The Latest News From The Farm!

It’s a cold and dreary evening here on my Tennessee hilltop and I’m in the mood to share  a story!  Grab your cup of coffee (I’ve got mine!) and sit down for a story that will warm your heart.

 

My daughter’s old Farmhouse

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So… I’ve mentioned before that my daughter and her husband and their two little girls lived in an 80 year old darling farmhouse that they purchased back in 2010.  They had taken one room at a time and basically gutted and redid the entire house.  They had a vision to take it back to all the original bead board walls and ceilings, which meant removing wall paper, wall board, and cardboard ceiling tiles. They also added a second bathroom upstairs into the attic area of the house.  All the renovations took them years and a lot of labor.  Following are some of the “after” pictures of their lovely farmhouse.  (Stay with me.  I promise this story is leading somewhere!)

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Living Room

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Kitchen

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Dining Room

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Master Bedroom

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Guest Bedroom

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Upstairs Landing and Attic Bathroom

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Upstairs Bedroom One

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Upstairs Bedroom Two

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This gives you an idea of what a beautiful home they had made of this old farmhouse.  But there was a problem.  The problem is that the house was only on 1 acre of land and my daughter and her husband really wanted to raise their girls on a place where they could have 4-H animals and room for their little country girls to get out and roam.  The time had come to go on the hunt for a large acreage where they could build a home.

I had a few panic attacks when I thought that they might have to move farther afield to find it!  My son-in-law works in the city about an hour away and they even began looking closer to his job for land.  Nothing opened up for them and nothing felt right.

One evening my daughter sent a text to say they were on their way up to the farm and wanted to talk to us about something.  I could tell it was serious and my heart kind of sank. The serious talk was to see if they could buy some land from us and build a home right on the farm!!!  Of course we excitedly said yes, and they and my husband scoped out the best area for them to build.

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See our house peaking through the trees on the hilltop?

It was a bit of a process to subdivide off the acreage and they decided that they wouldn’t put their house on the market until the land deal was completely finished and it was officially theirs.  Finally that day came and they put a FSBO sign in their yard, posted some pictures on Facebook and within 5 days had a contract and closed on the sale a month later.

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My husband and son-in-law are a good team and love working together so they put our tractors to good use and dug the 600 feet of trench and installed the water line to the property.

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After a lot of foot work and some stresses our daughter and her husband have hired a builder and they broke ground last week and are already in the framing stage!

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What is hard for me to express is how happy it makes me.  My daughter and I are one of those lucky ones that have always been very close and now that we have the flower business together it has created an even tighter bond.  I could not imagine life without my daughter nearby!

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Not to mention my precious grand-girls!

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It’s a huge transition time for them – living in the city during the work week, out here with us on the weekends, and feeling quite homeless!  But it’s super exciting days ahead!

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I’m writing this blog post on a Sunday night, a few days before it is due, and as we stood on our porch this evening and waved goodbye to my daughter and her little family as they drove off to go to the city for the week, the tears started rolling because I miss them during the week so much… but my heart was so warm and so happy because soon they will be living right at the bottom of our hill!

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And then it hit me… my Farmgirl friends would love to know about this!  So there you are friends.  A story to warm your heart tonight!  We all need them about this time of the winter don’t we?

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Until our gravel roads cross again… so long.

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Dori

P.S. I probably won’t be sharing too much more of the building process as my daughter will be documenting it on her blog.  If you are interested in following along, here is her blog and you can read about the building journey!  She also has amazing pictures and stories on her blog of the renovation of their old farmhouse.