​We got the call that one of two of our baby goats was born yesterday. We will be first-time goats owners and are over the moon with excitement to bring them home in 8 weeks. So as we prepare for our new family members we are realizing we have a lot to do in 8 weeks. 

We currently have an excavation team here cutting in our new driveway to the garage, lowering our entire grade of the property and clearing woods. As soon as their done we will lay stone for the new driveway and loam where we will be putting grass. First on the agenda is cleaning up and clearing behind the shed. It will give the goats shade and a place to rest. 
I've also been mapping out where we will be creating the new "goat zone" ​ I never realized how many different looks for fencing there are. We will be creating a room within a room you might call it under the shed overhang. Somewhere we could put them at night to make sure predators don't hurt them and also somewhere in extreme weather they will stay safe and dry. 

I've also been mapping out where we will be creating the new "goat zone" ​ I never realized how many different looks for fencing there are. We will be creating a room within a room you might call it under the shed overhang. Somewhere we could put them at night to make sure predators don't hurt them and also somewhere in extreme weather they will stay safe and dry. ​

The kids are over the moon excited, we've been working on a chore board ideas. Making a schedule around here is basically the only way to stay on track or to remember to do anything. The kids are now at ages where they're able to read and enjoy it, so I will remind them to look at their board but it'll be up to them to see what needs to be done for the day.  For the most part, we've avoided any animals that would require the kids to have any responsibilities. Let's face it they're usually on top of something for the first two weeks and then the excitement wears off and it's left up to parents to take over. So I have no idea how this will go but I think I'm ready, I think we're all ready. 

​Alright so back to goats. Thank goodness for my friend Paula, who we are getting them from. She's amazing! She has goats herself and is a great resource of information which makes me less nervous about all of it. Above is a photo of us visiting the goat where he stays with his mom for now . Paula says we should visit as much as we can so he can get used to us . If you're ever in the area Barnstable feed & pet supply located in West Barnstable there is a great space for kids to visit the animals first hand and they have anything you would need for your pets or mini farm. They have ducks, goats, chicken and even a beautiful peacock. This is our guy below , we're still working on a name but it's coming . We could spend hours here but pretty soon we won't have to and we can spend our days with our own little babes.

​ I'll update to keep you updated once we have the fenced area up and the home built. If you have any helpful information about your experience of raising goats I would love to hear about it. 

 This might have been one of my favorite projects we have done it a while. Mainly because I could think outside box, it's a shed no judgment, right? We've been thinking about what to use this space for some time. Storage, kids outdoor junk maybe a sauna? but realistically we needed an area for summer storage. Things we use when we go out to the beach and on the boat, items you don't necessarily want to pack away because you use them often but you don't want to leave on the front porch all the time either. Coolers, beach bags, beach toys, a grill, life jackets, and a small table. Using this large shed for part-time stuff left me always feeling like a waste of space. So I somehow convinced my husband to turn this baby into a guest room for friends and family that visit, but if you met my brother you would understand. 

 We had taken down 4' X 8 sheets of beadboard from the ceiling from the front porch attached to the main house and had been storing them in the shed for almost a year. This was the perfect project to re-use a lot of materials we had leftover from other projects. As you all probably know by now I have an obsession with pine I tend to use it in any way possible. Things I like about it is paintable, stainable, sandable and if you leave it natural every time you walk into the room you can smell it, I know I'm a total weirdo. SO first things first we started with the beadboard. I cleaned out the entire shed of everything that's been stored there for months and we're off to the races. 

We started with the beadboard, some of the sheets were in much worse shape then I remember we trimmed off any rot and then cut to length. Once installed I used painters putty to fill any holes from nailing and any gauges that we made from the initial removal. 

It took me about three hours to sand and repeat until I was ready to paint. I chose was Iron gray-Benjamin Moore. Can you spy the pine we're using on the ceiling and walls? Above you'll see we stored the pine in the shed for three days to let it acclimate to the temperature of the shed. We do this because pine will expand and contract, you need to condition it to the space that it will be installed in.  

I like the contrast when designing a space I call it a balance of opposites. In this case, it's the contrast between the light pine and dark paint. After the installation of the ceiling, I decided to gray wash it. I used leftover paint from a separate project and added one cup of paint to one cup of water. I usually just use a rag and just dip it in, ring it out a bit and while wearing plastic gloves I use my hand. It's easier for me. All in all, probably took me about 2 hours to finish.

This is me in my element. Not pictured is my not-so-hot cup of coffee and music blasting. It only took me about 3 hours to complete two coats of grey wash. I will do this process a lot. I think it allows you to change the look of the pine, take away the "yellowness" that most people don't like but still allow the natural beauty of the pine to come through. It works for all sorts of looks whether your going for a coastal theme or you're deep in the woods on N.H this will always work. If at a later date you decide to paint, no problem! You would just paint right over the gray wash no matter what color you're using. 

​Even though we have large projects going on it doesn't usually mean we don't have about five smaller projects going on at the same time. It's usually with the changing of the seasons I start making lists of the "need to do's" and the " Want to-dos" . I also have my separate lists (Did I mention I love to make lists) I make for myself that doesn't require my husband and I can get done myself during the days while he works. Recently working remotely from home has allowed me to check so many things off my list, one major thing stayed and that was the shed. 

When we bought the house the shed was in rough shape. We thought about tearing it down and rebuilding but at the same time couldn't afford to lose the storage space because at that time we didn't have the garage so it was a catch-all summer/beach stuff, gardening tools and kids outdoor toys in the winter. So we decided to keep it. We replaced all the rotten trim, installed new shingle siding, and replaced the old three-tab roofing with new architectural shingles. We used two windows that my father in law removed from a job site. It wasn't much but it was night and day to what was originally there. If you're looking straight at the building we removed the small room to the left of the shed. It wasn't built properly and obviously was added later on. We thought it would make for a good spot for our chicken coop since we wanted to utilize the space behind the shed for chickens anyways. To the rear of the shed, someone has built a makeshift wall by piecing together pieces of plywood and using windows with older single pane glass. Most of the windows were broken and need serious attention. One day my husband went to work and I was watering our garden, I took one look at the wall and knew I had to take it down. I know what you're thinking but my husband is used to this, I don't think there is a day he comes home and doesn't ask what I've been up to....that's gotta be a good sign? 

​ It didn't take me long to get a majority of the walls down. Each tiny piece of plywood was screwed on but luckily was no match for me and my drill. Over the plywood was layers of asphalt roofing that I removed by hand along with the broken windows. When my husband got home from work we used 2 X 4's to brace and support the overhang while we cut out the remaining wall and posts to make way for the new cedar posts.

​Once the exterior wall was completely removed we dug down an additional three feet so that the headspace under the overhang was enough a 6-foot man could comfortably walk under without ducking his head. For the new post, we used cedar 4 X 4 posts. They're usually around $25-$30/post depending where you live. I kind of have an obsession with cedar. It fit so well with my modern farmhouse look and light sand and stain and they're good as new. 

           With the new posts in, we're ready to empty the stuff we had stored underneath and get the rest of it dugout. Next, we will focus on staining the posts and the sidewall on the back of the shed. We are planning on getting goats and chickens so we are looking for something that is "farm proof"  I'll let you know what I come up with .

​Alright everyone remembers the siding inspiration I had been drooling over? You know over a hundred pictures saved in my phone that were all telling the same story white farmhouse, board & batten style then the day came I got the phone call ... thanks to my father in law once again he happens to be at Harvey's building supply making an order of his own and asked about this mythical siding I kept talking about and guess what just so happens the universe is my best friend - a company had used this siding on a recent job and ordered too much and they had some there in the warehouse leftover for purchase. Want to know something even better than that? I was able to go up and check it out in person and it was everything I had ever dreamed of. It was fate. 

Big smiles today because you guessed it ....it's siding installation day!
​
Why is siding choice to important ? The right siding can dramatically boost your exterior appearance. Whether you're renovating or building new, you'll want to choose the house siding option that best suits your home's style and meets your needs for maintenance and durability. Here are the points we went over when choosing the siding for our main house & addition :

• Initial Cost
• Water Resistance
• Installation
• Energy Efficiency
• Aesthetics
• Versatility
• Durability 

​ In my previous post, I mentioned we chose Vinyl for the new addition & garage area even though it's not very common for the area we live in. My dream siding was a vertical board and batten, we found a product that looks just like wood but with durability and easy maintenance and with three kids and full-time jobs, the less time we have to spend maintaining is what we are looking for. Choosing it was the easy part, next came figuring out how to install vinyl and vertical at that. 

Let's say thank goodness for Youtube. I watched videos over and over and when I would find good ones I would show Tucker and we would watch together. After all the talking and planning we realized the only way to figure it out was to just do it. That's when we realized all the J-channel (pieces of plastic that are formed to the shape of a J & required to hold the siding to the building ) were the wrong sizes. After a couple of weeks of returning and re-ordering, we were finally ready to go. Our next issue was because we were dealing with the vertical batting we were trying to space them properly so that when you're looking at the face of each area the batting would be spaced evenly. Easier said than done. you would think each piece of siding is 12" so you would calculate the total length of the wall and divide by 12 ...not so fast. Because the batting is a different thickness than between them when it falls on the one you need to use 1 1/2 " but if it falls on inside of a batten it requires 3/4" plus the 1 1/2" ...have I lost you yet? yeah, same. So when we initially measured we forgot to factor in the j-channel width. When we re-did everything I stood back and realized what would matter more to me is where it landed on the windows to keep a consistent look. Back to square one. The easiest way to do this was to cut the boards to length and use the cutoffs. We attached them all and stood them up and simply moved them until they all lined up on the windows the same. I wouldn't recommend this way but it worked for us. Another side the one with the two garage doors for instance we just started with a full panel. Cutting the J-channel for around the windows was another tedious task. You can find the video that we used here : https://youtu.be/geQVbvuiNw0   
We started with the windows at the back of the house for practice but after two windows my husband got into a rhythm ​

​I tried multiple times but found out if my measurements or cuts were not 100% it would not connect correctly or lay against the building right while installing so I left that to my husband. When installing the J we found the best way to start was bottom first, sides, and top last even for the windows. It tucked closely to our trim we had previously installed. I'm not saying we enjoyed any of this but it wasn't as hard as we initially thought and we learned something new. I think our biggest hurdle was ourselves. Getting out of our heads worrying about how and just starting somewhere . Every wall was a huge accomplishment at the end of the day I stood back and took a picture and fell more and more in love with the choice we made. 

​Below is the rear view of the entire house & new addition, you can see where we cut back our existing Hardieplank lap siding(https://www.jameshardie.com/) which is a cement product and blended the new Vinyl. Lucky for us the color matches up but I did realize that my trim color needed to be changed and matched to the siding. The color I chose years back was more of a creamy white(Benjamin Moore-Dove White) as opposed to a crisp white. Here are pictures of when we first bought it ​

 ​We chose shingles for any walls that were East-West and Hardieboard in Arctic White for any wall North-South. Since we had just purchased the large bay window you see on the left-hand side of the house we wanted to reuse it. I loved the idea of having it in the living room so that we could see out to our backyard. So we removed the smaller one and used it in the garage because they were the same size and replaced it with the bay window

​The window ended up being the max size we could fit there. We didn't want the interior door to open into the window and on the right, we had a post for framing that there was no way we  could move.

​ Even though we had to move wires and carry the heaviest window in existence it was all worth it . I enjoy walking into the living room and watching nature in the backyard. With the window in, we were able to finish up all the J-channel and start on the siding. It took us a total time of two weeks to complete the entire lower half of the garage front and back. We decided to wait for the upper area until we build the new deck for the rental. So 4 full days(weekends only) and the rest a couple of hours after work each night. I have to say I did kind of feel useless in the process, I mainly carried boards and helped install. I also helped the J-channel install that ran along the waterboard, but anything that required a cut I was no help at all.

Next up on the home front is finishing up the sidewall (shingles ) and we're beginning a huge excavation project. We will be cutting in a driveway to the new garage, removing the existing island that is located in the middle of the driveway when you first pulled in and lowering the entire grade of the front of the property.This is going to make an enormous difference to our property. Once that's finished up we will start on decks back and front. It will make the world of difference to have easier access to the rental both for us and sub-contractors.