Remodeling This Life

I couldn’t be on this fabulous vacation without sharing some of the awesomeness of the cottage itself. Let me tell you the short version of the story. In 1981, my parents sold a cow and bought a cottage. How cute is that? Three years later, they bought the falling apart cottage next door to the first one. The fixer cottage sat for 15 years until my parents got serious about remodeling it. They decided to fix it up and add on.

My dad, brother, hubby and a couple friends did the huge project that spanned a couple years. There is all sorts of unique, fabulous, authentic cottage charm around this place. I am not going to share the kitchen and living room and bedrooms as those are just what they are. I am going to share the cute unique things that make this place so imperfectly perfect.

I’ll start with the hand built staircase, it’s beautiful windows and a piece of my brother’s artwork being showcased

Moving on up the stairs, there is an area that was cut in and a small staircase leading up to a reading nook was formed. A mattress and a bunch of big pillows and a view out the small window to the lake make it the perfect place for napping and relaxing on a quiet afternoon.

You’ll notice I didn’t tidy up for your visit. Sorry! I hope you enjoy your stay anyway.

Here is the heart of the cottage - a handmade stone chimney from decades ago. It’s the only thing that stayed when the cottage was rebuilt. Well, aside from the fabulous exposed beam ceiling. They kept the fireplace and built around it, installed a gas insert and hearth. We are pretty sure that when the men built it, they were really drunk. My parents and other people from around the lake remember this place from the 60s when they’d break in and drink beer and laugh about the chimney. You don’t knock down that kind of history.

Here is a glimpse of the original ceiling. New skylights were cut in to add light to the living space. In this bedroom, a loft was put in and there is a ladder up to it. Someday, it will be another cozy reading nook or sleeping space. For the time being, it is storage space.

Next, we’ll venture over to the dining area off the kitchen and I’ll show you the amazing table that my dad built (with help). It seats at least 10 and fits the space perfectly.

Another angle from that space so you can see the walls and walls of windows all the way around to the front porch that overlooks the lake.

One more little glimpse into a space that wasn’t being used before and is now converted into a walk-in pantry full of useful shelves and nooks and crannies.

I hope you enjoyed your walk through the cottage. Because it was all do-it-yourself, there are a lot of unique secret little spaces put in to maximize every square inch of the building and windows galore to bring in the sunshine and show off the view.

Before I left with the kids on vacation, I left the required honey-do list for hubby. I am a slave driver. I didn’t leave a list of things like “replace the light bulb in the laundry room”. Nope, I left things on his list like “paint toddler’s bedroom” “rip up carpet and install tile in toddler’s bedroom” “rip up carpet and install tile in our bedroom”. My daughter even got in on the action and left things on his list like “paint my bedroom PINK” and “hang my tire swing”.

So, we’ve been gone for 3 weeks and he has one week left before he joins us here on vacation. The mad scramble is on to make it look like he did anything while we were away rather than sitting and watching movies every night and drinking beer with his buddies.

He has emailed me progress along the way, I think both as something fun for me because he knows how I love photos but also to prove to me that he’s been busy.

So, here’s our son’s room with new paint, trim, a closet door, and tile floor.

And here is the new tire swing!

And my current bedroom getting a new floor

He still has a princess room to paint pink and a kitchen to paint blue. He’s been busy! I hear he’s even been watering my gardens! And even still had time to miss us! I am not sure he’ll get it all done. I just hope he does his dishes and cleans up his beer bottles before he leaves.

This is a guest post from Alison at This Wasn’t In The Plan. She is all sorts of creative, thrifty, simple, frugal and fabulous. My kind of girl. Please check out her site as it is full of lots of really great content that focuses on living a great life on less, and making the most of a life that doesn’t follow all the rules in the book. Please check her site out and if you like what you see, why not subscribe to her RSS feed?

Soon after Emily and her husband bought their fixer upper, my husband and I did pretty much the exact opposite - we bought a brand new home. Faced with a house full of empty rooms and white walls, we got to do our own sort of remodeling. Most rooms are still white and boring, but the bathroom is not. While perusing a Lowe’s ad, we saw some very cool wall paneling that we thought would look totally fabulous in the bathroom. Unfortunately, this stuff apparently only existed on the pages of that ad. We improvised and purchased a bamboo screen from the lawn and garden department. It’s totally not typical for a bathroom (or any indoor room for that matter), but I love it. And after the initial mess of putting it on the wall, it hasn’t been bad at all.

With the pedestal sink, there really isn’t much room for storage in this bathroom. There was not a whole that needed to be stored in this particular bathroom, but I at least wanted a place to put extra hand towels and toilet paper. My husband and I had a hard time finding something that was both affordable and attractive. We apparently were thinking too hard. A simple piece of wood and some shelf brackets were all we needed. To hide away stuff, I bought a cheap bin for a few dollars and covered it with the same bamboo we had put on the walls. Voila! Because it’s fun to be matchy, I also covered the plastic trash can with bamboo.

Next time you see you a look you want to recreate - think outside of the box, you’ll probably come up with some fun ideas.

Last year, when hubby was remodeling the kitchen, there was a tile that got laid funny. Part of it was too high and it needed replacing just about as soon as it was put down. Because it needed replacing, hubby didn’t even grout around it when he did the grout job. So, for a year, I have had this tripping hazard in my kitchen that collects dirt, dust, debris. It became one of those things that my remodeling blinders kept me from noticing and thus kept me from nagging about it.

Finally, a couple weeks ago, I put it back on the very short to-do list for a Saturday afternoon.

To be honest, I think hubby was glad about doing it. It meant, after all, that he could demolish a tile and what man doesn’t love destroying stuff?

It was a relaxing family day, so I didn’t want to put “paint the house” on the list and instead gave him a project he could do with us around and the kids could help.

Please ignore in the photo below that my children have half ripped down one of my mistreatments that I slaved over. Blissful imperfection!

And now, a year later, I have a pretty perfect kitchen tile floor. Well, other than it could use a mopping.

I just updated my House Remodel Photos page if you are interested in seeing the progress all in one place.

And I updated My About Page with a new photo of me.

Just, you know, if you’re interested!