Another Harvest

This is kind of a unique story.  It’s one of those that will make the house memorable.

Some time ago I wrote on the blog that we were searching for wood work to match what is in the new house so that when we put the addition on, it won’t look so much like new.  We hunted and search and found some but not an exact matches and we’re okay with that…we just didn’t want stuff that was completely different.  One day I got an email from Joyce in Cresco, Iowa.  I met Joyce from visiting their guild.  She’s a sweet heart.  She said that she was reading the paper and saw that there was a family in Chester, Iowa who was tearing down an old house and they were hoping to sell the wood work from it.  The odd thing…we had to write them a letter as no phone number or email was listed…just a snail mail address.

I said something to Hubby and we ended up writing to them.  A few weeks later we got a call and we could “come bid on the wood work”.  At first I didn’t understand-“bid on the wood work”.  I said something to Hubby and we ended up driving up to Chester.  We looked at it-liked it and put in a bid.  While we were there, we figured out that Roger knew the lady from the year we lived in Chester back in 1990.

Anyway couple weeks later we were notified that we had the winning bid.  So now we needed to come get the wood.  The lady was super understanding and allowed us some time.  At the time this happened it was April and the guys needed to be in the field planting crops.  So finally Sunday we went to get the wood work.  All of it was still in place so we had to remove all of it from the house then pull all the nails.

The nail pulling was done by me and Karl.

It was a big job.  It was very humid that day and luckily I set up my station on the deck with a bit a shade.

Roger and Craig were working in the house.  The air in there was old closed up abandon house air…stale and stagnant.

We ended up with LOTS of trim.  I am so excited.  It is in good shape and I know it will look awesome in the new house.  Along with wood work we took doors….

We also took out the attic trap door….complete with all the framing.

We bought the attic ladder too.

We bought a built in that was in one of the closets-it just has three drawers but it’s cute.  Hubby had to disassemble it in order to get it out…but look at the drawers.  I love the handles.  Right now I am not positive but I think this is going in my closet.

The drawer pulls are so cool.  I think we’ll likely take them off and put them on a piece of furniture that will be out on display then but simpler bucket handles on these drawers being they will just be in my closet…we’ll see.

I got this little stool too.

But there is wood work and wood work and wood work.

I didn’t even take a picture of the long pieces.

I think we are complete on the wood work now…at least I hope so!

We still need to clean the boards up a bit but all in all-it was a wonderful day (minus the blisters and puncture wounds I got from pulling nails)…but boy of boy were tired at the end of it….and to you Joyce–THANKS A MILLION for letting us know about the house.  We are so happy to have the wood and they seemed really happy to have it gone.