Forever Farm - Our "Pheonix Farmhouse"

We love our yellow farmhouse!

The Oregon autumn rains have finally begun. Our gardens have (mostly) been retired from summer production and we have time to turn our attention to indoor projects (like catching up on our five-month hiatus of posting to this blog-site :-). The purchase of the Sharing Gardens land is complete! We spent the nine months from Oct 2013 until early July renovating the 1875 farmhouse that came with the land. The house was considered a "tear-down"; more of a liability than an asset. It had not been occupied in over seven years and in that time all windows and doors had been busted; there were gaping holes in the floor that looked straight down to the ground below and vandals had marred the interior walls with spray paint and sledge hammers. Originally we pictured ourselves fixing it up just enough to use as a work-shop and materials-storage but as we progressed in the renovations it became clear that the house was basically solid and that we had the skills to bring it back to a fully habitable dwelling.

This is the house after considerable work had already been done; doors and windows installed; tangles of blackberries and other overgrown weeds removed. January 2014

Same view, September 2014

Our living room in the early stages.

Now, isn't that cozy!

Dining room: We put rigid foam insulation on the insides of all the walls, and then paneling over that.

Because of the insulation, the house stays cool in the summer and is quick and easy to heat in the winter.

We did most of the renovations ourselves - both inside and outside.

View from the rear. September 2014.