The Good, The Hard, and The Half-Finished Window Seat

Okay, listen, to be fair, it’s a mostly finished window seat.

And at this exact moment in time–the moment where I’m on a roll building assorted cabinetry, and my mom and I are having a blast working between our two houses on the weekends, and there hasn’t been a farm crisis in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve actually got the time and energy to sit down and write this post–things are good. Really good. I’m living the dream (as long as we all understand “the dream” is covered in sawdust and still doesn’t shower or do the dishes quite as much as is socially acceptable.)

But let me also tell you that while things in this moment are good, it’s only because I have been living right on the cusp of “what the actual fuck” for the last several months, unsure if I’m going to tip right over the edge into crazy-squirrel-lady-who-has-given-up-on-doing-anything-she-loves-ever-again or, you know, manage to claw my way out of that hole until things feel right in my life again.

(I’m not joking about the Crazy Squirrel Lady part. They invaded the house and started hiding walnuts in my laundry.)

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Here’s the thing. My life is not now, nor will it ever be, a study in balance. I’m a creature of extremes. Of periods of time when I’m in the grips of a big project or a physical challenge and feel like I have the energy and vision and drive to take on the world… and times when I don’t. When I feel the absence of that energy so acutely that even though I know that it’s just a recovery period, and that I will find myself engaged and energized in my own life again at some point in the future, there’s a part of me that says (very loudly and incessantly), “Welp, that’s it. I guess I’m never going to do anything good again, and everything feels off in my life, and I’m just going to be exhausted forever. Awesome.”

I’m compelled to say that out loud, because what I really want to do is skip over all the things that have sucked lately and just talk about is how awesome it feels to be building all kinds of shit right now. But, even though I haven’t been in the right space to update this site as frequently as I used to, telling an authentic story is still the most important thing to me.

And life is (almost surprisingly) good right now, but only because I’m on the other side of some shit that has been really hard.

First, because I burned through a ton of energy this summer making a pretty big career change and spending a lot more time away from the farm that I’m used to.

And because I spent a solid 8 months training for a solo 50 mile hike in Iceland…

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(I crushed it–finishing in 2.5 days instead of the 4-5 I planned for– but also very quickly felt the post-adventure blues. It’s a real thing.)

And then because the very worst thing happened… I lost Bubs.

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I mean, I did not misplace him, obviously. I lost him to cancer (which, I know, sounds very melodramatic for a cat. After being otherwise healthy and acting normal he stopped eating one week, and then I found out his intestines were riddled with tumors and he didn’t make it out of the surgery to try to remove them.)

I get that cats are not humans, and for most people cats are not even dogs, but this cat in particular has been my companion for the last 12 years. He was literally the inspector for the very first big project I completed on my first house (the first badass pergola)…

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And has been with me through every house, every relationship, every project…

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And every blog post since…

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I understand all of the intellectual things about how he had a great life, and we got to spend 12 years just hanging out together…

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But it still fucking sucks, and I miss his cat face every day.

(Although I did find a desiccated bat on the middle of the living room rug two weeks after he died and was like HOW ARE YOU STILL DOING THIS TO ME WITH THE BATS, BUBS?! I do not miss waking up to dead bats in the bed, but I do miss my cat.)

So, that was hard. 

Not only is it tough not to have him around, but within a couple of weeks, the squirrels moved out of the attic and started hiding walnuts around my house. (The one I found under the covers of my bed was the last straw.)

Also, the mice started hiding Bubs old cat food in my shoes.

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That’s not… I’m not making that up. It happened a handful of times before I realized some creature was doing this to me on purpose.

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I mean, I knew Bubs was good at catching shit, but I had no idea how much work he was doing on a daily basis to keep the house free of rodents.

So, just to recap: New job, big adventure, post-adventure blues, dead cat, rodent invasion, and also this has been a tough year for a lot of my friends in a lot of different ways, so just add all of that into the general mix of hard shit and, oh, I’m sorry, did you come here to read about a window seat?

Yeah, so, I managed to come out on the other side of that mess of feelings, a little worse for wear, but with my sanity mostly intact. And then I built a window seat.

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As one does.

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I had my HVAC guys come and move the baseboard heat for me because it required a bit of finagling. Then I bought a piece of 10′ plywood, made a napkin drawing, and went to town.

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It looks civilized from the outside, but the inside is just a mess of blocking.

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Originally I was going to make the storage in this thing drawers (see drunk napkin sketch above) but then I realized that after I accounted for the baseboard heat, the drawers would only be 5″ deep. So I went for the next best thing…

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Flip top! (A couple of stainless steel piano hinges did the trick.)

I only expect to access this storage space once or twice a year (it currently contains my window AC unit and a bunch of canning jars.)

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And just to provide context for the size of this beast…

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It’s over 9′ long. Like everything else in this house, weirdly oversized, but we’re just going with it.

I finished the top of the bench with iron-on veneer on the cut ends…

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Legitimately the only use this iron ever gets. Also, if you ever have qualms about iron-on veneer, I also used this exact stuff on the tables I built for the office at my last job. Those tables have been in the common area of that office (used by 50 people or so daily for the last 3+ years) and the veneer held up beautifully.

Back to the project at-hand though…

The last step was to trim out the front so that it looks a bit more in line with my cabinets.

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Trim is always the critical factor in taking a project from “what the hell are you doing?” to “Huh. That looks pretty damn good.”

Also, you can’t beat the view…

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It needs to be painted, obviously, and I’m in the process of ordering a custom cushion, and then if you need to find me after that, I’ll just be laying in this window seat for the next eternity.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

Did I or did I not say I was on a roll with the cabinet-building?

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After three years of staring at the ass-end of these cabinets, I finally got my act together and finished them.

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This whole project was a study in creative problem solving and using what I had on-hand.

First, I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to handle the trim on these, but I knew I wanted to replicate the look of the cabinets because the big blank panel that used to be there (before I added a 3rd cabinet) kind of drove me nuts.

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Because I custom-built that end cabinet with a wrap-around toe-kick, I had to get creative with the trim (which also meant replacing some of the facing on that cabinet because I didn’t think far enough in advance 2 years ago, apparently.)

And then, of course, once I figured out how I wanted to do the trim, I found out that none of my local lumber suppliers sell 3/8″ thick trim boards in any kind of usable length and width. Turns out, however, that I have a bunch of 3/8″ thick tongue and groove pine planks from an unfinished project upstairs, and if you rip the tongue and the groove off?

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Perfect trim boards.

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But then there was the question about how I should hold the the pieces of trim in place while the glue dried in the spots that had no usable clamping or nailing surfaces.

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No problem.

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Also, funny story, that is not paint in my hair. That’s legit all the gray hair the last four months seven years life has given me that I stopped coloring for a minute because I was too busy not having a meltdown to care about.

Good news, I did not have a meltdown. My hair is very gray. And the back-side of my kitchen cabinets look like this.

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I am considering that the bottom trim board really needs to be a bit beefier, and weighing that against my desire to screw around with this anymore when I’ve got a couple more drawers, and secret cabinets, and at least seven sheets of plywood’s worth of built-ins I’m hoping to get done soon.

I’m telling you, it was a long, hard end to summer but I’ve got a wave of energy when it comes to building cabinets right now, and I’m going to ride it as long as I can.

Source: The Good, The Hard, and The Half-Finished Window Seat

Lake House: Living Room and Other Shenanigans

It turns out there are good and bad things about the Lake House in November. The bad thing is that it legitimately is too cold to spend all of the daylight hours out on the kayaks. The good news is, since I’m not spending all of the daylight hours I have available out in the kayak, there’s plenty of time to work on some other projects in the house.

Remember how I said my mom and I are going to take it nice and slow with projects around the Lake House?

For once I was not lying. We are actually taking it nice and slow with projects around the Lake House.

My mom spends most of her time here, but occasionally she’ll spend a night down in Ohio during the week, and my new favorite thing to do in the evenings is to raid my mom’s wine cabinet fridge and paint things in the house while she’s not there.

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Swear to god, I “borrowed” those sweatpants from a college boyfriend 17 years ago and they are now a testament to all of the rooms I have painted white in my life. Also, if you’re thinking, “wow, you really don’t get a lot of paint on your pants, if that’s what 17 years worth of painting looks like” you should see my hair.

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First of all: HOW EVEN.

Second of all: While it’s annoying that I literally cannot walk near a paint can without unintentionally creating some kind of skunk stripe on my head à la the cat in Pepé Le Pew… honestly? I also really only feel like myself when I’m singing loudly to the radio in an empty room, late at night, with a roller in hand and paint in my hair.

Projects at my own house always feel very complicated, so I’m grateful the Lake House has brought more of those easy, fun, paint-in-my-hair DIY moments back into my life.

Anyway.

All of those evenings painting paid off with a newly white living room (and new couch)…

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And then I may have gotten a wild hair and bought some window treatments while I was at it…

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Here’s the thing, we’re not actually planning to close the shades on these windows ever, because they look right out onto the lake (obviously.) But there’s something to be said for dressing up the windows to make a space look more cozy, even if you don’t “need” to.

(For reference, the bamboo shades are from justblinds.com, the sheers are from Pottery Barn (in alabaster), the rods are from World Market, and the curtain rings/clips are from amazon because they’re a hell of a lot cheaper than the ones PB will try to sell you. Also, none of that shit is sponsored or affiliated or anything like that, it’s just what I bought under the influence of a bottle of my mom’s wine one night.)

We also decided to put a console table behind the couch to give us a place to set things while we’re lounging in there (like we do) and also because literally the only place in the entire house where you can get more than one bar of cell service is next to that window. So we needed somewhere to set our phones so we could stream Christmas music while hanging our stockings. Obv.

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What I love about this is that it’s actually the table I built a few years ago out of old barn wood we cleaned up on the farm to hold the TV in my living room, which became obsolete back when I partially re-did that room a couple of years ago. Technically I was using it behind my own couch “temporarily” because it was not at all the right size, but I built that damn thing with my own hands and didn’t want to get rid of it. And now I don’t have to, because it fits perfectly behind my mom’s couch. I do have to build another right-sized table for my own living room in the near future though, because I learned the hard way that I no longer have a good place to set my beer when I’m watching the best Christmas movie of all time.

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Also, while we’re on the subject of Christmas, you may have noticed that the Lake House living room also looks much cozier because we put a tree up in there. Which is true. It’s actually a nice compact artificial tree I had been storing up in my attic for the last couple of years. If any of you are wondering how my mom and I spend our time together on the farm and at the lake… this pretty much sums it up.

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After we successfully got the tree down (without being attacked by and/or killing any wild animals) my mom looked at me and said, “Why does this always happen to us??

I don’t know, Mom. But it sure is an adventure, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Source: Lake House: Living Room and Other Shenanigans

Lake Life and Learning Curves

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of big changes, new projects, a very cold learning curve, oh, and snow…

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Because why not, Michigan.

So, here’s the deal. My mom and I took possession of the lake house a little less than a month ago. It was still nice (and light) enough a month ago that I had two glorious weeks of rushing home from work with just enough time to get 30 minutes of paddling in on the lake before the sun went down.

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And on my very first evening out in the kayak, I came across this…

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Yeah, that is a real, huge, bald eagle. Pretty amazing (especially considering I’ve lived a half-mile from this lake for seven years and have never once seen a bald eagle.)

My mom even managed to get out on the water her first full weekend at the lake.

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And then, of course, the snow came.

We’ve been simultaneously trying to 1.) get some furniture in the lake house (so my mom isn’t sleeping on an air mattress forever.) 2.) Spend a little time on the water before the deep freeze, 3.) Prep the farm for winter, and 4.) Prep the lake house for winter. Which, it turns out, is a lot to do in just a couple of weeks, and is exactly how I ended up in the lake, in November, in my long johns…

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Our new lake neighbors are the previous owners of my mom’s house and have been so helpful with educating us on how things work around here. They even took most of the dock out for us, but I insisted on doing the last section, just so I could get a feel for it.

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And also because I wanted to lose all feeling in my knees, apparently.

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We will not be doing that task in November from here on out. (Or I need to invest in a pair of waders, stat.)

Luckily, other than figuring out kayak storage, there’s not much more that is needed to “winterize” the lake house. (Don’t get me started on the list for the farm though.)

However, we have been trying to make some quick (and small) progress on making the lake house feel more like home.

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We were originally going to try to re-use some hand-me down and leftover furniture from the farm, but I really felt strongly that the only way to make the space work in the living room is with a sectional. (Which I decided by making a mock-up of a potential couch out of empty boxes and paper towels, as one does.)

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Don’t knock the boxes-and-towels method. It worked.

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The couch is the Bayard modular sectional from Wayfair. The bottom cushions are very firm but not uncomfortable, price was reasonable, and it was just the right size for this room.

There’s still a fair amount to do in this room. We did paint the walls white, but there’s still some caulking and swapping out of electrical switches and outlets that needs to be done. And we’re working on the fireplace…

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We’re also waiting for some window treatments to arrive, and keeping our eyes out for a good deal on a bistro table and some bar stools. And very soon I’m going to find a weekend to spend in the shop, knocking out some built-ins for either side of the fireplace AND for this little project I have going on in my own kitchen…

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I wish we had a little more time on the lake this year, but I’ll tell you what… after a summer of travel, it feels real good to just get back to work on things. I just don’t feel like myself if I’m not covered in paint and sawdust most days.

Source: Lake Life and Learning Curves

The Lake House: A Tour

In the middle of prepping the farm for winter, traveling for work, stocking up on hay, traveling for fun, and a few unexpected life events (because why not, life?) this happened…

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My mom and I took possession of The Lake House!

(Like, my mom literally got the keys last week while I was on an airplane, and I had 30 minutes to run down there an snap a few pics during the 12 hours I was home before I leave again, and at some point we have to start moving her stuff in, but there are currently 30 bales of hay in the back of my truck, and I’m probably not going to sleep for the next month because I’m too busy thinking about how I totally need to custom build a wooden canoe a la Trent Prezzler (If you don’t follow his Instagram, you should.))

Also, this is what it’s like being in my brain right now–it’s just a series of never-ending nested parentheticals all the way down–so I’m just going to stop and we can take a tour of the house.

Directly inside the front door is the mudroom/laundry room…

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We’re thinking a lot about the most effective use of this space, and I can already see that I’m going to be build a lot of cabinets this winter (for both houses.)

The one bathroom in the house is also off this room.

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From the mudroom, you go right into the kitchen…

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The kitchen is a really good size and has a lot of storage…

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This is an early 1900’s house (built in a similar style to my farmhouse, just on a smaller scale.) From what we can tell there have been 3 additions to the house over time, and that usually ends up with some less-than-efficient room layouts, but, you know that’s the fun of old houses.

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The kitchen is fully functional and has a great built-in cabinet from back in the day. At some point we may want to look at re-doing the layout, but that’s years in the future. (Because let’s be honest, my own kitchen is still years from being “done.”)

The best part, though, is that the kitchen is fairly open to the living room AND has a great few through the back windows to the lake.

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The living room is cozy, has lots of light, that great view, and a working fireplace!

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We have no idea how we’re going to work the furniture layout between these two rooms (I’m seeing more built-ins in my future though) but we’ve got some leftover/hand-me-down furniture we’re going to give a shot for now and then go from there.

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Back off the kitchen is a small hallway that goes to the two downstairs bedrooms, and a ladder/staircase to the loft…

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This will be my mom’s room…

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The bedrooms are small, but have good-sized closets.

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The downstairs guest room is also small, but again, has a couple of good-sized closets.

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And then there’s the loft…

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It’s not as big or as tall as it looks in this pic. My mom and I can comfortably stand up there, but we’re basically hobbit-sized.

We’re still planning to put a couple of beds up here though. (And maybe some storage, but to be honest, there’s plenty of that at the farm a half-mile down the road.)

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That’s basically it for living spaces inside the house. It’s small, but just the right size for my mom (and all the guests we plan to have here.)

The outside, though, that’s where the fun will be…

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From the living room you can walk right out on to the enormous back deck…

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Two levels, three sets of stairs, lots of space we need to figure out what to do with…

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(The playset is not staying. The family we bought the house from actually just moved one house over, so we’ll help them move this to their back yard eventually.)

One thing I am oddly excited about though is this…

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A legit root cellar!

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My own basement won’t work for root vegetable storage (and I’ve toyed with a lot of ideas over the years, including building my own root cellar out in the field somewhere) so you can bet I’m going to be building all kinds of storage for vegetables down here eventually.

And then, of course, the thing that normal people would be most excited about…

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The lake!

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It’s a good-sized lake and I’m excited for morning workouts in the kayak (which I fully intend to do right up until the lake freezes over.) Also, add “kayak storage” to the top of the list of projects I’ll be tackling at this place ASAP.

I mean, we are so excited, but it also doesn’t quite feel real yet. The one thing we’ve said is that the Lake House will not be a thing that stresses us out (yet), so we’re not starting any big projects any time soon. (Ha. Anyone want to take bets?)

In the short term we’ll probably paint, figure out the furniture situation, and enjoy the water as much as possible before we enter the deep freeze of Michigan winter. Then I’ll turn my attention back to the Liberty House to get the kitchen finished (finally) so that we’re free to work on the lake house next summer!

Source: The Lake House: A Tour