The garden is in, the sun is shining, summer is here!

Well, we have been in the mobile home on our "farm" for 2 months...  And even in a tiny single-wide with 6 people, we love it!  The house is taking longer than we had hoped (as these things always do), but this is definitely home for us.  The kids still love all the room to run, and we love being able to send them outside to play when things start feeling a bit cramped.  We have had 2 BBQ's... One with our small group from Church for Memorial Day and the other to celebrate Gwenny getting Sparky of the Year for Awana.  It is amazing how comfortable our tiny house can be with so many people, but then again, we spent the entire time outdoors!  The screened porch turned out to be a perfect place to set out the food and the courtyard in front of the mobile is perfect for setting out chairs and doing an old-fashioned lap meal with the kiddos on a blanket on the lawn.  We love it here!

I finally finished painting the master bedroom.  The walls went pretty quick, but the trim is a huge challenge.  I don't want to do much sanding, as I am fairly certain the paint must have lead in it and everybody I talk to about the house warns me of the evils of lead poisoning, so trying to get a smooth finish starting out with a rough one has been difficult.  After a little online research I discovered the wonder of flotrol and lightly sanding between my coats of paint and I am calling it good enough.  Matt says it is time to embrace the imperfections.  It is a hundred year old home, after all. 

So on to the kids room.  Matt and I painted for about an hour and a half tonight, until we ran out of paint.  The room has a first coat on all but one wall and the second coat should go pretty quickly, then I am back to that whole trim delimma.  In addition to that, the windows in the room are very old.  I mean VERY, and when I started prepping the room I found that the previous owner had stuffed tissue in all the edges and as I began removing it all, I quickly discovered this was because the windows let in a lot of air.  So, Matt and I have decided those need to be the first ones to replace.  The kids don't have a heat source in their room, so this winter could be pretty chilly with drafty windows.  So, here are the up sides to replacing really old windows...  I don't have to paint the trim or wood parts of the windows (insert Spring doing the happy dance) and I will have some beautiful windows to use in decorating (see my mind at work with possiblities here).  The down sides...  Let's be real...  Money! and then there is that little detail that Matt and I have never replaced windows before.  But I have to say, as beginning DIYers, we have had some pretty good successes in figuring it out.  It is amazing all you can learn online and we have some wonderfully handy and helpful family members and friends when we get stuck in a rut.  So, we will be diving in!

Now I have to take a minute to brag on my husband...  Bear with me a bit here!  I don't know if I have mentioned that while I come from a fairly handy family, Matt's family is less DIY and more visionaries that delegate.  I think there have been times where my willingness to dive in and give things a try have kind of intimidated my husband.  But he really impressed me when it comes to the swamp cooler in the mobile. 
We have quickly discovered that mobile homes are really cold in cold weather and really hot in the summer.  The original farmhouse seems to stay cool year-round (major score for the summer months), but the mobile is pretty much unbearable in the afternoons.  So, a few weeks ago I decided to try out the swamp cooler. 

Now, growing up I had an amazing thing going for me...  When I got hot I turned a nob and the swamp cooler turned on.  I never really questioned how that happened, it just did.  I assumed that's how they worked.  When I decided to do that in our little mobile, I basically expected the same thing.  I did remember, however, that it needs water and since no one has lived in this mobile for about 5 years, I thought to turn on the water to the cooler.  I did, by the way, also think to take the plastic cover off the inside part of the cooler.  Having done this I assumed I was very clever and good to go.   I might have been a little wrong.  After getting blasted with about 5 years worth of dust and cobwebs (but thank the Lord no actual bugs) I started to doubt myself, but decided to give it a few more minutes of blowing before giving up.  About 5 minutes later I heard some water running off the side of the house.  I went outside to investigate and found exactly what caused the noise...  Water running off the side of the house.  And we are not talking a little drip.  It looked a lot like some one was spraying a skinny house off the roof.  It shot out a few feet in a steady stream.  Maybe I'm not so brilliant after all.  Off the cooler went, off the water went, and I then contemplated whether to put the plastic cover back too, but one of the things that held it up broke when I took it down, so I nixed that idea and decided not to think about the number of bugs necessary to create the amount of cobwebs I was covered in crawling into my house in the middle of the night.

That night I told Matt of my experience.  After laughing at the visual of me covered in cobwebs, Matt said he would take a look.  Then he did.  Apparently, had I actually looked at the swamp cooler on the roof I would have noticed a cover that needs to be removed, and under that filter pads that very obviously need to be replaced.  And then a copper house that needs to be hooked up that was just sitting up on the roof (the source of my water fall).  Then there is a pump and other stuff I have no idea about, but my new DIY husband had a great idea.  He took pictures with his cell phone and went to work to talk to the maintanence crew.  He thought he had the basic idea figured out, but thought he would run it by someone who may have actually worked on one of these things before.  Apparently he was on the right track, so he headed to Lowe's, bought some parts and after a few more trips similiar to that...  I have cool air entering my house with no cobwebs, dust, or so far... bugs!  Now if that isn't love of your wife who has to sleep during the day when working nights, I don't know what is!!!  My hero, again (sigh).

So life is good, family is good, the house is moving forward again which is good, and everyday we wake up and thank God for what He has given us, which is very good.  We pray you are doing the same!