Building The Love Shack

I am going to start this blog out with a Hallelujah…..

The weather was finally cool enough to start working at the Love Shack. We had perfect Fall Weather on Saturday to get work done and we used up every minute of it.

To start out, the lawn had not been mowed in four weeks and the weeds took on a life of their own. So the first thing we did was clean up the property.

Next on the list was to keep a promise to my neighbor who offered me some of her perennials. They needed to be split and moved. Which meant creating a garden space. Which meant, doing some of the skirting of the lower part of the house first.

It doesn’t look great, but it’s going to be much better in the Spring once I add some more plants, but hey we got a garden started.

With the outside done, we moved inside to start putting in the insulation.

Back when we first started our water problem journey, we had to build a shelf and put in a water heater. When we did that, we never thought to put the insulation in first.

Lesson learned.

This corner of the Love Shack took us some time to do the work. It turned into a two person job. Him with his long arms and me with my small hands, we were able to insulate behind the water heater and get the vapor barrier in. It took twice as long as it would have if the tank wasn’t already there. But hey, we now know better.

While we were at it, we once removed a window and covered it with plywood but again moved on to more important things. Now that we were doing the insulation it was time to go back to that project.

That board was removed. The framing was built, the plywood moved to the outside where it will be covered by the new siding and the window was filled with insulation.

Next came down the last of the old insulation on the walls. I am happy to say we have all of the old dusty insulation out. A glorious moment as far as I am concerned. Glorious, after the dust settled.  We had to open all the windows to get the dust out.

Then it was time to put up the first of the insulation on part of the new gable area and the wall behind the frig.

Now, this meant, you got it, pulling out the frig and my cabinets.

The walls were vacuumed, filled with insulation and cover with the vapor barrier and Holy Crap it’s 11 PM. Where did the time go?

We were tired… but happy to be working again. Boy how I missed that.

Showered and off to bed we went.

We woke up to the sound of rain hitting the rooftop.

 

 

We were planning to work on the inside and the cool rain breeze felt a lot better than that high humidity we had all Summer.

Sunday afternoon was spent building a closet around the water heater.

 

First, the framing was done and then the drywall went up.

 

 

 

 

It was a very productive weekend. Not only did the water heater/broom closet get built, but we used up supplies that we now don’t have to store over Winter. As it turned out once we put the frig back and cabinet. We put them in a different order and it made more space in the main room. I think we are becoming champions in designing small houses.

This weekend is Thanksgiving at the Lake. I am looking forward to having the kids up for dinner.

We will be taking down the dining tent and putting the outside furniture away. It will also be time to say, “see you in the Spring” to some of our neighbors who will close up their cottages this weekend.

At the Love Shack, we will be hanging that kitchen light that we didn’t get to last weekend and putting up more insulation.

We are still waiting on that window to come in. If we get it this week, we will be insulating the Gable. If we don’t, we will do the back wall.

The thing the Love Shack has taught us the most is to be flexible.