So much to do

Had a wonderful weekend.  I haven't moved in yet but we used the farm for a 16th b-day bonfire and it was a success (minus the clogged toilet... good thing there are 2 in the house!).  Made use of the still extremely hot ashes yesterday to cook a foil-wrapped dinner too.  YUMMY!!  I think more dinners like that need to be made.


Someone recently asked me if I'd made a complete list of things that need to be done for the farm.  I told them a resounding no because I'm afraid that looking at such a long (and in many cases expensive) list would make me simply go catatonic and not be able to know where to start.  Someone else suggested that I actually do start the list because then when the lovely wonderful people in my life show up unscheduled at the farm and want to help, I'll have a few choices of things to do that need to be done.  Ok, that's a good reason to have a list.  So... as long as I don't look TOO closely, here's the START of that list (in absolutely no order except how it pops into my head):

• Get the furnace looked at
• Get the stove/oven looked at
• Pull up the carpet staples in the den before the flooring guys come
• Get the wood floors redone (living room, den and landing... possibly the stairs)
• Do something with the bedroom floors involving some amount of carpet probably
• Scrape paint upstairs and at the tippy top of the stairwell
• Have ceiling fans in living room and den mounted, eventually buying and installing the fans upstairs
• Move fridge
• Redo kitchen floor
• Add cabinets (eventually adding a dishwasher which will entail more new cabinets and a change of countertop and backsplash)
• Spackle EVERYWHERE
• Gutter grout in the tub, followed by regular bath silicone
• Prime all walls and ceilings
• Paint all walls and ceilings (which also involved deciding on paint colors for everything)
• Move book shelves upstairs
• Replace shower head upstairs
• Take shower head from upstairs and put on shower in basement
• Put in insulation in the attic
• Clear out Springhouse for outdoor storage
• Have siding and trim replaced
• Pull down almost dead tree
• Put in t-posts
• Put in new corner and front posts in barn paddock
• Replace posts as needed
• Run fence wire (buy more?)
• Clean out barn
• Build stalls
• Figure out lights (with John's help) and water options
• Get new barn area set for excavating
• Figure out window treatments
• CLEAN, including window sills
• ETC!!!

Then there's the whole actually moving in thing and on top of that an open house at the Cottage place on the 23rd to get ready for (cleaning to do which includes the carpets HAVE to be done).  Some of the items are obviously wants or "laters" that I can definitely get away with not having done right away.  But when creating a list based on what is and what my vision of the place is... it gets to be quite a LONG list. Even straightforward stuff like "clean out the spring house or barn" gets into making several piles of stuff -- trash, sell/donate/recycle, save for future use.


But it's STILL a labor of love.  We cleared a bunch of brush from the fenceline around the house this weekend and it's looking much better already.  And the electric work continues which is amazing and I'm SO grateful for!  Just keep swimming, right?