Finished!

A house is never really finished, is it? Like painting the Golden Gate Bridge...when one end is finished it is time to start over on the other end.  With a house, there's always one more thing to hang, fix, straighten.  One nick in the wall to repair, leak to fix, bush to plant. New paint feels old before you know it.  Kids grow out of princess themed wall decals. The bathroom you swear you remodeled yesterday was actually done 20 years ago.   I get that.

But, when you build a house yourself, you have to allow for a "finish" point -- when you are done with the feverish all-consuming details that you "have" to do and are left with the details that you will get to on your own time, if ever.

So, cue the drum roll and blare the trumpets. I am so thrilled to announce our FINISH LINE!!! 

Official "certificate of occupancy".  Proof that we officially built a house.

Here is where we were in March of 2013, with a lake-side, falling-down, ancient, single-wide trailer and a dream.

And here is where we are now.



Sunset view from the deck.

Lake-side deck.  We used the old deck boards from the trailer.  Super cool and perfect deck furniture was given to us by our dearest friends (thanks Janna and Bret!)

Kitchen. "Vintage" cabinets were bought at a resale shop and happen to fit perfectly, even allowing for the kitchen "Island", perfect for bowls of noodle salad and potluck finery. We used outdoor lights indoors in several places for a bit of whimsy. My daughter and I made the driftwood wall hanging from pieces we found on Lake Superior this summer. Fridge was free from my mother-in-law.  Sink and stove were from Craigslist. 

Living room.  That rug was made by my super-talented Grandma. It is a crocheted "rag rug" made from pieces of polyester clothing she got at 2nd hand shops. We had the table and the futon in our NYC apartment.  Wall paneling and trim on the ceiling for a "clapboard" look. 

Guest bedroom.

Downstairs bath.

Kids room.  We can cram 8 kids in here for some fun sleep-overs!

Balcony at the top of the stairs.  This was my Grandmother's desk.  You can see that cool, huge driftwood piece sticking up over the wall.  I hope to occasionally be able to work from here soon.

Master bathroom upstairs.  The jet-tub was a $70 Craigslist find (works great!).  The window looks out over the kitchen, through the second story lake-side window and lets in lots of light.  We hope to get a stained glass piece in there some day.

Looking down on the kitchen from the balcony.

So, that's it.  True we still have lots of trim to paint and landscaping to do outside.  We are thinking that will wait until this winter and spring.  We eventually want to build a boat house and an attached garage and a mud room.  Its our "Golden Gate Bridge".

You'll recall that the reason we did this at all was to get out of a terrible, predatory mortgage without "walking away" and going into foreclosure since you can't re-mortgage a single-wide trailer under the post-recession mortgage rules. So, we are now actively pursing that process and close to getting into a much better situation. 

I guess that's the real "finish line".  But the emotional one came before that, just a week or so back, when we found ourselves with a day a the lake.  A whole day.  And we didn't have a nail to pound or a hole to dig or a wire to pull.  A day on boats and hammocks and kayaks with fishing poles and grills and swim goggles that ended in an evening campfire and a glass of wine and the joy of pride and relief and disbelief that it was done and now, finally, just ours to enjoy.

Thanks for reading.
Sarah

Guts and Glory

It has been a year since the last post, but -- rest assured  - there has been progress. 

A year ago, the cottage was a finished shell that looked like this:

And a completely unfinished interior that looked like this:

So, we spent last May through October working on the what I call the "guts" of the cabin:

• Electrical, which my husband completed on his own (after lots of research) with minimal help "pulling wire" from me and the kids
• HV/AC, which we partnered with a friend of a friend to complete
• Plumbing, which we contracted out because, turns out, plumbing is hard.

Here is a picture of the kids working on pulling the wiring in their room. 

They don't have much stamina for manual labor, but they will, I'm sure, be happy to brag to their kids and grand kids that they helped.

We worked until it got too cold last winter to do any more and then got back at it in early spring.

In March we hit a major mile stone and passed our building/electrical/plumbing/mechanical "rough" inspections:

The "guts" of building a house is pretty tedious, inglorious and generally unsatisfying.  I spent half a day putting wire nuts on in every outlet and when I was done, the cottage looked exactly the same as it did when I started.  Same for plumbing, mechanical, etc.  We were thrilled to get done with that work and onto the stuff that makes a house a home!

Since passing rough inspection we have been all out with the project including

• Insulation (we splurged and went with foam on the roof and blown in newspaper stuff on the walls)
• Drywall (with contracted help)
• Paint
• Well (sub contracted -- our well is 312 feet deep! Who knew you had to go that deep to find water on a LAKE!)
• Subfloor
• Great room ceiling 
• Railings
• Electrical fixtures
• "Finish" plumbing fixtures (still in progress)
• Installing kitchen cabinets and kitchen sink (both 2nd hand) and refrigerator (free) and countertops

It has been quite a hurricane of activity and quite a complicated project to plan an execute - because one piece can impact so many others so the order of operations is critical.  For example, we didn't want to do the flooring until the ceiling was done, and we couldn't install the cabinets until the subfloor was in. So, the ceiling was important to put at the top of the list.  Excel was our friend in our late night glass-of-wine and project planning sessions.

Here are some pictures of all the progress and where we are now!

Insolation

Primer paint! 

Paint!

Well

Interior Lighting

"Kids" bedroom

KITCHEN! (cabinets and sink are 2nd hand.  Fridge was free)

Kitchen again. Notice the "island" we are planning in the font?  Also, the ceilings are done in bead board in the kitchen and LR for a cottage look.



Living room!  We are using some exterior lighting inside - so fun. And there's that awesome drift wood up top (possibly one of my most favorite things on earth)

Guest bedroom

But, no way could we have gotten this far without generous help, exemplified by our leap forward last week with the assistance of a work crew fueled by charitable hearts and desire to pay forward work and help that had been paid to them.

You see, Bob, my father in law who passed away suddenly from an accident 15 months ago (and the subject of my last post) was a hard worker who was generous with his time, the work of his hands and his long-earned experience and advice.  He was the first guy to volunteer to help someone else including heading to clear fallen trees at a local park after a storm, finishing his other son's basement, spending weeks finishing his sister's vacation house (while using a 5 gallon bucket to flush the toilet), and spending the summer 2 years ago more than full-time on our place. He was our go-to helper, advise giver, researcher, strong back, sharp mind. The major loss we felt and still feel from his absence in our lives is as acute every day of our project as much as anywhere else.  As we work, I can still hear his voice calling out measurements, directing next steps, joking and laughing. It is often that I take a moment to wish he could have the satisfaction of seeing the project now and seeing it through. I know he would be proud.

Bob is no doubt the foundation of the reason that our "work week" crew, made up of Bob's best friends, sister, brother in law, and my mother in law, offered -- no, insisted -- that they help.  To "pay forward" Bob's tireless efforts on their behalf.  And, boy did they.  Kevin, Marilyn, Bob, Ginnie, Barb...we can't thank you enough.  Here's the "crew":

Work Crew: Andy, Barb, Ginnie, Marilyn, Bob, on the newly constructed balcony railing and Kevin peeking out the upstairs bathroom window.   Pic shows the awesome driftwood that has found a cool spot at the cottage

So, we still have work to do, but the finish line is in sight! Next steps:

• Flooring
• Finished electrical and plumbing (almost done)
• Trim
• Paint the ceiling
• Septic (almost done)
• Decks  - front and back
• Kitchen island countertop
• Furniture!

The goal is to stay there on the 4th of July with working facilities and possibly get our "certificate of occupancy", finish up the cosmetic stuff the rest of the summer and be in a new mortgage in the fall.  I think we'll get there.

Thanks for reading.
Sarah

Memorial and Time

Today is Memorial Day. So fitting that this day has 2 meanings: a day to remember loved ones and a weekend to kick off summer.  Fitting that we did both at once at the cottage this weekend.

Tragically, my husband's father died suddenly in an accident in March.  He was an amazing, loving, smart, beautiful soul and I could go on and on about him. But, this is a blog about a group of non-builders building a cottage. So to stick to the subject, here is an excerpt from the tribute I wrote and read during his memorial service:

 Bob and Andy spent last summer building our cabin on Wixom Lake.  He would stay at our house for weeks at a time.  They would wake up early to study the plans and make Home Depot shopping lists. They would spend 12 hour days building, planning, discussing every angle and 16^th of an inch, and then come back to our house at  night to have some beers, reminisce about the day they had and formulate plans to do it all over again in the morning.  One of those evenings, I asked Bob if he was enjoying this summer of hard work –  I was a little worried that his strong sense of obligation was his main motivation.  “What do you mean?,” he said, “I am spending all day with my son outside in this beautiful summer. I am building a house at age 66. I’ve never felt so alive”. 

Bob is a part of our cottage. It is no stretch to say that we would not have gotten half as far without him last summer.  

Here he is literally pounding in the first nail.....

And here he is taking a picture of the plans months before we broke ground so he could have a copy for himself to study and get ready...... 

Throughout last year he sent us several documents of 2-3 pages in length titled "Cabin Musings 1" and "Cabin Musings 2", etc...complete with links to product web sites.  He was our details man.

Here he is working with my husband by lamp light to get the siding up....

Here he is with my husband and his brother.  Bob was so happy to spend that weekend with both his sons....

And so, we spent this memorial day working on the cottage. You could almost hear his voice talking through each cut...calling out lengths in 16th-inches...helping us understand the chess game that is a project like this - how one move today impacts a part of the project 5 steps into the future. He's not there, of course, but it is the place on earth where we feel closest to him.

As we finished interior framing on the 2nd floor on this day set aside for memorial, I ached with regret that he never got to see it finished, and that I never got to tell him how much he meant to me. I ached with sadness for all my husband's questions that will now have to be answered by someone other than his Dad. As we were putting away the tools and making plans to come back next weekend, I thought about this section of the tribute I wrote for his memorial:

He had big plans to spend this coming summer finishing the cabin with us.  We will finish it -- probably a little slower and with a little less precision – and it will be a standing joyful active memorial to him and his great willingness to help those he loved.  

 

Thanks for reading

-Sarah

Accomplishment!

We're done!  Well, not done with the cottage of course, but done with the "shell", which was our before-the-snow-flies goal.

It is pretty cool to think that we went from an idea for what to do about this.....

...to permits to demolition to surveys to excavation to foundation to frame to sheathing to siding to roof to this..........

......in 7 months. 

The actual time from when we "broke ground" to where we are today was just under 3 months, and that's counting a month delay in the roof materials.  Pretty great for a rag-tag group of folks with no official building skill, very limited budget, lots of conflicting pulls at our time and an abundance of will.

There's still a ton of work to do. This is the current state of the interior:

Formidable frontiers of house building still to conquer: HV/AC, plumbing, electrical, insulation, drywall, paint, flooring...and on and on.  Somewhere in there we need to do a new well and septic system.  But, even though there is lots of work ahead of us, we are allowing ourselves a moments guilty pleasure of being thrilled and really proud of what we have done. 

Reflection
I had the pleasure of doing a 4-min presentation on this project at a work event recently as part of a 3-day conference.  I almost didn't do it...thinking "who could possibly be interested in my little project?".  Well, I was wrong.  For the following 2 days I was inundated with support and questions.  Here are a couple of quotes:

"We are looking at houses to buy right now and I've had dreams of buying a place and finishing the basement.  I didn't think I could do it, but if you guys can build a house then we can definitely do that."

"Your story reminds  me of the place my family has. All the memories, and now our kids' memories.  I loved learning about what you are doing"

"I love hearing about every word of this project...it is so inspiring"

"I know you must realize it...you are building the embodiment of happiness for you and your family."

That last quote has been echoing with me ever since.  It distills -- like I haven't yet been able to -- the purpose of this project. Happiness. Its not about getting out of the bad mortgage, increasing our property value or even the cottage itself.  Its about the memories we are making while we build it, the memories we will have enjoying it when its over.  Its about people who will visit and share it with us and the legacy it will hopefully represent of being able to do something like this, with people we love, even though we didn't know how to at first. 

It also let me try to be okay with happiness as a reason for doing this.....for spending all this money, time, energy, worry.  I don't have to rationalize it in some formulaic way to justify the decision to do it.  I don't have weigh the cost and benefits or determine the ROI.  We are going for optimal happiness and that's reason enough.

Thanks for reading
Sarah

Sealed Up and a Look Back

Truth be told, since I work and travel, my husband is the main builder in our project since he is a teacher with summers off. His biggest source of advice and sweat equity has been his dad and my dad who have spent 6-day weeks of 12-hour days working over the past month.  I come in when critical decisions need to be made, food needs to be planned and prepared (after work), and to take a turn once or twice with the nail gun just because it is fun.  I do however have some vacation time planned and I hope to get my hands dirty.

In one month's time (exactly July 1st through Aug 1st), we went from a hole in the ground to walls, a dried-in roof, interior rooms framed and a 2nd floor. Pretty good for a music teacher, a retired computer programmer and a retired GM employee (with some help along the way -- notably a long weekend of sweaty work from my husband's brother).

After the work whistle sounded tonight,  I asked my husband and his dad for building advice at this point in the project.  Here is what they said:

Framing a house: advice to would-be DIY Home Builders from actual DIY Home Builders

• Buy the full set of plans including studding and floor joist lay outs.  Though it has been fun and satisfying to save $400 AND research and figure things out ourselves.....what you'll lose in engaging post-work-day discussions you'll more than gain in saved time and avoided frustration
• Have the right tools, know when to use them and use them when you should.  Example: much rejoicing in the efficiency of a power planer (and apparently it smells really great)
• There's no substitute for a power nailer.  Napoleon said "I can give you anything but time" .  Power nailers give you days worth of time (and save your forearms and thumbs)
• Tool belt -- you have to wear one....or make sure someone working with you has a well-stocked tool belt so you can drive them crazy by asking them for things.  Tool belt should include:  hammer, fasteners, tape measure, pencil, razor blade knife.
• Do not buy tape measures at garage sales.
• Buy half-inch wall sheathing.  Trying to save a little $ on 7/16th sheathing means you have to calibrate to the order of 16ths of an inch constantly during the framing.  Much more challenging than half-inch.
• Feed your workers well and take water breaks.  This build typically turned out to be 12 hour work days.  Labor of love for sure, but even the most passionate workers need to conserve energy.
• Ask good questions to the right people (and listen to the answers). Some of the best advice we got came from the building inspector and random builders who we came into contact with.  
• Save roof work for days that aren't windy
• Roofs are tough. The steeper the tougher. And scarier.  Our roof is a 9-12 pitch, which I have come to learn is pretty darn steep.
• Handle OSB with gloves
• Learn to use your simple tools effectively.  Everyone gets how to use a hammer, but using it well is a different story. There's something zen-like about hitting a nail once and watching it disappear into the wood. 
• Invest in good tools. You'll have them forever and they won't let you down.
• Don't assume anything on the roof is nailed down. Always check.  My husband learned this the hard way when he stepped on a sheet and it slid off the roof.  He caught himself on the edge of the roof, his body dangling below until we could get a ladder under him.
• Take pictures of your project along the way and take the time to stand back and appreciate the progress you have made. Allow yourself to be proud of what you have done and appreciate it without getting bogged down in what you have left to do. You're building a house.   That's pretty amazing. Enjoy it.

And on that note....




Floor joists



We had lots of help on the sub floor the weekend of the 4th of July
(this picture makes me laugh)

The first wall -- Quite a view!

Wall Sheathing

Starting to figure out the rafters

More rafters (scaffolding in the middle) This is really up there!

This view will never exist again



Starting to look like a house!

Rafters are done and roof sheathing going on. 

.

Interior rooms framing

Finally, a water-tight roof.  No more worry about rain ruining the sub flooring!

We hope to get windows and siding up and the roofing on before the snow flies. In the meantime -- onward to windows, siding and all the interior fun!

I still can't believe this is actually happening. 

Thanks for reading.
Sarah