are hard to photograph (obviously). 

But then it turned into something even better, and it was worth the wait.  We had no idea they were going to do this pattern on the ceiling.  I especially love the little frames for the ceiling fans.  I love these little details that give the house some extra charm.

Yep, hard to get a good picture of a ceiling.

The east side of the house was the first one they finished.

Back side of the house.  

West side of the house and carport

In the house, the drywall is done and sanded and the walls have been primed. The interior doors, trim and baseboards were delivered this week.  We made a last minute decision to change the trim downstairs, to something a little more old-fashioned.  We kept the upstairs trim as originally ordered, to keep the budget down and because we won't see it as often (sorry kids!)

Installation of the doors, trim and baseboards has gone quickly.  The upstairs is done, and downstairs is about 60% complete. 

Upstairs den and bedroom.

Hopefully next week brings painting and lots more.  We think we're about a month away from finishing (fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc) so there should be something new for us to discover just about every day.  Stay tuned!

But...we said we weren't getting another one!

DISCLAIMER:  All pics are obviously from later in the story.

Last Thursday while Neta and I were out at the farm a lumber truck pulled up to the house.  I walked over to inquire about the delivery and as I was talking to the guy, I looked up and a dog stepped out from the house and onto the front porch.  I turned to the guy and said, "Huh...a dog just walked out of my house."  The guy looked up and chuckled and I expected him to say that it was his and had been riding along, but that was not the case.

Moments before the horror of visiting the vet.  She looks healthy...from a distance.

I called the dog over and it immediately pulled its ears back, hunkered down in a submissive walk and came over to me wagging its tail.  It was a very sweet, but extremely mangy, under-nourished and slightly weak, English Setter.  I walked over to tell Neta as the dog headed back into the house. Neta and I followed her back to the master bedroom closet and she was laying down, all curled up.  Neta kept the dog company while I went to grab my phone to look up the number of Animal Control.  I was hoping we could get the dog to the shelter for some medical treatment as it was very mangy and possibly eaten up with fleas.  It turned out it was after 5pm and Animal Control was closed.

The fleas have had a feast!

Neta went up to Terrell's house and got some food, in this case a packet of tuna and a can of beanie-weenies (don't judge his pantry).  We fed her some tuna which she lapped up quickly.  After about 10 mins the dog had perked up and was bounding all over the place.  We distracted her so we could close the house up and not let her back in.  We didn't want her taking up residence, or messing in the house, especially considering we'd just fed her and didn't know how she'd react to new food in her system.  We set up a spot in the barn for the night and hoped she would be there the next morning.  We wanted to help, but didn't want to visit any ailments on Sammie at home.

Who couldn't love that face?

We stopped by Terrell's on the way out and she followed us up there.  She ran around his house and seemed like she'd hang around there for the night, especially knowing that someone was home, so we left her there.  Terrell says it's not uncommon for people down here to steal a hunting dog (you can tell she's been hunted by her movements and body language) and hunt it for a year or two and then turn it loose so they don't have to care for it.

The next morning, Friday, I went over to the farm and sure enough, she was laying on Terrell's carport.  I called Animal Control and they said they didn't know if they could get to her that day.  I asked if I could bring her in and they said they'd check to see if they had room and call me back.

A couple of hours later the man from Animal Control called back and said he'd gone over there and picked her up and brought her to the shelter.  He said that we should give it a few days for them to process her and they are closed on weekends.

Skin and bones.  Poor thing!  She weighed in at 35 pounds.  She also thinks she's a lap dog.

Despite saying that we would never get another dog, I could tell that Neta wanted her, and deep down, seeing how sweet and gentle she was, and reminding me of the two English Setters that my parents had, I secretly wanted to adopt her too.  We were keeping our fingers crossed that we would be able to adopt her once she was processed through the system and given the proper medical treatments.

We began coming up with names.  That pretty much sealed the deal.

On Monday at noon I called to check on her and was informed that since she was suffering from mange so badly, along with other ailments, it was their policy to euthanize her.  I asked if anything could be done to save her and they told me to call the head of Animal Control.  I did and left a message  In the meantime I called the Humane Society since their website said they worked with the county shelter to save animals from being euthanized.  They told me that they didn't have the best relationship with the shelter and couldn't just pick and choose animals to save, but if we said we would adopt her outright the shelter may just hand her over to us.  We drove to the shelter.

She was either in my lap or Neta's lap the whole vet visit.

The people there were really nice and said that along as we agreed to give her veterinary care, they would turn her over to us on Wednesday.  We made an appointment with the vet for Wednesday after so she could get a check up, see what kind of treatment she needs and hopefully nurse her back to full health.  It's a roll of the dice, but she's certainly a sweet dog and deserves a good home.

Today, Neta and I went to the shelter to pick her up.  They considered it a rescue and did not charge us the usual fees as they provided no services other than food, water and shelter.  We loaded her into the car.  WHOA!!!  She smelled bad!  That doggy smell...times 100!  But she was so gentle and sweet.  She laid right down in the back on the blankets we had for her, and we took her to the vet.

Someone needs a hug.

She endured the horrible abuse of the vet, namely a blood draw, a couple of needles and taking a fecal sample.  The vet determined that she did not have mange, just a bad reaction to all of the flea bites. She's an English Setter.  She's only 35 pounds has mild hookworm, mild cataracts and judging by the extreme wear on her teeth, she's between 8 to 12 years old.  She won't be on a cotton candy diet, but she's not going to leave much of a mark if she bites you.  Imagine a grandpa...at 90 years old...from England.

After all of that awfulness, we got her home where she and Sammie had a meet and greet in a shady part of the yard.  They seemed to at least tolerate each other, though neither seemed interested in being friend or foe, more like ambivalence.  We brought her inside to just the kitchen area where we gave her water.  She lapped the bowl dry and also quickly devoured the food we gave her.  Then the worst betrayal of all...A BATH!!!

I feel safe now.

Having very little fur was a good thing for us.  We wet, washed, rinsed, repeated and dried her off in just a few minutes, they finally let her loose into the rest of the house.  The carpeted and furniture filled part.  She made a beeline for the sofa, jumped up and made herself at home.  Sammie gave us a look like, "Really?  She's here 15 minutes.  I'm with you for years and I'm not allowed to do that!"  She was gently removed, though she has made the same attempt at least another dozen times.

She and Sammie are still figuring each other out.  Sammie is ready for a friend.  She...not so much.  She "seems" to be housebroken, already going to the door to signal a couple of times  She certainly smells much better since her bath, though until her skin clears up more, she'll still be a little doggy smelling.  Otherwise, she seems very calm, despite the vet visit, bath and complete change of scenery and life.

Post-bath and finally FREE!!!

Finally, for those interested in knowing her name.  Neta wanted to name her Lucky.  I was thinking of something more fun and whimsical that had a southern ring to it.  So her name will be...

"Lucky Lulu Belle"

And now you know "The Story of Lucky Lulu Belle".

Critters Welcome

I said the other day that we haven't had as many critter sightings lately, and that's true.  We used to see a good bit of wildlife at the Cox Farm house (deer, rabbits, possum, fox squirrels, owls, and a coyote).  At the farm we've seen foxes, turtles, herons, osprey, armadillos, and more. Our sightings have slowed way down, probably because of the heat, but we have gotten some pictures with the wild life camera.

I still have it positioned on the popular causeway to the island.  One nice thing about the goose departure is we no longer get 600+ pictures of them in a week's time.  We had plenty of pics of the fox coming and going though.

Our resident fox suffers from a severe case of blurriness.  

Only one shot of this racoon, so he may have just been visiting.

Trash panda

The armadillos are hard to spot in the night pictures, but the Google helpfully made an animated picture to make it easier to see.

I'd say building your nest in a roll of barbed wire is pretty ingenious, if I didn't know wrens will build a nest pretty much anywhere.  

Not a very good picture, but I am pretty sure that's an osprey we've seen several times "fishing" in the pond.  

By far our most frequent visitor is this guy:

Either he hunts frogs at the edge of the pond or he is a secret skinny-dipper.

Designing Woman

Fair warning - this whole post is going to be about paint colors.

Now we are getting to some of the fun stuff on the house, like finishes and paint colors. Or at least it used to be fun, before I had to pick everything out and make sure it all worked together.  Let me just say that I have a new found respect for designers and the incredibly difficult work they do. Or maybe it was just difficult for me. Craig says he doesn't care about these things and leaves the decisions up to me. He's lying, but that is what he says.  He does leave the decisions up to me, he just questions each and every one!

For years, I kept a notebook full of inspiration torn from magazines.  Then Pinterest came around and I have approximately one billion pins of house inspiration.  That was the easy part. Turning all those pictures into actual selections was the hard part. What really helped was going through them and identifying what they had in common. That's how we decided to go with the galvanized roof.  I thought I wanted a darker color, but when I looked at all my pictures of houses I admired, almost all of them had a galvanized roof.  Since I don't have the Property Brothers drawing pictures of what my house is going to look like when it is done (oh, if only) looking at pictures of similar houses really helps me see what works and what doesn't.

I thought picking paint colors would be fairly easy, because there are plenty of "whole house paint schemes" on Pinterest.  I planned to make it easy on myself by just picking one of those. But none of the plans I found were quite right. Call me Goldilocks, only instead of running away I ran to the paint store.  Did you know that Sherwin Williams has thousands of colors?  More than 60 shades of white. Did you know that chromaticity is an actual word?  I wish I did not know these things!

It took me a lot of pondering and changing my mind repeatedly but I did finally, finally come up with all my colors. It is sort of a farm-on-the-beach color scheme. Or as I will henceforth be calling it: low-country farmhouse.  Who knows, maybe I will start a trend!

I wound up picking 3 of those 60-plus shades of white (Cotton White, Summer White and Pure White).  Other colors are: Sand Dollar, Sea Salt, Tidewater, Meander, Honeydew, and On the Rocks.  I didn't pick these based on their names, but some of them sure fit pretty well! Meander blue will be on the porch ceiling, for the traditional "haint blue"' effect. We had to do some finagling to get a paintable porch ceiling; the original plan was for it to be vinyl but the blue options weren't quite right (Goldilocks again). So we're going with hardie board instead. Craig's desire for low maintenance was no match for my notebook full of haint blue porches!

The picture above has all the color swatches we're using. They are laid out on a sample cabinet door that our cabinet maker painted with a custom color I requested. That's right - those thousands of colors weren't enough for me so I combined two of them.  To be fair, I just wanted an in-between shade of two consecutive colors (Oyster Bay and Retreat).  I am calling it Bay Retreat in a shout-out to Craig's upbringing on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  Or maybe it is just me being pretentious but no one thinks that, right?

Right?!!

Bonus points if you read this far, and even more if you got the title reference...

The Sugarbakers weren't available, unfortunately. 

August on the farm

Craig and I head out to the farm pretty much every evening, to check on house progress, cut grass and work in the garden.  We usually stay til just about dark, and sometimes just beyond, as there is always plenty of work to be done and we just plain enjoy being in the great outdoors.

Full moon over the sunflowers
They are all done now, after topping out at 11 1/2 feet tall.  

I usually start out harvesting whatever is ripe.  We were glutted with watermelons for a while, but managed to offload five 25-pounders on our trip to Maryland, plus fed several overripe ones to a cousin's horses.  Several of our tomatoes have gone belly up and the cucumber has about quit (thankfully), but the eggplants and okra are having their moments now.

I feel like Bubba from Forrest Gump:  eggplant enchiladas, eggplant salad, eggplant pasta... 

You have to pick okra every day.  EVERY DAY.  The pods grow quickly and once they get past a certain size they are too woody to be edible.  I have 3 varieties planted, one of them red.  I like them just for the color (both the plant and the pods are burgundy colored) but they taste the same as the green okra.

This is what happens when you go out of town for a long weekend just as the okra is coming on.  The clippers are in the picture for perspective; I couldn't actually cut the big okra with them.

I had to use tree trimmers to cut the big okra!  

We are still getting peppers (bell and jalapenos) and we planted some new tomato plants to hopefully get another harvest.   

There is one sadly stunted cucumber hiding in the box.  

I planted pumpkins just to use for fall decorating. I planted a bit later so they'd be ready for Halloween, but it was still too soon.The good news is I'm going to have a spectacular Halloween display; the bad news is that display is going to be in August!  I've picked all the mature pumpkins and I'm hoping for a second harvest by Halloween.  Thanks to my Aunt Wanda for suggesting what should have been obvious but wasn't! 

The pumpkins didn't get the message about "normal size".   

Arriving unfashionably early.  I had to roll this monster over to the barn; it was too heavy for me to lift.  

We haven't had as many critter sightings lately.  I blame the heat, and the possible, probable gator in our pond.  I'm afraid I have to report sad news:  we lost a goose.  We noticed that the two geese families, which used to spend most of the day at the front pond, had recently started avoiding it. Then we did a headcount and came up one short.  Coupled with some suspicious muddy drag spots on the bank of the pond and lack of any goose-shaped chalk outlines elsewhere...

The grieving goose family appears to have left for greener, less gatory, pastures.  The smaller family has stayed, but spends their time down at the bigger pond.

Craig made the (brief) acquaintance of a small water moccasin when he turned over a piece of wood in the field.  He very prudently did the turning with a stick.  We've both learned to be cautious of picking up/turning over things outside, as there is a good possibility there will be some sort of creepy crawly underneath.  Said creepy crawly will probably be just as startled as we are and want to avoid us too, but in the panic (ours, possibly theirs) might do something regrettable.  Breathy screams, arm waving and biting (them, possibly us).

This scary lady was minding her business under a cooler that covers a spigot until I turned it over (with my foot!).  After playing paparazzi I just turned her house back over and left her alone.  

We're back!

Yes, it has been 25 days since our last post, in case you were counting (we obviously weren't!)  I can only plead moving, travel, lack of blog-worthy news and general busy-ness.  Possibly a smidge of laziness.  We'll try to do better in future!

Now we just need siding...and posts.

When we last we posted, the roof had just been installed.  There has been a lot of progress in the last couple of weeks:  the exterior brick has been laid, spray foam insulation was applied, the windows are in, and the drywall is up.  We've been told that once they move into the interior work the progress seems to slow to a crawl.  I hope not, but I suspect time will really drag for us until move-in day.

First, the brick (which I love, love, love).  We considered skipping it to save some money.  Would it really make much of a difference?  Tracy assured us it would be worth it (honestly, I didn't need much convincing).  He was right - the brick is beautiful and really gives the house a special touch.  Did I mention I love it?  They'll use the same brick to build steps, for the fireplace, and behind the stove.

It would look a little nicer if it weren't framed by a dirty construction site.

As much as I love the brick, Craig loves the spray foam even more.  Spray foam is his HGTV dream come true.  He kept checking on the progress, talking to the techs and their boss, and he tried to get a sneak peek during the application. The boss must have prior experience with lookie-loos because he headed him off at the door.  I certainly appreciate the spray foam, but Craig is a real nerd about it (it isn't often I get to say that about him!)

Trust me, the fluffiness is deceiving.

They spray the foam on, over-filling the space, then cut off the excess (leaving big bags of faux cotton candy in the dumpster).  The boss came to inspect after they had finished, and Craig pointed out a few spots that were missed.  Then the boss pointed out several more that we hadn't even noticed. They came back and did the touch up and we're very satisfied with the results.

After the excess is cut away.

We also had rolled insulation put in some of the interior walls, around the bathrooms and between shared bedroom walls, for noise suppression.  We had that done when we remodeled our master bath in Virginia and it makes a big difference.  Between that and the spray foam we are going to have a pretty quiet house.

Spray foam in the attic

We had a bit of a mixup with the windows and had to wait on the ones for the dormers and showers to come in.  Then Craig noticed that something was a little off about 2 of the kitchen windows.  As it turns out, those were our 2 shower windows, hung vertically rather than horizontally.  Oops!  All was eventually straightened out and looking good now.

The drywall went up much faster than I expected - it only took 2 days total.  The rooms actually look like rooms now and it feels a lot more like a house when you have actual walls.

Dining room on the left, Craig's office to the right.
We are going to put up reclaimed wood from our barn on the back wall.

Living room and front door, as seen from the kitchen.

Living room, the opening to the laundry room, and the kitchen on the right.

Upstairs bedroom and dormer.

Master bath (the green drywall is mildew resistant)

I'll leave you with one last shot that Craig took of the spray foam (again: nerd).  The light from the attic window shining behind it really gives it the lava lamp look.

Or an alien egg sack.