The keets will be two weeks old tomorrow, and they’re rapidly growing out of their cuteness. They’ve sprouted feathers and have been experimenting with flapping across their brooder box. I need to start building that coop now!

Last week I sold half of the keets to a nice young woman down the road who is building an organic farm. I got such a response from my CraigsList ad that I am think of becoming a keet broker.

The remaining babies, sixteen in all, are still fun to watch particularly when I give them bugs. That’s a good sign, as I got them to control the bug population at my farm. They are supposed to go crazy for white millet, so much so that it’s recommended as a training/taming aid, but my birds don’t give a hoot for the little seeds. Instead, their drug of choice, which I just discovered yesterday, is grass! They love the little seedheads and the only time they willingly approach me is when I am holding a stalk out to them. Otherwise, they are very flighty and not at all as docile as chickens.

Tonight when I was cleaning their cage, I moved them all to a smaller box in which they roiled and cried and flapped about on their new wings. I left the room to refill their feeder and when I returned one keet was wildly calling with a shrill alarm. Much to my surprise I found that this little one had flown the box and was strutting about the kitchen floor.

I scooped her up and dubbed her Bathsheba, she who dared escape the madding crowd. Away from the group think of her flockmates, she was tame and even perched on my finger like a parakeet. Can you imagine how uncomfortable it must be to have all those little pin feathers poking up all over your body?

I worked late on Friday night and by the time I left the office, a beautiful almost-summer evening was shaping up. Thunderheads marched from the west during my drive up to the house, and out of no where the honeysuckle had burst into bloom and perfumed the heavy air that swept into my air conditioned-less vehicle. After checking out the house and watering my new trees, I sat until sundown on the front porch and watched the lightning show behind the mountain. I have to say that the last thirteen months of this often-maddening adventure were totally worth it for that moment, my first porch sit.

New updates include the completion of the kitchen redo. The new counter was installed, and I was very pleased to find the appliances in place, minus the dishwasher, which is coming in a few weeks and minus the range hood, which my dad will install because it requires modification beyond what my “builder” can manage. The kitchen sink was replumbed and guess what!? Now the sink and faucet are aligned on the window above!

My builder is calling for the C.O. tomorrow, so fingers crossed we pass the inspection. There are quite a few things that, although not really hazardous, are probably not perfect if we get a stickler inspector. A big one is we haven’t yet built railings around the porches…so if I am required to have them expect to see a few hastily tacked up 2×4s in upcoming photos!

After the C.O., next week will be spent cleaning and May 23 is scheduled move-in day! Do you believe it? I don’t! It will be a year and a day from when I closed on the property, which was May 22, 2009. And what a year it’s been!

The painting was also done on the stair railing, and I love it. I spent a couple of hours sanding each factory-sharp edge off of each banister and newel, and I love how the whole thing, upon close inspection, looks soft and old, like its been there forever.

I’d also gotten register grates, and the laundry sink, which my dad and I had positioned and installed last weekend, was in place. The gas tank for my stove was also set on the concrete pad we poured last weekend, and gas was flowing to my stove. I can’t wait to get cooking on these beautiful counters and with this gleaming gas stove. I am used to a stove that required me to regulate its temperature by cracking the door and setting fans to blow across the opening, so this is luxury!

Speaking of cooking, doesn’t this just make you want to make a cherry pie? It seems to be the week for cherry ripening here, but the local birds are really the ones enjoying the feast. Which is fine with me—I hope that in future years I will be able to partake in the harvest, but with all the other things I am trying to manage right now, I am happy to share.

Today my farm took a giant leap forward in credibility with the arrival of my first livestock: 32 guinea keets. After having had two tick bites already this season, I decided to go the natural pest control route with these little guys. Guineas have a reputation for eating all sorts of bugs, snakes, mice and other undesirables—without scratching as destructively as can chickens. They also make a loud, obnoxious alarm cry that has earned them the nickname “farmer’s watchdog.”

At 8:10 this morning I was on the way out the door to work when I got the call from the postmaster of the little rural outpost office that handles my mail. I sped up the road to receive a small box full of raucous peeping and beady peeking eyeballs. All the way from Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa my little babies had flown, having not had anything to eat or drink from when they hatched at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, May 4. Baby poultry feed off their yolk sacks for a day or so after hatching, which nourishes them through the trip.

Yes, 32 birds in the space of shoebox…but that’s actually what allows them to survive their journey. By being so tightly packed, they can conserve their body heat. I have at least five different colors of guineas, and I can identify pearls, whites, lavenders. The other two variations are somewhat perplexing…perhaps buff and royal purple?

I was expecting to open the box to some losses, but all birds were up and vigorous and ate and drank immediately after I placed them in their brooder. Building a house sure comes in handy when raising poultry—all these giant cardboard appliance boxes make perfect first homes!

My mom took great care of the babies on their first day home while I was at work. She even e-mailed to say that a couple of bugs fell in the box and the birds ate them right up! How precocious are these little pretties!

All this excitement has them a bit tuckered, and they look absolutely hilarious when they fall over and pass out. No this bird isn’t dead, he’s sleeping!

Stay tuned as the birds navigate their potentially challenging first few weeks of life. They are supposedly more fragile than chicks, so I steel myself, like any farmer, to the possibility of loss.

But, I am super excited to now be able to write less about house construction and more about the things I’ve been wanting to do at this home!

The tease at the end of my last post wasn’t entirely about my new front porch sconces, though those are pretty neat. Instead, last week my house traded its zebra stripes and HardiePlank gray for its official paint scheme: 

When I pulled up to the house one evening after the first coat of paint had gone on, I was pretty much beside myself with excitement and relief. I loved it instantly and I actually got kind of choked up with happiness that I managed to pull this off to my liking. One would think that to paint a house white would be the easiest choice in the paint deck, but the reality is the thousands of white paint colors are really just a minefield waiting for a very expensive and public misstep. Too cool, too warm, too gray, too gold. And of course, I knew what I didn’t want—anything too stark or modern or anything resembling the shade of the old white aluminum siding we pulled off the house (and which is still on the wellhouse). But I’ve known from the beginning that I wanted the house to be white. It’s something of an homage to the previous house that shared this foundation, and I also enjoy the look of a bunch of white farm/cottage buildings in a field.

The trim color was the easiest decision I made in this whole project. There’s a house not far from mine that’s just adorable…a little 1920s stucco cottage. It has the most amazing trim color—a dynamic shade that looks green in some light, grey in other, and sometimes even blue. I looked the homeowner up, asked her to share her trim color, and she invited me to visit. Well, the inside of her house was just as cute as the outside, and reflected the good taste of a very neat, artistic lady. We spent a couple of hours sharing some wine and conversation. I came away with a trim color and a new friend.

Now the only exterior color decisions left to be made involve the front door and the porch ceiling. I am really liking the raw wood look of the ceiling, so I may scrap my plans for a “haint blue” paint job in favor of a nice natural stain that will preserve the wood but leave its color looking like, well, wood. For the front door, I think I will experiment with the gel stains that are sold to stain fiberglass doors and see if I can get a nice medium oak color. If not, ‘a-painting I will go. Ideas?

The past week has focused on finishing the floors, which involved various sandings and then burnishing the Magic Oil into the wood. First coat was a slight white wash, which is hard to discern in these photos, and the second was a natural clear color. The oil/wax really brought out the richness and color in the wood, an effect that will even continue to increase as the finish ages.

I had to take last Friday off work for an emergency meeting involving my builder, the sub who ordered the kitchen cabinets, and my counter installer. The issue was this:

When the cabinets were ordered and installed, they were not centered on the big window directly above. No one noticed this problem until the soapstone went on and the plumber installed my kitchen faucet. Classic domino effect. Anyway, this off-centeredness was not cool with me, and I went through a pretty tense discussion with my builder when he tried to pin the problem on my sub, the counter installer, when the original goofup occurred with his sub, the cabinet guy. It’s a classic contractor maneuver, I’ve learned, to try to dump responsibility on someone else.

To my surprise, though, when we all met in the kitchen for the showdown my builder actually stepped up and admitted he dropped the ball on this one. The resolution of our meeting is that everything just installed in the whole end of the kitchen is getting ripped out, the cabinet man is going to order a custom cabinet to properly fit the space, the counter man is going to redo the slab that holds the sink (and send the bill to my contractor), and I don’t have to pay a dime for the corrections. It will take at least two weeks to get the new cabinet, which puts us right at our targeted date for certificate of occupancy (C.O.) But hey, I will take the delay if it means not having to look at an improperly centered cabinet/sink/faucet! That would have driven me nuts!

Now, for a bit of a tease as I show you some major developments that happened this week on the outside of the house. Who’s paying attention?

April 21, 7:28 p.m.

Driving home from town in the fog, after a thunderstorm.

April 18, 7:42 p.m.

Driving home from the farm after a beautiful day spent working on the back porch ceiling and doing what I hope is the final trim sanding. The last time I drove home this way, it was on thick ice and this pasture looked like this.

Countertops were installed yesterday:

Green crystals! I think the countertops are perfect—in fact the whole kitchen is really looking like my vision…still a long way to go but it’s taking shape.

Things have kicked into high gear with several different trades—plumbers, electricians, carpenters, counter installers—at the house each day. Dad has been meeting my builder each morning to go over the previous day’s work, and then we both spend a couple of hours each evening reviewing and making lists for the next day’s meeting. It’s crazy to me that for each thing “fixed,” a handful more problems arise…and that’s even with reducing my builder’s scope and responsibility (on stuff that requires a lot of finesse) because he can’t seem to do a satisfactory job. It’s nuts. I am grateful, though, that my dad has stepped in to be the taskmaster as I was losing my flipping mind trying to manage my builder.

But I had the most exciting moment I’ve had in a good long while when I walked in my powder room, flipped on the switch, and had light! It was like standing inside a glowing red heart. I almost had a stroke I was so thrilled that maybe, just maybe, this craziness will soon be over.

I just realized that there’s been a fairly large development at the farm that I’ve yet to share. Drumroll please…and allow me to introduce…my new trim!

Now, it may not look like too much from these photos, but it’s done a lot to make the house start to feel like it may actually one day be finished. This trim took quite a lot of work to develop—and all the credit goes to my dad, who dad used this project to learn Google Sketchup, and he drew all the trim to scale and dimensioned. Then my builder mocked it up, but it still wasn’t sitting quite right with me. So I started shaving quarter inches off, masking them with blue tape to see the effect, and ended up with this. One more mockup later, and I think it’s perfect.

Some of the highlights include six-inch deep window sills. I am a plant collector and tea-mug rester and like using my windowsills as temporary end tables. These sills are great. And did you notice I now have doors too? These are solid core with a nice heft in the hand and they complement the Craftsman look I’m going for.

I just got home from spending six hours at the house with my parents sanding the edges off all the trim. Knocking off the edges, which was my brother’s suggestion when he visited yesterday, rids the trim of that “new house” look and makes it seem more “old.” Definitely an effect I am going for here. Plus, the paint adheres better and an edge that is not knife-sharp is more resilient against bumps and dings. Anyway, I hate sanding but its done and although I sanding off all my fingerprints in the process, it looks great.

Oh! I forgot to mention in my last post that the man who is fabricating my counters told me, upon visiting the house, that, “It looks like it grew there.” This is probably the highest complement anyone could pay me about the house, as I have worked so hard to respect the original home site in my design and execution.

Last week I went to a local stone dealer to pick out the soapstone slab for my counter. Was this place ever cool! The owner, a really nice, almost-eighty year old man who comes from generations of stone merchants, took me through his warehouse where I about flipped my lid at all the beautiful kinds of stone. Is it any wonder, considering my most salient memory of touring the Vatican at age 15 wasn’t of seeing il Papa perform Easter Mass, it was of all the magnificent inlaid marble and mosaics?

As my guide wandered with me amongst slabs of granite and limestone and marble, he was as excited as I, even after spending a lifetime looking at stone. “I love my work,” he said. “It reminds you that Mother Nature is the greatest artist of all.”

He’d just gotten a new shipment of soapstone from Brazil. Now there is one of the country’s great soapstone quarries just south of Charlottesville in Schyler, but in yet another great economic irony, it actually cost more than the Brazilian soapstone.

A nice shop worker operated a neat hydraulic lift that plucked the giant slabs like tissues from a box. I picked out this piece, falling in love with the white veining and vibrant patterning. Originally I had envisioned a “quieter’ stone, more uniformly grey like a chemistry lab counter. But I couldn’t resist the obvious artistry in this stone, which will darken to almost black with repeated applications of mineral oil. In the major white vein near the bottom of the slab, there are actually aquamarine-colored crystals. Sold. A few days later I returned to see the slab all marked up with how it would be cut to fit into my kitchen, backsplashes and all.

“I have a customer who just comes to buy pieces of stone to hang on his wall like artwork,” said my host and tour guide. After a trip to the showroom, it’s easy to see why. I like buying functional art, and even after I roll out a few hundred piecrusts on this counter, I am sure I will still find new facets to appreciate in its beautiful design.