Deer Season

One of the reasons I was so excited about moving out here, other than my dream to be self-sufficient, was that I would have a place of my own to deer hunt, archery I don't really feel safe shooting guns other than my .22 out here.

It all started in June, I was out mowing the pasture and I started seeing parts of deer laying around. I found a total of 3 deer that had been killed within the last few weeks or so. That was the last straw, after running the neighbors off last rifle season I felt like it was necessary to put up lots of no hunting and no trespassing signs.

Later when while I was moving in the guy that I had ran off's son came over and started talking to me about the guns I was bringing in and I made it very clear that his family is no longer welcome to hunt on our land (I don't think they ever really had permission)

In August I set up a deer camera and put out some salt lick to see if there were any deer left in the herd. As of now from what I have seen on and off camera we have 2 nice 8 point , father and son, 1 adult doe and 2 yearling that I think might be bucks. I have a name for the father of the heard I call him phantom because the only picture I can get of him was when he jumped the fence next to the game cam and when I see him out in the woods I can never get a shot at him. 

The hunting pressure out here will be almost none for a few years to try to get the doe population back up so I can have a healthily herd. In addition to low hunting pressure I am going to plant a little over half of the pasture in a food plot this spring, and if money allows I would like to fix the pond so it holds water. After all that is done there isn't much of a reason for the deer to leave this area, other than for breeding do to the lack of doe but I can hope that some of the construction on E will push some of the deer over here where they are out of the way.

The Boys Bathroom

The boys bathroom talk about a project. Well we bought a new vanity for it an 18" instead of the 24" that was in there because it was butted up right next to the tub and a shower curtain wouldn't fit between. Well I got out my phone to of course take pictures of our little fix and Patrick grabbed ahold of the vanity.

Tada. the vanity crumbled and so did the wall behind it. Lesson #1 of remodeling always expect the worst because if it can go wrong it will.

so we ripped it out

and the floor

and everything else down to the bare bones. Oh and remember the closet we made the waterheater? This is where the Water Heater was to begin with.

We covered up the window. Why would you put a window in the shower to begin with?

 

We literally replace everything the Tub the Toilet and hey there is that vanity we wanted to put in.

With all the water issues that we have found we aren't taking any chances. That red paint around the shower. That is a water barrier that we painted on our already water resistant sheet rock.

We Painted the walls green.

Well after one really long, hard day working on the bathroom it is finally fully functional. There are still some finishing touches that it could use but it looks great. Oh and now the boys don't have to come up stairs to use the bathroom!

Our baths little update

We have big plans for this bathroom and the bedrooms upstairs but for now we just want to make it a little more like home.

Before:

We added an exhaust fan.

It has a light and a heater. There's no more being cold when you get out of the shower!

We painted the walls brown. We actually chose one of the colors we originally looked at for the kitchen.

Someone previously painted over the tile I haven't decided what I want to do with that.

Picnic table

So During the Summer this Picnic table was $98, in Late August Early September I noticed that it was on sale for $75 and it wasn't even cold outside yet, so I patiently waited and now that it is mid October it went down to $55. I am so excited we have been wanting a picnic table. I think it was a great investment.

The boys were all at home when we put it together but sadly I didn't get any pictures of the work in progress.

Here is our finished table :)

Appliances

We have been wanting to get a pantry cabinet for this corner of our kitchen and put our appliances in it rather than having them stacked on our counter like we did at our old house. It really ate up our counter space. We'll the one that matches our cabinets is like $230 and right now that's a bit much so we put up these shelves, we already had and only spent $15 . I think it looks pretty good for now, and works really well until we can buy more cabinets. We might repaint them to match a little better.

My kitchen

Well like I had said before we were wanting to use the cabinets that were already in the two kitchens and make one kitchen that was livable for awhile so few wouldn't have to spend so much money at the beginning of the remodel, however when we got to the cabinets down stairs we found water damage and sadly we found some of the same up stairs.

 

There just weren't enough cabinets for us to work with. We took them out and took out the floor. 

The Sheetrock really needed some work, there were a lot of holes to patch, some just from nails or screws and others much bigger.

Since our wood was a light wood we thought we should go with a darker paint. We weren't really sure what we wanted so went to Home Depot and talked to a lady that gave us some ideas. We left with three paint samples so we could test it out to decide. With most of the house being brown we decided to go with something different.

We went out and found this floor that we just loved, its hickory, as well as some cabinets that were also hickory.

Now we need counter-tops. We looked around and finally decided on one of the first counter-tops we say the color was called antique mascarello. It was actually a color that we found in the in stock counter-tops but with the shape of our kitchen we were going to have to special order. That basically doubled our cost right off the bat so we shopped around for different colors and edge styles. We just weren't happy and it was all basically the same price. Well of course we had to shop around so we looked at the other two home improvement stores in town and just by luck we found, a SALE oh I was so happy they had the same color and we saved like $200!

This has been such a long process and I am sooo happy to have my kitchen and a sink!

Oh the Stairs

We finally got to the thing I wanted to do first.

We had a really hard time with the stairs at first we were going to make our screened in porch part of the house and put our stairs out there but then we decided that it wasn't the best idea and that we would sacrifice part of the living room downstairs and part of the dining room upstairs but it just got to costing to much money to cut a hole out of the floor joists and get all that ready so in the end we went with what the house had originally which was a spiral staircase. Patrick really doesn't like spiral staircases but I think it is the best option not only space wise but financially.  Not to mention all we have to do is cut out the Sheetrock that is covering the hole in the ceiling because the hole was already there, so less prep work.

We decided cheep railings were the way to go until we hatched out a better plan. I love not having to go outside to go downstairs!