The Queen's Blessing Teaching Homestead

11/13/2025

05/15/2023

Yes, we participate in no-mow May, and this is why.

01/26/2023

01/26/2023

The old homestead when we bought it. The central 2 story house was the original home, consisting of 2 rooms downstairs and 2 rooms upstairs. In the 1960's the kitchen and garage were added and in the 1980's the living room was added. The total rooms are a very large kitchen with walk in pantry, a nice sized dining room, a bedroom/office with closet, a huge living room, and a bathroom and laundry room on the main floor, upstairs is tucked a large bathroom and 2 more bedrooms. Here in Minnesota they have optional abstracts that go with a home. It's basically the history of the house/property. Ours starts with the government giving the land to a Norwegian gentleman under the homestead act in the mid 1800's. The little 4 room home was built shortly thereafter.
The kitchen addition has a small basement/storm shelter built beneath it that also houses the homes mechanicals.
We see so much potential with this home and we love it's history. With the mold, pet damage and odor, it sat and languished on the market. Having rehabbed houses together before, we know we have our work cut out for us, but Grant and I are a good team and we are making great progress.

01/26/2023

Have you ever bought a dirty house? A sick house? We just did. We offered very low and of course, they accepted. We knew the house was no healthy when we bought it. Now, to roll up our sleeves and make this house healthy again. But to start, here's the back story on this home. It was a second home to a couple and their 2 dogs and 5 cats. Both parties worked full time so the animals were left in the house for many long hours every day. As you can imagine, the animals went potty everywhere and anywhere. Any cleanup was minimal. Areas of mold began to develop and grow. The animals chewed, scratched and vomited, defecated and urinated on any and every surface, often repeatedly in the same spots. The house had a very bad smell and that was the first thing we noticed when we entered. But the house also had charm and we could see what it could be potentially. We could see what it once was as well. Here are some photos of the damage inside the old house. The saddest part is the damage done to the 100+ year old trim and woodwork as well as the hardwood floors. Also, many years ago, MDF was used as flooring underlayment. As you can imagine, MDF disintegrates when it gets wet, so much of this underlayment is going to be replaced as it is just crumbly and falls apart when touched. We discovered this when we pulled up the horrid smelling carpet in the living room. The one thing the photos can't capture is the smell. We have taken up all of the carpets and carpet pads, the dropped ceiling tiles and scraped the popcorn ceilings. We are using Zinzer odor blocking primer as well on all the underlayment. Then we'll be putting in a moisture barrier and new hardwood flooring. We also discovered the original 9 foot ceilings above the dropped ceilings that we installed, so we'll be restoring those.

01/26/2023

So much has happened in such a short time. Grant has accepted a promotion within Davey Tree, but it meant a move to Minnesota. So we sold everything (and I do mean just about everything, except the cat, dogs and each other) and headed out to Minnesota in search of a new homestead. We found a delightful 3 bedroom 2 bath homestead on 5 acres with 3 barns that we offered on and, just last week, we closed on. So we'll be sharing our adventures of starting up this new homestead from scratch with you all. Stay tuned!