Blessings of the Lord

Well we are happy to inform you that John got a job! He is working for the Mt. Pleasant Housing Commission as a maintenance worker.  It is low-income housing for elderly and disabled people.  The main building is downtown Mt. Pleasant and is 10 stories high! (I think the tallest building in Mt. Pleasant actually). We have been praying that God would provide and just before we ran out of money He provided for us again. We are very thankful that we have a Lord that watches out for us and provides for our needs (maybe not all of our wants as I am learning!). Thank you to those who have been praying and helping out! We are very blessed by all of you!

Paint Galore!

Joel allowed us to borrow an awesome tool...the paint sprayer.

The girls room

The school room-a little brighter than we thought but blue is the color of learning! 

Guest bedroom

Hallway with bedrooms and bathroom

Hallway leading up to attic

Living room

Master bedroom

Master bathroom

Main bathroom

Main bathroom

First floor bathroom

Kitchen

Dining room

Office

 

 

As you can see we have made great progress! We primed the house in a day thanks to all of our families! Then we took the next week to paint the whole house and I am happy to report that it is all painted! Now we move on to completing electrical and plumbing and getting some flooring in. So far it has gone well. We've had a few speed bumps along the way but God has been good to us! We are so greatfull to John's grandpa, dad and siblings who have logged a ton of hours on this house!! We will probably have to wait a little while on a kitchen as they are quite expensive and we need to save up for that. We are getting very close to moving in!

What a merry Christmas we had!

On Dec 24, we added our newest Derby Family member, Paul Robert Derby!

 

 

 

 Our children all seem to look the same when they come out! Can you guess which baby is which?

I think that the blue gives away the third one! They are actually in order of birth. The first picture is Hope, the second picture is Grace and the third one is Paul. Their daddy sure has enjoyed them! (So has their Mommy). The big sisters are enjoying their new brother as well. Hope always wants to hold him. Grace looks at him and says, "Baby cying." Translation: baby crying. She must think that babies only cry, even though he doesn't cry that much!

The birth went pretty well.  Paul was positioned poorly so it took a ton of energy to push him out. Still it was only a 7 hour labor (it would have been 4 if he was positioned right!). He was my first home birth and it went very well. The midwives were great and helped a ton! John got our room ready in the farmhouse and did an awesome job. It was my own birth suite. We have been on hold for the past few weeks with work on the house as we waited for the baby.  Now John will finish mudding and sanding and we are just about ready for a painting party! We are hoping to get a bunch of people together to prime and paint the whole house (or at least paint all the ceilings...I may not have all the colors picked out for all the walls yet). After that we will most likely be having our cabinet maker get started on the kitchen. After that we need to get flooring down and we should be in the house! It all depends on finances now as we are committed to doing this project all on cash.  John is out job searching so keep us in your prayers that he would get a job that is a blessing to him, to us, and to the company/person.

Drywall:Step 1-Delivery, Step 2-Get it in the house, Step 3-Place in designated room, Step 4-Hang it!

This is called a Boom Truck and can deliver drywall to the 2nd floor.

Luckily none of the drywall went Boom! :) It was all delivered safely.

We had great help to unload and put the drywall in each designated room. John did a great job of organizing the sheets by room and my sister directed them as such. It made everything go smoothly.

Yes, that is the 2nd floor. Luckily there is a roof over the porch below so it helped out!

Then we had a huge crew come up for a few days and start hanging all the drywall (almost 200 sheets!).  You will notice a yellow device in the middle of everyone. That is a drywall lift. It was very valuable during these days!

John's is using a drywall cutting tool that uses a magnet to cut both sides at the same time. It made for an easy and clean cut.

John's brother, Joel, is using a Bazooka! A Bazooka tape dispenser that is. It puts drywall mud on the tape at the same time that it goes on the wall. This tools saved hours alone!

There were a few times when all hands were on deck. There were many nights that ran late too!

The stilts that Joel brought were awesome. It allowed the person wearing them to be able to put screws in the drywall on and near the ceiling without any problem. They are by far the most used tool (and the most fun).

Even grandma got in and helped! As you can see, our house turned into a dust pile! Everything is now white.

So here is a small idea of  the madness that we have been creating this past week. We have had lots of help and it is going really well! We are so thankful for all of those that have come out and helped us. We are almost completely done muding round #1 and have started a little on the 2nd coat. Hopefully we can be done muding the 3rd coat by the end of the day tomorrow and then we sand it and prime it.  We are slowly getting there! Just in time for the baby to come which is due in about a week. Soon I'll post finished drywall pics. Thanks for your support and in interest!

Love, The Derbys

Getting Stuff Done

Sean, our brother-in-law, came and tiled two of the three bathrooms. The is the master bath

 tile.

We had a company come out and foam insulate the exterior walls. The difference is awesome from sound to holding in heat.

We successfully completed our rough plumbing inspection!

After a little hiccup with our electrical inspection, we were able to fix some things and finally passed our rough electrical inspection as well. What a blessing! The inspector failed us and then told us he would be on vacation for a week and a half and we had drywall coming in two days! Stress! But the Lord provided a different, much nicer inspector to finish the job.

We passed the rough mechanical inspections, although this is hired out to a professional company. Now we just need to get the company to finally finish their job! They seem to be dragging their feet and we've had a few issues with the furnace as a result but we are confident that it should be finished soon.

So that is the update right now. Next I will post pictures of the drywall maddness that we are currently in the middle of!

Beautiful scenes from the Farm

We've had some great scenes here at the farm. This was the best rainbow that I have ever seen! 

For now we are in crunch mode. We have plumbing and electrical almost completed and will be calling for our inspections next week. Pray those go well! We have the insulators coming on Friday and the drywall is delivered on Sat morning and away we go! John's brother, Joel, will be in town for the week to help drywall. With almost 200 sheets to cut, hang and mud, it should be quite a feat! If you have anytime from Nov 12-19 feel free to come by and help! No experience necessary :) Blessings!

Homeowners

Well today we are officially the Homeowners of the farmhouse! It has been fun watching the house change and transform.  We pulled our plumbing and electrical permits last week so we are full swing into those. We really need to find a good source for helping run the new heat ducts. We have a few leads to pursue still but the heating companies are outrageously high priced. We are scheduled to be insulated the beginning of Nov., so we are moving right along. Hopefully we will be all dry-walled by Dec. but we shall see! God is continuing to bless us through this process. After the first of the year we will begin to change our focus from house to farm. By then we will be able to get the farm into shape enough to have animals after the snow melts. We are very excited for what is to come and we thank you all for your interest and support. For those of you that we have left, we miss you all and continue to think of you often. I keep thinking that I have seen someone or their vehicle from back home but then remind myself that they don't live here and it isn't them :( But all is well with the Derbys. Hope and Grace love to sing together all the time.  They love playing with the barn cats and the tractors.  Hope is ready to get her cow, Arbelle, as she named it. She will have to wait until Spring. Baby #3 is still scheduled to arrive around the beginning to middle of December and is doing very well. Blessings!

John and Kristin