Saturday, May 19, 2012

Some major steps forward.....and its May!

So May rolls forward (it fact its almost over) and we have made some major steps forward on Murramarang! On the house front, we now have a high efficiently propane furnace installed which we hope will save us heating costs in the future. It looks WONDERFUL - instead of a box that looks like it came off a WWI battle ship, we now have a set up that looks more like its from the Star Ship Enterprise (take us up to warp speed Scotty!) Of course, we will not really know how good this all is until next winter...but we hope that it will make some difference! It also means that we can scrap/sell the old furnace and tank and get rid of the fuel oil smell in the basement.

Another step in the house has been the installation of a new septic system. After some slow starts due to rain up here in Maine, the system is finally in. New tank, new leach field...so we hope that the backing up of water in the pipes is now just part of history. How strange it has been to wash the dishes and then find spaghetti strands coming up into the bath! And how nice it will be to have a shower again!

The Septic Digger arrives! 

The final house step has been to replace the water pipes. Our low pH well water has been stripping out the lead from the solder points as well as dissolving the copper pipes. These have all been replaced with PEX pipes by our friendly plumber. He is (as I write) hooking all our drains up to the new septic system, moving a toilet and vanity, adding a toilet (wow...we will now have a 1.5 bathroom house). This all has been a long drawn out process - mainly due to the bank stuffing around with paperwork and payments - but after May we will feel that we have really made some big steps forward. We have many more to do (a new kitchen, putting in a back door, moving the basement stairs, building a deck) All we need to do these is money (and time).

Out on the farm we have moved forward as well. We have put up horse fences for about 2 acres. The electric fence is so hot it is scary....it took two grounding rods, but worth the effort. This allows our one and only horse (Maggie) to roam and eat without turning the fields into mini dust bowls. We also hope that we have space to start to bring in boarders. We completed one stall in the small barn and added a door so that we have better access to the tack/grain room. We recovered some old fencing from family - some picket fencing and some stockade fences. After a power wash, we hired a commercial spray gun and gave them all a coat of white paint. We put a a first coat of paint on our garage - a change from the red/brown to the blue we like.



We installed a fire pit.....

 We have so much more to do.....but we think we have made a wonderful start and hope with good weather and finding some spare cash will help us to move a few steps forward in June.

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