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

Took a break to remind myself of what lured us here in the first place. It's been trebly bleak of late: Sarah out of state, winter's shortest days, and persistent rain. Yesterday afternoon the sun broke through but I had to run an errand. Today, unexpectedly, the sun made an encore cameo and I seized the opportunity to try out the wetsuit Sarah gave me for Christmas. It was smack dab between high high tide (8:25 AM 12.6 feet) and high low tide (2:29 PM 6.8 feet), a good time to get in at the park. The wetsuit fit and kept me warm but my bare hands ached in the 46 degree F water. Floating on my back buoyed by the neoprene, I was able to keep my hands above the surface, like the otters I'm told frequent this inlet. Unlike them, I might invest in gloves. From sunbeams and sparkly water to the damp dirt of crawlspace beneath the bathroom to wrap pipes, emplace ground plastic, and insulate between floor joists. I prefer Rockwool batts because they're easy to install/de-inst...

Wake up.   They say even the longest journey begins with a single step--but that presupposes a linear trajectory. What if you're walking in a circle? Then the trip is infinite. So while we are prepared for this being a drawn out process of multitudinous tasks and literally thousands of individual actions large and small, we're not immune to moments of FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. What if we never finish? Well, a house in never "finished" because there's always maintenance, but what if we never even get to baseline habitability? Or worse, what if it turns out to be beyond reclamation? As I literally dig in and get to know the structure intimately and see the degraded foundation and other unknowns arise, a specter of dread looms. Which is why I like to start each day with a straightforward, self-contained task. Today it was re-attaching refrigerator handles that had been removed when maneuvering it out of the house where a friend of a friend gave us a full set...