(Originally posted Jan 5, 2015)

One year, and a few months because I am late at getting this blog post up! It’s been one year since we purchased our ‘new’ house! I fully intended to do frequent updates on the house… well that just didn’t happen. Summer happened, long days happened, a little bit of stress happened and we kept moving forward. But since we’ve made it a year (I almost wanted to say survived a year) I felt that is was time to give the list of updates and improvements we have made. I am going to include everything, so feel free to breeze over the list but sometimes I need to make a long list to remind ourselves of the amount of work that we’ve put in to make our house a home.

OUTSIDE:
–          Rebuilt the garden fence – Kit worked super hard to get this done for me. It was really exciting that we had a garden to work with right away and he made it a priority to get this done for me.

–          Planted a garden – we weren’t sure this was ever going to happen as spring was reluctant to come! I was super happy to get a decent list of veggies planted and we utilized most of the garden. I planted sunflowers, tomatoes, onions, radishes, carrots, corn, peas, brussel sprouts, lettuce, spinach, arugula and pumpkins. The corn reached a full 3 feet high and we ate the tiny little corns for Labor Day. The pumpkins didn’t stand a chance; the frost took them (I mean the one) out before it could get big. Oh well!

–          Built some large planter boxes to cover drain covers. I never did get to planting anything in them but they were built.

–          Knocked down what was left of the barn – it was a bit of an eyesore and very unsafe and I was able to build my planter boxes out of the wood, so it worked out great.
–          Had our wonderful 40 acres surveyed and marked – and we’ve had a lot of fun walking the line and checking out the property

–          Updated our electric from 100 amp to 200 amp – super exciting I know. I am including this because we dug and dug and dug a stupid trench from clay… it sucked but it was a good thing to do.

–          Cleaned up the garden areas, old barn pad, and behind the house.  This resulted in multiple large slash piles that turned into some fun bonfires.

–          Built a dog fence – while it’s not done it keeps the dogs mostly contained. We didn’t get to finishing that project because….
–          We built a chicken coop – and the chickens are loudly enjoying their new digs! We finished the steps to the coop the day before the winter storm hit. There are a few things we still need to do to mark that off as complete, but we got the chickens in and they are laying between 7 and 10 eggs a day!

–          4 Dumpsters – and we probably need 2 more… ugh!

HOUSE – EXTERIOR
–          Added a dormer and a mudroom – ok, we hired someone to do that. The dormer will be a master bathroom in the future and the mudroom we hope to get done next year. We don’t currently have any stairs to the new mudroom, so that is a future project as well. (Sorry these are terrible pictures, I need to get some better ones but this is what I have right now…)

–          Removed 80% of the deck – almost every time I came home after a weekend of being gone, Kit would have removed a portion of the deck. Sometimes it was the whole deck, sometimes just part of a railing. We still have a portion of it left and hope to get a new one built in the next few years!
–          Tore up the front yard to add geothermal – again, we hired that out and so far it’s been working great. After last winter’s months of negative degrees weather and using fuel oil furnace and a wood furnace, we decided that a new heating system was a priority. Since we are still working on re-insulating the house, we haven’t cranked the heat beyond 60, but it’s nice to know we have a new heat source.

HOUSE – INTERIOR
Basement
–          Removed the cold storage room – while it was kind of a neat space, we decided that it would be better utilized as a utility room. Kit took a sledge hammer to the double layer of bricks and wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow removed the bricks. While a lot of the brick was destroyed, those we could salvage, we plan on using to make paths.

–          Removed laundry room walls and all the ceilings. We opened the space up so that we take a look at the plumbing and electrical that we will be replacing over the next few years.
–          Removed a fuel oil tank, furnace, wood furnace, and water heater and replaced it with a geothermal heat pump and new water heater.
Main Floor
–          Demo everything – well, almost everything. We demoed all the walls and ceiling except the bedroom we are living in, bathroom and the most exterior walls. This included painstaking removing 2 layers of flooring in the kitchen that were tacked down with 5 million nails and staples.

–         Added two interior beams to open up the new living room and kitchen – in order to do this, we had to get rid of half the kitchen and all the interior walls… see above.

–          With my parents help, we started the construction of the new bathroom and office walls. In order to do this we had to get rid of the kitchen entry door. The major bummer for losing that door was the direct route outside and access to the deck. Last winter, we didn’t use that entry too much but it will take a bit to get used to.

–          Had a wood stove installed – and we love it already. We haven’t been able to use it a ton yet but we had our first half day burn during the first snow storm and it been wonderful! I was never really sold on wood stoves til our honeymoon up at Bearskin Lodge. The week we were there, it was -10 degrees out and we had it burning all day every day. After that, I thought a wood stove would be pretty nice in the house. We installed a flagstone fire pad and hope to get a mantel and stone wall completed this winter.

–          With the new mudroom, we also got two new entry doors. We still don’t use them yet due to the lack of stairs, but I love them and can’t wait to have the mudroom fully functioning.

Upstairs
–          Demo – more demo upstairs. We removed all the interior walls, chimney and the teeny, tiny bathroom. We left all the exterior walls and ‘insulation’ to survive the winter once again.
–          Dormer installed – for the master bathroom. The thing I miss most about our old house is the beautiful new master bathroom in our old house. 2 months after we spent months (actually years) finishing it, we moved. I don’t regret moving one single bit but I do wish I could sneak back into the old house to shower every once and a while!

It’s a good list of completed projects. It’s easy to write it all down but what I like about writing it down is that I remember all the hard work, time and energy we put into this house. Some days I think we are nuts, we are we doing this; but I love the space and watching the ships in the big lake and the garden and the chickens and taking the dogs for walks and the snow days and I so glad we made this crazy move! Some days it’s hard to stay positive (a recent one in particular that involved removing old drain pipes comes to mind) but I know we are making our house into something we will enjoy forever.
– Stacia