Fall color is beautiful in the woods!

We're about a week past the peak of fall color here, but the leaves are still beautiful, even on this cloudy afternoon. It looks like many of the orange and red leaves are on the ground and the yellows are sticking around.

Farmstead ideas wanted, please

Now that some of the interior house work is either underway or on the radar, there are a few outdoor things I'm thinking about to dress the place up. I'm looking for creative ideas. None of these are immediate projects, but I'd like to dream about them over the winter.

1. How should we post the centennial farm sign?

Between two 4x4 posts with pretty post caps is what is commonly done, but something that demonstrates maple might be nice. Maybe there's a way to inclue an old metal spile with a metal pail hanging from it (bottom drilled out to prevent water). And it should probably have at least a little "maple syrup" sign somewhere so people know they can stop and buy some. It might be nice to have that expandable in case Addy and Dori ever want to start an egg enterprise or anything.

2. Where should we put our Battel sign?

It's a board about 8 feet long, painted red. BATTEL is in white raised letters. In Eckford we had it on the big red barn. It could go on the big barn here, though that barn isn't painted. It might be too big to combine with the centennial farm sign. Not sure though.

3. What should we do with the big black kettle?

Maybe it could be worked in with the farm sign display, maybe even hung with wood stacked underneath that looks like it could have a fire under it. We could do the typical flowers-spilling-out-of-the-kettle idea. I always like a little garden pond by the front porch, and the pot might work well.

4. Should we leave the front porch open or add railing and spindles?

We hadn't planned to change the porch at all, but the columns are rotted out. This project won't be done right away, but when it is I'd like to get rid of the vinyl siding at the bottom. Should we replace it with railing and spindles, or leave the porch wide open? Is it too high for an open porch (three steps up)?

5. Where should the driveway to the house ideally be?

We need some loads of gravel anyway because the driveway has very little, if any, left, so this may be a good time to determine if the driveway is in the best spot to access the house. We'll still need at least the back end of the driveway to access the barns. Should it be a U-shaped driveway in front of the house? At the very least, if we keep the existing drive only we should add a turn-around pad. I'm not thrilled about the idea of people backing all the way down the driveway into the road for safety/visibility reaons with kids playing nearby and horses trotting past.

Let the gutting commence

Bob and I have managed to accomplish everything we planned to do at the October 17-20 work bee, so instead we will be gutting the house with the help of a small crew of friends, family and neighbors.

Everything is torn out of the house — including the kitchen sink. The doors are off their hinges and labeled. The trim is off the windows and doors, except the inside window frames that can wait until after gutting. The baseboards are off. Wall coverings are mostly removed. Ceiling tiles and furring strips are down.

Brenda took care of the girls this afternoon while Bob and I did some more prep work for the gutting and she offered to do it again tomorrow. We'll spend the time burning some more rubbish as we did today and clearing out the house for the big gut. We have some nails to pull out of the plaster down at the baseboard area, but other than that we should be ready. We even have a bag full of dust masks and a bucket full of pry bars and claw hammers ready to go.

We're feeling good about this! It's not exactly fun work — as I told Bob today while hovering over the baseboards on my knees in a pile of dust and nails — but it's satisfying to get so much accomplished.

Swatches of the old house

I photographed all the old wallpaper I could find, some of it under a number of layers of paint, paneling or paper. It's a little sad to pull it off because I know it was carefully selected at the time, and many of the choices are very beautiful. This is our way of preserving it. I'll always remember the blue diamonds of Grandma's kitchen. What rooms do you remember?

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Farmhouse, half torn up

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I found the crew I want to hire to gut the house

http://view.break.com/143704 - Watch more free videos
Six guys gut a house with their bare hands

Two bids are in

We have now heard from two of the four general contractors on their bids for the complete gut. We'll be doing the gutting down to the studs and one of them will take it from there, probably with us painting at the end.

We're now awaiting the other bids and will make a choice from there. Then we'll also finalize our decisions on some of the issues still lingering — what to do with the kitchen cabinets, where to place the dining room, how to handle the heaved mudroom floor, etc. We'll decide which projects can wait, maybe even a couple years. These might include the roof, front porch (although some temporary shoring up needs to be done to carry the burden of the rotted-out post), tuckpointing the brick, maybe the back entry porch (also needs temporary fix to hold up the corner of the roof).

Whichever way we go, it looks like we will max out our budget. Anybody want to buy a beautiful blue brick house in Reed City yet? No word from our REALTOR since we renewed the contract in August. We're thinking maybe its too bad we have never missed a mortgage payment and didn't get involved in the sub-prime loan mess. If we had, maybe the government would bail us out of the Reed City house soon. Kidding, of course.