What They Didn't Teach Me In New Home School

This is the first time I've ever been in a brand new home. 

This is the first time I've ever owned a home with a finished basement.  

I grew up in a house with a dirt floor basement, and it's a scary, small, musty place.  My first home had a half dirt, half concrete basement that would flood annually and was a scary, small, musty place.  My second home was on short piers and had a crawl space under it.  It was a small, squishy, dank place.  My third home also had a dirt floor basement, which was a mildly unsettling, tall, musty place.  I'm not much of a cellar dweller to be honest.  I do not know the ways of concrete, or humidity, or the quirks of a newly built structure.  I'm practically an expert on living in a home that's over a century old, but this place?  I'm out of my league.

That's a long, rambling way of saying my concrete foundation has yet to cure, and between that and the copious amounts of rain we've seen so far this spring and summer, my lower floor is an experiment in mold growth.  No, not the dreaded black mold you find in ceilings and walls, thankfully!  But every piece of wooden or wicker furniture in my garage or media room or mud room has a fine layer of mold on it.  

Well, now that's frustrating.  

 

I researched the best way to tackle this issue on the interwebs, then spent most of Saturday morning hauling out furniture, spraying it with a vinegar/water mix, and wiping it all down.  I did what I could, then let everything bake in the sun (we actually had a sunny day!) for the rest of the afternoon.  Inside, I sprayed the floor in the media room with the vinegar mix and mopped, vacuumed what I could, brought the clean furniture back in, turned the heat on, and closed the doors.  It makes me shudder to think of running the heat at 78* in mid-summer, but it was necessary.  I ran the heat for 2 days and also have two dehumidifiers running nonstop.  Fingers crossed this will remedy the situation.

I also managed to mow the field, finally.  My intention was to let the grass grow and form seed heads, and when they dropped then I would mow.  That was a few weeks ago and with all the rain we've had the field was ridiculously overgrown.  I had to run the mower deck at its highest height and even then it mostly just pushed the grass over instead of cutting it.  I was about three quarters done and one of the belt wheels on the mower deck gave out, so I had to finish with my mom's riding mower.  I'll need to get my wheeled string trimmer going and take care of the brushy patches, but it looks pretty good.  That's the mulberry tree dead center, the reason for all the wildlife hanging about.

  Here's what she offers:

And this year she's loaded with berries.  After I mowed there were only a few scattered in the grass.  The next morning I went out and everywhere I looked there were berries on the ground.  It brought in not only the coyotes, porcupine, and deer, but an entire family of coonskin caps.

I also threw in the towel where my peas and lettuce are concerned.  The peas gave me three good harvests, and the lettuce has turned into something from a science fiction movie.  They've been pulled and relocated to the compost bin.  

My tomatoes look horrible thanks to lack of sunlight, but the cucumbers are obviously loving all the wet weather.  My onions don't look as nice as they did last year, either.  I did manage to mow around the barn and garden this weekend, too.  And get some shots of my poor three year potted plants that would love to go in the ground.

these stargazer lilies are actually only 2 years potted

echinacea "Hot Papaya"

pink tiger lily

crocosmia "Lucifer", which didn't bloom last year

my three year potted bergamont, still doing its best

I've crossed a few things off my lengthy to-do list, but there's so much left.  My wooden raised beds have arrived, which means my next efforts need to go into the tiered garden project.

Ugh, what a mess.

The beat goes on

 Today was all about the foundation.  The general contractor put a waterproofing sealant around the outside of the walls, worked on piping that will run under the connecting room, and the excavating contractor backfilled the front wall of the basement.  Once that was filled and compacted, stone was laid on top of it and leveled.  Eventually a cement floor will be poured, but the foundation needs to be capped before that can happen.  The first delivery of building materials arrived, too.  

Day 13

I'm finally starting to get a feel for the size of the overall house, especially the basement. The garage will be a little more than half the space, and the remaining space will be split into two small rooms.  Since I'll mostly be coming into the house from the basement, the first room I walk into from the garage will be a mudroom and it's a little smaller than I had imagined it.  I'm not disappointed, though; I think it will be more than large enough.  

I'm really looking forward to the driveway being finished, and I hope that happens next.  The electric wires for the new barn run underground near the house site, so they pulled them to ensure they didn't rip them up accidentally.  I've been without power in the barn for a few weeks now, and with the shorter days and colder temperatures, it's been a little inconvenient.  Last night temperatures dipped into the teens, so I had multiple extension cords running from the old shed to the new barn to run the heated water bucket for the mules.  Not the most safe option, but luckily the temperatures look to be heading up for the next week and I shouldn't have to run the heated bucket again for some time.  I have a solar light coming that I'm hoping should light up Flea's stall and work better than my little headlamp.  I'll have to affix the little solar panel to the barn exterior and run the power cord in through the window, then affix the light to the interior wall.  This little hiccup has me rethinking my original barn design, and I may ask my son-in-law if he can put in a larger window in that wall sometime in the future.  Hindsight, you know.

And like that *poof*, they were gone.

 Apparently the cement walls only needed to cure overnight, because the concrete crew was back in the morning on Day 12.  Within a few hours they had the forms down, the equipment loaded on the truck, and the site cleaned up.  They did a fantastic job!

photo courtesy Mom

While all of this was going on, my farrier came to trim Flea.  There were trucks and cranes and bangs and booms, but Flea was only his normal turd self, and didn't give Kaitlyn too much of a hard time.  Desensitizing at it's finest; there are people who would pay to put their horses through something like this, ha!

Now the excavating contractor can finish his part of the job.  He will backfill the foundation, put in the new leach field, and has already begun to level off the area for the new driveway.

Mom and I are both floored by the dirt he's digging up right now.  Nary a rock to be seen!  It's definitely better soil than what he dug up for the foundation hole, and what was dug up for the new barn.  I'm sure he'll use this nicer earth to backfill, which means I may actually have a shot at creating some gardens around the edge of the house.  Nice! 

Walls Up!

 Day 9 finds a hive of activity!  The concrete crew worked most of the day putting up the wall forms, and the general contractor used a jackhammer to punch through the surprise 3+ foot thick wall of old concrete that was discovered around the existing house foundation.  Apparently that was a result of "how they did things back then"; instead of pouring concrete into molds made of forms, contractors would sometimes frame the interior walls and pour the concrete directly against the dirt for the exterior of the wall.  (I think I explained that correctly, but maybe not.  Much of this goes right over my head!)  The hole between the foundations is needed to run a water pipe and electric wires from one house to the other.

The arrow is pointing at the jackhammer; I didn't want to bother him while he was working, so I kind of snuck around to get this photo.

The white pipe marks the hole where utilities and water will eventually come through the foundation.

Day 10 was the completion of the wall forms.  The concrete truck was supposed to be on the site that afternoon, but that didn't happen in time, so work was halted for the weekend.  

This was also the day we made it official, and I purchased the property from my mother.  Once again, I'm a homeowner!  It was a bittersweet day for Mom, but in the end we agreed this was the best way to move forward.  She'll retain her home, and I'll be right there to take care of her when she needs it.  She's the most spry and active 70something year-old that I know, so I think it will be a long time before that happens.  

A side note...Friday the 13th is becoming "my date", apparently.  My big mule, Fargo, was born on a Friday the 13th, and now I've purchased my childhood home on a Friday the 13th.  Who says it's an unlucky day?  

Day 11 the concrete trucks - yes, plural! - arrived and the walls were poured.  It was a lot different from the last pour, when it was a pleasantly unseasonal 70*F.  This day was bitter cold, windy, and damp from downpours the night before.  It definitely felt like winter!

Mother inspects the pour.

Since the temperatures have dipped so drastically, I'm not sure if they'll have to let the concrete cure longer before they remove the forms.  Today is going to be in the upper 30s, and tomorrow it's supposed to be in the 20s with a bitter wind. I'm wondering if they'll wait and come back toward the end of the week, when it's supposed to be up into the 50s.  We shall see!

Forms and Footings

 Day 7 finds the concrete contractor and his crew building the forms for the foundation footings.  

The foundation doesn't actually drop down in front; that's where the 4' frost wall will be.  

 

Day 8

The forms are set and the concrete truck has arrived!  Holy smokes, the divots that truck put in the lawn are insane.  You would think after all these years the soil around the house would be quite compacted, but I guess you don't know exactly how compacted until you have a massive truck weighing a couple tons drive over your lawn.  

Once that's set up and cured, they'll start putting up the wall forms.

Busy times here at Stoneridge Farm!