another discovery

As we were pulling up weeds and junk and leveling the backyard, we made another discovery. This lovely little bottle was filled with sand. We assumed it was another Foss' Fruit Flavors.  When we got it home and got it cleaned up, we realized that it is a Dr. True's Elixir bottle.

I googled Dr. True's Elixir.  I didn't find a lot of information, but did find out that Dr. True had a practice in Auburn, ME.  His elixir seemed to work well and became in demand.

http://www.sunjournal.com/node/60037

basement started

 Martin has started digging out for the basement where the kitchen addition used to be.  We don't want to use the neighbor's offer for use of the back hoe for this part because the water pipe comes up here.  We have a general sense of where it is buried, but don't know how deep.

Martin pulled out all of the concrete blocks. Today he spent time digging and pulling out rocks that had been part of the original kitchen addition foundation.  Lots of big rocks made a big rock pile.  We are pretty sure he will find lots more where these came from.

with a little help from our friend

Our friend, Joanna, kindly photoshopped the line drawings that I had scanned to make them dark enough to actually see.  

This first drawing is of the basement.  We are going to go down three feet from the walls and come in three feet, then the center of the basement will be full. The bulk head doors and stairs will be at the front of the house, with the stairs coming in under the bay window.  Martin has given me permission to plant beautiful things that will hide the bulk head.

The first floor will consist of a fairly open floor plan. You will be able to see from the living room through to the kitchen/dining room.  We will have a custom built (read Martin designed and built) bay window at the front of the house, facing south, which will include a window seat.  The downstairs will have a "family" room that can be used as a spare/guest bedroom, plus the full bath.

This line drawing of the outside gives you an idea of the overall changes we are going to make. The front of the house that faces south and the road is the right hand side of the drawing.  The barn will stay the same size, but the roof line will change to match the new house roof.

Upstairs will have two bedrooms and a half bath. The washer/dryer will be in the bathroom also.  There will also be (the left part of the drawing) a large storage area because of the slope of the roof, we can't make the entire second floor living space.

lilacs and sunflowers

The sunflowers are looking good.

The lilac at the right front corner of the house wasn't going to survive widening the house by four feet, so we dug it up and put it along the fence between us and our east neighbor.  We were able to divide it.  We are planning on putting a variety of plants, trees, and shrubs so we have a hedgerow to provide some privacy between the two properties.

Finally back

The area behind the house and barn was very uneven. We had dug it up with the towable backhoe to be able to remove roots, stumps, and junk.  Unfortunately we left it that way and lots of weeds grew up.

Martin and I spent several days cutting the weeds, pulling up the roots and leveling the area (think shovel, wheelbarrow, and hard rake).

Both areas are now level and as packed as we can get them.

Moving dirt again

We are moving top soil, again, so we have a place to put sand from digging the basement.  

I've got one

One of the sunflowers I planted has actually blossomed. I wasn't sure if any of them would, between the bugs eating them and the late planting.  

I have two grey stripe sunflowers that I am hoping will blossom before we get a frost that kills them.

Great News!

 A neighbor, he lives about a quarter mile away just over the town line in Baldwin, stopped by while Martin and I were digging out roots and leveling the backyard. He offered the free use of his backhoe to remove the to pine stumps and to dig the basement.  This is great news since the towable backhoe is great for digging areas where the dirt is going to go right back into the same spot (laying pipe), but isn't great for moving lots of dirt.

We have some prep to do before we are ready for him to come, like getting areas ready for the sand from under the house to be dumped when it gets dug out.  Martin also needs to do some foundation work before the full basement gets dug.

This is such a relief. We thought we were going to dig the entire basement by hand, hauling the sand out in five gallon buckets.

We had an area behind the house that we had slightly dug up and another area behind the barn.  Part of the reason why we dug it up was because both areas had lots of small scrub trees which meant stumps and roots. Also both areas had been used to dump stuff which we felt needed to be removed.  Initially we came in with the back hoe and just dug the areas to pull out stumps, roots, and junk.  We left the ground very uneven.  Since then lots of weeds grew with abandon. We had briars, sunflowers, milkweed, sumac, celandine, lambs quarters, etc. etc. We just spent a couple of days, pulling weeds and roots.  Then we spread and raked the soil to level it. there were a couple of areas where the topsoil looked a bit better than the average sand that usually makes up the topsoil at an tigin. This got wheelbarrowed into the pile of topsoil.  

We are planning on putting sand from the behind the barn.  Any other topsoil we move will go in the smaller pile behind the newly leveled area behind the house.

two steps forward and three steps backwards

 The plastic that we used to protect the barn roof hasn't lasted as long as we hoped. It was a temporary measure, but we didn't realize just how temporary.

So the temporary "roofing" was replaced with better temporary "roofing".  Which means I spent another day on the barn roof, not my favorite place to be. Sometime you just have to do what you have to do.

We also had a problem with the back hoe.  The last tree (or what was left of it) in the back yard needed to go, along with the stump and roots. Martin cut it down and used the towable backhoe to get the root out.  He was working on getting roots out and moving topsoil, when he heard a snap.  The arm pivot broke.  You can see the difference between the top and bottom of the attachment. The top is broken.  We towed the backhoe home and Martin will need to take it to someone who welds. He could do it himself, but would need to buy the equipment. Until it gets fixed, we are stuck moving topsoil with shovels and wheelbarrows.

Floor Plans

I scanned the floor plans and here they are.  As you can see (or not see), they didn't scan very well.  I also tried taking a picture of them, but they turned out the same.  I'll keep trying. I would love to share what we have in mind.  We are looking at a 24 x 31, one and a half story house with 2 bedrooms and a 1/2 bath upstairs. Downstairs will have a full bath, open kitchen/dining room/living room with a family room that can double as a third bedroom  A huge difference from the tiny house we discovered.