A Neighbor's Dozen

Whew!  What a great work weekend at the farm house.  Some good friends joined us for a day, and with their building and design experience, and their general can do attitude, progress was made in lifting and propping portion of the sagging floor.  The long gap in the floor, where Brandon has his hand in the picture above, is the location of wall between the dining room and the living room.  I wanted to take out part of this wall and change the floor plan of the house, but Brandon was hesitant to remove the wall since it is a main support wall, with the exterior wall of the second floor directly above it.  Well, once he removed the paneling and the plaster we realized that all the studs were eaten by termites long ago, and there was no wall support in this area anyway.  Thank you termites! 

The termites didn't stop at the wall though, they also ate some of the supporting floor boards, which is why the floors tilted toward that wall.  It was a pretty serious slope too.  When trying to use the shop vacuum in that area the vacuum kept rolling into the hole in the floor.  The guys had to remove more layers of flooring that have been added over the years, including sheets of pressed board with a zillion nails, then pull up some of the wood floor strips.  Then they used a jack to raise each floor joist and level out the soil underneath enough to place concrete pavers.  It was a messy job done on knees and stomachs, but the floor is so much better!  Speaking as someone who didn't do any of the hard work (hey, someone has to grill the burgers!), I think it was worth every effort. 

We also explored the chimney and the hearth for the first time.  It took a little brute force, but we managed to get the grate off and see that there isn't much room in the hearth, which seems to have been plugged with cement sometime in the past.  It does, however, have a hole in the chimney that would allow a wood stove to be used if it were sitting in front of the mantel.  It's all very exciting. 

Once again, while Brandon was tearing down repairing the house, I spent some lovely time outside planting things.  I planted three apple trees, three pear trees, a muscadine grape, four small red crepe myrtle shrubs, and a sugar maple.  There were some doubts expressed about the necessity of this expenditure by Brandon, the chairmen of our finances, but I think it's important to get the fruit in the ground since it takes so many years to get results.  It's an investment in our future jam supply, which was my winning argument.  Besides, all his talk about the cost of dry wall and rolls of insulation that we need was boring.  Fruit trees are much more fun.

While I was planting the fruit trees along the back edge of the property, our nearest neighbor made a visit to his barn, which I could see.  We waved and then introduced our selves and had a friendly chat.  He helped me understand the property boundaries, and also offered the use of his bush hog, and said that he had a machine that has a bucket that he could use to lift the trash that is piled up in several locations on his property and ours.  We worked out a deal that if he could help me lift the trash he could use our dumpster to get rid of his trash piles.  He has all the equipment I've been needing; I think we are going to be best friends!  Then, when I thought things couldn't get any better he asked me if I would like some eggs from his chickens.  Yes!  I got to meet his flock of fancy polish chickens, that have crazy poofs of feathers on their heads, and he put eleven little white eggs, straight from the nest box, in a bread bag for me.  I took them back to the house to show Brandon and he said eleven must be a neighbor's dozen.