DIY & Memorial House Update

I bet with all the Red Pepper deliciousness on this page you thought I forgot I owned power tools, but fear notpeople, despite the rapidly decreasing number of usable hours in any given day (does anyone else want to kick daylight-savings-time’s ass still?) I’ve still been spending a fair amount of time covered in sawdust. I mean, how do you think I keep this rosy complexion?

Basically, my workshop is a crookedbroom explosion right now:

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We have 2×4’s, handles waiting to be routed, handles waiting to be trimmed, and handles in various states of paint and finish. There’s also a work bench in there somewhere, but you’d be hard pressed to find it with a shovel and a map. Welcome to my life.

Who new crookedbrooms would be such popular Christmas presents?

It’s hard to imagine with all this mess I also have an actual job that requires my actual presence in something other than ripped jeans and wife beaters. (Sometimes I feel like I’m  managing to fool people into believing I’m an actual well-groomed human being for most of the week… instead of the truth, which looks more like a gremlin.)

Ahhhh!

hawk

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<Pause, while we all wipe the tears of hysterical laughter from our eyes.> 

Sigh. That shit never gets old.

Admittedly, I have way more hair than that now, but anyway… enough about my uncanny resemblance to Chinese gremlins in the morning.

 

The Memorial House

What about the Memorial House, you ask?

MysteryMan and I have been tucking every dime we can spare safely away in anticipation for the first of two additions to the house, which we hope to start in the spring. This will be the Master Bed/Master Bath addition, and the only reason I insist that this is done before we put my house up for sale is because it’s going to require tearing out the one and only bathroom. I spent the first 4 months in this house without a working shower, and that will be the only four months in my life I ever make myself live through that experience, let me tell you

In the mean time, I’m trying to convince MysteryMan we actually need to do something with the inside of that house. Namely, remove the ceilings.

He is understandably hesitant because 1.) He’s never undertaken a project of this magnitude. 2.) I’m counting on him to work some mystery engineer equations to make sure our roof doesn’t cave in. And 3.) It does sound a mite insane.

And also, he has a harder time visualizing the things that I do, probably because he lacks psychic powers or a magic wand to crack open my skull and see what’s going on inside of there. Suffice it to say, it looks something like this… but on a much smaller scale.

timberframe inside livingroom  goshen_timber_frames_great_room_with_floor_to_ceiling_fireplace

The one thing we have going for is us that unlike a lot of the men in my life that believe power tools will be the death of me, MysteryMan has faith. I’m also starting to see a bit of humor on his face instead of a look of sheer panic when I use phrases like “demolition” and “I have an idea…”

His sense of humor even extended so far as to look me in the face the other day and tell me (absolutely deadpan) the girls that are putting together his ten-year high school reunion next year want to have everyone over to a bonfire at the Memorial house afterwards, and he told them that was cool. And I was like, yeah, awesome, have ’em over… I love a good bonfire. And then I did a double take so fast it put a crick in my neck and was all “you-mean-next-year-as-in-the-year-the-house-will-be-without-a-bathroom?” To which he replied with a shrug, “What? They can piss in the corn field.”

I’m not sure if I’m rolling my eyes right now at men, or at the country… but either way I am not pissing in a corn field, so I guess this will be good motivation to have at least one bathroom complete by this time next year.

4 Responses

  1. I absolutely LOVE the look of exposed rafters, but how do you insulate the roof?

    Excellent call on the bathroom-reno-before-moving issue, if you have a working kitchen and bathroom life is good…

  2. You insulate in the roof using rigid foam insulation. It does look awfully cool (there’s a house down the road a ways with it, that looks great lit up at night, and our uphill neighbors have exposed rafters, too), but the downside in winter is that warm air rises, so your heat tends to congregate up in the rafters. It would be much better if you had radiant floor heating instead of forced air for a layout like that.

    Chances are that your house has roof trusses; depending on the age they’re probably site-built. In any event, they probably don’t look nearly so cool as the rafters and beams that were designed that way in the pictures. Which is to say besides making sure the roof doesn’t fall in (always a good thing), you might have to do work to re-do things in order for it to have the openness.

    Not to be a party-pooper, but just so you approach the idea with realistic expectations.

  3. must. keep. gremlin.

    no bathroom?! oh crap. and pissing in a corn field?! after drinks, with a giganto fire? oh purdy please keep your camera handy for that event.

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