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We finally decided that it was time to finish the remodeling project we began back in, oh, when was that again? Oh yeah. A really long time ago.
As a quick refresher: back in the winter we moved the closet for the smallest bedroom out into the upstairs hallway. This increased the floor space in a very small room, but it also managed to cut off all the light from the window at the bottom of the stairs from the hall, turning it into a dark and gloomy place. We decided to install a window at the top of the stairs as well, but were hesitant to do that while it was still cold and snowy outside. Also, we had better things to spend our money on at the time. So before putting up the drywall we framed out where the window would go, stuffed some insulation in, and drywalled over the whole thing after taking care to carefully mark where the window should be installed later.
Many moons and projects later, we finally decided to bite the bullet and order the window. It helped that it has been very hot lately and we were desperate to get a cross-breeze moving through the upstairs. The day the window came in Michael, in a fit of good husbandry, tried to get it installed as a surprise before Cherie came home from work. Unfortunately she left a bit early that day and walked into the middle of the project. As punishment, she had to help with the installation. There are no free rides in this place.
Since we had already framed out the spot for the window, this was a very easy project. First Michael smashed out the drywall to expose the exterior wall. A very nice way to let off some steam at the end of the day.
We pulled out the temporary insulation. Then out came the Sawzall to cut through the exterior wall…
(Oh, look at all the green. That’s very nice indeed.)
And in came the window.
This was more precarious than it looks. This spot is on the north side of the house, which, because of the slope of our hill, is the highest part of the exterior. So what you can’t see is that Michael had to climb about 20 feet up in the air while carrying the window and is now cavalierly balanced at the top of a very tall ladder. We suppose that’s his punishment for…something.
Here’s the finished product.
(We get a lot of comments on that lamp, by the way. It’s made from leather treated with henna, which gives it a nice purple glow, with metal framing outside. We got it from a now-closed gallery in Bar Harbor a few years ago, when we had no idea what we would do with it. We also cannot remember the name of the artist who made it. Sorry. It is pretty, though, isn’t it?)
How did it all turn out? It’s fantastic.
The amount of light this single window lets in is incredible. We knew that it would provide light for the upstairs hallway and it does. We knew that it would help circulate air around the upstairs and it does. What we didn’t know is that the light would flood down over the stairs and brighten up that entire side of the living room. We’ve definitely reduced our use of both the light over the stairs and the upstairs hall light. Plus, the green of the trees at the end of the hall is pretty nice, too.
In summary: this simple little remodeling project has made us very happy. And it only took six months or so to complete.
You may have noticed that we’ve been a bit distracted lately. There’s some big news around here that we’ve been sitting on because it didn’t seem appropriate for the blog. We try to stay pretty focused on the house here, because we know that that’s why the majority of people read this thing.
But the time has come when we need to share some non-house information. Because if you were paying close attention to the last entry, you may have noticed something different about Cherie.
C: Should we really tell them?
M: I think we should. Our family and friends all know now. It’s going to be pretty obvious really soon. We don’t want the readers to feel left out.
C: It just seems so…personal.
M: Is this really going to be worse than admitting how often we bicker and swear on a daily basis?
C: Yes, I think it will be. But fine. We’ll tell.
Okay, here’s the thing. Cherie…um, well…Cherie cut her hair.
HA! Are we funny or what?
Okay, that wasn’t the real news. Although that is news. This is the shortest it’s been since the unfortunate Dutch Boy haircut of 1978.
The real news is this:
Yes. It’s true. Like the farm families of old that were faced with more work than they had time to do, we have decided to start breeding our own labor force. Coming this November: an extra set of hands.
How long after birth do you have to wait until the kid can start shingling? Two years? One? Are they good to go once they can hold their head up on their own?
We won’t even make the little one start off with the nail gun. We aren’t monsters. They can just hang out in the bouncy seat and plane down the shingles.
That’s not asking too much, is it?
Of course, the other thing this means is that we have three months to turn this mess:
into a suitable nursery.
Wish us luck.
One of the most miserable experiences that we’ve had while building this house was the infamous clearing of the septic field, detailed in this July 2006 entry. Ridiculously hot weather, high humidity, hoards of ravenous mosquitoes, branches that seemed determined to bruise or scratch us wherever they could, stubborn trees that refused to fall in the correct direction and threatened to take out power to the whole road…it was a grueling few weeks that, unfortunately, we will never forget.
The only positive outcome of this time of misery was that we ended up with a good amount of usable wood. Although the soft, fairly useless spruce tree dominates in our little corner of the world, we also had a good number of red oak and poplar that we were forced to cut down. Many of those are large enough to mill down for use as downstairs interior trim and built-ins for the house. (The upstairs trim will be painted, so there’s no sense using the good wood for that.)
In the purist, most ideal interpretation of the Arts and Crafts philosophy, every material that we used to build our house would have been salvaged like this from the surrounding land. But let’s be reasonable. We are only working with 3.5 acres of land, most of which is covered with half-dead spruce. We don’t have any trees big enough to serve as beams and we don’t have 20 years to wait.
But that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to use what we can. The trees were cut down last summer. They have already aged a year and if we get them milled into boards now, then they should be dry and ready to be used by next summer. Yes, it would be nice if we had plans to get trim up before next summer but, again, let’s be reasonable. This is us we are talking about. We understand the realities of our work ethic.
We’ve got a nearby sawmill that’s willing to cut the logs into boards for us for us; we just need to get them there. An acquaintance is, luckily, also running a load of logs to the same mill and has offered us space on his pulp truck so we don’t have to rent our own. Each 8-foot log–and we’ve got about 25 of them–weighs between 150-250 pounds, which is too much for us to load on and off of Michael’s truck by human power alone.
But before we send them off to the big buzz saw in the sky, we first need to strip the bark. Because the majority of these logs were on the septic field, a spot which cannot hold the weight of a pulp truck, they needed to be dragged up to a more accessible location. Meaning our front yard. Most of the logs were moved several weeks ago, although we didn’t write an entry then because there wasn’t much excitement to it. Just two humans, one truck, a winch, a log choker, and a bit of bickering about directional hand signals. (Michael believes shouting, “THIS WAY” while circling a hand wildly in the air counts as sufficient direction. Cherie disagrees.)
Dragging was effective to get them where they needed to be, but unfortunately it caused the bark of the logs to get encrusted with dirt. We can’t send them off to the mill this way because the dirt will clog up the machinery. Machinery that could very well cost more than all of our possessions combined. We prefer to not do that.
So we need to strip off the bark. Because the logs are a year old, most of the wood has already shrunk away from the bark, making this a pretty easy procedure. Observe:
Here’s what the logs look like before. Note how the bark has helpfully separated from the wood.
Step 1: Slide the edge of a spade underneath a section of bark and lift up.
Step 2: Grab the loosened bark and peel it back. If, like Cherie, you have a sick fascination with picking at scabs and peeling off sunburned skin, you will love this job.
Step 3: Keep using your spade to loosen and lift all the way down the log. This log is nearly done on the one side.
Step 4: Roll the log over, using whatever means are necessarily. Cherie is using our breaker bar to flip this beast. And she would also like credit for posting this picture, even though it may well be the most unflattering photo ever taken of her, and not just because she is wearing shorts.
Step 5: Start all over on the other side and then keep going until you have a pile of naked, dirt-free logs. (Any remaining dirt can be easily brushed off before they are loaded.)
We found that this method worked better on the oak than the poplar. The poplar bark doesn’t come free as easily. We are debating other dirt-removal methods for the poplar, including borrowing a power-washer.
This is a lot of work, but we should end up with close to 1,000 board feet of high quality wood harvested from our own lot. And we think that’s pretty cool.
What happens to the wood that isn’t big enough to mill down? That ends up here:
Where, should we ever get the woodstove installed, it will help keep us warm this winter.
Right. Woodstove. We still need to do that, don’t we?
