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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…

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…

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.

From the mudroom, you go right into the kitchen…

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

This will be my mom’s room…

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

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

And then there’s the loft…

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.)

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…

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

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

(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…

A legit root cellar!

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…

The lake!

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

The last seven years of my life have been punctuated with unexpected adventures. The farm The donkeys! Almost buying a ton of farmland and then not buying and ton of farmland and being a little devastated about it! Then, being glad I didn’t buy all of that farmland because of this…

My mom and I bought a lake house!

Backstory:  A couple of years ago my mom said she really wanted to retire up by the farm but not, like, at the farm. At the time, she was looking at all of the nearby farm properties and possible land I could build a house for her on, but  at some point last winter when I was working on the upstairs bath she said to me, “It’s taken you 3 years to finish this bathroom, there’s no way you’re going to be ready to build me a house before I retire… in seven years.” Which… fair point, Mom.

So then we started talking about the lake. It’s just a half mile down the road from the farm. Not a huge lake, but big enough to be all-sports. And, also, almost impossible to get a house on.

I was not worried about the impossible part because we had seven years. Surely something would come up in seven years.

Except my mom got this idea in her head, and then immediately sold her condo and moved into an apartment (so she’d have her money “free” in case something came up) and started checking Zillow for potential lake houses every single morning for the last two years. You guys, all I’m going to say is that SHE HAD A SPREADSHEET. You know I’m serious about building some shit when I’ve made a drunk sketch on the back of a junk-mail envelope. You know my mom is serious about some shit when she makes a spreadsheet. Just saying.

A great little house did come up a year ago, but the asking price was higher than we thought was reasonable (and that we could get a loan for) so I thought, we’ll just wait this out and when they realize that is an unreasonable amount of money for a 900sf house we’ll make an offer. And then in sold for cash above the asking amount in 24 hours. (Insert slight mental adjustment on how much money we’d be paying for a small lake house here. Yikes.)

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I got a series of texts from my mom while I was on the way in to work. For reference, my commute is about an hour, and at the beginning of the drive she “just happened to see a house for sale on Zillow” and by the end of the drive she was 100% ready to buy it. So, with a better understanding of the lake-house market I was like, “okay, let’s buy it.” This was a Thursday and there was an open house on Sunday, and I thought we would be super proactive… maybe go look at it Friday or Saturday and put an offer in. Right? By the time my realtor got back to me at 3PM on Thursday they had 8 showings lined up for Friday, which didn’t even matter because the house was already sold.

My mom was devastated.

Do you see this wonderful woman who treats my chickens like grandchildren, and watches the farm when I want to go on adventures, and is the only reason this house has actual gardens and not just fucking weeds growing everywhere, and all she wants is a lake house within golf-cart distance of the farm?

Not fun to see her disappointed.

Also, my mom and I are a lot alike in how we handle disappointment… namely, we like to buy things. Recently, for me, it’s climbing holds. (See also: all of this) For my mom, apparently it was trees.

I mean, I got this text a week after the second potential lake house fell through, and then realized she had been talking a lot about trees for the past week. So I immediately called her and was like, “you’re not about to do something crazy right now and go spend a down-payment’s worth of money on trees or anything… right?!” and her response was dead silence for 15 seconds, and then…  “I mean, I’m really sad we lost that house.”

Ha.

Here’s the crazy part. I convinced her not to buy a zillion trees, and instead meet me at the farm after work for dinner. I got home, opened a bottle of wine, started cooking, and–lo’ and behold– there’s a knock on the door.

Before I go on, can I just say how utterly unlikely it is that my mom would be at the farm on a Wednesday evening? I mean, ever. She’s here all the time on the weekends, and occasionally will come up during the week over summer when she’s on break, but she’s always gone before I get home. Except on this particular day.

So there’s a knock on the door. A few months back my mom made friends with one of our neighbors on the lake who often drives his grandkids by the farm on their golf cart, and whom my mom has invited over to visit the donkeys, etc. So I open the door, and there’s our lake neighbor, and he says, “I’m so glad I caught you, I know your mom is looking for a house on the lake and I just so happen to know that one is going up for sale next week.”

You guys.

I literally walked back in to the kitchen, shut of the stove, grabbed my mom, and was like, WE ARE GOING TO MEET THIS PERSON RIGHT NOW.

Which we did. They invited us into their cute little house on the lake (with zero advance notice that we’d be coming through their home.) They were gracious, their kids were polite and funny. They told us about how they bought the house next to them from a neighbor and had been fixing it up to move into (since it provided a little more space for their 3 boys), and when they said they were planning to put their house on the market soon, my mom and I were like, “Um. We’ll take it.”

And then went back to the farm and were also like, “holy shit, did we just buy a lake house?? unexpectedly??”

Yes. Yes we did.

I had a slight concern that the house might not appraise for the asking price (but it did!) and/or that the number of things they asked my mom to fax, fax again, fax with extra pages, and re-fax, might give her a permanent twitch in her eye (but it didn’t!)

And two months later, here we are…

Proud owners of a new lake house!

We closed yesterday, but technically we don’t have possession of the house just yet. (The family we bought it from needed a bit more time to finish up their new place next door, which, as a person who hasn’t had a floor in her kitchen for four years… uh, I can totally empathize with.) So I won’t be sharing any more details or interior pics until we’re actually “in” the place.

The lake house will be my mom’s primary residence (which means she’s signing up for that long commute I’m so used to at this point) and it will be a second property for both of us to take care of… BUT, it’s going to be amazing to have her so close by– golf cart distance!– and for both of us to have the farm AND a lake to play on. Plus, we really like the new neighbors. (Not just because they sold us the house, but because they’re awesome.)

There’s so much more to come. But for now, I’ll leave you right where we are…

Anxiously waiting to get in to this place!

 

Source: Unexpected Adventure: The Lake House Edition

Oh, hey, look what we’re talking about again… the second longest running bathroom remodel in the history of houses I’ve owned. (Technically there was a bathroom in my first house that didn’t have trim around the door for four whole years, so I have a little while until I beat that one. But at the rate I’m going this room may not have an actual door for another year or two.)

This bathroom is not done. But hey, guess what? It does have some very pretty mirrors.

Mirrors that can only be picked up at the store (not shipped) from Home Depot Canada.

Turns out there are thousands of styles of mirrors you can get all over the US, but not this one, and for some reason this is the one I had my heart set on. (In fairness, there are a few options like this, but they go for $236 per mirror. The Home Depot Ca has them for $83 Canadian each, which is like $63 USD right now.)

Here’s the good news: I only live about 90 minutes from a Canadian Home Depot. So I did what any normal person who hasn’t had a functioning bathroom upstairs for three years would do…

ROAD TRIP!

I legitimately made my mom update her passport so that we could go to Canada together to get these mirrors. (And, since we were going to Canada anyway, do a few other fun things.)

First, when I changed jobs a few months ago I actually started working for a company that you all know is very near and dear to my heart. So near and dear, they actually quoted me on one of their T-shirts that came out earlier this year…

That’s actually wholly unrelated to the work I do at Carhartt, just a fun little side-note. The other fun little side note about my new job is that I get an employee discount, which means on the way to Canada I took my mom to the flagship Carhartt store in Detroit for a shopping spree!

Here’s the only bad thing about working for Carhartt. I get to wear Carhartt clothes to work every day, and it has become very difficult to distinguish which clothes in my closet are for “work” and which are for “farm work”…

Just sayin’.

Anyway, that was the first stop on our Road Trip to Canada. Then we crossed the bridge, made it through customs, headed to the nearest Home Depot, found the mirror, and then I promptly changed my mind about it being the “right mirror”. Even though my mom got her passport renewed just so we could drive over the border to get it.

The problem was that it was hung in an area where it reflected ALL of the ceiling lights in the place, and it basically make the mirror look like an oversized disco ball, which is not the look I was going for in the bathroom.

We did see this other mirror, which would not have been my first choice online, but actually looked really good in the store…

But they didn’t have any in-stock at this location.

Luckily, there was another Home Depot Canada just 30 minutes down the road (and kind of on the way to the Big Surprise I had planned for my mom while we were up there.)

So we get to the second Home Depot, find the mirror (on display in a totally different spot in this store) and realize NOPE, my original choice was actually the better one, and looked far less like a disco-ball in this store.

This is why I like drinking beer and building shit instead of decorating.

We purchased the mirrors, tucked them safely into the back of the car, and then headed off to a surprise location for lunch…

I found reviews for the Oxley Estate Winery online and thought it would be the perfect spot for us to stop (and get a little inspiration, since my vineyard efforts have been, ah, less than successful so far.)

Lunch was amazing…

As was the wine flight…

And then we walked off the wine by touring the vineyards…

And taking a short stroll down the road to see Lake Erie (from the other side.)

And then it was back over the bridge and to the farm. Which brings us to here:

A slight upgrade from this one-mirror situation I had going on for a few months…

And a definite upgrade from where I started six years ago…

This bathroom still needs– first and foremost– a damn door. And then a little trim work, plus there’s one unsolved electrical mystery I still need to work out. But it’s mostly done, and that’s a good thing, because my mom and I have another huge, and awesome project coming up next month. (Which I can’t talk about until it’s a done deal, but here’s a hint. We are VERY EXCITED.)

Source: Upstairs Bathroom: Mirror Adventures

I spent the better part of last year trying to convince myself not to build a climbing wall out in my barn, and then in October, I finally gave into the impulse and started, well, this…

(That is not the appropriate way to climb on a climbing wall, by the way.)

I built the wall in 3ish sections, and you can read more about framing and building the first part of the wall here.

By the time winter came last year, there were two sections of wall to climb on, including a nice little overhung section…

Instead of putting the patio furniture away for the year, I just moved it out to the barn to make a nice little seating section around the wall…

And I snagged one of these patio heaters on sale at Lowe’s, which came in handy when trying to climb in six-degree weather…

I literally climbed in my Carhartt bibs.

(Also, yes, we did have a little Christmas tree out in the barn because why not?)

To be honest, the wall didn’t get a ton of action between January and March, but as soon as the weather swung back in our favor I started planning the next sections of wall.

First, the “easy” section of wall with no overhang. This is my mom, on Mother’s day, helping me drill holes in 3/4″ plywood for t-nuts…

I know, I know, all moms are awesome, but I’m just saying… mine helped me build a climbing wall.

It was far easier to get the plywood up on this section of wall, and the fun thing about building something that you’re supposed to climb on is that no screw is out of reach, even when you run out of rungs on the ladder…

At this point the wall itself was about 90% done, but there was still the big, gaping space between the overhung sections of wall. I mean, we still climbed on it this way…

As evidenced by my friend (and chief route-setter for this wall) Mike…

But I also spent A LOT of time thinking through the logistics of connecting two sections of wall, on different angles, with plywood that also had to be on an angle, and then my brain turned to mush because I didn’t pay enough attention in trigonometry when I was a kid.

You know what I did do a lot as a kid though? Visualize.

I couldn’t do the math on this the way an engineer would, but I did have the somewhat-brilliant idea to use string to visualize all of the angles and pieces. Then I measured the angles of the string with a protractor, and holy shit…

IT WORKED.

You guys, I didn’t even have to do drunk math to make that work… it was 100% sober. Who am I even?

There’s a bunch of blocking behind those pieces of connecting plywood, which I tested in the most OSHA-approved way ever…

By climbing on it in my workboots. Seems solid.

So there you have it.

From this…

To this…

I still have a few more finishing touches, and may eventually want to texture and paint the wall and put in some legit padding underneath it… but for now I’m just enjoying being able to walk out the barn and do some climbing whenever I want.

Was it a frivolous project? Yes. But also a helluva lot of fun, and seriously, what’s the point of being able to build anything you can dream up if you don’t actually dream up and build crazy shit every once in a while? (Which is 100% foreshadowing for the next post I have about things I’ve built in the barn this year.)

 

Source: Building a Climbing Wall: Parts 2 & 3