Part 3: Progress On The House

I suppose I'm taking a two-pronged approach to our projects up at the farm. Or I'm calling it a two-pronged approach, because if I don't, I'd be calling it a mayhem-madness-want-to-shoot-someone-approach. Which is to say that I'm trying to do too many things up there, all at once, because I'm excited about too many projects and want to get them all done, but I'm also not up at the house enough right now to actually do them all. Nor do I have the money to pay someone to do everything. So instead-- I'm basically driving myself nuts in New York instead.

Let's go back to calling it a two-pronged approach. It feels so much more optimistic. 

Here's where things stand upstate:

• I picked up miles of bucolic landscape wallpaper from the Craig's List lady on Long Island last week. And I mean miles. In fact, there is so much wallpaper, I negotiated the price down by agreeing to take it all. This weirder-than-a-bucket-of-hair-wallpaper is going to be installed in the downstairs bathroom, and I actually planning to take Thursday and Friday off to get this project finished, unless something unexpected transpires. (Which would be foolish to rule out...)

• I've also picked up the beautiful William Morris wallpaper that's going to be installed in the staircase going from the first floor to the second floor. I've got no timeline on this project, other than knowing it ain't gonna happen in the next couple of weeks. But when you find a good deal on Craig's List, you can't vacillate or you'll find yourself without beautiful William Morris wallpaper; so I'm putting that project at the end of the list, and trying to come to terms with that schedule. Breath in, breath out.  

• The chimney has been removed from the guest room and the attic, and the totally awesome wall has been assembled to divide the storage area from the sleeping area. We used one of the salvaged antique doors I found last fall (in the burn-pile at a neighboring farm!) and retro-fitted it to fit under the eave of the roof. Or-- to be clear-- the handy chap who built the wall retro-fitted the door. I just explained how. 

• The same handy chap has built and installed this unfathomably beautiful railing around the stairwell leading to the second floor, so people could stop risking life and limb in the middle of the night, navigating downstairs to the bathroom without falling down the hole. The railing (purposefully) resembles the railing on the front porch, minus the irregular spacing and rotting wood. I am so in love with how this looks, it's almost hard to talk about. 

• And most victoriously, I've just secured child-care (yay my mom and dad for babysitting Julian in the city this weekend!) and extra labor (yay my friends Ty and Ginger for coming up to the farm for the weekend!) and we're going to start tackling the paneling up in the attic bright and early Saturday morning. I'm so jazzed up about getting that started, and even more jazzed up about the prospect of having it done. 

Keeping in mind that it will take roughly one-million hours to complete this project... So you may just want to tune back in April 2016 to see the final photos!