My sincere apologies that I’ve fallen into a once-a-week schedule of updating you on all that’s happening at Cockamamy. To be honest, it has been a crazy several weeks of travel and 12-hour work days for me, and every waking moment/second of daylight of re-siding the house for Ben. Those are Ben’s poor legs and feet, above. He’s sporting quite the Chaco’s tan alongside bug bites and bruises and paint splatters. Frankly, we’re both exhausted and I haven’t been good about keeping y’all in the loop. I hope you will forgive me and keep coming back!
Here’s a quick look at all that we’ve been up to lately:
1. A Change in Altitude.
With the drywall sanding, priming, and painting done in the bedroom upstairs, we decided it was time for a change of scenery for our one piece of furniture. Well…a mattress and boxspring on the floor isn’t exactly what I’d call ‘furniture,’ but they are the closest thing we’ve got at the moment! So, we moved our bedroom out of the future dining room and in to the …drum roll please… bedroom!
Our bedroom “wall” on the first floor kept our space relatively less dusty than the remainder of the house.
Here’s the bedroom in the dining room (with Milly curled up on our pillows).
The wall came down and the bed moved upstairs.
Waking up each morning to beautifully finished walls is a wonderful way to start each day!
2. Green Thumb Gardening
Because we know that there will be some major equipment moving dirt around in our backyard in the not-so-distant future (for a garage, barn, other outbuildings), we decided to have a temporary garden this year, rather than putting in a plot or building raised beds. It looks like a hot mess, but really, it is proving to be quite prolific! We bought a load of dirt (mostly horse poop) from a local farm and they dropped it on a concrete pad in the backyard. After a month or so of thinking we would build beds, we just gave up and planted the mound of dirt with tomatoes, squash, okra, kale, peppers, dill, basil, and more. At the beginning of the season we planted tomatoes, herbs, and peppers in pots. And then our neighbors brought us even more tomato plants as welcome gifts! All together we have 25+ tomato plants, all at different stages of growth (for which my belly is very happy).
The first red mater! I can’t wait to eat him!
Baby bell peppers
3. Siding. As you know. A separate post on Ben’s amazing progress coming soon!
4. Breaking stuff.
If you ever wondered what a tape measure might look like after a facing off with a riding lawn mower, mystery solved.
Last, but certainly not least…
5. Privacy!
I am extremely proud and excited to announce that not only do we have a toilet, sink, and shower all in the same room, but that room now has a door on it! The door is the same one that was on the bathroom when we moved in. It is very old, solid wood, and has original hardware that looks to be from the 1920s. The door knob doesn’t work so well…but hey—it looks good! And one day we might get around to fixing it.
You can see from the upside-down hook near the floor that we flipped the door. It originally opened the opposite direction. But with the new shower, we needed the door to open right to left. The antique hinges attach to the face of the door (not the edge) and we didn’t want to move them. So, we just flipped the door. A little cockamamy, but it works!
Cockamamy Farm 