April Fools...

We were pranked early when we went to pick up our chicks early Tuesday morning. My husband ran inside the post office to get the chicks and came out several minutes later with two large boxes. I was a little surprised the hatchery would send such a large box, but it was way too early in the morning to think much beyond that. After he handed me the box, I peeked into the breathing holes and saw a duck bill! I told Bronson the hatchery had put a duck in by mistake,  which we were pretty excited about at first because we had already talked about picking up a duckling or two from the farm and fleet store. Then I noticed ALL of the "chickens" had duck bills. Confused, I looked at the recipient address on the box and found that the post office had given us the shipment of 80 ducklings the farm and fleet store had ordered! After jokingly discussing taking them home and a good laugh, Bronson ran back inside and exchanged them for our much more appropriately sized box of baby chicks.

The chicks all made it alive, which was a nice surprise. I had been preparing myself for the worst, but they seemed fairly comfortable. The packaging was nice and secure with plenty of fluffy paper stuff inside. After introducing them to the brooder and showing them the food and water, they settled in nicely. Then we went back to town and bought two of the ducks from the store. They're all adorable and I love the ducks!

We decided to buy a new tank for the chicks, our first batch of chicks are growing very fast and I don't think the babies would be safe with them. Whether they'd have to worry more about bullying or simply being trampled, I'm fairly sure they wouldn't make it. I'm a little nervous about integrating the two ages together when we move them out to the coop, but I'll have a better idea about that after a little google research.

We used the feeders we bought for the first batch of chicks, after washing them thoroughly, of course. I ordered nipple waterers online and Bronson built a waterer out of pvc pipe and an apple juice jug. We haven't put it in the tank yet, the glue needed to dry overnight, so I'm excited to see how it works. Keeping the water clean has been a pain and the chickens don't make any effort to avoid stepping in it, so it'll be nice to keep it off the ground.

The baby chicks have been pasty for the past couple of days, but I was expecting that. Things are slowly clearing up as they get more comfortable to the new environment. The ducks and chicks are doing fine together. The chicks were very confused and curious at first, but the ducks are bigger and avoided confrontation. They all seem to be living comfortably after getting used to each other.

As for the older chicks, as soon as they were big enough, they started jumping onto the waterers and feeders and trying to fly out. We solved that issue by taking out the feeders and putting in the large hanging feeder, we're exchanging the waterers with the pvc pipe, and then we threw a lid on the whole thing. Bronson and my dad made the lid out of some scrap wood we had lying around, 4 hinges, and some hardware cloth.

Those Easter Eggers on the right aren't dead. Their in a state of Euphoria over the sand we put in the brooder!

They continue to grow at a ridiculous pace. These first pictures were taken when we transferred them to the bigger tank last week.

These pictures were taken yesterday, March 30th. Within one week, they've somehow become awkward teens.

It's been a very busy two weeks for us, I spent all of last week testing DIY cleaning products, including: glass cleaner, laundry detergent, stain remover, and more. So check back soon to see what I found.

Grand Tour - Interior

Since winters get cold here in the Midwest, we chose to do the outside work in the summer hoping that we'd be able to continue on the inside work during the wintertime. It hasn't been going as quickly, but we've done a lot of really important things.

The previous owners and builders of the property cut a lot of corners when they initially made the house, so most of the work that we've done on the inside is repair work. When we first got the idea to remodel, D.Burnett started by painting the upstairs bedroom. The walls were covered in so many layers of wallpaper, the corners of the room had rounded!




Our first big project indoors was the downstairs bedroom. We started with this room because when they were installing the sliding door upstairs, we saw the decking they had added wasn't properly sealed, allowing water to get in and seriously damage some boards. But, when we opened up the walls and ceiling, only one or two boards actually needed to be replaced due to rot. We did find that the weight of the upstairs had basically been caving in on the downstairs bedroom and bowing the boards underneath. So, we jacked up the second floor; added LVLs, a man-made material, to help support the top floor; and lowered it back down. Also, the studs were set at 24" instead of the standard 16", so we added one in the middle, making it a 12" interval.

They also replaced the sliding glass door and demolished the closet between the office and the bedroom.

There were mice climbing through the sloppy construction before our remodel. Yuck!

The electrical was pretty screwy, so we decided to redo and improve the electric wiring. We went pretty custom, adding extra outlets and things that go way beyond my level of understanding. D.Burnett has tried explaining it several times, but apparently it's not my strong suit. He says the contraptions below are called ballasts and if I tried explaining it, I'd be making it up.

This is the electrical voodoo (and a heater) that runs our plant room.

Wiring in the bedroom.

We noticed the house seems to be shifting, so investigating into that issue we found that the foundation was pretty flimsy, set on a hill made of sand, so D.Burnett framed and poured concrete slabs in the basement to help reinforce the foundation. We're not done with that particular issue yet, we still need to take off the siding in our living room to see just what the issue is with our load-bearing structures.

Also, D.Burnett did some work in our plant room, which I've already told you about. He took out old, nasty insulation and used new spray-insulation to fill in all the gaps in that room. Before using the spray insulation, once you had taken out the old, nasty pink stuff, you could see straight through the back of the house to outside. Needless to say, the room is a lot warmer.

Now we're waiting for the weather to warm up so we can get the bedroom put back together. We're also tearing down the wall in the living room to see if there are any load bearing issues. I'll be doing several posts soon; I still need to show you our property, I want to tell you about the chickens we ordered and how we're going to take care of them, and I need to show you some of D.Burnett's chainsaw carvings!

So, since there's still a lot of house that we haven't seen, I'll take you on a visual tour of the place.

Top floor.

Main floor.

Here's a quick sketch of the house to get your bearings.








When you first come into the main entrance on the side of the house, you have the living room to the right.

The kitchen is on the left of the main entrance.

Our roasted chicken dinner, yum!

The laundry room is to the right of the stair case and the hallway to the bedroom and bathroom to the left. We keep the bathroom warm with an extra heater! So warm, in fact, this is where we'll be keeping our baby chicks when they arrive in a couple of weeks!!

Downstairs bathroom with baby tub.

Upstairs we have three bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms. I decided it was too messy to take pictures of yesterday, so you'll just have to imagine. Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for everything we have coming up!

See you soon,
B.Burnett