Archive: November 2018

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.

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.

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)…

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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…

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.

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

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.

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.)

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

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…

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…

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