We are getting so close!!! The farmer said we should definitely be in by the beginning of September– most likely before then. We had a picnic dinner on Friday at the farmhouse. It has been brutal with the humidity. We had a little bit of a break and took advantage of it.

When we went inside, we talked to the farmer. He had painted several of the rooms and the area above the stairs! The carpet guy will be coming soon to replace the yucky carpet.

The light is at the end of the tunnel! Woohoo!!

We finished painting the kitchen. The color we chose (color matched Shiplap) makes it hard to see where you’ve painted over primer until it’s dry. We’ll go back in this week to do a second coat in there.

The school room is all painted. I think I’m going to paint over that green also. The carpet in here will get replaced soon and trim will get painted and go back on.

The kids were with us and playing in the room with dry paint. Pony rides for life.

Here is the master bedroom all painted. Look at the view out the windows!

Sick of white? haha! We really are just trying to be budget friendly with this process. The farmer insists on paying for the paint because he doesn’t believe that any of our money should go into the house. I think that’s nonsense because paint isn’t necessary. Either way, we are going to do this color throughout since 5 gallon buckets are much more affordable. Once we add in our furniture and decor, it won’t feel quite as sterile. This color is a creamy white, so it feels much warmer than most whites.

The detached garage even got a new roof.

If you are new here, this is the before of the farmhouse. There is no other way to describe how this all came to be than it’s all God. I just “happened” to meet the farmer’s wife and tell her our dream of living on a homestead. I just “happened” to bump into the farmer when I went out to look at it. He let me walk through it and everything has “happened” to fall into place. We get to rent this beautiful farmhouse while we are here, and we couldn’t be more grateful.

The farmer said that they feel truly blessed to have us. I told him that words could never adequately express how much they mean to us.

I can’t wait to sit outside and read my Bible with a cup of coffee. The sunsets are incredible. The wildlife is so fun. The quiet is bliss.

PS- It’s Prime day. Are you shopping it? I’m not shopping, but I am sharing some of our favorite things that are on sale in this facebook group.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that we painted quite a bit. Before I show any of that, look at the difference primer made in the kitchen!!!

It is so bright and I love it!! Here is a before.

The kitchen will be getting pained the color-matched Shiplap color that the rest of the main rooms are getting. We got the wall behind this picture painted. The drawers are all getting re-glued so that they are sturdy for us.

We painted the school room and master bedroom. The air is not on right now, and our heat index has been 100+ degrees. Surprisingly, it wasn’t unbearable inside with the windows open and fans on.

The upstairs bathroom has been primed and is ready for paint as well. We have to pick paint colors for the two full bathrooms, and the girls’ rooms. Chloe and Addi like this color for their room. I love it, too. Harper’s bedroom is currently navy blue, and I really love it. But, wonder if we should do something different.

The upstairs floors are possibly going to be sanded down and stained, which will be so pretty. The carpet in the school room will be torn up and new put down. The baseboards and trim will all go back on when we are done painting. The farmer has said that he’s close to helping us paint. He has been so incredibly kind. He even offered an extra vehicle to us if we needed it. I was fighting back tears while thanking him for that unnecessary kindness.

Scott was saying how he is so thankful for the people that come into your life and you can honestly say that you are a better person for knowing them. That is how the owners of this beautiful home have been. We were strangers to them, and they have treated us with so much kindness and generosity. Lord, help me to be that kind of person for others.

The crops are growing pretty well despite the intense amount of rain we’ve had this season. There are soybeans planted all around the house, and corn in a field across the T in the road. It’s so amazing to see the way it all grows. And, of course, I can’t leave you without another picture of this beauty. I still pinch myself…

Not much has changed in the house. We need to get in there and paint so that we can move on to putting things back together. It looks about the same as last time.

Our van broke down again on Friday, so we spent most of our Friday evening and Saturday figuring out how to get it towed back to town. Of course it broken down 30 miles away from home. Now, we are just stressing about what could be wrong and how much it’s going to cost. We already sunk a lot into it on Thursday.

Life has just been one hard and frustrating thing after another for the past several years. We are honestly weary and worn out. I don’t think we can take much more of it. Every time things start to look up a little, something else gets thrown our way. You know when you are swimming and swimming and eventually you just get exhausted and feel like you couldn’t possibly swim anymore? That is where we are.

So, we stopped by the farmhouse and watched the sun set. The girls caught lightning bugs. It looked like glitter from all of them.

I’ll just share some pretty pictures from Friday evening since the rest of the house hasn’t changed much. With the holiday weekend, we are hoping to get a lot of painting done and hopefully things will move along quickly after that.

I know I keep saying it, but this place is so calming. It is quiet and still, and is a place where my mind can rest.

I don’t have any interior pictures this week. I spent the weekend laying in bed resting as much as possible. My husband is the best for holding down the fort.

The farmer called Scott on Sunday and said that he is about 99% done with the drywall. That means paint is next! Woohoo!! He said that he has some leftover paint from their house that we can use in the bathrooms if we’d like to. We are all about saving money, so I’m sure we will take him up on the offer.

Another project is the floors! The farmer’s brother has a huge sander, so we are going to try to sand the upstairs floors and refinish them. If the wood doesn’t look great, then we will put carpet down. It’s going to be beautiful if we can get them stained! There will also be new carpet down in the homeschool room. How fun would this be on the stairs instead of the 60s carpet?

The half bathroom off the kitchen is going to get new flooring since it had to be re-done. He is going to wait on putting the bathroom back together until we move our washer and dryer in.

Depending on how long the floor work takes, it could be pretty soon that we are moving in. I am still praying that it is before we start school. It’s so stressful to be getting settled into a home while starting school. Been there, done that. haha!

While I was laying around this weekend, I was browsing for things that I’d love and thought I would share. It’s fun to dream and drool. My interior design classes were my FAVORITE when I was in college. I wish I had stuck with that degree.

~This rug is beautiful! Our living room could use a bigger rug so it looks more balanced. How can I partner with Wayfair? (This is my current rug that I love, but is too small.)
~I really love this wall hanging. It’s such a fun texture.
~This pillow is so cute. I’m a big fan of textures.
~Here is a great priced basic welcome mat ($13 and free shipping). This would be cute layered over this rug.
~I really want to get some of these rechargable lights to put under the cabinets in the kitchen.
~I used a little of my amazon credit to buy these. I saw something about finding small ways to bring joy to your home. There are rainbows all over my house!

Totally unrelated, but because sharing is caring– here’s a really good deal on goldfish.

We peeked in at the farmhouse the weekend before last. The only change was that primer was on the walls in three of the main rooms. I say “only” lightly, because that is a LOT of work. It just never looks like it.

We went again yesterday, and it looks like we can start painting!

He has put new bottoms in the cabinets under the sink. That is a huge blessing. I don’t think I’ve ever had cabinets that weren’t warped under the sinks. That’s just normal.

The walls are up in the upstairs bathroom, which means it is ready to be put back together! It’s beautiful! We are going to need more paint, and I’m trying to be frugal and pick paint that we will love in all of the bathrooms.

The spot on the far right is where he has been working on the plumbing. We will have to paint in this room also, which I was hoping to get away with leaving white. I would really love to do a darker color on the walls to make sleeping better. This is the big girls’ room. Their bedding is mostly white with soft pink and gold. I may go with a dusty pink. I want them to choose, but I also do not want neon walls. You know? (Also, the doors have to be painted… why do people paint inside doors?)

It still feels blissful to walk through this beautiful home. It feel surreal that we will soon call it home for however long God keeps us here.

It already looks SO much better than it did just a few weeks ago. I have been praying that we can get moved in and settled before our school start date of August 12th. I’m cautiously optimistic that it may happen. Now that we have had our garage sale and donated a ton, it’s time to start packing!

If you missed it, I did a walk-through tour of the Farmhouse over the weekend on Instagram. If you want to see it, you can click here. There is a light blue circle that says “Farm House” under it. Click on the blue circle and you can see all of the videos/pictures.

As you can tell from the videos, we are at a stand still on our end. There are a lot of big projects that have to be finished before we can continue painting. We will have to pick out some colors for the bathrooms and kids rooms.

I do have some pictures from this week to share. We ate dinner at the house last Friday and played some games outside. Everything is blooming ritght now, and it’s so beautiful.

I don’t know if the sunset will ever get old out there.

Hopefully, we will be having a garage sale this weekend. If not, next. We have SO MUCH STUFF and I can’t wait to get rid of it. ha! We are officially done with our 2018-2019 school year, so I get to pack up homeschool stuff. Lord willing, I’ll be unpacking it in the farm house!

Happy Thursday, friends! I hope you stay dry wherever you are!

We didn’t get to the house at all last week. It’s difficult when we both end up working on Saturday– our only full day to work hard there. Scott went over last night to put up a second coat in the office and start in another room. It looks like the farmer has been REALLY busy. Things have been done that we didn’t know were going to happen. It’s crazy how much he accomplishes in one week!

The half bath looks about the same. He’s working on a lot of plumbing, so I imagine it will stay this way until thats completely done.

The school room has the ceiling tiles down as he is working on plumbing to the upstairs bathroom. Holes have been filled in. This room will be getting new carpet because it’s in such bad shape.

The master bedroom is a bit of a mess also. I’m not sure what happened around the door. The previous tenants painted over wallpaper. You can see some of it in the last picture above the ceiling line.

Here’s the office with the first coat of paint dried. That first coat always stresses me out because of how splotchy it is. It looks so much better with the second on now. I don’t think I have a picture of that to share. Next week. 😉

There’s a bathtub in the big girls’ room! haha!

This upstairs bathroom was in really rough shape. The tub and fixtures were all just really old. The tub had pretty bad rust stains in the bottom and the nozzles for the tub stuck out a good two inches. This room made Scott the most nervous, so I think he’s relieved to see that it’s getting re-done. The other would have absolutely been usable. Just not ideal. I don’t think I ever took pictures of it because it was pretty gross looking.

This house is so special. At first, we were thinking that we would probably move in early June. I’m pretty confident that it won’t be that soon now. It will be worth the wait. I also need to come up with a thank you gift for this man and his sweet wife for all that they are doing.

I fully intended to share this progress early this week. We were going to get some more done, but obviously life had other plans and I had a deadline to keep. So, you’ll get weeks four and five pretty close together.

Hey, hey! We made some progress this past week at the farmhouse. My mother-in-law had a slumber party with the girls, so we took advantage of the kid-free time. The half bath/laundry room has all new plumbing and a new floor put down. The farmer (I’ll keep calling him that instead of sharing a name) has been working really hard.

He discovered that the kitchen sink had also been leaking, so he’s been repairing that– along with repairing a pipe that froze over the winter.

We took down the curtain rod in the living room, which opened up the space so much. It’s amazing what a big difference something simple can make. We filled in holes and scrubbed down the walls.

Here’s the room with the curtain still up– just so you can see the difference.

Scott took down some obsolete security stuff that was all over the place. We got to see the wallpaper that was left behind. It’s always fun to see things like this. I feel like it’s just little pieces of the house’s story.

We got the first coat of paint up in one room. We color matched the Manolia Shiplap color. We bought a big five gallon bucket from Ace Hardware to do all of the rooms that need painted. It will brighten the spaces up quite a bit, and also save us some money by doing the same color.

There is still quite a bit to do, so our hands are a bit tied as to what we can do right now. The carpet is going to get replaced in what will be the homeschool room and the ceiling tiles will get put back up. Once that and the plumbing are done, we’ll be “ready to rock and roll” as Chip says.

We get more and more excited with each week that passes. We are all looking forward to summer break from school, and knowing that we will have a new home to make memories in will be great. Also, not having neighborhood kids knocking on our door six thousand times during dinner will also be splendid.