Renovations

When I was about Nova's age, my parents built a house in the woods. We lived there summers and weekends while I was growing up, and later, when we moved further away, other people rented it in the winter. The place has housed quite a menagerie over the years, and it's held up OK, but decades of wear and tear and sweating slate floors have left it almost uninhabitable.

When I arrived home in late July, the house smelled of mold and abandonment, so much so that it was difficult to breathe inside. Some of the mold was the result of recent water damage, but it had been growing over the years, especially during winters when the house was unoccupied. In any case, the work was already well underway. In the photo bellow, you can see the new dormer:


In the former upstairs, there were three small bedrooms, a nice library nook, and a virtually windowless storage nook. The dormer creates a whole bunch more space in two of those bedrooms, and gives them closets. My parents also wanted to wedge in a full bath upstairs, which is now framed in.

Downstairs, the plan is to re-floor the place with some kind of insulating sub-floor on the slate and concrete slab, and to re-insulate and sheetrock the walls. In the photo below, you can see some of the last of the old rough-cut pine wall. I'm sure it looked great when it first went in, but as the decades passed it got darker and dirtier, until it sucked up all the light which had managed to escape the slate floors and darkening ceiling. It was also a wicked fire hazard. I dragged my feet for a while on the plan to sheetrock, because I liked the warmth of the unfinished wood walls, but now I'm totally sold on the plan to sheetrock.


While we're ripping things out, we'll be doing the kitchen, too. Here's how it looks at the moment:
Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the old kitchen at hand, but I'd like to unearth some for a before and after series.

I've been thinking about getting back to work on my novel, but the overhaul of the old house is sucking up most of my available brain power and spare time. For the past few days, I've managed to get over there for half-hour stretches of time to do bits of board-cracking, nail-pulling demolition. I'm kind of enjoying it.

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