…when you leave this cozy spot to head out into a dark cold rain to rig a heat lamp to keep your 15 guineas toasty warm.

The guineas have been doing fine (i.e., surviving) the few nights that have gotten down into the teens. But reading the weather report tonight, I discovered that the storm system sweeping eastward may bring subzero wind chills Tuesday night. I know the birds can handle cold, but the wind we’re expected to get may do them in. I am pretty sure their coop is resistant to wind because its so tightly constructed, but I am not entirely sure how much makes its way through and I don’t want to find out by discovering a bunch of two-legged popsicles.

And, I’d rather be doing this mucking around tonight, in a rainy but relatively balmy 35 degrees, instead of Tuesday night after work in a subzero windstorm.

So I hung a shop light over the perch, nailed it in so it wouldn’t fall and catch their house on fire, and then tacked the cord down so the birds wouldn’t hang themselves if they got caught in it. Thankfully the “chicken door” that the birds never liked to use was just loose enough to let an extension cord in, saving me from drilling holes in my perfectly predator-proof coop. We’ll see how long it takes the birds to start pecking at the extension cord. Then I’ll be enjoying flash-fried poultry instead of popsicles. Choose your poison.

Of all the fussy tasks involved with this house, the front door has been one of the most annoying. I estimate I’ve spent about 25 hours trying to get this thing right. And that doesn’t even count the numerous conversations with my builder before I moved in because he didn’t install either of my doors properly. The doors weren’t cheap—thousands of dollars each, and I’ve had nothing but trouble with them. Locks that won’t close, cheap weatherstripping, gaps between the door and jamb that let in light and cold air. Suffice it to say, I won’t be recommending Therma-Tru anytime soon.

But this post is really about aesthetics, so to that we go. The front door is a fiberglass door, and one of the reasons I bought it was it was “stainable” to approximate a wood tone. What a great challenge, I thought! How fun!

I did my research, ordered three colors of special gel stain from someplace in Iowa, made sample strips and a decision, and finally applied the stain.

And it was okay. Except for the unevenness and some weird blotchiness. The stain was ridiculously hard to work with, because it didn’t penetrate the surface and instead just sat on top and got gummy. Which meant that any attempt to “fix” bad areas just ended up making the problem worse. If I were to ever stain a fiberglass door again, and I hope never to be assigned such a horrible fate, I would quickly wipe the stain all over it and not touch it again until it dried.

I also didn’t love the dark color. Though it looked passably like wood, didn’t give me a good feeling when I approached it. Which is key! But I figured I could live with it if I could just fix the bad spots. So I tried to correct bad areas by taking off the stain, which required lacquer thinner and probably took years off my life, but no dice. I gave up and went to plan b, which was paint!

So that required a few days of playing with paint chips, and another $40 in Benjamin Moore sample pints. Luckily, among the three colors I chose to sample, I found one I thought would be okay. So back to the paint store for primer to cover the stain and a $20 quart of really nice paint.

And so I continued, dedicating an entire weekend to priming, and then last weekend to painting. The bad news is I am not thrilled with my painting skills, which require quite a bit of touch up that I’ve been doing every night after work this week. And the liberal use of my rationalizing imagination, which is protecting my sanity by telling me that my front door looks like it belongs on a 100-year old dream cottage, all banged up and caked with a century of loving paint applications.

But the good news is I love the color I picked. It is just what I wanted and what I should have just done from the start instead of messing with the stain.

In fact, before I built the house and was playing around with color combinations for siding, trim and door, this was what I came up with as my favorite. I even found an old screenshot I took of the Benjamin Moore Personal Color Viewer, where you can try paint colors on a house that vaguely resembles yours.

Pretty close, huh? Now I just have to muster up the strength to paint the inside of the front door, and then I can cross this odious project off the list.

I came downstairs early this morning to make my tea and was greeted with the most stunning sunrise I’ve seen in weeks. We got two inches of rain yesterday, and the departing clouds made for a riotously beautiful sky. I could feel the relief of the trees and plants and grass as they exhaled well-scrubbed air.

I’ve never been a fan of rainy days. They make me sad and slow. But since moving to the farm and experiencing a summer of drought—and seeing and sensing drought’s physical and psychological effects on plants, animals and people—I am coming around to appreciate the days when no sun shines and water falls to earth.

It was a beautiful morning to celebrate an anniversary. A year ago today I “broke ground” on my house. Well, demo began on the old house, which at that point I was still planning to renovate. A year ago today I thought I was in the remodeling business, not new construction, as I would learn a day or two later with the discovery of all that termite damage. Isn’t it amazing what a difference a few days can make in the direction of our lives, and on a larger scale, what can be done in a year with the right resources, creativity, determination, and moral support?

And with that, I dedicate this post to my parents, without whom I would not have made it through this last crazy, terrifying, wonderful year, not to mention the entirety of my life. Thank you for farming with me.

The keets turned thirteen weeks old two days ago. A week ago I switched their food from medicated gamebird starter to a combination of nonmedicated chick starter and layer feed—to meet their high protein requirement. They need to be off the medicated food by twelve weeks because, believe it or not, they are actually old enough to be producing eggs! Each day I step into the guinea house I expect to find a new surprise…but nothing yet!

In the past two weeks the keets have developed a beautiful aqua blue over their heads, which have completely lost their baby racing stripes. Their helmets and wattles continue to grow.

In another two weeks they will have been in their coop six weeks, which means I get the green light to open their door and let them out to explore the brave new world. It will not doubt be the start of sadness, as I can’t imagine all of them surviving. But I hope that it will also be the beginning of a new phase of farm life in which my livestock actually gets to range free.

In a whirlwind of accomplishment last weekend, Dad and I got the tar paper on the roof of the coop—a crucial step to prepare for the actual roofing material. But then there were two evenings of rather violent storms yesterday and tonight, and when I went around doing damage check late this evening after the rain stopped, this is what I found:

So much for those staples I used to attach the tar paper to the roof!

I fetched the deficient stapler and hauled myself onto the coop. There I relaid the tar paper and peppered its surface with staples, hoping that perhaps a constellation of weak metal would make up for having the proper tool for the job.

While I was up on the roof, the sky blazed up with hot pink clouds and a cool breeze came off the mountain to cut our almost-100 degree day.

I lay on my back and watched the clouds fade from magenta through puce to ballet pink. Above my head, a fat contrail chased a small jet flying west. And for once, I didn’t wish that I was on it.

The hours put into this project have run together just like the sweat and sawdust that mixed on my skin as I worked. But continue we must, as the birds weren’t growing any younger in their garage box. So, we got the siding up and positioned and nailed:

And then cut out the openings for all the doors and windows:

All the siding is on and the roofing as well. I must say, having a tractor to pick some of this stuff up was great.

I spent at least nine hours on July 4 painting circles around the coop. The T1-11 siding really drank up the barn paint I was using. I like white farm buildings, remember, so that was the natural choice for this little house. Plus, I am hoping it will help keep it cool inside.

Then I put 1/4″ hardware cloth inside all the window openings, hammering in poultry staples every few inches for a tight fit. And then I screened in the eave vents, with the idea being to eliminate any access point for predators. And then I installed the windows—storm windows that I put in with their latches facing outside so that I could open and close them without actually going inside the coop—like when I am all dressed up and on my way out to work!

Meanwhile, Dad framed in the wall that will divide the bird area from the storage area, and he built four beautiful custom doors: a front door, a storage/bird area door, a cleanout door for the opening beneath the roosts, and a tiny “chicken” door that will provide the birds access to the wild blue yonder.

Here’s about where the temperature was—in the shade—during this entire construction project. It’s been a beastly slog, up at 7 a.m. and working until 9, 10 at night during a rainless heat wave.

But the good news is that after a few late nights last week, including a Thursday night that ended at 11 p.m., the coop is done! Well, done enough to move the birds in anyway—I still need to trim the doors and windows and put on the roof, which is sporting a space-age silver tarp until I can get that done.

The whole project has been way more involved than I ever thought it would be…but I am happy to say that it is great and I think it will be just perfect for my needs and the birds’ too. If there is one thing I know about keeping animals it is that their enclosures need to be well designed and well built to keep caring for them from being a dreaded chore.

And this coop is built solid as a tank, so if this whole bird thing doesn’t work out, I have a really nice guest cottage!

The guineas turned eight weeks old yesterday. Since being moved into their larger enclosure, they seem to have doubled in size. They eat about four pounds of food a day, and drink close to a gallon of water. They are also molting again, turning my garage into a toxic waste dump with their dander. I enter to serve them donned in a face mask and safety goggles after having an allergic reaction to all the dust. I can’t wait until they are in their proper coop and I can reclaim—and clean—the garage.

Speaking of coop, last weekend was again spent in construction mode from almost-dawn to nightfall. We got an early start Friday evening when I had the day off work because of a crazy storm/tornado that came through Thursday night and knocked out power to my office as it decimated a huge swath of town. It was again beastly hot and the weekend was peppered with sessions spent panting, lying prone on the ground from heat exhaustion. I also whacked the heck out of my head on some of the framing Saturday, and ended that day with a sick headache and stars in my eyes.

Physical discomfort aside, we managed to locate windows and install the sheet vinyl floor. The we got all four walls framed in:

I cut rafters and we got those up and nailed in. We waited out a quick rainshower Sunday evening—

—Before starting to put up siding late Sunday night.

We got the front of the coop completely sided before it got too dark to continue working, and then we wrapped the whole structure in tarps to guard against rain until we can again tackle the project. The plan is to side the whole thing and then go back and cut out the door and window openings.

Meanwhile, isn’t it interesting that the white keets have blue eyes?

And did you know, I have a three-headed gorgon living in my garage?

We got started on the coop midmorning last Saturday, at the beginning of our area’s first summer heat wave. The coop will be 8′x12′ and have a shed roof and a storage room.

First we nailed together the presure-treated base and studs. The whole contraption sits on skids and cinder blocks lest my new house make this country property look too classy. I leveled the base, and then we added floor joists 16″ on center.

Then came three sheets of pressure-treated plywood nailed into the joists.

Over that went a layer of OSB, overlapping the pressure-treated plywood joints for stability. This floor is rock solid! As the light was fading, we mocked up the positioning for the front and back walls, tinkering to get the right proportion and roof slope:

Both Dad and I had worked right through the heat until 10:00 p.m. at night and made ourselves sick. Working in full sun on an almost 100-degree, humid Virginia day is no good. We learned our lesson and planned Sunday’s work day to start at 7:00 a.m., with a break during the heat of the afternoon.

The next morning started nice and early, but already the temperature was in the 80’s. We laid out and framed the front and back walls, using the newly built platform:

We tipped the walls into place and temporarily secured them in order to frame the door and window openings, which aren’t shown below. And that’s when the weekend ran out, at 10:00 p.m. Sunday night.

Monday morning I got up and got ready for work. On my way out, I stopped by the garage to feed and water the guineas. I knew something was wrong when I tried to open the garage door and was met by brief resistance followed by a flurry of feathers. You guessed it. Another jailbreak. So there I was, powdered and perfumed and the clock rapidly ticking toward 9:00 a.m., when I was due in the office…and I was again chasing guineas around the garage.

I got them all caught, one at a time because they are so big they need two hands to secure, and hit the road. Walking into work, I was still picking guinea feathers out of my hair.

Well, my dad sprang into action that evening and when I’d returned from work, he’d whacked together an interim housing solution for the birds using two sheets of plywood framed into a bottomless box set on thick plastic in the garage. These expansive new digs, 8′x4′x4′, were just what the birds needed. He made access doors at both ends for easy cleaning, and I stapled chicken wire to the top and filled the box with pine shavings. The birds love their new home, and are enjoying the chance to stretch their wings and fly from perch to perch. It was really a great idea because they’d definitely outgrown their last cardboard box, and were obviously wanting more space! Plus, it takes some of the time pressure off getting the coop proper finished.

It was very late when I shut the garage up Monday night and headed back to the house. I heard a rustling in the field and with my flashlight discerned two green eyes coming toward me across the field. Some animal, with its head held low, was headed right for me. I got ready to do battle with my Mag-Lite, but when it came into view I saw it was a tiny fawn. Once the creature realized that I was most definitely not its mother, it turned away and slunk around the driveway and off into the night.

I came home from work Thursday night to find the hay had been cut in the fields around the house.

As much as I enjoyed the tall hay glowing in the sunlight, I like this fresh and clean look too. And just in time! I was out late last night buying material for the chicken coop that Dad and I are going to start building in the field today. It’s no small undertaking, this structure, so stay tuned for progress reports. Here’s the coop thus far:

Last night, the farmer who takes the hay showed me a photo he took of a gigantic black bear that lives in the neighborhood. I had suspected as much after seeing some incriminating looking bear poo under the cherry tree. A lone bear doesn’t worry me much, but he’s seen mothers with two and three cubs as well, and that’s not a situation I’d want to walk into in the dark of night.

At last count, the predators I am battling in this quest to keep birds include: fox (saw one run though the back yard the other night), raccoons, snakes, coyotes, hawks, eagles, weasels, mice, rats, dogs, and now bear. A more sane person might ask, “Why bother?!!”

As you may have guessed from my long silence, things progressed nicely on the house front. In a one-week blur of C.O. nailbiting, final walks, punch lists, bank meetings, invoice haggling and frenzied packing the house was done. I moved in a week ago today, one year to the day from closing on the property, and I have spent the past week trying to get things in order. So without further ado, I present the mostly finished house before it was hit by the tornado of my belongings:

Studio/office

Living room/someday library, above

Powder room tucked under the stairs

Awaiting a dishwasher, due in next week

Laundry

Guest bedroom, downstairs

Guest bath directly across the hall

Sitting area at the top of the stairs

Same space from the master bedroom door

Master bath from front dormer

Master bath

Master bedroom

Master closet

As you can see, there is still a lot to be done. The storage-area access doors, built-ins for the master bathroom and master bedroom. I need to get the cover on my vent hood in the kitchen, and build out the closets. And then there’s the landscaping outside, front and back porch stairs, and finishing the back porch ceiling and screening in the porch. Oh, and the guineas need a coop!

But in the past week I’ve hung towel bars, got a phone line and satellite internet installed, installed window blinds and Dad put in the foyer and kitchen light fixtures. So we’re making progress. Even though there is still so much to do, when I think about how far I have come, those projects seem positively recreational!

And the best news is I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful house. I had no idea a year ago that this would ever happen, let alone turn out so well. I am still a bit in disbelief that it’s a Real House. Everywhere I look, I see through walls to the underlying framing and systems. I still see this place as a collection of two-by-fours open to the the sky, and each time I climb the stairs I remember the months I scrambled up and down a ladder propped in that spot. It’s a hard feeling to articulate…To know something this intimately, to have lain awake most nights for the past year obsessing about every detail from start to finish definitely translates to an intensity of affection I’ve until now never experienced for a place. It’s what I’ve wanted my whole life, and it pretty much blows my mind.

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.