We’ve got so much done here around the homestead recently!

We’ve (nearly) finished up the studio entirely. It now has a floor, insulation, and wall coverings! We used snap together laminate flooring between us and the insulation for a few reasons, the main one being that it was cheaper than putting up dry wall. It was also prettier than plain drywall, and we didn’t even need to paint it after.

We also added a window like this (Amazon) for a little natural light, as well as a little bit of a breeze. The studio gets hot enough with the two of us that we won’t be adding in a wood stove until fall. The one we brought with us is just a tad to big for our tiny studio, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for a good deal when we go into town.

Next on the list was an outhouse, and Kyle built us the biggest one I’ve ever seen.

He’s over 6 ft tall and he didn’t want to duck to go to the bathroom, so it ended up being 7 ft tall in front, sloping to 6 1/2 ft in back. It did give lots of room for storage of soap, toilet paper and cleaning supplies, though. Eventually, he will add a small hand washing station as well.

Our greenhouse made it up this week too. It doesn’t have much in there yet as I need to collect some planters or buckets, but I plan on filling the whole thing eventually! Being able to produce food on our homestead is an important goal for us. The greenhouse will also be housing our chicks until our chicken coop is completed, which is next on our list. We marked out some trees for it today and will be splitting our time working on that and on our solar panels as we have been running exclusively off of our generator so far, which, by the way, has been amazing.

We have the Honda EU2000i (Amazon), and it is so quiet! It also runs all of our electronics for 8 hours on .9 gallons of gas.

Speaking of electronics, we have set up all of ours to Kyle’s satisfaction now. We may be off grid, but that doesn’t mean we have to go without every modern convenience. We have our TV, Kyle’s Xbox One (Amazon), and as of today our cell phone booster (Amazon) so we can get reliable signal at home now! I think its a little funny, but Kyle always has been and always will be a techie.

And hooray for shelves so we can keep the kitchen supplies in the studio. No more running back and forth between our storage tent and studio to make a meal. And we moved clothes in as well. It’s tight, but it’s much better than living in a tent!