What Do You Mean It's March???

Three months of updates in a single post

Apologies. I really can’t tell you exactly where the time went or what I did with it, but it is suddenly March and I’ve been told I’m overdue for a ranch renovation update. Let’s get started…

Renovating while living real life means accepting that progress happens at different speeds. We know exactly where we’re going, but getting there requires juggling a dozen tasks simultaneously rather than checking them off one by one. It’s messy, but it’s the only way forward. So here are our dozen tasks we’ve managed over the last few months:

1. Farm Truck: Yep, we have a farm truck now! Brandon won it at a COPART car auction. It’s a 2011 GMC 2500 Denali. The catch was that it only came with three wheels. Luckily, he is handy enough that him and his buddy were able to fix it up and pass all of the necessary State and legal inspections to get it registered. It has been extremely handy to have a truck around to haul things I find on Facebook marketplace and my horse around. This item will likely get its own post in the future.

   

2. Horse Trailer: Speaking of… I desperately wanted a horse trailer for my horse, Cisco. For many reasons, but mostly because I’ve met so many cool cowgirls around the area that I can trail ride with! Plus, I am going to show in Working Equitation this year so it is nice to be able to pull Cisco to shows throughout the summer. So after many hours searching and two offers on trailers, we found one 10 minutes from the house! It has a bit of surface rust, but everything else was in good condition for a 31 year old trailer, kind of like me. I’m starting to log my practice hours driving it around and can hook/unhook it by myself! I’ve been rated 99.9% proficient.

   

3. Move Entry Door to Garage: In order to fully finish the kitchen, we needed to move the door that goes from the kitchen to the garage over to the right by four feet. I know, four feet doesn’t seem like much and why even bother, but it needed to happen. This allowed us to put in our 30” floor-to-ceiling pantry next to our refrigerator, it’s final location. Moving the door also created a proper mud room entrance from the garage. The new door is also much less drafty than the old door and keeps the house sealed up more nicely.

   

4. Moved the Laundry to the Utility Sink area in the Garage: This was an audible call. Brandon and I have been toying with the idea of eventually closing in the current attached garage to make it livable space when we build a larger garage, and with that idea came the idea of moving the laundry into the existing utility sink room that is in the garage. We originally wanted to stack our washer and dryer in the above-mentioned mud room, but when we started measuring things out, it was just too tight to make work. That’s when we decided to “go for it” and move the washer and dryer completely into the utility sink area and we will finish that off into a nice laundry room soon. For now, the washer and dryer are functional! I will plan to post some “after” photos when I can get an evening or weekend to make this space feel a little more complete.

   

   Before: We removed the utility sinks and the step they were standing on. After to be posted later!

5. Prepared the plumbing for the main floor half bath: This was a big step in the right direction! My father-in-law really made this happen quickly for us. We decreased the size of our main floor bath and moved the door from the East side to the South side (across from the garage entry door now, instead of opening into the kitchen, ew!), so this meant that when we went to put our walls up again, we had some plumbing that wouldn’t fit in those new walls. It needed to be slightly rerouted and tidied up, which he was able to do while visiting.

6. New Dishwasher: This happened to be a situation where we planned on just keeping the dishwasher that came with the house, but it gave up on us. We did try to fix it, but one time it ran for 12 hours straight after we thought we fixed it. So we listed it on Facebook Marketplace and invested in a new dishwasher.

7. Drywall, drywall, drywall: We are getting good at this! We have so many patches that still need to be done and two walls that need to get drywall put up. Drywall is such a tedious process, but the process really pays off if you follow it patiently. This is an ongoing project.

8. Install a Hot Tub we found on Facebook Marketplace: An unnecessary Facebook marketplace purchase, made possible by the farm truck and some good friends! We decided to pull the trigger on getting a hot tub when Brandon saw the deal and we didn’t want winter to go by without some good R&R when we could squeeze it in. We picked up the hot tub from a backyard in Boulder. The guy hadn’t even finished draining it when we showed up with a huge trailer and a team of 6 people to load it. While we waited for it to finish draining, the owner of the home had to cut his fence down so that we could move it out of his backyard. Basically, we had to flip it up on its end, use massive lifting straps and inch it to the trailer. Then, we tipped it up onto the trailer and leveraged it down flat. Loading it was the hard part! Once we got it unloaded at our house, Brandon and I spent a weekend leveling out a nice pad area and adding pavers for it to set on next to the wrap around porch. Then, we used a car jack and 3” ABS that we had laying around to maneuver it into place. It might have been easier to call hot tub movers in this case, but we managed to make it work and have been enjoying it!

9. Organize Closets & Basement: This was an effort led by my mother-in-law to bring some sanity to our space! We still haven’t fully unpacked given we have so much construction dust with the renovation, but she was able to help make sense of all of the upstairs closets and help organize the basement. Our closets look SO MUCH better and we have a system in our master closet/armoire that we can follow. It gives us a lot of peace of mind.

10. Planned our Perimeter Fence: We’ve been talking about this since we moved in and this would have been something we would have valued a lot if it had already been on the property. There are remnants of old fencing here and there, but who knows when it was taken down by the previous owner. We want to add a livestock perimeter fence for sheep & cattle. We’ve planned the area, checked survey/easement info, decided where we want gates, and talked to a couple fencing companies. It will be about 3,400 feet of fencing to install and connect into the corral on the North side of the property.

    

11. Replace front tires on tractor: I swear this tractor needs a new part every time we touch it! Well, now it has two new front tires. The front tires were dry rotted and it was time to replace them. The issue was that we had a hard time finding somewhere that would mount the tires on the tire rims. My father-in-law kept calling around locally and as soon as the local shops heard “tractor tire” they would say “no, we don’t have the equipment to mount tractor tires”. At one point, I overheard my father-in-law tell them they’re wrong and say “yes, you can - it’s the same size as a car tire” - I thought he might go up there and show them how to do it himself.

12. Perfect a Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe: This was a fun project to undertake and is technically still underway, although I have the dough I want. I just need to perfect the type and amount of chocolate chips. I started with a recipe that one of Brandon’s old coworkers gave me that I already loved and started tweaking one ingredient or step at a time to compare a new version. I’m currently at Version 5 and am very happy with the dough, steps, cook time & temp, but am debating the types of chips. I’ve done regular semi-sweet, dark chocolate (these were GREAT), mini chocolate chips, and chopped up baker’s bark to make chunks. The chunks are a top contender so I may need to try a dark chocolate chunk version for the final recipe.

    

    I've probably baked well over 250 cookies through this process. It has been really fun to focus on just one recipe until you're really satisfied with it! From left to right: V1, V2.5, V5 cookies

    Our focus for the next bit will be on the main floor bathroom and preparing for spring in Colorado! The project list keeps going on and on, though. We have been super grateful for the help, whether its workin’ with us or giving us a break from the work.

    
    

    KB