Cheep Cheep!!

One of the buildings on our property was a chicken coop.
It hadn't been used in a while, and needed some TLC, but it was quaint, and we were excited to try our hand at "chicken farming."
Is that a real thing?!
So, one of the first things we did was buy chickens!
Little did we realize we wouldn't be IN the house for another 6 months!
Oops.
We didn't know much about chickens...how much did we really need to know?!
Um....maybe slightly more than we thought!
But we learned as we went.
We started out with 5 Rhode Island Reds.
Little chickies are absolutely adorable!

And then my husband went a little crazy while he was watching the kids one afternoon and bought a pair of every kind of chicken they were selling at Orscheln.
Ya...surprise!

They were so easy to take care of though, and the promise of lots of yummy eggs lured me in and I was on board in no time!
And that's why we got 3 more little green-egg laying chickies a month later.
They are the prettiest.
I like them a lot :)

We were still living at our old house while they were little, so we kept all 20 of them in a dog crate under a heat lamp in the garage.
They were so cute!
Until they got to that nasty teenage section.
Poor things sure got ugly fast!

The chicken coop is huge!
I think we figured out we could have more than 150 chickens in it IF we wanted to.
Thankfully...we both thought that was a little excessive.

It needed a little upgrade and cleanup.
There were mud dauber nests coated on everything inside.
Yuck!

 

There were lots of treasures to be found!

Including a HUGE rat with babies that was living under the nesting boxes. 

GROSS! 

It tried to get away, but we got it. 

Welcome to the country :)

We moved them to the coop after they got big enough to fend for themselves.
The kids love them and it's been such an easy "pet" to have.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist and love to see things labeled and categorized.
We had so many different kinds of chickens, and they all produced different eggs at different times.
So, like any normal person, I made a spreadsheet :)
We have Rhode Island Reds, California Whites, Americaunas, Barred Rocks, Silver-laced Wyandottes, Black Australorps, Brown Leghorns, and New Hampshire Reds.
See...aren't you glad I know which ones are which!
We got our first egg about 2 month ago.

And then started drowning in them!
Two families started buying them from us, and between that, family, and us, we go through them pretty quickly!
I didn't know if I would be able to tell a big difference between store-bought and fresh eggs.
But there is...besides being extra yummy, the yolk is super yellow. It even turns whole batches of cookie batter and pancakes orangey-yellow!
And they are crazy hard to break.
It makes me feel like an awesome chef when I flip them.
But it's definitely not me...they're just healthy little chickens :)

Thanks to pinterest, I've been stocking up on egg recipes for easy dinners.
I'm trying really hard to remember that there are other recipes besides cookies that have eggs in them!
It's made lazy dinners a little healthier too!

The big reveal {inside}

Here it is!
{I took better pictures with my nice camera and could not for life of me get them to download! So...these are from my iphone and some are a little blurry :( }

 The laundry room...and Ruxin. 

He protects the laundry room quite well :)

 {Kitchen Before}

 {Kitchen After}

*The only thing we did in the kitchen/laundry room was painting. We're planning on redoing the kitchen/laundry room in the next few years. Even just the paint has made a huge difference! It's old, but I honestly don't mind! It'll look nice when it's new, but it's kind of fun to have a retro kitchen mixed in with all the new. And I can't complain about all that old school storage space!

 {Dining Room Before}

{Dining Room After}

 *The dining room has been a great place to hang out. You can see in to all the other rooms from there and still sit and eat. That makes it a little easier to keep all those little kiddo crumbs in one place! And the highchair/measuring stick nook is one of my favorite walls. I found a measuring stick picture on pinterest and Matt saw it one day. He said he could make one even better than that. I said "Oh." A few days later, this arrived at my house :) It's over 7 feet tall! Apparently he's hoping for giant children! I love all the unique things he can whip up so easily! It's made out of old bleacher wood from the high school we went to. I'm so glad I finally have a place to show it off!

{Living room Before}

 {Living Room After}

 {Hallway Before}

 {Hallway After}

{Stairs Before}

*The ceiling was so low that Matt had to duck his head the entire way up. But they were surprisingly wide, so we thankfully didn't need to change that.

{Stairs After}

 *He fixed that problem! He took the ceiling out and moved it back into the attic (which is above the hallway/living room area). It opens it up so much and makes it look incredibly updated too. And now those giant kids he's hoping to have will for sure fit up the stairs!

{Bathroom Before}

{Bathroom After}

 *Another of my favorite things...the double sink. This is the main bathroom for all 5 of us. It sure helps to be able to spread out! Matt made the vanity and shelves. Doors coming soon :)

{Master Before}

{Master After}

{Webb's room before}

{Webb's room after}

 *We obviously haven't done much unpacking in here!! Since he doesn't need much right now, it's been kind of the catch-all room. We put new carpet in and painted, but his room is still plaster and lathe. It's not a huge deal, so we decided it'd be easier to leave alone.

{Big kids room before}

 {Big kids room after}

 *We completely redid this room. New windows, drywall, carpet, ceiling...the whole sha-bang. It's really big and easily fits both of them with room to play...even though they still bring all their toys downstairs so they can play where the people are! :) Do all kids do that? When Webb is in a big bed, he'll come in here with Tripp and Ellie will go to the smaller room and have her own little girly space. 

{New wood floor}

 *This is definitely another one of my favorites! We were so excited to find out there were wood floors underneath all that carpet! What a treasure! Matt had said we would need to stain it a dark color to cover up the pet stains. I have had a certain stain {"special walnut" for any stain buffs out there!} in mind for years and was waiting patiently to use it someday! Thankfully it was dark enough. It's darker and deeper looking than the picture shows. It's the same color as the cedar chest in the big kids room. I love walking in and seeing it all over!!

*I used the same paint color everywhere. It took quite a while to find what I had in my head. I really wanted a light neutral that would be a good backdrop for any type of color and decor I wanted to use down the road. And I love gray. Come to find out, gray is absurdly hard to find...so many different undertones! I finally found exactly what I wanted from Benjamin Moore. Thank you, Mr. Moore. It's called Revere Pewter. The most perfect mix of gray and beige with no blue, purple, or green undertone. Perfect I tell you!! It changes with the light too, so it looks a little different in different rooms which is fun. I got it color matched from Sherwin Williams at 50% intensity (made it lighter). Thank you Mr. Williams...your sales made it much cheaper!

So there you have it! 

We're officially moved!

There's some more things to do.

But the big stuff is done...stairs, electricity, bathroom pipes...all the expensive stuff no one sees that can potentially blow the house up if you don't fix.

It's nice to know we're safe!

For now, we're just happy to be here. 

We'll get to the next few things in a while...after a nice long break :)

Hope you like it as much as we do!!

The inside {our house}

We have been fixing our new house for quite a few months.
And I say "we" very loosely.
I'm awesome at organizing.
Not so much demolition and restoration.
But I tried to be as helpful as I could.
I did find out I'm probably the slowest painter in the world.
But, with all that said, we're finally moved in!
I am absolutely astounded by what my husband has done.
He is one talented man!
And he does things the right way.
I'm more of a "get it done quick, don't understand long term stability" kind of person. 
He's not like that.
And I'm really glad.
I love that everything is done, and done well.
He's a super hard worker and I am so proud of what he's done!
We also had help.
A lot of it!
Thank you family and friends for staying up late, getting really dusty, killing rats for us and leaving them as presents on the porch {hannah}, supporting us when we felt like it was never going to end, and working SO hard with us!
We still have finishing touches to do, but the big stuff is done.
It's liveable and I love it!
Here's a look at what the house used to look like before Matt got ahold of it!

 {back entrance...which apparently in the country is the only acceptable door to use, I've found out!}

Through the back door, you go into the mudroom/laundry room.

There's a small bathroom on your left, and a door to get to the scary, really old basement. 

I keep that door shut at all times :)

 Kitchen looking in from the mudroom. 

The kitchen and upstairs was the original homestead built in 1900.

The rest was added on in the 60s/70s.

Can you tell?!

 {Dining room looking in from kitchen.}

 {Dining room}

{Dining Room}

Commercial break:

Everything that is wood floors was covered in REALLY old carpet. 

The family had rented out the house for several years. 

And there were many animals and many pet stains involved over those years. 

After we took the carpet out, there were pet stains everywhere! 

So stinky! 

We were afraid they wouldn't even be fixable when we redid the floors...

But, my husbands awesome. 

 {Living Room looking in from dining room}

 {Living Room}

 {Living room...with a peek into the dining room...and the apparently never used front door}

 {Little hallway off dining room}

 {Hallway leads to stairs...}

 {And retro bathroom}

 {Retro bathroom}

 {retro bathroom...the teal was kind of cheery and cute, but it was plastic, and some were chipped. We opted for a clean bathroom and no teal plastic!}

 {Master bedroom off hallway}

 {Webb's bedroom upstairs}

 {Ellie and Tripp's bedroom upstairs}

So that's the inside when we first bought it. 

It needed a little pick-me-up.

Thankfully we could look past the crazy orange floor, stains, wallpaper, and dirty plastic tile. 

After I take some pictures, I'll show you what it looks like now!