Almost Six Years Later…

Someone once told me that you can tell the difference between a real farmer and a hobby farmer by looking at their home. A hobby farmer has a beautiful, well maintained home, while a real farmer has a beautiful, well maintained barn. I guess that puts me in the real farmer category. When we moved here six years ago, the first thing I was going to do was to remodel the dining room. It was due for a makeover a generation ago; yet, six years later the wallpaper is still hanging there along with the vinyl flooring that is glaringly out of place. Today is the day.

If the project were merely stripping the wallpaper and replacing the flooring it would have happened a long time ago. Unfortunately, thanks to decisions made by the previous owners, there’s more to it than that. They had refurbished and reused the original kitchen cabinets as more or less a server. Kind of a neat idea, but this room is far too small for it and it really didn’t provide as much storage as you would think.

The two closed doors are actually old flour or potato bins; cool, but not really functional in today’s world.

The whole thing is coming out and being relocated somewhere else. Sadly, they didn’t install the flooring all the way to the wall and, even better, they glued it to the subfloor. Both the vinyl and the subfloor are going to have to come up, then we can assess how bad of shape the wood floors are in below. They also installed the electrical outlets at counter height, those will need to be moved down. And finally, a new piece of baseboard will need to be made.

Then there is also the challenge of the 10-foot ceilings. I have an overwhelming fear of falling. I have less than zero desire to get on top of that ladder with a steamer.

Luckily, I was able to convince someone else to do it by convincing him it would increase the property value immensely. Real farmers can summon all sorts of motivation when there are dollars involved.