328. House Build Reflections: What Worked, What Didn’t, and What We’d Change | Ash of Turner Farm

You have to also consider like your own comfort in your house too. Because I think that there's a health perspective to that too. Like if we're freezing. Absolutely. Well, and what I've noticed with house building is there's just always give and take. Budget aside, any house aside, you want one thing, but it contradicts another thing. And it just, that happens constantly. Like I can just think of so many things like that. And so there's way more factors to consider than just, is this bad? Is this good? It's like, is this necessary? Yeah, and that's kind of where we were at with the installation. I really went back and forth a lot with that. My name is Lisa, mother of nine and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boone. On this podcast, I like to talk about simplifying your life so you can live out your priorities. I help you learn how to cook from scratch and decorate on a budget through this podcast and my courses, Simple Sourdough and the Simple Sewing Series. I will leave links to these resources in the show notes and description box below. Now let's get into the show. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Today, we're having a fun discussion with Ashley Turner from Turner Farm. Now, last time she was on, we talked about sourdough. She offers tons of great resources over on her Instagram. She has classes and a membership. So lots of great info there. But today we're going to be chatting about her home build. Of course, I am interested in this because we're right in the middle of one, but a lot of you are either thinking about building or just entertained by unconventional home building, which I personally find very fun to observe, to dig into like how this came to be the design, all of the materials. So we're going to be talking about that. They built a home that has the most beautiful character. it definitely does not look like a cookie cutter new build. And all of that was very intentional. And she has a lot to share on that as well as how they made their home healthy. So they took a lot of steps to make their home a healthy home. So she has a lot to share about that as well. Let's dive into the interview. Ashley, I am so excited to have you back on and talk about something a little different than we did last time. I think last time we chatted about sourdough, which if you want to find out more what Ashley has to offer on sourdough, just go over to her Instagram, Turner Farm. There's so much of that. But today we're going to talk about the house build, which correct me if I'm wrong. Did you start that in like 2022? Yeah, it's been a long time. We've been in the house almost a year and I want to say, yeah, it was about three years before that, that we fully started it. Okay. Yeah. So we're currently right now in the middle of a house build. I almost said a big house build. Every house is like a big deal probably. So big, so much. Yeah. A big house build. I mean, you know, just, it's just a house build, but it feels like a lot, especially because we're doing a lot of unconventional things, which I know you did too. And I really enjoyed following along with your house build. And I think it helps me to be a bit realistic about the timeframe because you sourced materials from, you know, not just everything came straight from the local hardware store. And so I think probably because of that, it took a little bit longer. And then you also did a lot of things in a healthier way, which I think people who are maybe thinking about building a house might want to know a little bit about that. So let's just start with a little overview. Tell us a bit about who you are, and then we can dive into the very beginning, like the design and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And it is definitely something that, I mean, as I'm sure, it consumes your whole life. So it's definitely something that has consumed ours for the last several years. And the planning that goes into it, even before you even start, it takes a long time. So we actually bought our property. It's been almost nine years and we lived at the front of the farm. And then over the last several years, we've just sort of been building our road back to where we are now. We're about a kilometer off the road now, a kilometer from our other farmhouse. And we just picked away at building that road and then starting the house. And kind of like what you guys did, we built a barn at the same time, which that's a huge undertaking. And if I could go back, I probably would never do that again. At the same time. Yeah. Well, because we sort of like built half the house and then built the barn. And so it put everything on hold. and then we kind of came back over and you know we get really delayed with things in the winter here there's only so many months of the year that we can really do construction and so um the house sat for quite a while kind of half finished and then we kind of came back over and finished it so it just felt like forever but yeah so we finished last march i think it was that we moved in fully so it's been almost a year that we've been into the house and yeah it's been it's been a great journey actually being living in the house. I bet so. And when you bought the property, it had a house on it. So what was the reason, or did you, when you bought it, were you always thinking we'd like to go further back and build a house? Was that like the long-term plan? And if so, why? I think I've kind of been building this house in my brain for like a decade, but no, that was not the plan. We bought that house with full intentions of staying there forever. and it was only on two acres. And so then we just picked a way at buying more property behind it and building out the farm. And as we built out the farm, our animals got pushed back further because we have neighbors out by the road. And so as we accumulated more cattle and grew a herd, they were pushed to the further fields in the back. And we just found we didn't like constantly farming and not being able to see anything that we were doing. okay and so then when we bought the larger parcel of land um and then moved the cows further back we sort of thought well maybe we should just build a house back there with them and so we kind of it took us a while to kind of like dabble in where we would put that and actually we had never been to the top of this hill and one year uh we farmed out or released out the farm fields to a farmer down the road and he was farming like peas or something and he was harvesting and he sent us a picture. And he said, if you're going to build your new house anywhere, it needs to be at the top of this hill. And so that, and we had never, ever come back this far because there was no roads. And so we hiked back here one day and stood at the top of the hill and thought, this is where we want to be. And so it just took so much longer to get here because it, you know, it's expensive to build roads and, and trails and driveways and all of, and put the power back here and all that. So it was quite a long, like a longer journey to, to get to this point. But no, in the very early days, that was never the plan. But I do feel like in my brain, I've been sort of accumulating. I was looking at old Pinterest boards from 2013, and it's all the same stuff. I just never swayed. Well, that's reassuring though, because I think if I would have built a home in my 20s, it would be very different than the home we're building now. And I hope that I'll feel the same way 10 years from now. And I would say, oh, I'm glad we built this house. This is what I would have wanted to build. So it's reassuring knowing that for a full decade, you had the same vision. And that way, you're not going to regret any part of it. Even though I feel like once you're living in a house, it's so beautiful. And you're thinking through all the spaces because it's never done because there's always more little things that you could do. And so once you have that in your head, I don't know that you would really decide, oh, I don't want this or I don't want that. But it's nice knowing that you were so confident in the design. So your design is unique. It doesn't look like a cookie cutter house. What would you describe as the style or how did you come about with the style and go about that? Yeah. And honestly, I think one of the biggest things I can advise people who are building a new home and wanting to do things more unorthodox is like there are sacrifices. I mean, unless you have endless pockets of funding to do that, but there has to be sacrifices. You know, our house is not very big and we made it smaller in order to do the unorthodox things inside of it that cost more money and that we really wanted in the home. And I remember when we first built the shell of the house, we didn't have any of the logs. I don't know if you've seen like the outside pictures of our house with all the walls. We didn't have any of that done. It was just kind of the shell of the house. And so many people were like, why didn't you build a bigger house? It's so small. And now it doesn't look too small up here, but the actual footprint of the house itself is small and it's just a box. It's just a square. And I have reasons for that from a health standpoint of like roof lines and, you know, and we can get into that of like the shape of the house, but it's really just literally a box. And so if you look at like sort of like Cape Cod style story and a half homes, it's sort of just one of those. We just changed all of the interior to make it more what we wanted. And so if anyone's like looking for house plans, like if they're interested in something like ours. It's just a story and a half house that we actually made a little more two story because we added dormers on the side so we could add more bedrooms upstairs. But that's it. That's all it is. Well, and those big timbers make such a huge difference. Do you find that people now, so when they saw it at first, they thought, oh, it's too small. But then once you added those, the people think you live in a mansion. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. Yeah. Yeah. It's just the overhangs. Like we added an overhang on either side and then the big gable end that kind of comes out like our gable end with the log timbers is about 16 feet. So it does make the roof line look a lot longer, but the house itself like is really not a large home. And so it is funny because I get questions all the time on Instagram. Like, can I have your house plans? And I always ask like, oh, that's, that's so fun that you're building. Like what size house are you looking? And they're like, well, like 5,000, 6,000 square feet. And I'm like, oh, you definitely don't want my house plan then. Like our house is not that big at all. It's like not even half that big. So it is interesting, the perception. And that was on purpose. Like, you know, I want this really cute cabin, cozy feel. We don't have, you have a, like you have a large family. It makes sense to have a larger home. But for us, we have two kids and they're getting older. And I don't want to be in a giant house. And so it made sense for us to build a cuter, kind of like smaller home, but make it look really grand from the outside with things that aren't super expensive. And I think if we were going to go to BC and build a log home, it would be really expensive, but we were actually able to do the logs very feasibly because the only structural part of the house with the timbers is the outside. So all the logs that you see here, none of this is structural. okay that's just kind of is it like i can't even hardly tell is it not it's just like tacked on basically but it looks like it's like a timber frame and they and they etched it all out as if you were doing rafters and floor systems with like timbers um but if you took all of that off it's conventional um trusses and floor systems and and the reason that we did that is because it's so expensive here and that's not necessarily the case everywhere but it's so expensive here to get engineers to draw plans for post and beam construction rather than using conventional construction. So we kind of did everything twice. It was like we built everything conventionally, and then we rebuilt it with timbers on the inside. But it was actually a lot cheaper to do it that way. Okay. So how did it take a lot longer to do all of that? Do you find that, I mean, with our house, there's just so many things that I didn't think would take longer. But when you think about like, okay, that makes sense. Did that make this process draw out like double basically? Yeah. And I think I see, I think I watched something you had posted online once, like make sure that you interview the people that you, that are, that are building your spaces. I think it was you that said that, but, um, it's really important for people who are building unconventional style homes, especially if you're doing it from like, um, adding in like the healthy home aspects of it. There's a lot of conventional builders that have no interest in doing that. And so we had to self-contract, which takes so much longer because even though Daniel's family is in construction, like we really had no idea what we were doing. And we had to self-contract all of the people to do all the unorthodox things that, you know, maybe our carpenter crew had never really done before. so we had a log guy and we had a wall guy that did all of our old wood paneling on the walls we had a floor guy that did all of our old flooring so our flooring is not flooring it came out of an old homestead and we refurbished it into flooring okay yeah so that took a lot longer that that set us back seven weeks our floors just our floors I mean I'm not surprised We had so many subjects like that. And so, and it just, honestly, for me, and like, and I think when people think about it, as far as like from a cost perspective, that also takes longer. So our house definitely, there's aspects of it that cost a lot more, but cost a lot less than maybe doing it if I hadn't have had the time to source the materials the way that we sourced them. And that takes longer. So like our floors came from three different buildings that were being torn down at three different times that were stored in warehouses. And I just had to wait until they had enough to do the square footage. So what are they? It's pine. So it actually came out of the upstairs. One came out of an old homestead that was being torn down. It was from the 1800s and they're actually much narrower. And then the large plank floors that we have downstairs was from two different buildings. One was a church and one was another homestead that was being torn down. And they had all different types of, like we had to have them planed down because they had all the old oil paint on them. And so we had them all planed down. And then we actually finished them ourselves because when we had it priced out to have a company come in and finish them, it was so astronomical. We're like, we're going to YouTube this and do it ourselves. And it was hilarious, but that's what really set us back a while. But anyway, they, they turned out really nice, but they're not something that you can just go to a store and buy. Okay. So what did you search? Like, I'm trying to figure out how you even figured out what you wanted with the flooring and then go about finding it. Cause if you just search salvage floors, like you had something more specific in mind than just salvage, you know, like. I found a guy. Okay. Like, so we like talk about our house. It's like I had a log guy and I had a wood guy. So I found a guy and he tore, that was what he did for a living is he tore down old buildings and salvaged the wood. Okay. So our walls actually came from him, but the walls are actually old wood from a barn that you could never use for flooring because they're too like porous and they are, you know, banged up and whatever. I had to find flooring that was like flooring in a building. Okay. And so I found a guy that kind of knew how to go into these buildings and source it. And then I just bought it from him. Okay. How'd you find this guy? he was he's a guy I found so like when we talk about I've been building this house in my head for 10 years so like 10 years ago I thought I was building this house and I went and I found this guy and I bought a whole batch of like boards for the walls from him and stored them and then ended up selling them like five years later because we just never built the house but I found him then and so then I reached and I found him because he used to own an antique store like in town and then he closed it and this is what he started doing for a living. And so I think, you know, like there's those guys all over the place. Like I'm sure you have a guy that like tears down old, like beams and salvages old beams. They'll often salvage the flooring too. This guy does beams. And so I just had him source and it took months, like a really long time to get all the flooring and square footage we needed for the house. And I think that's where people stop because it's one thing to find things, but then it's confusing on how to put it all together. And you have to be very confident that you love this design and you're not going to sacrifice just due to timeline in order to make that work. And I think most people at some point, they're like, okay, we're not going to find the flooring. Just go get something so we can get into our house. Yeah. It's so true. And honestly, it does take so much longer to wait. And we did get to a point where I was ready to make sacrifices. And, you know, I'm, I'm glad that we had a place to live in the meantime. You know, not everybody has that. And so I can appreciate that they're under a time constraint if they've, you know, sold their house and they only have three months to get out of it or something. So we were very fortunate that we were able to just live in our house until we weren't living in our house. And so it, cause it, cause it just all takes so much more time, you know, and then And even we did on our walls. So wood was like a big, when I had started researching healthy homes, and there's lots of companies in the States that you can go through to build like a healthy home and they source the materials for you or whatever, it's astronomically expensive. And so I started kind of researching their philosophies on how they did their building. And what I recognized was like a lot of these homes were very cold. So a lot of stone and a lot of like tile flooring and like just things that I really didn't want in my own house just from an aesthetic standpoint and how it made me feel. And so I think that there needs to be a balance for people, too, when they're building these healthy homes that you have to also think about, like, how do you feel in the space? Because that's that's important, too. And so I started researching other elements of homes that could be used other than you know these colder materials And wood was a big one And so wood off gassing takes a long time So you don want to put wood all over your house and then move into it like within the month. You want to make sure that you have like a solid three to six months of it kind of drying out and off gassing because it can make you really sick. However, when you have wood paneling on the walls, which is what we did, we did like all wood paneling on the walls. When you're building a home, because our homes are built so airtight now, often what happens is our building materials, such as like our trust systems and our strapping and things like that have gotten wet and not had enough time to properly dry out. And so it's a really big issue with these newer homes being built that they have mold issues. within a couple of years because of the building material and there's no airflow. And so with wood, it takes a lot more time. And I can tell you how we did a little cheaper, but essentially your house gets to breathe. And so your HVAC system works within your walls too. So it pulls the moisture and whatever you would be dealing with from any moisture issues on your strapping or your trusses and it pulls that out because you it can breathe so that was a that was a element of our house that took a lot longer was all of the wood that we used but i was really adamant that we did as much of it as we could so that those internal like our exterior structures could could also breathe and dry out um but when we went and did the wood paneling and we priced it out, um, to get like tongue and groove board to put on your wall from like, for example, I don't know, like Home Depot or Rona's or whatever it is. It was so expensive. So we actually went to a local mill and we bought it on, like it wasn't kiln dried. So it was, it was dry, but it wasn't kiln dried. Again, if you're going to do that, you have to wait a while before you move into your house. But so we were really nervous to do that because it would gap so much. So if you actually walk around my house, all the walls are like, they're not flat. Like they've, you know how like there's some cupping that happens when boards start to dry and shrink, but it's so cool. Okay. I love how it looks. It's just really authentically primitive. Like it just looks because nobody was kiln drying shiplap back then. So it looks like true wood walls. And I think it looks so, so great. So that's a way of doing it a lot cheaper if you're okay with it not looking uniform. Yeah. So it will just continue to dry out. Like how long will it take for it to fully dry? It's probably dry now. Okay. So this winter, as soon as we turned on the wood stove, I noticed a whole bunch of it changed. Did they fill back in the summer? I don't know yet because we were here in the summer and when we moved in, it was March. So it was already starting to kind of warm up. And I, so I don't really know how big the gaps got. Like, I don't know if they filled back in, but the same thing with our floors. Like there are definitely some gaps in some of the floorboards because, uh, because it had never really been with wood heat before. So, um, there's a couple of parts where I probably will try to fill in a couple of the cracks cause they bother me a little bit, but if you're okay with that, then, you know, wood is definitely such a great way to easily and like sort of inexpensively make your home feel older because it just kind of is a bit uneven all over the place. Yeah. Okay. So the difference would be in modern houses, if you do beadboard or treatment of some kind, like a tongue and groove board, usually there's drywall behind it, but then yours is just like insulation and then the studs and then, okay. We did the same thing. And I actually am like very familiar with this whole, uh, drying out gapping thing because I'm starting to experience it in our house. But yeah, but it's, it is cool because instead of it looking like a sheet of fake bead board that we have in some of the shiplap we have in there and some B group board, I'm like, well, you can sure tell it's real because. Yes. Cause it's gapping. And so did you do it as a shiplap? So when ours gapped, we can't see through to the insulation or anything like that. It just shows the ship board in between the two boards or whatever. Yeah, there's that. And then we do have some beadboard too. But it was put on so tight that now you can just tell where one board ends and one begins, but you can't see back to the insulation. But part of me is like, we don't keep our home as climate controlled as the average person. So like in the summer, cause they're like, well, then, you know, if you install it at this percent of moisture, then you install it. So it won't have gaps. I'm like, but I'm kind of more worried about the fact that I don't run the AC at, you know, 68 degrees. And so what about in the summer? Wouldn't buckling be a lot worse than gaps in the winter? So just something. That hasn't been our experience. Okay. And we did not gap ours cause I knew it was going to like separate. I just had them install it like tight together. Yeah. And now it's kind of done its thing. And I didn't find any buckling in. And we have a very humid, humid climate here in the summer. And we don't use air conditioning. And I did not find that. Okay. Well, I just mean, like, if you do it really tight when it's already dry, I'm wondering if the opposite. So instead of. I see what you're saying. So anyway, this has been on my mind lately because it was kind of one of those things I had never thought about. and then I started realizing it and I was like oh no but like well really honestly this is probably good because in the summer it could have been bad if it was so tight in the dry dry winter yeah oh yeah and honestly it doesn't the way that things move and breathe and crack and do their thing like I love that I just I am not a uniform person nothing about the house that like we're in is uniform. And I do think that I have to like practice that with people when they're like, I love, I love the design and I love the vibe and I really want to do it. And I said, well, just, just make sure you're not somebody who needs things to be really, you know, perfect. And I am so with you. One of the things that's on my mind right now is countertops and we're doing, we're doing more of like a farmhouse. So not as much, like not as rustic, but one thing I want is I want marble. And in our last house I did quartz and I'm like, I'm not going to be talked out of this this time. People are like, it'll etch. I'm like, I know, but I can't have it looking like perfectly plasticky, perfect all the time. And I think that's okay. So yeah, same vibe. Yeah. Don't let people talk you out of it. So we did wood and I finished it myself, which, so it's definitely far from perfect, but it's stains and marks and it just is what it is. Like back then they had stains and marks and all the things all over their countertops. And I have friends that have marble and it's stained and marked and etched. And I just think that's so cool. And like, it's real and it just feels more lived in. And I, and, and you can tell that it's like a real marble. Like I, I, I would have loved to do marble, but I, when we kind of like sourced out the materials for the kitchen. I was so committed to the vibe of all of the different wood that I was like, I don't really, and I can always change it someday, but like, I didn't want to, that was the hardest part for me. I think for the kitchen, I second guessed myself a lot because there's so many different types of wood in the kitchen that as it was coming together, I was like, oh gosh, I don't know if this is going to look good at all. I have no idea if this is going to come together because it's very unfitted. It's hard to know. Yeah. Yeah. But it is so beautiful. Thank you. Yeah. I was really happy once we like had the back wall painted and I put everything in and I'm like, okay, I think that this fits, but there's a lot of different wood tones going on in this kitchen and none of it really matches, but it did come together and you have to really trust your process when you're getting to that point because it's not a builder grade kitchen and nobody really knows what to do with that. Like from a builder standpoint, like they're just like, I don't know what you like, what are you doing? And like, you know, they don't really, they think you're a little bit crazy and you know, you just have to be so committed to the vision of what you're looking to do. And for me, it was really hard to find Pinterest examples of what I had inside my brain. And, and so you just have to really trust that process. You do. And you are going to get a lot of pushback, like you said, because there's this standard way of doing things. You get in your cabinets, and then you measure, and then you do the counters. There's this order. And when you're doing a lot of these unconventional things, the order kind of gets a little messed up. We're doing, like you said, tons of tongue and groove wood. And so we kind of have some trim carpenters there, but then we're supposed to also be painting so the floors can go in, but there's still some trim carpentry being finished up. It's not like this very set drywall. And they don't know what to do with that. Honestly, I don't either. The one guy texted me today, he's like, are we ready for the floors? I'm like, probably not because we ended up having to put a little trim up because it's just so different. And I think you do have to just tell yourself, don't get impatient. I'm going to live here for however long. And if I start sacrificing now, then you are, like you said, you're committed to this vision, even though it's very unconventional and you realize why people don't do it. Like once you're fully into it, right. I guess I said people don't do this. I completely agree. I like when we were almost done. And I think that's the problem, like, because at the beginning, so, you know, in a week's worth of work, so much looks like it's happening in the beginning. Oh yeah. And at the, like, you're like, I have walls and a roof and like, those things are not long. And then it's like these people will come into your house and they'll work for a week and it doesn't even look like they've done it. Yeah. That's because, yes. Yeah. It's very, it's, it's very discouraging, especially for things like wood and things that take a lot longer. And, you know, if you're working with a crew that's really open to doing what you want, but they've maybe never done anything like that before it, they're, they're kind of like learning all of these things. Yeah. And like, so for us, like, um, you know, I think one of the questions that the audience had asked was like, how did we like, what are things that we sacrifice as far as like price, like goes as far as budget. And then what are things that we didn't. And one of the biggest things I can say that we budgeted on was our closet systems. Oh, because like, because if you actually break down like costs of like what those are. If you were to get like, for example, like a walk-in closet and like have it custom built with all the things and it's so expensive. So we went to Ikea, we bought all Ikea and we retrofitted them to look like custom built. So we put them like faces on them and we had them kind of all retrofitted. So that saved thousands for our closet. So that was a way that we kind of saved a little bit of money there. And then things that we didn't. So I, I, I don't know if you've bought, have you bought all your light fixtures yet for your house? Most. Okay. So our, I made the hugest mistake and I really wish I had had someone consulting me, or I wish I had had a podcast that I listened to that I learned about this before I built, but I really have such, like, we didn't want to sacrifice on like builder grade light fixtures. I wanted the light fixtures to match the old kind of like vibe of the home. And so I went out and I bought all these kind of like old style light fixtures. But the problem with that is like a lot of them came off of like Etsy, for example. And they come from Europe or Africa or wherever they come from. But none of them like a they don't meet code, which is fine if you're renovating because you already have an occupancy permit. So you can put whatever the heck you want in your house at that point. but when you're building and you're working with an electrician that has to be like doing things by the code they have to have that kind of like ul stamp or whatever on it and all these lights yeah mine then mine won't fit that at all like we have all antique light fixtures yeah so you may get away with a electrician who will put up and your codes might be different like here it's so strict yeah ours are way less strict i think yeah so you're probably fine so like here you have to have that sticker on it or like they make or they'll like fail your inspection where can you buy those no I'm just kidding yeah the stickers yeah so my electrician was like that won't work and you're all that and so there was like a couple that I convinced him to put up light bulbs until the inspection went through and then he came back and he like swapped them out for my weird unorthodox light fixtures but there was a lot that showed up that didn't even fit in our like I don't know plugs or whatever they fit them into, which would be different in the States than they are here. But I lost so much money on light fixtures because of that. Well, TBD on that, we could be in the same boat. Now, did you do any other salvage materials? I know you did a lot, obviously the wood, so much wood was salvaged. Salvage materials are tricky to get them to fit. Yeah. Yeah. So I would never suggest salvaging light fixtures unless they've been refitted, like refitted to like fit in your, the boxes that we have. Um, so I didn't do any of those because I got in such a mess. So all of our light fixtures, they are from different places, but I ended up spending a lot more on them in order to get them. Yeah. You can get brand new ones also that look very like almost indistinguishable from antique, but they're definitely pricey. Yes, they are. So I definitely spent more on lighting than I wanted to. And there's a couple places in the house where we still don't even have the lights because I just, I got to a point where I was like, this is getting too much. So we're waiting on a couple, you know, places in the house that we'll fill in later. And so, and then I would never recommend buying antique faucets or plumbing fixtures. Okay. That's actually a question I have because we did antique claw foots and then sinks, but we can get new faucets for them. But there was an opportunity with someone that they would like to send me some toilets from the 30s. And I was like, cool, that sounds great. And they're redone. But then I got to realizing, my husband brought it up. He's like, they take like so much more water just to flush properly. I'm like, ah, I didn't think about that. Yeah. I know. I know. I have this, like our guest bath is my favorite bathroom in the house. Cause it's so, so like antique, everything in it is so primitive. And then there's this toilet that's like this modern white toilet. It's like, it bothers me so much, but I don't know. Those are the plumbing thing. So I actually bought some like old, I don't know if they were old, but they were like true brass fixtures. And I ended up, so we, um, we did install one in our bathroom, our guest bath, cause I wanted it to be really like everything to look really old. And I had bought a whole system for our shower in our, um, ensuite upstairs. And so when we installed the one in the bathroom here, we ended up having a water episode where it leaked in the wall. And yeah, thankfully we have wood walls. Right. Yeah. Right. Thankfully we have wood walls. So dehumidifiers can dry that out really fast. And we didn't have any, you know, drywall that was trapping any moisture, but still, um, it, it could have leaked in the wall for a really long time without me knowing, like, thankfully it didn't leak in the wall without me knowing. But, you know, I just don't think that it's worth those types of episodes. So, you know, I ended up buying a whole new system before we even installed it in the shower upstairs. And then I bought like a brass, like Kingston brass or whatever. So it's still really pretty looking, but it's more new looking, unfortunately. But, you know, I just think that those are things you don't mess around with, especially with water, because as far as like mold in your house, like those are just, for me, it's just worth more to spend like the money on the new fixtures, even if they don't look as old as you want. And you can still kind of make do with your antique cloth foot tubs and like kind of make it more antique and primitive looking with other things that aren't going to cause like a water episode. Yeah, that, that makes sense. And you can get unlacquered. Did you do like unlacquered brass for the faucets you did buy. So we'll show that patina and age. I made the mistake in our last house of getting like, I guess they were like fake, but it eventually would rub off. And I'm like, okay, this might be a place to spend a little bit more because you're taking the time to install all this stuff. And then it doesn't really look, it doesn't have that same patina after everything. Yeah. And at least with like faucets that aren't in the wall, I would never, maybe like, I don't know if you did do faucets in the wall. I would never do a faucet in the wall. We actually didn't do any. We almost did. And then I texted the plumber last minute and I was like, okay, we're actually going to just do this. And we had something different. Okay. So we actually have two faucets in the wall and one is in our laundry and one is down here in the guest bath. And I would never do it again. And the reason for that is because if you have a water episode, it is catastrophic and you probably will get mold and you will probably get water issues. Like if there is a leak, it's probably leaking in your wall before you know. And so if you end up getting a water issue like this, just I would never do one in the wall again, just personally, especially if you have tile. If we had had tile, I wouldn't have even known it was leaking. It would have just leaked in my wall and I wouldn't have ever known. So well, and I'm sure we all are a lot of people have stuff like that happening. And how do you ever find that out? I guess you just don't. Yeah. So I mean, and I think that's like for us mold when we built our house, as far as like the vibe of the house, that was at the top of the list but mold was at the top top top of my list for how we built our house Because I just think it is such a common thing Like even roof lines even people who are going out and like searching for new homes like choosing homes with simple roof lines. I think yours is pretty, yours is just a regular roof, isn't it? Yeah. It's a real, it's pretty steep pitch too. But it's just like one side, right? Like a side and a side. It doesn't have a bunch of juts out anywhere. No. Yeah. Well, Well, there are two dormers, but they're in the attic. And you would notice because you would just see stuff coming in, I guess. Well, yeah. And so these homes that have all these different roof lines, which is really common in these one-level ranch-style houses to have all these different depths of roof lines, those are actually really bad for moisture. And they can build up in corners. And then if it does mold, your HVAC can push those spores through your house. So simple roof lines are really, really important when you're building a house, but then also really important if you're like searching for a new home. So that was one thing that was important to us, like just like simple square, simple roof line. Like if you have some dormers, I think that's fine. But like trying to avoid lots of different juts out in the roof, it's more expensive to do that, like all the juts anyways, but we try to keep it as simple as we possibly could. So that was like one thing that we kind of, yeah. Okay. So on that topic, what are some of the other healthy home things that you guys did? And I'm, I'm just going to take some of these and if we did it wrong, I'm just going to release that, but let's, let's hear it for those who are thinking about building. You know what? It's like, there's so many things to think about. And like, even after we finished building, I was like, Oh shoot, I shouldn't have done that because of whatever. So like one of the things that we did that's not as healthy as you could is we did our, like we spray foamed as our insulation, which for people who are really understand a healthy home, they're probably like, I can't believe she did that. But yeah, that was like the only thing I heard you weren't supposed to do. I think the rest of the stuff, I had no idea, but I could be, I didn't do like any research on it. So I really don't know as far as healthy homes. Yeah. So when we did, we live at the top of a hill, we get a hundred kilometer winds here and it is very cold. So as far as like the R value of using sustainable, um, insulation, like we would freeze essentially. Yeah. It just, it's, you have to take into consideration that's like, what is, what is healthier? You know, I did manage, um, as far as like using the closed cell spray foam and I'll tell you kind of like what we did to mitigate some like exposure to that. But like, um, you have to also consider like your, your own comfort in your house too. Cause I think that there's a health perspective to that too. Like if we're freezing. Absolutely. Well, and there's always like, what I've noticed with house building is there's just always like give and take, like it really, but budget aside, any house aside, you want one thing, but it contradicts another. And it just, that happens constantly. Like I can just think of so many things like that. And so there's way more factors to consider than just, you know, is this bad? Is this good? It's like, is this necessary? Yeah. And that's, and that's kind of where we were at with, um, with the insulation. I really went back and forth a lot with that. And ultimately where we live, we needed something that was going to be warm in the winter and just not heating us. Like, like it would have been so expensive to heat a home that was not properly insulated like that. So what we did do is we, we did the spray foam. So we have like a full open attic, but we added venting as far as like our HVAC venting in the attic, because what happens is when you do closed cell spray foam, it's very common for there to be moisture in your attic because of it's so closed in and there's no heat up there. So what we did was we had them push venting through the attic and treat it like another room. And as a result, it's very dry. And so that is something that people can consider if they are pushed into a corner and doing clothes with spray foam. The other thing is making sure we bought air filtration systems that we put through the house and they're HEPA filters. So they're good for mold and dust and things like that. But they also have other filters in there that are really good for VOCs. So any types of like different VOCs from like painting or materials that you're using in your house, they will kind of capture those. And so we had those going for, well, we still have them going, but like we had them going for a while before we moved in. And then if you are spray foaming, making sure that you are spray foaming and not moving in for at least six months. So that's, those are ways you can mitigate. I guess the timing though with that kind of makes it to where, that's like the time when you're finishing the house. It is usually going too fast. And, but like, if you're going too fast, that's when people run into mold problems. It's like you want to build slow because it gives the materials in your home a chance to a migrate through the seasons, but then also really dry out before you're just like closing all that in and letting that build up. So it's actually really helpful to take a long time to build your home from that perspective. Oh, well then, Hey, we're doing great. Now, I guess though, as long as it's under roof, Yeah. Well, yeah. As long as there's no water episodes happening, like as long as it's closed in, but you, you have airflow. So like we had our windows open while we built and like, as long as things are off gassing. And so the biggest thing with wood and with spray foam is that you, you want at least six months. I think it was almost a year before we moved in after we did any of those. Okay. That makes sense. Cause yeah. Once it off gases, that's it's it. Yeah. You're pretty, you're pretty safe at that point. Okay. The other thing that we did for our house is we took the meter and we set it way back from the house. We didn't put our meter on our house. And if you can turn it away from your house, that's even better. But ours, for whatever reason, they wouldn't let us do that. So ours is still facing the house, but it is set back way off the house. That mitigates dirty electricity or things like that, especially since our house was small. And if we had had it on the house, it would have been right underneath my son's bedroom. so we took it off the house we put it way back um oh man mine's under my son's bedroom is it okay so next thing then there is a company it's called emf solutions and so when we were uh trying to mitigate like emfs in the house because we live out in the country uh we do have a metal roof which is terrible for emfs and it's like okay probably the worst thing you can do on a house like for ems because it makes it like a hot pocket so you want to ground your metal roof. And so I found this company because we actually hardwired our internet into our home. We weren't going to have wifi at all. Oh, so we, we have all of the wires run through everywhere and we have like ethernet cords that we can plug into the jacks in each of the rooms. But I did find, um, as I was kind of researching all this, I realized like that's not even enough. Like we are still because a lot of people around us would use like satellite Internet, which we would still get. And so this company, they use like Earth elements and they do it in a way that they create these products that harmonize the dirty electricity and like electromagnetic frequencies that would be inside of your home as a result of Wi-Fi or, you know, fans. Fans are another big one or like HVAC systems or. Wait, what do you like? What kind of fans? Like, what do you mean? Anything that spirals is, is very, is yeah. So like if you have a fan in your room, like my son likes to sleep with a fan in his room, it should always be like a solid six feet from your bed. Like it's in the far corner of your bedroom. Um, really? Yeah. Because the circulation, um, it's not EMS, but it is like, uh, what do they call them? It's like a type of frequency that is just like, it's like sub chaotic frequencies is what they're called. Okay. It has a sub chaotic frequency that is like very, very difficult for our brains. And so when you have a fan in your room, it should be like as far away as you can, but you can harmonize the sub chaotic frequencies so that, um, like our bodies kind of like, don't feel them the same way. And so this company has figured out a way to do that. And they, uh, develop these products. And what I really liked about them is that they did these like scientific studies with people's blood and they did the with red blood cells and they would put them in chambers with like electromagnetic frequencies and they would coagulate and they would clump together and make like irregular cells um oh so closing you know why we would all get sick from emfs and things like that and then they would put these products like these earth elements in with it and it and over time it would actually like uncoagulate the cells it would help the red blood cells kind of like remain normal. Okay. So I decided to do like a home test and I ended up getting their products to put in our house. And I have to say, if you're harmonizing frequencies in your home, it also helps with mold because mold grows faster with a lot of subchaotic frequencies. It feeds off dust, but it also grows a lot faster with EMS. and so just like harmonizing your home as a whole is just like a really great idea and a way to do that especially if you have a meter that sits at your house especially if you have a smart meter we don't have a smart meter but if you have a smart meter um these help with that so anyway if you are interested in going down that road that's a really good company to to look into okay that's good to know somebody told me one time about like behind your refrigerator which our refrigerator so it's in the pantry. And so I'm going to be standing in front of it at all times in front of my stove and my Island. And somebody said something about a shield, which I kind of completely forgot about until we're talking right now for like a good six months or so. So is that something to think about? Yeah. So fridges, um, yeah. So your refrigerator, I think for me, as long as you're not sleeping, so like as long as your bed doesn't share a wall with your fridge, uh, because it's, it's more like when your brain is going into that REM phase, it, it disrupts that. So there's like, there's studies of like children that have like shared walls with a fridge and like experienced seizures and like really awful autoimmune issues. And then when they've moved their bed away from it, yeah. And it all went away. Okay. So I don't know about shields during, like during the day, but I just know it really, really disrupts your REM sleep. And it's not something that you want to share a wall with when you, when you sleep. Okay. Okay. I will say one thing about building on like social media, YouTube is you get so many people saying so many things that you're like, Oh, messing everything up. Like we are going to die for sure. Like it's one of those things. That's the other thing too. It's like stress is like probably the worst one. It's like you do what you can and then you have to kind of give it to God a little bit because if you, if you don't, then you're living with this, like the stress will make you sick. So I've kind of had to like really remind myself of that since we've been in the house. It's like, okay, we made the decisions that we did for the financial budget that we had at the time. And I have to be okay with giving the rest of it because I otherwise will just live in fear. And that's just as toxic, I think. So there's lots of things you can do. And there's lots of ways inexpensively, like getting a simple water test. I mean, that costs money, but it's like for here, I think it's like a few hundred bucks. And we had a full panel done on our water. And you can look into different water systems that will help make your water cleaner, especially if you live in the city. So we have UV lights on our water, but I haven't yet put in the full system because it's like $5,000. And that was something that I was like, our water came back so clean that I was like, we have a filter for our drinking water and I put a UV light and then I'll worry about the rest another time when we have the money to do that. So, but if it had to come back really dirty with like cadmium and some lead and like maybe some heavy metals in there or like different types of bacteria, then that would have been something that would have been pushed to top of my list to invest in, in our home. And so, um, we haven't put that full filtration system in, but those are cheap ways of like, you know, for a few hundred bucks, you can just have peace of mind to know what you should be investing your money in rather than just listening to people on the internet. Right. Yes. So I am curious what kind of filter you went with and then what kind of, uh, long-term, like, is it a whole house system that you want to eventually install? yes yeah and i'm taking lots of those by the way yeah so you can get someone to come out and do a full water panel test and it was like 19 pages like they tested for everything okay and they'll tell you everything that's in your water they'll tell you if it's hard or soft or um you know lead and heavy metals and different bacterias uh chlorine they test everything and so um they can put in a full filtration system and it can include a reverse osmosis. I don't love reverse osmosis because I think it removes too much of the good bacteria that can be present in the water too. So we chose not to do reverse osmosis, but you can opt for that. And then the full filtration, because we absorb things like chlorine through our pores a lot more easily than we do by ingesting them. If you have chlorine in your water, it's a really great option to do a whole home filtration system because then you're showering in clean water too. However, if you can't do that, you can also get things that go over your shower head. So if you test your water and you know what is in it, then you can specifically go hunting for things that go over your shower head and filters that you can filter your drinking water. And those are a lot less expensive if you don't have the option to install an entire system in your home. Okay. Now, what are your thoughts on water softeners? Because we're at the point where we've never actually had a water softener ever, but also I do know that all of our things like eventually the water line on the fridge stops working. Like the espresso machine, you have to like chisel out the calcium every once in a while. And so I can see why it's enticing, but I haven't done enough research yet. The only problem with them is their, their salt, right? Like the, you have to add salt, uh, to the water. So, um, I would definitely, if I were you get a water test done because what you can do like you you would probably need to have a softener but you can remineralize your water there's certain types of um different like I guess like processes that you could put underneath your sink especially if you're remineralizing your water to drink so for people who are softening their water oftentimes those minerals are removed right yeah but yeah I I used to have a water softener in like a host not the last host but the one before but we live on a rock right now. So our water is not... Usually it's like if you live in sandy, loomy soil, you'll have harder water. And we live up on a rock now. So ours is not like that. Yeah. But we used to have a softener. The only thing that you're going to find with that, if you do end up with a softener, is it will affect your sourdough starter. Really? As an assault. Okay. Okay. Well, that's a thought. Because yeah, our last house... I mean, anywhere I've lived, we've never had a water softener and the sourdough starter. I've never had any problems. People will send questions and I'm like, I don't know. I've never had a single issue with sourdough. It's been pretty easy. So maybe that's part of it. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people struggle with if they have a water softener and I'll often ask people like, do you live in a city? What's your water like? If they're using a filter, I often don't like water filters for feeding your sourdough starter because you remove all the minerals and the bacteria. So it's harder. So for our drinking water, we have a Sertato, I think is the company. It's a copper water filter and it has ceramic filters in it. So it's very clean and it removes so many things from your drinking water. And you can actually get one that works for, I think, hard water. And it also works for chlorine. We don't have chlorine, so I didn't get that one, but you can get specific filters for chlorine. So S-E-R-T-A-D-O is the company. Now, it's like the Berkey where you put it in. It's not like an under-the-counter thing. It sits right on your counter and you just keep refilling it. And actually, copper is really remineralizing. And so it's actually very healthy just to drink water out of copper anyways. So So it's a great filter. So we drink all of our water out of that, even though we could definitely get it from the tap. It's nice and clean. But that would be one thing I would say to people, like as far as like building your healthy home is like your lighting, your air quality and your water. And those are like my three biggest ones. And so we do have UV filters on all of our HVAC systems too. Okay. Is that something that you can add later or do you have to know that ahead of time? Anyone can put one on. It's a light actually. You can put it into the coils of your HVAC system and it filters any types of bacteria that would come through in your HVAC. It kills it, just stops it. So that's an easy thing to add later on. Okay. And you said lighting. What do you mean by that? So our whole house is incandescent. So that's a really cheap thing for people. if they're like, you know, right now I want to make my living space healthier, get rid of all of your LED lights, just take them all out, switch them for incandescent. It's so much healthier for your circadian rhythm. And then we try, so I do have some pot lights or can lights, whatever people call them in the house. We got strong armed into putting those in and I regret it. But that's like a builder thing. And they really want people to have those lights. There's no certain things, you know, they want. I'm like, fine, just do it. But I did find a company and I haven't bought anything from them yet, but it's called Blue Light Block, Block Light, I don't know. I try to find it and I give you the link But they have can lights that are blue light blocking So there no LED in them And I thinking about it would be expensive to switch them all but I thinking about switching the ones in our kitchen out to those. Okay. And I guess worst case scenario, you can just not turn them on. We never turn them on. I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I've used them in the whole year that we've been here. Yeah. Yeah. Now you also mentioned the house being square and that being an intentional thing for health. Um, was that just because of the roof lines? That was because of the roof line. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So we have the shape of the house. Now, did you guys purchase plans and then adapt it? Or did you, I forget what you said, have them drawn? We found a Cape Cod square house, like story and a half. and the inside was sort of like a layout that I liked. And then we completely changed it. So we just took it to him. We totally changed everything. But I took it to him and I said, this is like the size that I want. And this is where I want my stairs. For example, this works, like the size of the living room works. But then I was like, take that wall out, take that wall out. And the outside is going to look completely different. and and he I found like a picture of sort of like a log home in Alberta or BC and I said I want the outside to kind of look like that and he sort of just put it all together and and made it all fit and uh yeah and so like the rooms are not very big upstairs because really it's supposed to be a story and a half so like we we squeezed a lot up there for for the square footage that we have yeah is there like there's like a couple rooms in a bathroom up there there's actually three bedrooms and then two bathrooms and our laundry room. Okay. So that sounds similar to our second story. It's not that big and it has four bedrooms, a stair hall, two bathrooms, and then all the rooms have little closets. But yeah, they're all small. It's all kind of packed in there. I remember when we first built the master bedroom or our bedroom and I walked in because we didn't do a dormer. And I would say of anything in the entire house, if I could have changed anything, I would have added a dormer to our bedroom just to extend that slanty wall out a little bit. But when we first walked into that room, I was like, we live in a closet. It's tiny. Yeah. We're not even going to be able to fit a bed in here. And we do. We have a king-size bed in there and it's cozy. But I don't have a problem with the small bedrooms at all. I think we sleep in there. I don't spend a lot of time in there. It wasn't something that I felt like we needed huge, gigantic bedrooms. It felt like very wasted space. So yeah, it works for us. Yeah. That's the same with us. Our bedroom in the new house is, I think, just over 10 feet wide. So it's very skinny. Yeah. Yeah. Ours is small. And like half of it is, like I said, it's like slanted ceilings. So you walk around the bed and that's pretty much it. That's all you got. That's all we got. And it doesn't bother me. I thought it would, but it really doesn't. We have a nice size closet and then we have our bathroom. And like really other than that, there's just not really a lot we're doing up there. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I love your house because it seems like it fits very well in with the landscape with what, you know, it's like it has its sense of place where you are. Was that very intentional? Obviously, I'm sure it was. Yeah. Well, the location, but it's funny because we'd never actually spent a amount of time up here. And now that we live up here, you know, we are not sheltered from any weather. And it is it is it's very hard. OK, not not something that we sort of like anticipated fully in the summer. It's very nice. It's, you know, when everyone is kind of suffocating from the humidity and the heat down in the valley, we don't really have that. We don't have bugs because we have the breeze off the water. but in the winter, you know, where it's mild and no snow anywhere. Like we are, it snows all the time up here. It's like we're on a belt. Okay. And that's not something you thought of. Yeah. No. Yeah. Well, I will say we're not in Canada and we're not near an ocean. So it's very different than what you are, but we also built on a hill. And that is one thing we noticed as we are up there more is, wow, it's always windy here. It's always nice in the summer though. like the wind is nice. And I will say living on a hill, do you have a basement? Did you have a basement with your house? Yeah. So much better as far as water flow. Like we don't ever have to worry about like a water episode from a flood. We are so high up. No way. Everything slopes away from our house. Like there is no water accumulating anywhere. Like it's like, we are just like this. Yep. True. As far as that goes, like that was really intentional for us because there was an option for us to build down further in the field. And that was something we really considered. It's like, it's kind of wet down there and the water runs at us. And I didn't want water ever sitting around the house because we're going to have a basement. And so being on a hill has its disadvantages, but I really think that you could say that about living anywhere. Yeah. Yes. There's going to be some things that maybe you didn't expect, but it's absolutely beautiful. I've loved following along and it's over now, but your whole entire process, I just felt like it looked so unique. It had so much character. I could tell it wasn't builder grade. And so it's interesting following along with that. And for people who are interested, I'm sure you have highlights saved of this whole process on your Instagram. Yeah. On Instagram, there's lots of highlights. Yeah. And we're actually looking at maybe, we've been asked so many times to sell the plans with an outline of the materials, even though they're a little bit more custom, but just kind of like how we sourced different things in the house. And so that is something that we're maybe looking at doing this year is putting together a document that we could sell for people who are looking to build something a little more unorthodox so that they have confidence to kind of come at builders with something more than just a Pinterest page. Yeah. Well, and even just so having all the resources and what you use and the specifics, but even having the pictures so that you have the vision and you can say, you know, if it, if it doesn't align with this, like maybe we should pursue other options because that's what we've ran into along the way is you'll have people who they came in thinking, I'm just going to do like the standard regular thing. And then you can tell, like you feel them out and you realize, okay, this isn't going to work out. Yeah. I think that would be very helpful because it's really important to go with that vision and to be committed to it. And interviewing people who, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to even know what you're talking about, but just that they're open to the craftsmen. Yes. Different. Uh-huh. And like, we were really lucky to have found a building crew that was open to that and they were excited about it. And there were a couple people that we had interviewed before them that really didn't seem like that. It was more like, these are the style of houses that we built. Right. Exactly. And so I was like, well, okay, that's probably not going to work very well. And, um, you know, and I think also self con, did you self contract your house? Um, not technically, but I think because it, it ended up being so custom that we were probably about that involved, to be honest with you. Yeah. So someone wrote me halfway through the build. Cause I came here one day to pick all of the location of the light fixtures and the like outlets and stuff. and I remember I got a message from someone being like, I just don't understand why your contractor sucks so much. Like, why can't they just do that themselves? And I was like, well, I'm the contractor. And I honestly, I think that in a house like this, you have to be. That's what I learned. They wouldn't have known what to do. Like they're so willing to go on this journey with us, which has been amazing. But they didn't know, they didn't have half the clue of what we were trying to do at the beginning. It's just been a journey. Yeah. I've been, we've been so involved. We found people for just about everything and sourcing things. We order, we're constantly ordering things. It all goes through us. Yes. It's I'm like, I feel like it, it kind of just has to because it's, yeah, you're going to be, if you're going to do something like that, you're going to be very involved. You can't hand it over to somebody who does standard builds and just expect them to go find that reclaimed flooring from the floor guy, you know exactly exactly they're going to be like well there's here are your options from the local hardware yes that we have that we can buy and and i think that that's not because they're not trying to be helpful it's just that's what they know and that's what they have added to so i think um you know really making sure if you're renovating or building that even if someone else is contracting it you have to be so heavily involved in the in like in the trades people because there's just, and I think that's why it takes longer because there's so many different hands in it all the time. The different, like even the brick floor that we did in our mud room, I was like, he was trying to use one of the little tools to scrape out, like to make it clean. And I'm like, I don't want you to use that. Right. But you were there and you said that. Yes, exactly. He's like, what do you mean? Like, no, that would be, you're like, yes, I know. I know. It's weird. We get it. I'm like, just do it. Like I promise. And it's like bubbled, And even people on Instagram are like, why are your floors bubbled? And I'm like, I told the guy one of them that way. Okay. I know there's, you just, we're, we're there every day. Like we don't live there. So we're driving there every day. Usually a couple of times a day, whether it's my husband going out once and me going out once, like he's usually there like half the day. So it's, it's very intense, but also there has been so many things that we've been like, oh, you know, like you said, that's just a tiny little thing. But you had this thing in your mind about that brick floor and they had the way it's normally done. They don't call and be like, hey, do you want me to, you know, scrape out the mortar a bit more or whatever? Like they don't, that's just not how it works. And we had something just like that. I mean, it's just constant. We had something just like that the other day with the windowsills and it wasn't that they didn't want to do what I want. They just thought this is how it was done. And I was like, I'm pretty sure it's not how we want it. And then I kind of dug deeper and realized, oh no, this is how we want it. But it. It just, it's constant. Like if you're going to go on this journey, just expect that you're going to be very, very involved for a year or two or maybe three. Yeah. And you're pushing back a lot, which, you know, that's, you got to have, you really have to have thick skin as far as like knowing what you want and builders being like, well, that's not how it's done. This is what I do. So I know. And I'm like, but that's not how it's going to be done now. Like you have to, You have to be really willing to be like, I know it can be done this way because, you know. And so I think that when people are renovating and going through this process, there are companies that you can hire that build new old homes. That is what they do. But they are so expensive because it's very niche. But all their houses look the same. They look new old. They look like, you know, they look very old, but they all look the same. So it's like if you are building something that is completely outside the box and different, you know, you really have to go down that rabbit hole. And like for me, and I don't know how long it took you to plan your house, but like I just think that it needs to be years. Like it has to be years of like understanding every single part of the house. And like we started buying our light fixtures probably two years before we installed them. And we started we bought my oven. My oven sat in storage for two and a half years. Okay. And remind me, I know it's beautiful, but remind me what it is. It's the La Conche, isn't it? It's the La Conche. Okay. I thought so. That's what I'm getting too. Yeah. Okay. I thought it was the La Conche. Yeah. We have the Sully, which is the 55 inch double, the double oven. Okay. I have the Clooney. Okay. Yeah. It's the 39 inch. It's the smaller one. Yeah. Yeah. And that, we bought that, like I saved up and saved up. And then as soon as I had it, I was like, I got to buy it now because if I don't, I know, like, you know, when you get into these builds, it's like you've run out of money and you're like, don't let me run out of money for that. Yeah. I'm like, I am not running out of money for that oven. So I built the whole kitchen around the oven, but I actually left it in the crate. It sat in a crate in my garage for two and a half years. I didn't even know it was the right color because as soon as you open the crate, your warranty starts. So it sat in storage for two and a half years in a wooden crate. and like the day it was like the heavens open the day that I got to open up that crate. It was like, and it was beautiful. It's black, right? No, it's green. Green. That's right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's such a beautiful centerpiece of your kitchen and it's lovely. I've seen them enough online to know that I, that's what I wanted. We got the smaller one just because of how the kitchen layout worked, but then we also have a wood cook stove. So half the year I'm like, well, We'll have two ovens. Yeah. Oh, I love a wood cook stove. We didn't have room in here for that, but I really wanted to do like a fire pizza oven thing. But we didn't have the wall space. Maybe outside. Yeah. So we thought of doing it outside. At some point, we'll build one outside and we'll use it in the summer. But we would have to get rid of some of our windows if we were going to do it in here. And I didn't want to sacrifice the windows. See, that's what I always say. Like, like I said, you have to make sacrifices just based on like, yeah, window or wood cookstove. I'd of course choose window too. And you'd have to change the entire design of the house to make that not the case. Like there's just so many times along the way you're like, there's just no other option. You know, people will say things online. Like I would have done this. I was like, that would have been great if we didn't want X, Y, Z. And so because of that, we had to do this. Our power goes out all the time here. That's the other thing about living up on a hill is we lose power all the time. I bet. And somebody wrote and was like, I just don't understand why you don't have a generator. I'm like, well, that would be lovely. And it's $5,000 to have a generator. We just built a house. So someday I would love to have a generator. But like, you know, those are things like insane with the water filter. It's like you, you make what you want in your house as you go. And then you make a list of the things that are later. And I thought at the top of my list would be a water filtration system. And then when I got that test back, I thought, you know what, I can move that down the list now. And you'll always have a list. And that's okay. It doesn't have to be a stressful list. It's just like, when we have the money, we're going to buy a generator so that we're not uncomfortable when the power goes out and we can water our animals. That's on the list. That's on the list. Yeah. So I think that's like, unless you have endless pockets, then there's always a list. And when you're building a house, you always go over budget. And so things get put on a list because you just can't do it all. And so there's just like our basement's unfinished. We had intentions of doing a rec room for the kids. That didn't happen. It's on the list. There's just lots of things like that. And I think when you move into a house, you start to realize, well, maybe I would have did this different and maybe I'll change this. You just don't ever know fully until you're there. And I think that that's okay. Yeah. I think you're right. I've already started making a list for like, for like a YouTube video I thought would be good of like regrets with the new build, you know, because there's just going to be those, you know, I think that's everybody like for sure. There's no way to avoid it. You can't fear it because there's just no way to avoid it. Yeah. I can't wait to see your house. It's going to be so beautiful from what I see already. I can only, you've only, have you only showed the outside? Have you showed any of the inside yet? we have but there's really it's just now getting to the point where there's much to see inside like we're we just started like we're finally done with all the the bead board and the shiplap and the v-groove and yeah so it's starting to take shape and we're starting to work on like doors and floors and all that but there hasn't been much to see inside but i love your coming soon dining area with all the windows is that where your dining area is going to be or your it's a sunroom but we definitely are going to put it we we want several tables so that's going to be a dining area, not like the main one, but it's going to be a dining area. It's beautiful. I love the windows. I can't wait to see it done. It's going to be so nice and you'll love, I know that you've been wanting to do a homestead for a long time. So like a bigger homestead. You'll have more space to have all the things and that'll just feel so nice. Yep. We are super excited. Well, thank you so much. And for those who want to follow along to learn more, tell us about where to find you and what you do. I know your house content just kind of fell in. It's not like what you do, but yeah, tell them where to find you. Yeah. So turner.farm on Instagram. And so I teach sourdough classes online. We have an app coming out. And then I also just, as we've moved into the house, started teaching sourdough classes on the farm, which has been really cool. Yeah. Really fun new offering. It's just like a dozen people in the kitchen and we bake all day and it's like a really fun offering. So I started doing that. So you can find everything linked on Instagram. And I have a little bit of stuff on YouTube, but not as much. I'm not as active on there as you are, but I do have a little bit of stuff on there too. Yeah. Awesome. Well, we will leave links also below. Thank you so much, Ashley. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me, Lisa. Thanks as always for listening to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. My husband, Luke, and I and our kids work together side by side on our farm in Missouri and use our blog, podcast, and YouTube channel to reach other homemakers, home cooks, and homesteaders with practical recipes in daily family life. For everyday sourdough recipes, make sure to check out our blog, farmhouseonboon.com. And to dig deeper, we do also offer a course called Simple Sourdough over at bit.ly forward slash farmhouse sourdough course, all one word. We also teach people how to ferment vegetables and mill their own grains through our courses, Fresh Ferments and Freshly Milled Grains. We will leave links for all of that down in the show notes below. you