Homestead dream house Tour (75% done)

3/4 of the way through our homestead dream house. I think it's time for an update. Let's show them what you've done. I'm so proud of you.

I haven't done anything.

Let's share with them what you've done. Oh, you directed.

I directed.

And then wrote the checks. Oh, we did paint. We've painted the outside, Beck.

Yes.

We can get the cameraman in here and then It's raining, so it'll be limited.

Decking, railing.

What was that? Well, and, and then the—

you, you probably saw on the way up here, this is generous all the way across. I didn't want to have a railing, and so per code, yeah, you don't have to have a railing if you have stairs. So it's a way to get around that.

What's really cool about this is you can still back up a—

we could back up the truck to it, put the bed down, and still be able to unload things, haul in a bunch of freezer meat or whatever.

Whatever, uh, an appliance or something like that. What was your idea behind this? Okay, so in the past we had a, we had a deck here. It was not covered, so you covered it.

Yes.

Um, which would be nice because, you know, the sun's setting over there, that's south, and we can have evening, you know, summer meals out here. It would be cooler.

Yes. One of my ideas actually was to to enclose this and make it an actual room off of the house, like a mudroom coming in.

Well, I figure I like the porch better, and you can always change your mind. Yeah, as opposed to tearing that.

Correct.

What was your idea behind— then this is the only new square feet in this whole place. It's the only new footprint. You might have added a roof, we might have added vertical. Um, what was the idea behind this connecting dock?

It was weird to get the stairs to come down here.

Okay.

So this was my solution to that because this is the front door and I just— more deck.

I mean, it's really cool to stand right there in that corner and look over.

Yeah. And then once when we redo the raised beds, yeah, I think we're going to design them differently to fit in this area differently and to be more in play with this deck since this deck wasn't here when we installed that garden with the hog wire. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Painted. And where do people come in? If so, if we have a guess.

This is supposed to be the front door.

All right. This is supposed to be—

So I might paint this door blue so that it kind of differentiates itself. Like, this is the front door.

Maybe a welcome sign.

I might have a welcome sign attached to it or something like that. But it makes sense because look, you walk straight in.

Where do you get these ideas? Like, this cavity in here as opposed to just flat across.

Oh, like going in with it so that if it's raining, people can step inside and knock on the door?

Well, that idea, that's good too.

They don't get wet.

Oh yeah, because a lot of times doors are just right here, right? But I meant like this generous ceiling. Oh, you know, that, that could have just been flat.

I didn't, I didn't even make that decision. Somebody else made it for me, and I like it.

Anything open Yeah, we're living in a house right now that's— I can literally touch the ceiling.

Yeah, so it's nice. And we went with the 8-foot doors.

Why'd you go with the doors?

The taller doors, just because I like it. I've always liked it. My friend's parents built a house with 8-foot doors when I— when we were like in our late teens, early 20s. I was like, I'm gonna have that one day.

She— you've been watching a lot of HGTV. How has that helped you?

It's helped me spend money because you watch a lot of it. I do not watch a lot of it.

I put hose bibs out here.

We did. I put a hose bib on every deck. I've never had that. We also have electrical outlets on every deck.

I've never had that.

Well, because like when we want to do Christmas lights, it doesn't happen because of that. Or if we want to cut our hair out here, we had to run a, a, a drop cord from inside or a generator to run something.

Maybe we have the whole house now, but we would have to have— there's times when you need to have electricity out here.

Yeah.

And you're just finagling it through the door.

Yeah, there has been times. So I'm like, I just got all the things that all other people have that I've never had.

Because like, what are you now?

I'm 44.

You finally got your dream house.

I'll be 45 when we move in. So yeah, finally got it.

This is good news that the tile saw here, guys.

Here, tiles here.

That's why I—

tile.

Yeah, that's why we want to do this tour now before we get some of those finishing touches of the floor and the tile coming this week.

Oh, you know what? I think there's tile in all the rooms. He has a sample of tile.

Show you this one. This is a mermaid pattern for—

it's not mermaid. It's a princess scale. Long fish scale.

She's kind of over the mermaid thing.

She is. But it's really beautiful when you see it all together like this. It's kind of like, um, they called it something else. They didn't call it a mermaid.

Yeah, panoramic doors. What's cool about these doors, they can open like this. Ready? Let's demo this. So the cool thing about these panoramic doors is I believe you can open it normally, right?

Well, like this.

Yeah, this door just opens, and then you can totally— see if I get this right— clicks in and Yeah, pull down on this button.

It just locks like that.

Okay. And then it's, I guess, a wider— it's just like a big open door, more generous door. We'll be connected to the outside. Homesteaders were always outside.

The other thing is, is that it's not installed right now. They haven't installed it, but there's a, um, I have a screen attachment that comes across and will block this and so I'm not block it, but make it so bugs, flies—

oh, you do—

can't get in and out.

That, that slides out of the way?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, it's like a hidden screen.

I think what we've done since last time is the big one is sheetrock.

Oh, okay, sheetrock and paint too. We did paint. We primed the walls and painted the ceiling. Is that it?

I think so.

I don't even know what we did last night. Well, this—

show them the deck. So it's amazing how it feels once it's sheetrocked. Feels definitely like a home. It's definitely bright and airy, which is what we're looking for. This deck though, the locust wood from our land.

Yeah, super beautiful.

Before, this was a covered porch. That was a covered porch.

Yeah, I'd say this was nothing.

And this is just over an existing roof.

Yeah.

Yeah, so way to— way to get so much more without any more footprint.

I know, I love this. And this sunroom is gonna—

we're gonna spend a lot of time out here, maybe in the winter, a lot of time in here in the winter. That's where all the grill is going. We— she had it gassed. She had a gas line put in so that we can have a gas grill. And she's taking a picture. It seems like the painters might have painted the window.

You can't see it. There's some overspray on the skylights.

They definitely didn't finish painting the skylights, the skylight pockets. Yeah, so whatever you call those. Rebecca, we're getting good at directing construction, but it's almost over.

We're figuring out how to do it. Flooring is coming Thursday. Tile is going in right now. Wood floor is coming Thursday, and then cabinets are next week. Then countertops are getting done next week.

And then finish electric and plumbing.

And then the floors will get finished the next week.

Oh, we should show the deck outside the office. Our office, uh, my office, studio, library nook up top. Spend lots of hours snuck away up there and journaling.

I know I sent you, I sent you a reel of a, of a ladder. It was really neat. It was like in bookcases.

Yeah.

So it came out.

Yep.

And then you— and it locked, and then you would go and then you would slide it back in.

You think the, uh, county department's gonna let us have that? All they said was permanent egress, so as long as it's permanent.

Yeah, it's permanent.

A permanent way to get up and down.

It's perfect.

Let's go to the other side to get out onto the back deck. We are in the master bedroom right now. I don't know if there's too much more to show you here than what you've seen in the past. This deck though, you can access this deck through the office or mine and Rebecca's bedroom, and we can come out and we can, uh, count the piglets that just happened. Okay, yeah, there's still 6 piglets. We're doing good. The calves are nursing. Looks like the cows have enough hay. This is the advantage of permaculture design. Put things that you're going to visit often, which is a pole barn with milk cows we're going to visit every day, put it as close to the house as possible. It is— I literally— we literally have a barn in the backyard, Beck. I know, and it doesn't smell because of the deep bedding.

No, it doesn't smell. I can't wait. It's going to be so nice to be able to check on the animals when they're in there.

And yeah, when the lambs birth in January in there, when the pig— somebody accidentally gets out—

pig is birthing in there.

The pig's birthing in there now. There won't be much going on in the deep of summer, but—

no, but in the deep of summer, we'll be able to come out here and check on our—

look at this—

high tunnel and our garden.

You can see Beefcake out there, the bees in the distance. You know, like there's, uh, get some binoculars to see if we need to weed. I've made that mistake of looking out there and saying, well, no, it doesn't need weeding.

But then also that view is gorgeous too, you know. I just feel like Justin had said, I knew it was going to be good, I didn't know it was going to be this good, the view. Yeah, from the back deck. I always wanted a back— so this used to be our window in our bedroom. Yeah.

And there was no porch here, but we're just— again, we're over a shed.

And so I— when we put the shed up, I was like, I always want— I always wanted to turn— take that door and— or take the window, make it a door, and be able to have a little deck out here. He did think I was crazy, and I was like, it would be so amazing. And this is like way beyond whatever I thought I was gonna have. Like, I was just gonna have like a little deck because honestly, one of the reasons I did it is when— and I know this has passed— but when I had Henry, it was like I went to, I went to bed so early with him because he needed to be in bed at 7 o'clock or he would just lose it. And, um, I always was like, once he got asleep, I was like, I still want to feel connected to the outside because it was, you know, good weather or whatever. That's why I thought this deck would have been really great for that. Of course, like, we're way past all of that.

Insulation happened too, of course.

Good insulation.

And we ended up indoor insulating every room.

We did. We insulated—

I don't know if that was a knee-jerk reaction of living in 700 square feet together, only having one bathroom.

Well, we were still living in the cabin when we did it.

We're gonna have so much privacy in that.

I don't know if we're very excited about that. We have a toilet with a door.

Right now we're living with one toilet and 700 square feet, 7 people.

So, and the bathroom's right next to the kitchen. We can, we can, even worse, we can, and we have guests a lot.

Yeah, and you can sneak away from the guests, zigzag away through the private bedroom back there, and then shut that door.

Although this is Lily's bathroom right here, right there. We need to tuck that in.

Oh, it's the guest bathroom.

Well, we insulated it, so there's no people or anything. No, there's insulated. There's no people.

You planning to get rowdy in there, Rebecca?

Maybe.

We should have some—

I hope. Oh, well, I was thinking I would maybe put a rock, but we could do plants all along here, really.

Oh, you going to have a go at indoor plants?

Yeah.

I like your no-give attitude.

A go.

Not give up attitude.

A go.

Well, we always kill—

I don't have indoor plants right now.

We've passed—

I do. There's the cabin.

But they're dead.

They might be dying.

We haven't watered them.

I did water them.

All right, that clearly has a film, doesn't it? See, should they have done that with all the other ones? Yes, that makes me think.

Yeah, look at how light it is in here. It's so nice. It's gonna be so nice.

Where is that paint spray coming from? They had— they didn't spray them.

They sprayed the ceiling, the nooks. No, but they sprayed the ceiling.

Uh, Oh boy. Okay, anyway, well, we got our—

I've told the people who need to be told and they're saying they're going to take care of it.

Part of our meat kitchen, you know, grind burgers. You enjoying the view? It's nice to you out there. Oh, uh, farm bathroom people can access from the outside. They don't have to take off their shoes.

Jonah's talking about he wants to put me a fountain out here.

I know, he's trying to do that today, I think.

I think he is. He's crazy. It's not the time for it.

It's not time to do that yet, is it? No, because people might need to— well, that needs to get cleaned up.

Well, we have to pick out a fountain too.

We need to run our gutters. Yeah, because that's going to have to be dug, right? Yeah, Jonah wants to do a water feature out in the— between here and the garden.

He wants to do it where it comes down and there's a circle driveway here, which is a good idea.

That's not bad. And So that's kind of some dull space there, unless that's a good space to run like chicks in a, in a chicken tractor, you know what I mean?

Well, we have that down there to do that. I mean, because technically we are going to be bringing the side-by-side down here quite a bit.

Yeah, to fuel up, to let— yeah, to, to guard, to load it, you know, bring produce from the garden. We have an entire room dedicated just for freezers. Ice, ice, ice machine and fridge.

That's where I'm going to hide our—

Mama's making every use of single space. What are you going to hide in there?

This is going to be like Christmas decorations.

Okay, that makes sense. This will be a training room. Weight training.

Weight training in this area.

What?

Foosball down there. Freezers.

Our idea is we don't want to assume the children ever have to leave. And, um, so we need to make this happen in place continually. You know, we have the soccer field out there, you have horses, foosball table in here, maybe ping pong table out there.

This is where a drain was.

Just people can have fun.

So no more drain.

We've covered the drain up. Plumber's going to have to put carpet down.

Are we going to put real carpet in here or just keep it concrete? No, we're having flooring. It's coming. It should— it was supposed to be here. Are we going to have a couch?

It was supposed to come yesterday, right?

No, we're not going to have a couch down I'm gonna have some stools in the kitchen.

Big mudroom. For a homestead house, you want a mudroom. You want a generous mudroom. Rebecca finally gets her garage. Yeah, that she can put her vehicle in. We had to extend it so that she could. Well, I think we raised the roof too.

We did.

So it doesn't feel like we're sardines. Yeah, I think we could have done it.

No, your truck wouldn't have fit at all.

Yeah, are you gonna let me park my truck in here?

I think so.

Cool. So we're not gonna have anything in here but cars, vehicles, nothing. Not a shelf, nothing. There was a neighbor down the street we admired for years. He kept his garage door open.

George.

He literally had— he's late, late George. He literally had one car in his car.

That's it. And we would drive by and be like, there's nothing in there.

Nothing. Not a gas tank.

We were like shocked.

Not a shelf. He was, and it was appealing to us.

The thing is, is that he had barns. We never saw one of those barn doors.

We have stalls. We have stalls.

I know, we have, we have space for it.

All right.

But yeah, no.

Feels weird because it feels almost done, but it's not.

It feels so far from done.

I think Joel Salatin said, isn't that frustrating? When the outside is complete, it means you're halfway there. But it doesn't feel like we're—

Well, yeah. We just felt like it's never going to happen, but it seems like it is.

How long? 2 months?

I hope by June. Please go back in there.

We've been, we've been shooting. We were shooting for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving.

And maybe if I would have had everything purchased prior to it.

Oh, I don't think it's your fault either. I mean, it's, it's hard to get, you know, line workers up appropriately.

Yeah, it would have maybe been before Christmas.

Took forever to get the permit.

I feel like we could have been in by January.

And then we said Henry's birthday, and then we pretty much gave up on that kind of stuff. Then we're just like, we'll get in when we get in. Not really, because the next birthday was your birthday, and we were shooting for May 6th.

Well, you're the one who said that. You said to the contractor, can we get in by May 6th?

Why don't we say July 4th? I think we need to aim for the impossible. That's why we keep shooting these hard goals.

I feel like we're still shooting for my birthday. What's the matter?

So maybe it's still possible. 4 weeks. All right.

Say bye. Bye-bye.