Homestead Remodel UPDATE | Half Way Through

Hey, the plumber's here. Happy day, y'all. Hard to have a difficult day, at least what I'm telling myself, with views like this. I mean, come on, we're starting off on the right foot. How's she doing?

Tried taking all the sheep on halters, but they didn't— none of them listened.

That feels real good. A barn full of hay. That happened yesterday, a little bit more today hopefully, and then we're done. We buried on accident the water line that goes to Beefcake. There's supposed to be a hallway here. She's made a nest. Your honey has made a nest. You see it here? They've raked up all the wood chips into this one corner and have themselves a nest. Let me make sure this is working after being squashed. It's working. I feel like the next couple of days is gonna be playing catch-up. We've been gone for almost a week. We've been doing this hay. The farm needs us desperately. Got a few straggler hay bales, got a bunch of loose hay we need to spread. Hummer is here, we need to get updated with them. And Shawn, our main contractor, needs a meeting with us about the garage at 9. That could be good. That could be bad. Good morning, how are you? Good. You need anything before y'all pour this? Yeah, we're in trouble. Yeah, he came out yesterday with the guy. Oh, did he? Okay, good. So moving forward, Sean's coming at 9. Yesterday, that was standing tall grass and weeds, and they ate every bit of that hay. Oh, it's good hay, it's good hay. That's the test, especially if they'll eat it when they have the option of grass. So I've got 45 minutes. What's the most important thing I can do? Mineral Monday. Completely out of salt, completely out of kelp, pretty much out of Buffer Plus. It's B, B, C, and A is empty. Josiah cleaning up the loose hay. That'll do it. I wish we had this hay wagon when we covered the field. And then I'll try to back it up. That's going to be the trick, backing up a wagon that pivots in the front. See if I can do this. Back in the trailer is already, already backwards, so this is like double backwards. I don't know, it's hard. Yeah, okay, that was pretty hopeless, but we got it. I had no control of where it was going. Yep, more of this. Bring back memories. That was harder than getting up hay, wasn't it? Yeah, way harder. If we had to do all 1,000 bales by ourselves, we might be saying a different story. Thankfully Andrew had a good crew. You come with me or the boys? Okay, let's go. Up top, we are talking about one of three of our heat sources.

Okay, so we're talking about a wood stove, but then he offered— will you show him that picture of like a fire, more fireplace-y? It's an insert. Okay, does it— it doesn't—

it's a wood stove that's built into the wall.

You'd be the stove man.

Yeah, it does for the blowers. Okay, but it doesn't have to.

It doesn't have to.

No, it's all got radiant glass too, so—

okay, there's blowers built into it.

It's like a wood stove that's built into the wall. So an insert would go in a fireplace.

We have— it's run on propane. We have a whole house generator and we have a wood boiler. Yeah, like, do we really need it?

That'd be a third heat source. When it comes to heat, we really want our redundancy.

I live in Deep Gap and I've got— my furnace runs off pellets, so I got a pellet stove. Pellet furnace, and that's how I heat my house. I've got a pellet stove downstairs that heats the basement. I've got a gas fireplace on the other end of the basement. I got a wood stove upstairs. Of course, it's probably because I'm in this business and I have been for 20-something years, but I— the thing I like about it is I'm not dependent on the gas company to get to me. I'm not dependent on the wood pellets to get to me, and I'm not dependent on me to split firewood. I've got a way to heat my home another way. And if something goes crazy, I've got 2 water heaters. I've got an electric water heater, I've got a propane water heater.

I'm—

I am not dependent on anybody to let me live my life.

I agree with Skye, it's a good idea to not be completely dependent on one of those things. Even splitting your own firewood, something could happen to you physically and you not be able to do it.

Osburn is what this stove would be, or this fireplace.

Okay.

And if we did a freestanding, I would still do an Osburn because they use a reburn system versus is a catalyst. Okay, there's no parts to go bad on that. And I've, I've always had reburn systems in my stoves, same as this one has. It'll have a reburn system in it, and all it is, it's a little plate on the top on the inside and some air tubes that go through it. And when the air is introduced, it's just introduced underneath that plate.

Can it run without electricity?

You can.

We had had idea to put wood stove there. Yes, it would be a long track up, might protrude a little bit. We thought about putting it over there, but But then it's over there in the corner, in the nook. What if we put it right there?

That whole front is cast, it heats up and throws heat off. You're gonna feel it down the corner, but—

Why do you like over there?

Well, I was just thinking—

Why do you like there instead of over here?

She liked it over there.

Well, I was saying that.

Too much of a—

No, I was saying that.

Well, that makes sense. You're gonna be wanting to hang out in there in the sunroom in the winter, and then you're getting this heat too. He offered some sort of, I don't know, let's call it return. I don't think that's what he called it, but You can have an offset here so that we could heat the sunroom extra special. We're gonna be spending a lot of time in the sunroom in the winter.

They make a gravity feed kit that comes off of it, which is just a little knockout on the top of the unit. I pipe it up with 6 or 8-inch flex. We could put a register on the wall back here that would dump some heat straight off of that into this room if you wanted to. If you wanted to, and it just does it by convection.

Even our wood boiler is dependent on a little bit of electricity, and if our electricity goes out— and we have the generator, but then if it goes out, what, we run out of fuel, whatever— then we could all hunker down around the stove, hang out in the sunroom.

Hey, we lost power, the world's ending for a few days, let's hang out, let's wall off and chill. And that's kind of how we did our basement. You know, if it got crazy, we could survive for, you know, a week or so.

Well, we had the blizzard in '93. Even if we have blizzard in '93 again where we lose electricity for a week, I think it might have been 10, maybe 2, 10 days, 10, 2 weeks. Fuel can't be hauled here on trucks because the snow's, snow's all over the road. Yeah, we're in North Carolina, we're not in Michigan, y'all. We're not equipped for 3 feet of snow. Hasn't snowed like that in 30 years, but it could happen. We'll sit at peace knowing something else could happen, and we have the 3 different heat sources, which is very important during the winter.

$500 or $600 for that today.

Is that about what it's worth?

I'd have bought it for $1,000, but that's good to know. I'm telling you, you get some money for it, I promise you, especially that first really good cold snap we get.

Yeah, that's when people wait. They don't, they don't plan ahead.

You could buy, you could buy, uh, you know, 2 or 3 generators and Sell them as soon as the power goes off. It's the same way with wood stoves. As soon as it gets cold, somebody's gonna take it.

That would end up being about half of what we thought it would be, so that's good for a wood stove. This garage turns out to be much too small. We can get in just barely on either side. We can also just barely clear my truck by only 3 inches. Big problem, it's not long enough.

About 22'6" is what you're gonna finish inside.

Is that enough?

If she were to park in here right now the hitch would stick out about, I don't know, a few inches. How much more is that than what we think?

It's almost 3 feet. It's not quite—

you only needed what, 6 inches?

Yeah, yeah, which is your truck.

You don't have some room to walk around?

Well, and the thing is, she won't have to pull it all the way.

That's putting her bumper right here. Driver's side, right here, she can get out and easily go into the bottom. But what if she has to get something out of the passenger side?

Or what if we're all with her, or somebody's with her, which is very likely if kids are with her, they'll be able to get out and walk around.

Yeah, Beauty, probably second to her kitchen, really wants a garage. We've had this— Lynn living here for 22 years, ever since we got married, might be 23 now. She's not had her garage and she's had a small kitchen. Those two things, I think she's Heaven on earth.

The only other option we talked about— see, these stairs up here, this set of steps are about 18 inches wider than this step. So we had talked about cutting this off and we could almost get, well, another 18 inches. So another— we put another 4 foot on it.

Even though we just rebuilt this part of the roof, it's gonna have to come down. Things are gonna have to be extended, new footers. It's a lot. It's gonna be extra, but Beauty's gonna have her garage. Lily, you in the hay? Lily, boy, they've already broke down a lot of hay. Yeah, they should build a house in the hay. Lily, can you show Henry your house?

Yeah.

Okay, I want a tour after this meeting.

Okay, I think—

was that from yesterday or is that new?

No.

Okay, Henry, all right, get in there. I'm gonna come explore your hay fort when you're done. Don't stack them.

I guess what my, my question would be, if we have to disconnect it to get the line set in the wall Well, would it not be better, just in my thoughts, to move this out next to the generator maybe? Then you— that would give you the option to pour this whole back porch.

Sean's saying we could pour this whole thing if this unit were gone. Right now we're going to have concrete here, and then here we have a staging area. But what if this were all staging area?

My thoughts are this would be a great area for when Justin and the kids come in, or y'all come in from the garden or whatever.

I don't like putting this unit right here because we wouldn't be able to get through right here to get to our co— our root cellar. We'd have to go around this pole and water setup to get to this root cellar. And we don't want to forget all our pumpkins, potatoes, whatever, onions. We want to be able to easily put these things in here and easily get them out.

I'm not really opposed to pouring what you had kind of mapped out, but this is what brought me to it. I mean, you see all this, this is all in your finished space.

Second problem with that unit right in here is we have all that electrical to cover up. He's proposed the unit also go over here, which I like that better. It's a little further to go, got a little bit of grading, but not a big deal. And we've cleared out of that way, and we have— hey, maybe we could even have a picnic spot in here, or a bit of a staging area here, or this is where we can put our onion rack when we're drying or curing onions or garlic. I like this thing under shelter. Seems like maybe it would last longer being out of the elements. A lot of these are outside, so I think it's going to be okay. And the freedom it gives us here—

I just need to get a measurement on insulation, and we wanted an option of spraying the roof, right?

Just the roof, everything. Spraying everything. We're gonna spray everything, right? Options.

38 by 68, if that helps you.

Okay, so we're talking about on both— on the stalls too, right?

Everything.

Okay, you guys are familiar with the shop? Behind the shop, well, and stalls, like fence stalls, new insulated area.

Just the floor.

Yeah, you got it.

Now you got walls and stuff here, all of this Back to the garage.

Oh, to the garage? He's gonna do the garage too?

Nah, just that wall too.

Even though this is unfinished, we are insulating all floor because it's living space. So this will be insulated, this will be insulated, and that will go a long way for keeping us warm upstairs. Even though we had this footprint, this is new living areas for us. Icemaker will go in there. This was going to be a giant cool room, but we've decided against that, and we would just get freestanding fridges and spread our risk across the board instead of— what if one thing goes wrong in this cool room? You lose so much. If you don't know, mudroom— where's the mudroom go? Where are we? Right, the garage. Remember the garage? It was our barn for many, many years. Here, we'll go from the garage into the mudroom into the new area. This will be our new thing. You'll see this shot Lots. And we'll go in there and this will be a staging area for the milk supplies mainly.

And then this bedroom back through here, this whole room she wants soundproofed all the way. All this is her room.

So every way, this way, that way.

Yes, that way. Right, right through there. Yes sir, yes sir. You got the bathroom there and the one in the, uh, corner.

What do you There's no crazy roof. I'll tell you something, when this roof is kind of like this, yeah, the best way is to foam. But I know you can figure it out. Yeah, I figured both ways. We have really high roofing now, much higher than it was before. Do you guys see how high that is? It's crazy. The lower part of our house used to be just right here, maybe 7-something feet. Now the lowest part is like 9 feet, and up there, what is it, like 14? Seen something crazy. Heat rises, gather up there. We're thinking definitely foam insulation for up there, maybe even the sides. They say it's an investment up front, but long term you're saving some. All right, good. So figure both ways, we're spraying the roof no matter what. Yeah. And then let's see if we're going to spray the sides versus that. Versus that. Yeah, personally, definitely the roof line. Yeah, that's what I can spray. That's where you get all the heat outlets. They say the foam insulation is an investment up front. It's definitely more than normal batten fiberglass, uh, but pays for itself, I've heard, in like 5 years. And since we are a legacy property of legacy mindset, it's probably going to be worth the investment. We are going to get two prices just in case. What are y'all doing? Where's Henry?

He's with Mama. Oh!

Now he went to town with Mommy. Really?

Yeah, she wanted to take him.

Okay, don't destroy the bells. Bless those boys, they think they're done. Bless them. We'll let them be done and let them have some fun with John because tomorrow— this afternoon we're gonna need to haul some hay. This will have to come in and be picked up on another day. Of course. Be careful on that edge over there. I don't know how strong that is. Hey, I'm afraid to go up there and tear it up. This could be the number one reason to get square bales. Kids in their forts. I would like to come up there and see this, but whoa, whoa, whoa. Can you guys get a GoPro shot of your course? Yeah.

Next, Lily's gonna be sliding down the hay thing. I'm gonna do it. Look at that hole! This is down here, and there's a little hole down there. Next, I'm gonna be crawling through that hole. I'm coming through! Now they are gluing a sword. It's taking a long time. This is for my channel. I have a YouTube channel.

Don't subscribe to Gideon.

What?

Hey!

It's gonna be a public channel, so whoever's edit this, I'm probably Austin.

Definitely he'll look that up.

Why'd you throw a hay bale down there? This is not interesting. This show's going bad, really bad. Show's over though. Video's over.

Bye! Minerals to the mobile wrestling ring! And look who's here!

The one and only.

Yeah, I think we just got set up and the doors are coming. Shall we go greet them?

Do we just, do we just go over and just leave everything?

Yeah, yeah, we'll come back. What are these doors, Rebecca? What's the name?

They're the Panorama doors.

Is that the brand name?

Panoramic.

Why'd you choose those?

Because they're amazing. I had wanted to get bifold doors.

Yeah.

But bifold doors were way more expensive.

Oh really?

So these doors—

Panoramic is the brand.

Panoramic doors.

Okay.

Yeah, that's the name of the company. And so actually I was served the ad on Instagram and that's how I saw it.

Okay. And so those things, apparently those, those ads, they work.

So we have the doors coming in on the, on the covered porch will be the doors, and then they have screen. So the doors, you open it and then you can slide it, and so it's like, it's like a bifold door, but it's not.

Okay.

And then you take the screen out, it's hidden, and then you just pull it across.

All right.

And then I needed a door between my sunroom and the house because the sunroom is not heated.

But you want it fully glass?

But I wanted it to have a lot of glass because I wanted the sun to come through.

When will they install these?

I have no idea.

Okay, for now you're just gonna have to live with the B-roll that Austin, our editor, pulled up during her talk there.

So the ones that are inside the sunroom doors, they don't have to be—

it's very last put in, what you're telling me, right away.

All right, um, but these ones out here need to be put in.

Oh, okay.

I guess Randolph's gonna install them.

Yeah, Randolph, keeping him busy. Do you— are you gonna unbox one of these and look at it?

Well, I need to look at them.

Okay, all right, that'll be fine. It'll go in a tight spot, won't it? It'll go in a tight spot. Free-wheel drive. Look at those doors. No glass is cracked.

These doors are gonna be the ones on the covered porch. Okay, and then the 3 ones are gonna be the ones that are in the side.

Goodbye the truck. How you feel, Beck? You super excited?

I am. I'm like, I just wanted to get done.

Well, we're one day closer to getting done. Okay, we took a timeout. We're not going to do the minerals because I know BattleSoft Royale is it. The premiere video for the boys' channel. We're trying Dude Perfect's Airsoft Royale. That means cool location, costumes, Every man for himself. Pop the balloon. That's funny. Hey, beauty crossing a ditch definitely works better with a camera. Oh, they're watching old vlogs in there.

They are.

It's hard to believe we've been doing this for 8 years.

In January.

We were just youngins 8 years ago. Some ways it feels like we're still just starting on this vlog thing.

Yeah.

But in other ways it feels like we're burnt out. Has there been a riot? They're so bored. They have not the internet. We're hoping to get to alfalfa, but alas, you have no thumbs, you can't open that. Oh, and they have no delayed gratification. They've done pooped in their mineral bin. Come on, guys. Come on, folks. We got their minerals filled up. We are not gonna dare do the sheep. They're bothering us. We'll wait till we move them to tomorrow and we get the paddock alone, then we'll do the sheep. We are back at it. Andrew putting the hay in the rows, his buddy out there baling. We're loading up. Come completely volunteers, John and Santa. These are good kids. I mean, if you take your free time, go throw hay for somebody else, that's a Good boy. This is how you want to always be thinking. We can't really back up, so always be thinking about that. Gosh, at least 140 bales in this stall. That's a full stall underneath our house. Super convenient. Been time to get them boys home and us another load before it gets dark. We can unload in the morning. Going— hey, the sun going down. Hey, slow down. All right, so It's hard to throw and film at the same time, so there you go. Final load of the season. Okay boys, overall rating of your first hay hauling experience? Hard. You got home safe and secure. There is a lot of room in this pole barn. I hope I can jostle them around and stack these a little bit better. I don't know if moving it— oh, and Lily and Gideon jumping on them— it might make it worse. All right, that's tomorrow. We gotta eat.

I'm tired.

Shut up. Where's your shirt?