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

I reuse, and reuse is good. Man, English is hard. Same spelling, different pronunciations. And don't you want to say royce ? You know, like the pitcher, Jerry "Rolls" Reuss? An umlaut here would help: reüse. And the verb could be spelled reüze. There, fixed it. I reüze, and reüse is good. Today was all about it. I finished the front deck planter, constructed from 1x8 cedar boards I salvaged when replacing a fence for a client a few months ago. The 6 legs are pressure treated lumber of various dimensions gleaned from here and there. I built two six foot long U-shaped sections separately and connected them in place at the large center posts. Eleven plus feet long, two feet tall, and 16 inches front to back. The legs sit atop the ground and the box has no bottom, with inch gap at lower edge for drainage. Plus you don't want your cedar in direct contact with the ground--that's how a lot of these boards rotted in the first place. Cedar weathers well, but it does rot. I...

Money can't buy love but it can help one acquire the three things needed to build: tools, material, and labor. But what if you don't have a lot of money to throw at a problem? That's us! We already have most of the tools needed ( though not all ), been doing pretty well scrounging materials, and have been pouring in sweat equity by the bucketload (gross). But there are limits to our knowledge, and when it comes to electrical work I know just enough to be dangerous. I'm comfortable with "makeup", which is the hands-on installation of wire, receptacles, and lights, but layout, troubleshooting, and circuit panel work reduces me to chimp mode, scratching my head and flinging feces in frustration. OK, I exaggerate. But only just. ICYMI, this house is basically an abandoned remodel, meaning some areas were done to completion (bathroom, upstairs bedrooms), some were barely started (kitchen, den), and others were abandoned halfway through (the wiring). Some circuits w...

Didn't have much planned for today. We both had stuff to mail and since it wasn't raining we walked to the post office, a little more than 6 miles round trip. That got us hungry and we eagerly ate reheated soup, crackers, and cheese for lunch. Simple food so good. A pretty sincere nap followed, accompanied by the cats, all four of us abed on a winter afternoon. Wiped the sleep from our eyes around 3:35 and it didn't look like much was going to get done today, but we had more or less vowed to move fridge from garage to kitchen, so we did.... That triggered more actions. I installed a fold down countertop and Sarah transferred the ad hoc cooking station from the living room. Today was one of those days where we focused on quality of life improvements versus repairs and construction. Having a sink and fridge in the same room brings us well into the 20th century, the miraculous dawning of mechanical domestic convenience. There's much to do before we lay down the permanent f...

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...

Optimism is a helluva drug. I used to get so high, man. Really out there! Like that time two months ago when I first tore into the water damaged kitchen floor. The vintage linoleum was worn away in spots and the plywood backing crumbled like shredded wheat. Start of kitchen floor demo - November 8, 2022 The shiplap subfloor splintered apart where I tried to pry it up and I stepped right through more than once. Despite that evidence, I wanted to believe I wouldn't have to replace it all. That was the Optimism talking. See, it doesn't look so bad. What rot? Gimme another hit of that Optimism sh*t.   Call it mission creep or a can of worms, but instead of replacing just a couple of sections of rotted wood, in the end I tore out all the shiplap, extricated two large water tanks , trenched the crawlspace , re-mortared the river rock foundation , wrapped the pipes in electric heat tape and insulation, demolished an intractable monolith , laid a plastic membrane, tucked in mineral woo...

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...

  I've been going full tilt since October and I think it finally caught up with me. The cats must have felt my fatigue because they let me sleep in till 10:30, which is remarkable because they usually demand breakfast by 7:30. Even after I woke up they just stayed snuggled between my legs as we listened to the rain. The rain. It rains a lot here in the Pacific Northwet [sic] and this house has needlessly suffered for it. While flooding is a thing here , it's uncommon and not the main problem. It's the steady drip drip drip of rain over the years that has done a lot of damage--damage that could have been easily avoided. Sarah's off visiting her parents and I felt my motivation flag. Plus, like I said, I'm bone tired. So I took it kind of light today, which in the end was for the best because small preventive measures pay big dividends.  I installed more downspout extensions. Most of the downspouts already had them, but some didn't. So I bought a couple yesterday ...