This week was big for us concerning the land, and for myself physically. We will go a for a walk a bit later in this posting, for now, let us count our blessings and sit in the rising sun, light some incense, and chat.
I'm about 7 appointments in at the new chiropractor and really feeling a positive difference! Although everything still hurts, my hips, leg, and ankle are to the point where I can function! and I mean function, and really step up my movement game each day. I still have rough days, but WAY less than before. On this most recent appointment, she started working on my left arm/shoulder, and just like with my left hip, found a muscle to be completely shut off! My deltoid, to be precise! It is absolutely fascinating to be going through this process with her! Within a week of my shoulder surgery in early 2020, my tricep and elbow were so painful, and that never went away! She said that the trauma from the surgery shut off the deltoid (remember, the trauma from falling last year and smacking that left hip area shut off the muscle there!), and the tricep has been trying to compensate for 5 years now! The "exercises" that she gives are so incredibly "small" and simple. Barely moving at all, but so effective! I do them for three seconds on each side, three times each session I do, three times a day. She also did the cupping, and stem treatment. I am so excited to not only be feeling relief, but to also learn WHY and WHAT is happening!
I ran errands, went to the visit my mother, and hurried home to change so that I would be ready to head to the land with Woodchuck to meet the guys we hired to excavate the pond and fix it. We had planned on going the day before, but had a massive storm blow through. I know Woodchuck still planned on going out there in the thunder and lightning because he was so excited to be moving forward with this part of it, but I had to burst his bubble. I love that he's excited, but we also have to be safe. 😂
I have to say that it has been such a relief to find people with the skill set that we need, and to let go of the need to have to do everything ourselves. I can tell by some of the comments that Woodchuck is making that he feels the same too. And, it's smarter that way too. To have people with the right equipment and skill set so that we aren't trying to do everything by hand and just can't keep on top of it, and be in our 70's crawling down in ditches, working outside in 100 degree temps. I mean, just because we can, doesn't mean we should! And there are so many other areas and things for us to stay on top of out there! The only downside, of course, is that hiring people costs more money. So I am back to looking for work to try and build a savings back up to help pay for those things moving forward.
Is the pond a mess? Yep. Are they going to have their hands full? Yep. Was it important to set a "do not exceed" amount of money during this meeting? Yep. Will I lose wonderful, native, healthy trees and plants and fish in this project? Yep. Will I stand there and watch them work? Nope. But I know that this is important and needs to be fixed. It will not be a quick process either, as the "stuff" they dig out of the pond will be dumped and piled where the excavator can reach, so that it can dry out. That will then be used to build the banks back up to stop the slumping and leaking. We also asked them to get us a quote on doing the stonework on the edges, because I honestly don't feel like I am not being listened to about that and us being the ones to do it. Luckily, even though I asked questions and tried bringing things up, they all brought it up that erosion can still happen, and we could be wasting rock if certain scenarios aren't addressed. We got to the answers I needed.
While we finished up with them, the guy we hired as our general contractor called to say a preliminary house design was ready. So we wrapped up at the land and headed to his place, which isn't too far away from our current home. We feel like it was meant to be to be working with this gentleman. The house was just what Woodchuck was looking for in the floor plan, though there are things that we are both having to compromise on. He wanted 9 foot ceilings, but is now going with 8 foot. I wanted a finished attic space to use as my art studio, and have to let that go. While there is a second bedroom, we don't know yet if our youngest son will be with us, so I won't know if that can be used as my studio. So in the meantime of not knowing, I am trying to purge and use up as much of my supplies as I can before we move, because if I don't have a space use as a workshop, there won't be good storage options there for my supplies. In the household and personal items, I am sure there will be at least two stages. Purge what we don't want right now and donate it or sell it on eBay, then move and purge a second time what we don't want or can't fit in the house.
Because: house. The new design is smaller, by about 300 sq.ft. and I am SUPER nervous about that. We are getting quoted the same amount to build a smaller, one level home that we were quoted a few years ago to build a larger, two level home. And that makes us both nervous. We don't want to feel closed in. But we will start this weekend figuring out what all we want, i.e. windows, doors, paint, cabinets, etc. I figure if we go room by room, maybe that will make it a little less overwhelming. The contractor said we could start building around October 1st of this year and it should take about 6 months. The goal is to get it closed in by Winter and then spend the Winter finishing off the inside. That is going to be here before we know it! So I've been kicking all of this around in the back of my mind today while I've been home working on chores and art. All we can do is make a plan and see how it turns out....and remain flexible along the way!
Let's lighten it up a little with some nature therapy and a walk on the watershed preserve.
We made a stop at Menards while in town to start looking at supplies and pricing stuff. We were going to go with a discount place, but honestly, we have gotten some stuff from them and the quality is a bit sketchy, lots of close-out stuff, dinged and damaged options...even a bit lacking on the install skills. So we are going to look at ALL of the options, and the contractor made a good point. "You don't want to go cheap now, retire, and then 10 years into your retirement you have to be replacing stuff." We found a lot that we liked, and good companies too. We started with the kitchen because that comes easiest to us and was the most recent thing we updated in our current home.
We loved this kitchen cabinet. Very woodsy and natural, which fits the area we will be living in, and similar to the other one we saw at the discount place! We couldn't agree on counter tops though, so shelved that task for now.
We liked this fridge! I love the one we have now, an Amana that we bought brand new when we bought this house and it's still running like a champ! If I knew that it would last us, I would take it with us....maybe we still will. It could buy us some time while building up more savings to get a new one. If we do get a new one, we are going with black again. We don't like white anything, and stainless is too reflective for our tastes, and shows the finger prints.
For range hoods, we have always, always gone pretty cheap and standard! Woodchuck really liked this one though.
I didn't have much of an opinion on the gas range/oven. Black finish color, cooks, and I'm good. We liked this one, though I don't care for the chrome backing, so we may need to keep looking. And with me being the only one who cleans the stove-top, I'm gonna be a very cranky lady between the chrome and those grates on top.
We have a very small deep freezer right now that really isn't working well for us. Everything is jumbled up in one big opening, for the most part, and I nearly fall in trying to get stuff out. So we decided that an upright one would be better for us. There were two sizes to choose from, and with it really just being the two of us using right now anyway, we are going to go with the smaller one.
I have handwashed dishes nearly my whole life, with one little stint in an apartment that had an automatic dishwasher that didn't work for the majority of the time I was there. So I am very excited to finally gain that time back in my daily life! 😂
The utility room will be right off of the kitchen, so we went ahead and looked at washers and dryers too. Maybe we will take our current ones with us, I don't know yet. We are simple people, and we always go with the simple top loader washer.
I already have lots and lots of brand new cabinet pull handles that I bought from a resale shop, and those will work just fine in the kitchen.....though I didn't know that insect and mushroom shaped cabinet knobs were a thing until yesterday when I saw them online and had to hold myself back! I'm not spending the money on that, and I don't have time to make them. So what we don't have right away isn't going to kill us. We can still open a cabinet without a knob.
I could tell Woodchuck was starting to get overwhelmed, but we took a quick glance at paint. I grabbed some chip cards and pamphlets, and we think we are just doing one color for the whole house. Neutral, lighter rather than darker. Then we headed for the exterior siding options. We wanted all stone, but the contractor pointed out the cement board on his house, and in looking at pictures and costs, we might need to do a little of each to break that cost up.
We liked this green cement board, though didn't take too much time to look. So again, I grabbed pamphlets. We also looked at various types of stone, but forget to have the contractor clarify the kind that he recommended. I found out that Woodchuck likes the rectangular stone, while I tend to lean more towards the round. It is honestly not that important to me, so whatever he wants is fine. This first set of stone sample struck me as having too much red, which looks more brown in the photo. In person, I didn't like it because it was too vibrant, but I do like it in the picture. 👇
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