It's all about doors!

As you can see, the doors are being installed and framed in. The washer and dryer now reside behind two beautiful pine doors.

[Here is this are pre remodel]

We hung a sheet across the bathroom door for privacy and it worked pretty well.
That too has been replaced.

A very special door got installed for the basement entrance. It is a spoon carved door. I have no idea how old it is, but I know that it was the front door to the farmhouse where my husband's father was born.

It is in the ... not quite finished room. The whole in the wall is going to be a dresser that is being built into the wall. 

The living room paneling is going to be pulled down and replaced by light pine beadboard. The carpet will come up and the flooring will be the same as the flooring in the room pictured below.

Behind the red door is the stairwell to the basement.
More about that and what I plan to do with it later.

The Red Door.

I had a shower curtain made from one of my favorite photos of a place called Baxter Hollow.
I felt it would look neat as a full graphic...

The photo doesn't quite do it justice, but when a person looks into the bathroom it appears as if you are peering into Otter Creek minus the sounds of the water running over the rocks of course.

Our 'front' and back doors have matching storm doors and 'disappearing' screen doors that match the barn red shakes in the peaks.

The doors are all framed in now, but I didn't have a good photo of that.

Soon we move to the stair well, where I plan on putting a finish on the railings and getting started on organizing things.

For the time being we have started to move things out of the living room area in prep for us getting ready to work in there. Boards are cut to start putting in the chair rails in the dining area.

Morris has been supervising this work.

And he is happy to have most of the living room to lounge in again.

And so we are going!

Still waiting

It is so hard to imagine how things changed for our house!

Right now we are on a holding pattern waiting for the trim and 2 interior doors to come in.

Meanwhile, I am still 'unpacking' the old kitchen and getting used to the 'new' kitchen.

Last night I was able to cook a very nice meal. I'd received Turnips from my 'up the hill' or Upstairs neighbor and sauteed them with an onion from our garden.

I made Southern Fried Chicken but did it in strips. I did it the old fashioned way and actually used my Kindle on the countertop to read and follow a recipe.

At least as much as I cared to follow it. I have a habit of modifying things to my own way.

This was a pretty big accomplishment for me. For the past 20 years I really did not like to cook in our incredibly small cramped kitchen. I found out what a luxury it was to be able to spread the items out!

We had supper in our eating area and then settled in on the porch. 
I'd picked flowers from our garden to add a bit of my 'touch'.

The next room that we have to work on is the eating area. The old dark siding that goes around the lower half of the wall is going.
It will be replaced with pine 'beadboard' which will be nice and light...and airy.

The carpet in the living room will be torn out and we'll be putting the same flooring as what we had installed in the downstairs bedroom to match.


Here is a snapshot of the sample...

It will be fun and very weathered looking.

The work outside in the yard has yet to begin. We'll be doing most of that ourselves. But the task looks pretty daunting right at the moment.

Dry walling is dusty

And so is ripping apart the house.

Which is exactly what has gone on since I last posted.  The dryer, wash machine, toilet, ... all gone. 
Most of the week was spent without power during the day time hours as the electricians and plumbers worked on putting in outlets in the new sections.  The plumbers drilled through the concrete floor and hooked up to the existing sewer lines.
These lines were a mystery as the builder of this house is deceased.

New water was run for the shower, the toilet, the vanity, the washer, and the new kitchen sink.

Old:

New:

Not exactly the same angle as the old shot, but the 'new' door was boarded over to keep critters out until the real new door can go in.

New bathroom, sort of partially done.  It is bigger than the old and there will be room to actually store my towels in it instead of the coat closet!

What you don't see in this shot is my dish pan and Dawn detergent for washing bowels and cups up.
And was is nice to be able to wash up or take a bath!

New bedroom with hole in the wall. An in the wall dresser is being custom made for us to save on wall space.  Cool right?

The entrance to the bedroom is on the far left of this photo. The doorway is the entrance to our new basement.
Maybe it won't make sense to those who read this, but it is a perfect solution to the addition for us.
Wait until you see the door we use for that entrance!

Last but not least, is a shot from the dining area towards the back door. The frig is stored right now in the future washer/dryer cubby.
I will have the frig near the back door. 
I will have gained 9 ft of kitchen when I only had 2 ft of kitchen previously.

To me, it is a big deal all the way around.  
Today is more sheet rock work and mudding work.

It is supposed to be 95 degrees and very hot today. I do not envy the guys doing this work, but I am also happy they are not on the metal roof trying to work.

I think after chores I will retreat to the porch and busy myself with something 'crafty'.  I don't believe that I can do anything in the house but stay out of their way until they are done this evening.

Then I will have the weekend to enjoy some peace and quiet.

We had storms yesterday and that made things quite muddy around our place.
It is also evident that after all the work is done, we will also have to redo the driveway.

We will hopefully get at the yard mowing before the weekend is out too.  But the weather has not been cooperating!

I'm looking forward to when the guys pack up their stuff for the last time.
I bet they are too!

Closer!

The date for remodel is getting closer!  It looks like there may be a start date of ... about April 15th.

We spoke to Kurt yesterday and that is when the road bans are due to come off.  Road bans are put on to prevent heavy vehicles from traveling on county and township roads that do not have the same good road base as the highways.
As the frost comes out of the ground, the road bases can be soft and heavy loads will damage the roads.

We've pretty much finished deciding on what the siding colors will be as well as the roof.  We only need to go in and finalize that.

Now I begin in earnest to clean out the back entry way so that when the construction does begin I won't be in a rush to toss everything into boxes 'willy nilly' and hope to be able to find things after the remodel.

Here is a photo of the house that I'd done for artistic value.  I wanted it to look beautiful.  Photographed last summer in Infrared.

This is the south facing part of the house.  When finished, it will have a porch extending 9 feet from the house as it is pictured here.

This is a photo of the roof of the south facing part of the house. Pretty sad right?  We intended to get things taken care of long before the shingles got in this shape.  The hole in the roof that is covered, is where the chimney used to be.  We never had a wood burning stove in the house and the chimney was never in use.  It had to come off before the remodel.

South west facing corner of the house. I dug out all of the flowers and plantings around the house last fall so that the guys working on the house wouldn't be stepping on them.  I relocated what I could and hopefully some of the plantings will survive to be moved back.

This is the north side of the house.  As you can see, this is a Tiny House.  We call it a cottage.

There will be a basement and an addition put on this side.  It will extend the house 10 ft out from where it is now.

The new space will give us a slighty larger bathroom, a mudroom, a real kitchen and a downstairs bedroom.

And here is the view from the the bottom of the driveway.  The driveway extends quite a ways up towards the ridge top.

The look and feel of the place will change for the better we think!

Eating Area and Wallpaper...ugh!

Today we started on the 'eating' area of our little house. I took a break from removing wall paper as I'd gotten to Rich's corner and stared at his stuff.

What on earth would we do with all of that stuff?

It is piled in broken down boxes and no matter how I tried over the years, I could never get him to totally clean up and put away the Stuff.

Of course we live in a Tiny House and when stuff accumulates, it needs to be weeded out and put somewhere.  However, this tiny house has no extra storage.  
For the remodeling, I started last year packing away any extra Stuff that I could.  
I stored it in a shed in plastic tubs.

Yesterday I handed Rich a large plastic tub and let him go at it.
He cleared just enough Stuff so that I could move the table and get at the wall.

You are looking at an area where the flooring will be replaced, ... we are pulling up the old tiling as we go along.  The brown wood will we replaced with a very light colored almost blonde wood.
The windows of course will be replaced and ... AND! No wallpaper!
I'm considering colors for the walls now.

The Stuff will reside somewhere else and I am thinking of getting a corner cabinet of some sort for Rich to put all of the paperwork Stuff that he keeps [and rarely looks at] into and out of sight.

We are doing a wood laminate floor and there will be so much more storage once the remodel is done.

So there it is.  Ugly as all get out right now, but perhaps cute as a button once it is finished.

The cabinets will be hickory and I would like a very very light light green for the walls.

When I was a kid we rented a house that had a putrid green paint on the kitchen walls and white cabinets.  I recall washing those walls and wishing the paint would fall off.  It never did.

So why would I even consider it again?  I think I can find a nice light green/grey color.  I don't think I want white in the kitchen section.

Maybe off white in the eating section?  That sure would brighten things up!

Well off to peel more wall paper and sort through more stuff.

This Little House

Instead of trying to separate my Mulewings~ Blog from all the daily ramblings, I thought I'd dedicate this blog for at least the summer to the remodel of our Little House.

Some would call it a cottage, some would almost classify it as a Tiny House, but we just call it home.

It was built over 30 some years ago by a bachelor who intended to be the only person living in it.
He actually put a bathroom and septic in when he decided to sell it to my husband.

The outside dimensions of the house are 20 ft X 26 ft.


The remodeling will start as soon as the ground has settled and the road bans for our area have been lifted.

Here is the house from our south side view.  I picked it because it isn't full of mud like our north side view.  The color of the house in case you are wondering is Barn Red. I painted it 15 years ago with barn paint.

The windows are in poor shape, the roof needs a lot of care, and we will be adding a porch to this side and 10 ft to the north side.

Kurt Swenson of Crooked Creek Construction, LLC. will be doing the work. 

I'll add other photos of portions of the house that will be remodeled soon.

Here is the house today after we cut down one of the pines that would have been in the way of the new porch.

Here is a shot of the house in the summer a few years ago when we let the mares into the yard to graze.

So the Little House is going to get a face lift and addition, plus some much needed TLC.