A Natural Home

The building is coming along. It is teaching me a new level of patience, and it is mind numbing.

We tore the old store floor out this week, then pulled all the nails, then scraped all the dirt off and then refitted it in the upstairs loft area.

Oddly, since we had some many pieces that we just not worth using again, we did  not have enough wood to finish the floor. We are going to take some left over ash from the new wood floor that we made and put in in the last 1/3 of the floor in the loft area.

The AMish guys I was working with thought I was deranged (okay maybe I am) to use this old wood floor again, in stead of buying sheets of plywood. I do not like plywood, and if given the chance and the opportunity I would rather use something differnt.

When it comes to building, you can make a new place with plywood, and people can deal with that, but when you are redoing an antique building you should reuse as much of the old style wood as possible, so you can keep with the integrity of the original.

I hope to have photos of things soon. As I said, this is all giving me patience. In the meantime, the web site of the organic grocery is coming along- waterfordgrocery.com

Thanks for reading, and I really hope to have photos up in a few weeks.

My son Henry, is really enjoying rehabbing the old general store building we bought. He is finding all sorts of fun things. We found an antique pulpuit, it was all hand made,and hand chisled, which was neat. Most of it was missing, but we got the general idea of how it would look.

We found 1/2 a coca cola sign from the 1920’s and Jenny too that home to put in her kitchen. We also found a full sized antique coca cola sign that was from the 1920’s. So neat, I cleaned it up and put it on ebay, we will see if it brings anything.

Of course there are the usual oldmetal this and that, but most of it is very rusted out and has seen better days, to be sure. The neatest thing about it is the quality of the items, most of the “crap” you see today is plastic. You have to wonder what people in 100 years are going to find from our era. Are they going to think well of us, or think, what kind of junk did these people make?

I like to think that in the future, if this store is still in operation, that they will think, these people cared enough to rehab this place to its original intent. I like to think that maybe they will find some of our furniture and think, this was well made, the way things should be made.

So in 100 years what will this little store be saying to the next teenager who is rummaging thru the walls and in the closets?

The building we purchased has offered some amazing opportunities. The wood alone that we are plucking from the rafters of the hand hewn beams is astounding.

Rather than slap on drywall, after we tore down the leaded plaster ceilings, we decided to go heavenwards into the belfry of this old church come general store. The wood appears to be Elm, cherry, and some maple. Even some old pine. Each one was cut with an old band sawn, you can see the up and down motion on the wood. It is really neat.

We found an old beam hand hewn beam that was never even used, so we put it up on ebay, hoping someone would appreciate the uniqueness of such a find.

As we dig farther into the building we are finding all sorts of lost treasures. A old pulpit (missing lots of wood), but you can still see the overall structure of the item. We would old tins and bottles, making the place a fun location to explore.

I am sure we will find more.  As we have done all this construction we are careful to be respectful of the bats and have rehomed them to the other side of the building. We want them there, but in a place that is less overwhelming for them to live in.

If you are ever in the area, stop by. We are opening up a little coffee house there. It is taking a little while, but we are having fun and savoring the experience.

It has been a bit since I posted something to the blog. So I think it is wise for me to drop a line or two about our move.  We found an 1840’s building for sale. It was in forclosure by the bank and it needed to be loved.

Sure, it really needed tons of work, but the potential was and is amazing.

Some of the challenges we have:

NO SEPTIC , or shall I say a rather sad little excuse for a septic. I could have had it grandfarthered in, but decided not to. We are using the current septic as grey water run off and buying an incenerating composting toilet. We are looking over a few brands- EcoJohn, Sun-Mar and Xerolet. I am leaning towards Eco JOhn right now, but I am going to call Sun Mar and see what they have to offer our commercial space.

Lead painted walls- thoase came out and the paster came down too.

DOORS and Windows- We have used recycled doors etc from habitat restore (we had to buy a few new ones too, no choice). I have scrolled craigslist and bought doors as well, and a few windows.

NO Insulation- we are taking care of that now.

Bats in our belfry- yes, there was a belfrey, this was a church at one time and you can still see the belfry. We are taking care to be quite and respectful about the bats. (I love bats!)

More and more….can not think of everything, but feng shui is coming into play as well.

It seemed kindof risky buying this buidling, but really with the potential of putting in solar, and using a composting toilet, and rebuilding with cleaner an better, I felt this was really the only way to go.

I plan on writing a little more every week again about our adventures and the history of the old general store we built. Oh, did I say it was apart of the underground railroad? (I will talk more about that later). Stay tuned and if anyone has any ideas about solar, drop me a line, I am interested.

I slept in this morning and went down stairs to check the woodburning stove. I spent 30 minutes adding little pieces of wood to the hot embers, blowing on the sticks and hots coals to rekindle the flames.  While doing all of this I thought of how things currently are in the economy and the environment.

We have burned up the wood in our fire box and let is die down to hot coals, we can rebuld the fire with trash (after all trash does burn as evident by the trailer homes I drive by at dusk and they are burning trash in  metal barrel in the yard) or we can rebuild it with carefully selected wood. Each piece added to build a roaring fire that will last, cook our meals, heat our home etc…. If I quickly build it, well, it konks out just as quickly.  Burning fast and hard, with little care.  Better to chomp a little at a time on the wood it is fed, slowly consuming, slowly building.

So, where am I going with all of this?  I am not really completely sure. I felt this flash of something while I was building the fire back up.  What if I could rebuild the world, would I throw trash on it, or would I select the best wood I could and rebuild a world that would burn strong, bright, and long into our future.

Okay, so after talking to a bazillion people (well maybe only 5), about redoing the web site and getting these OMG quotes for redoing this and redoing that, I decided to just do it myself.

Yes, I is taking forever. Yes, at times, while I am nursing the baby she reaches up and pounds on the keyboard and adds a few extra HTML codes that I did not want, but I am doing it.

Fell in love with a few new toys, like sothink DHTML menu. LOVE IT! I used to have this a few years ago and used it quite a bit. I loved how quickly the code could be writter for drop down menus. It was easy and fairly painless. I spent about 4 hours getting it just right and put it on every page.  I uploaded it to the web and discovered to my pain and headaches that only a third of the code was working. Apparently the “free” model I was using would only let you do 3 links, OOPS! Of course I was going to buy it anyways, but I wish they would have said something about it , or I would have bought it to begin with and not messed with the “free” model.

The site is NOT done, by anymeans. For instance, you are still reading the blog under the old “skin”. The contact form is not working in HTML, and the dealers page still needs to be interactive with drop down menus, but we are getting there.

If you will note that not every item has its own page right now. Again, the plan is for each item to have its own page by the end of the week.

So please stop by and let us know what you think.

One of those Dreary Ohio days. Is it sleet? Is it snow? is it slow? Not sure what, but it is a bit nippy in the air, and I am thinking were are finally hitting “winter” in Ohio.

Last week was FAB, lovely weather. The kind of days in Fall that I love. You need a light jacket- you can walk and walk in the sunshine. The leaves have all fallen at this point, but you feel good about raking them up into piles and trouncing. The kind of day you like throwing feed at the chickens, sweeping the side walk, building a chicken coop, and riding the lawn mower for the last time. The kind of day that just make you feel super to be alive!

Today is not one of those days. It is gloomy and cloudy, and spitting snow/sleet/ or something akin to both. I read that central ohio has as many grey days as seattle ,washington. That makes sense. I think way too many people suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) in central Ohio, too many cloudy days.

As I am sitting looking out at the world (well my horseshoe driveway) I am thinking, “I would love a little more sunshine right now”. I am thinking, “it is time to dig out the winter coats and change into my favorite Blondo boots, time to pull the sweaters from the tub and air them out.” Winter is coming, no stopping her, no denying her presence.

So I ask the weather man is it sleet? Snow? or something in between.