The Housegleaners: A DIY Freestyle Fixerupper Remodel Blog Focused On Salvage, Reuse, and Upcycling

Sunny and Patchouli are littermates, born in a Minnesota barn, adopted by us at about 5 months. For kitties who've tasted the freedom to roam, they seem content being indoor only. They have to be, because cats are not the top predators they think they are. There's plenty that could get them here: eagles, coyotes, maybe even a mountain lion--though a tough raccoon would be bad enough. All the neighbors have warned us to keep them inside. They know first-hand the feline body count is high. But we still want them to have some form of outdoor access, so we're converting the back upper deck into a catio by building up and screening it in.    Note the gray (formerly white) fascia board where railing posts are attached. (Foreshadowing!) The balustrade segments were attached with six or so nails each.  Easiest way to remove was to cut them out with recip saw. They'll be reinstalled later between taller posts. I don't expect anyone to watch the whole thing, but too many vide...

    Have we gone too far? The cat branch got a new vertical element, a floor-to-ceiling limb we wedged in adjacent to the original horizontal corner piece and fastened with a couple of long screws so when wet wood dries and shrinks it stays in place. We expected Sunny and Patchouli would leap from one to the other, but it proved too challenging, so we added another piece to connect them. It worked! Aside from providing a natural-ish playground for the kitties, we like the indoor forest vibe. Who knows where it will end? But one haunting question remains: are we bringing in pests that will eat the house?

Every day starts and ends with cats. They wake us up when they want breakfast, and after they eat they crawl under the covers for a snuggle session while we drink coffee in bed. At some point we begin work and they are interested and eager participants, unfazed by the noise and commotion. Rather, they resent being sidelined and seek to breach whatever barriers we put in place to keep them out of harm's way. They were especially indignant about the plastic cordone keeping them out of the kitchen, so at their purrsistent insistence I catproofed the area and removed the wall. Once it was down, they asserted authority over their expanded jurisdiction and supervised my every move with their trademark micromanagement style. The next goal was a simple one--prep this little corner of the kitchen so we could bring the fridge in from the unheated, unlit garage. But of course, nothing is ever that simple here. The weirdly angled partition wall had some extraneous framing I had to cut out with...

  This place came with the three things I most wanted when I was 10 and my parents dragged me around looking at houses they couldn't afford: a fireplace, spiral stairs, and a pool table. The pool table will eventually go in the woodshop, where I'll build a protective removable top to use as table saw outfeed table. For now its ponderous bulk squats immovable in the living room, covered by tarp and piece of plywood for use as work station, though mostly it just collects stuff. Sarah claimed this bespoke scratching post off a free list and we've been planning to add a vertical element above for the cats to extend their climbing. First thought was shelf with a hole in it, then that evolved into a tree branch spanning the corner, inspired in part by Hundertwasser , an Austrian architect who planted trees in apartments. To bring the outside in, we cut a section off a felled birch out back. (We checked if birch is toxic for cats. It's not.) [ Correction : it's actually Al...