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