Woo hoo, drywall!

The insulators finished off their work today by blowing-in insulation behind the plywood walls.

We’re putting up batt insulation where there aren’t plywood walls already.

Aaand we have a sliding glass door!

And maybe someday, a deck?

(In case you missed it, this was the situation before glass door.)

It’s mighty hard to believe that not everyone is in support of the sliding glass door. They fought hard, but I fought harder.

But Matt the mason understands me. He agrees with my dream of stepping straight from my bedroom onto a deck someday. It is possible that he is just trying his best to placate me, but that is probably the right thing to do, given the circumstances.

And by “circumstances,” I mean about fifty sketches of my future off-bedroom deck, where the only thing missing is an image of me in my bathrobe.

New lights are not just for the kids. We’re getting some, too. And you can also see some building activity in our closet, where we have: 1) closed up the firewood pass-through, and 2) added framing for deeper storage. I can really feel the progress today.

There have been many setbacks, but we’re pressing on. From the pictures it looks like we haven’t done anything at all, but that’s because most of our work has been under the house:

1) We replaced the pipes under the house that were leaking sewage. (Gross.)

2) We cleaned up the rat infestations both above and under the house. (No more rats, but no more insulation, either.)

3) We replaced all of the rotted posts that support the house from below. (They weren’t doing their job before, but now they are.)

4) We lifted the house slightly to try to level it. (It kind of worked. Well, not really.)

5) We made a lot of improvements so that moisture and rodents under the house are no longer a problem. (We hope.)

So finally, we’re back to working on our bedroom. That means the ugly, tiled ceiling is gone! We are currently trying to decide if we want a basic, sheetrock ceiling, or if we want something with a bit more pizzazz—in the modest, lake house sense of the word—which basically means wood planks.

We can now look directly at our nude roof, which, as you can see, has no rats, no insulation, and no dignity left.

Now that walls are coming down, we are coming face to face with our limitations. Everything we want to do is dependent on something else that we can’t do, so each step forward feels like a few steps back.

I should be concerned, but I am having a blast.

We continue to remove wallpaper and wood paneling, with the help of our two troublemakers (ages 5 and 8):

My husband stripped the closet and now we can look straight into the living room. That’s where we found new problems, like a cracked chimney and rotted floorboards:

We did find a treasure trove of vintage trophies in the attic, and the kids think if we sell them, we might be able to afford this renovation after all:

Good thinking, kids.

For Day 1, click here.

A couple of weeks ago, we closed on a house! We haven’t owned a home since our Chicago condo, so we are part newbies and part experienced homeowners.

Our new house is a small, 1959 ranch and close to the lake. For now, I’m calling it “the lake house.” It needs a lot of work. A lot. On our first day of demolition in our bedroom, we discovered a little bit of everything I feared: zero insulation, critters, rotting wood, and mold spores.

We have only minor experience with renovation, but we’re about to learn. All we know right now is that 1) it’s going to take a while, and 2) we won’t be able to afford what we want to do. So where to start? With the part that’s free, of course! D-E-M-O-L-I-T-I-O-N.

Here’s what we did today in our new bedroom.