Country Living

Living in the country in the summer is the best (at least when there's no bats). There are endless hiking opps in the back yard, the scenery is beautiful, wildlife abounds...the winter is another story. There's a 12 foot snow bank across the road just waiting for the next wind storm to blow it into our driveway, there's a shroud of snow surrounding the house so that the dog must relieve herself on the porch, and wildlife abouds...inside, trying to stay warm like the rest of us.
In two instances I have heard something that is living in the ceiling over our kitchen. If that's a mouse it's a mouse the size of Clifford (our cat)...so I do believe we have a squirrel living there. My first hint was getting chased by a red squirrel out of the garage a few months ago when I went out to get firewood. That saying...they're more afraid of you than you are of them....is bullshit. That nasty little thing came running straight for me, and I took my place in the food chain and made a mad dash out of the garage, sending poor Lucy out there to contend with it as I cowered in the kitchen. Lucy came up empty handed and confused.
Finally, the impetus for writing this post was last night. As I lay all cozy in my bed with my little baby sound asleep next to me (Autumn, not Charlie), Charlie was there too of course, any way, the cat jumped on to the bed meowing. This is a regular occurrence, a few pats on the head and Cliff snuggles down for the night. However, this time, Cliff brought us a present. A live one. In our bed. With the baby.
The list of things about country living that I can't imagine ever getting used to grows...
That cat never would even hurt a fly before we lived out here, but I guess I should be happy that he's catching them instead of letting them eat our food, which the dog would do without question...like with that squirrel. Who's probably all snuggled up in our ceiling with a nest full of the next generation of home invaders. I will take all of this over the bats. But am slightly depressed that we just can't have our house to ourselves.
I will post again prior to a year from now, with more photos.

So it’s been almost 7 months and a lot has happened. First of all I’ve gained a lot of weight.

Ok, I’m pregnant. Baby girl Craigmile is due July 13, this picture was taken yesterday at the 29 week mark. I fit right in at the nearest Wal-mart with this tank top/belly look.

That being said the pressure is on to get this house done. Just this past weekend the living room became just about finished. We still have a few little things to do like replace the wood burning stove with a less intrusive, less dangerous one and get curtains for some of the windows. I’d eventually like new furniture too…but my point is, it is actually starting to feel like a home. We can sit on the floor and not feel dirty and disgusting. We actually unpacked knick knacks and hung pictures on the wall, unpacking things we hadn’t seen in over a year. Take a look at the transition.

Living room and dining room the day we bought the house (January 2008).

The ceiling with faux beams that were really there to cover the crappy dry wall job.

So Charlie took out that ceiling and of course it was a drop ceiling, so he lifted the ceiling about two feet, stripped out all that horrible wood panelling that I abhor (there was actually wood panelling over wood panelling). Then the last few weeks he's been painting, putting up the trim, we went on a curtain shopping spree (Oh! What an exciting life we lead) and then bought some really expensive carpet.

So, here's the living room Friday night as Charlie installed the ceiling fan. The floor has been this crappy linoleum for months…yuck.

Finally, living room on Monday with the new carpet.

And yes, Lucy got big, she's not a puppy anymore.

So we're getting there, the baby's room is near completion, photos of that will come in a near future post. I promise it will be up quicker than 7 months from now.

Progress

We have siding, and it is so nice. I never thought I could be so excited about siding. But now there are no more cracks or crevices for the critters to get in and the place looks less like a shack and more like a home. Go to my first post to see the before pictures. The windows still have to be wrapped (they'll be white and not faded, peeling and let's face it...rotting...yellow), but we have all new ones now too. Even that made such a difference, you can see out of them! Everyone will be happy to know that the bats are gone now too. I originally thought they just migrated and would probably be returning in the spring; however, our neighbor informed us that some have moved to his house. Bad for him, but promising for us. This means that they gave up trying to get in and now that all the holes are covered by the new siding, everyone can come visit with less fear now...and I can sleep with the bedroom door open.



Here's our house, taken from down by the pond, with the house done and the garage still to be done, this was Saturday and Charlie has since sided the whole garage.

By the way for those of you who haven't been here yet, the huge tree between the house and the shed is actually a PEAR tree. It's pretty awesome and apparently, we also have the mother of all elderberry bushes. I am embarrassed to say that I had no idea that it was an elderberry bush or what a priceless treasure elderberries apparently are. Charlie's mom was here and drove away with a laundry basket full. I never did get a pie.

And just because I never post anything. Here's a picture of the whole family too, at Lake Hiram of course.

So if you think about it, Charlie is a maniac and has accomplished so much. We bought the place in January, moved in in February, and already have the dining room completed, two bathrooms, the bedroom and the hallway mostly done. I know I need to keep up on the pictures.

charlie rocks

The dining room is almost done! Charlie has done an amazing job, especially on installing the hardwood floor. Take a look. It's so nice to have a real room!

Pictures of nice things

So now I have to get up extremely early to get to work, which is fine. I am enjoying my coffee and NPR while driving...and I drive a Honda so that gas prices aren't killing me yet. Anyway, the point is, I have seen some amazing sunrises up here early in the morning. So I thought I'd share a picture of one.

I don't really have any good pictures of the "after" condition of the rooms that are complete because although the remodeling in the bedroom and both bathrooms is almost complete they are too messy to take a picture, so instead I will include a picture of the pets.

Chateau Craigmile still stands...

...this is not necessarily a good thing. Since the last post, Lucy has grown tremendously, the snow has melted and we've faced a multitude of ridiculous incidents.

We've drilled a new well, here's the drill rig in our front yard on Easter weekend. I know its sideways, but it takes a long time for me to fix the picture orientation because...

We do not have cable out here. After having dial up internet for about a month (one of the reasons I slacked off on the blog) we have switched to satellite internet. It is not fast, but it is faster than dial up. So now I am one of those people in the country with two satellite dishes on their house, paying a ridiculous amount of money for sub par internet. Ahhh...the country.

Anyway, we also had some septic issues...here is our beautiful view at sunrise with our recently covered septic tank in the middle of yard. To make a long story short the snow seemed to be melting in the middle of the yard, and things were being bypassed. The thing had to be excavated, cleaned out and have some piping replaced. Charlie did most of it himself. I managed to stay away from the lawn during this whole ordeal. If it weren't for Charlie that probably would have been the last straw for me. We are still here and there have been several last straws since then...

Like the bats.

We all knew that there once were some bats in the house. They left mountains of evidence in the crawl space. Well, they came back. For a few days you could here them squeeking and shuffling around over our heads. I actually lay awake in bed one night listening to them, terrified.

So we called the exterminator. Who informed us that we probably had hundreds. I was thinking probably 20 or so. So we stood outside that night and watched them fly out and counted. After about 15 minutes and 135 bats, I stopped counting and the exterminator was called the next day.

So you can't really see what's going on in this video, but I think the audio is enough to make you laugh at us. And you can see a few flying away from the house. This is after the exterminator put screens on the openings in the house. This allows them to crawl out of a very small opening in the screen, but then they cannot come back in. So we were watching them struggle to get out of the screen. Ridiculously creepy. The screaming is because one of them dove straight at my head. Enjoy the video, this will take like 20 minutes to upload, so I hope you watch it. Ok, it won't upload. Damn.

Anyway, this morning our house looked like a horror movie. Bats were literally swarming our house, looking for any way in, flying straight into the eaves and bouncing off, and coming dangerously close to my head.

Other than that things are great. Some more of the inside has been complete. Next post will have photos of nice things.

Meet Lucy Craigmile