The Rabb's Farm Life Adventures

Let's face it.  When our children are little their presence fills our days.  At times, we think we will never recover from the long days and sleepless nights.  As they grow older, we become occupied with their activities and our days are still filled and busy.  As a mother of five, I know what full days are like.  Some days, I miss them.  With three of my children grown and married, one in college and one in Jr. High school, my days can still be full and busy, but, it is a much different busy.  I remember many Saturday mornings when we would call out the troops for cleaning duty.  Each child was given a room to clean or floors to vacuum and by the time we were finished, the house smelled better and the clutter was better under control.  The messes are much smaller these days and calling out the troops really isn't the same when there is only one child to call.  A teenager no less... Stephanie will be graduating from college in December...

Okay, so I know we have already completed several rooms of our farmhouse renovation, however, we decided we needed to hire a contractor to assist in completing the final rooms in our home and we hope to complete an addition in the next year or two. So far, we have renovated the kitchen, laundry room one bedroom and one of the bathrooms. Our current renovation includes two bedrooms and the hallway.  We decided along the way we would also add central air and heat as well as an attic access, flooring in the attic for additional storage as well as replacing the siding on the outside of the house to repair all of the damage we have created along the way. We also had all of the hardwood flooring refinished. Finish work in the laundry room, bathroom and previously completed bedroom was also completed. All of the interior work for phase one is completed.  The work remaining is the completion of the siding on the back of the house.  I am excited to show it to you.  For to...

I only have two "followers" of my blog, but I know that you are reading my posts, so thank you very much!  I would love to have you "follow" me, so if you are so inclined, please click on the link to follow me along this journey.  I was thinking how funny my week was so I had to share some of the humor.   Our countertops were finally installed this week and the final touches completed on the cabinets.  During the process, we discovered that the outlet to the new dishwasher wasn't hot.  Meaning, there wasn't any power going to it.  We knew we needed to contact our electrician friend and have him take a look at it for us.  He gladly came by and fixed the problem.  After he left, however, our bigger problem ensued.  We lost power to our bedroom.  I mean all power, no lights no outlets, which means, no alarm clock, no heater, or blow dryer, etc.  We didn't discover the problem until right around bedtime so we decided to deal with it...

Thanks to major effort and hard work by John, my dad and the cabinet installer, we have a kitchen.  It has all come together beautifully!  I love the cabinets and the appliances.  I haven't cooked a lot of meals yet, simply because we have been really busy with practices for the Living Christmas Tree performance this weekend.  But, I certainly plan to get busy cooking and baking next week.   We hired someone to do the mud and tape work and though he did a pretty good job, he didn't do a good job of the finish work.  We will need to do a little bit of touch up work to the walls in the kitchen and then we will be able to finish the painting.  I love the color.  I even picked out material to make curtains, but haven't finished them as of yet.  The cabinet installer was great.  He was meticulous about making sure everything was straight.  The crown molding at the top of the cabinets is beautiful and I am very pleased with the work he ...

Many have asked for an update on the house renovations so here you go.   As you may remember the washer and dryer were in the kitchen when we moved in.  Well, they are no longer located in the kitchen.  As a matter of fact, nothing is in the kitchen, not even walls.  The kitchen is gutted and the laundry is basically complete.  By complete, I mean, the room has walls, a closet and we are doing laundry in there.  It is a fantastic space and I have even been able to set up my sewing machine in there and have been busy working on sewing projects.   Kitchen cabinets above the washer and dryer were removed.  We hope to reuse them in the laundry room or in the shed.  This is the last time you will be able to see through the laundry room into the living room, these two rooms will have a new purpose now. My carpenters! The windows were appropriate for a dining room but really too big for a laundry room.  The guys worked ...