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

What's the difference between a tool and a machine? A tool is reliably compliant whereas a machine is just waiting to turn on you. We're in the middle of some weather, yard prone to flooding, bought trash pump to keep ahead of the rain. Before the deluge, yard already saturated with this week's steady pour. And more is coming. Will Trashy the trash pump help, or will more water instantly well up to replace what gets pumped out? Running a gas engine to alter the natural order feels perverse and I hope we can evolve a more natural, passive drainage solution. But this is damage control mode to keep water away from the house, so I sold my soul to The Machines. And it didn't stop there! Laundry crisis imminent, hooking up washer and dryer was a priority. I knew the electrical outlets worked, but was the drainpipe still connected? Would the leaky old faucet valves fail? Laundry vent combust? Will the Whirlpools we got free off craigslist even work? Listen for yourself: Actual

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

Mine's a tale that can't be told My freedom I hold dear How years ago in days of old When magic filled the air T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor... - Led Zeppelin (with a nod to Tolkien) Disclaimer: I'm not advocating below method, but it is what I did. We don't know the full history of this house, but it's obvious it was built in at least two distinct phases. The older part started as a basic cabin--heavy beams set on blocks with an open crawlspace. That is to say, it did not start with a proper foundation. At some later date, the gaps between the blocks were filled in with loose rocks, possibly to keep larger critters out. At least that's my best guess. (Another possibility is that when the pipes burst (two owners ago), it washed away the mortar from between the stones, but that seems less likely.) Two thirds of the house is a later addition set on a proper perimeter foundation. But the original part is more of a self-supporting box set on a handful o

  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

  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

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

The cats pretty consistently wake us up at 7:30, and they did so today but with more ruckus than usual as they took a boisterous victory lap over the mouse they killed overnight and left under the bed. It's tempting to say they've started earning their keep, but they keep us. Their antics keep us laughing all day, no matter how hard the work gets, and today did get kind of heavy. Started easy though by setting up a dishwashing station on the back deck: soaking tub, soapy sponge in its own bucket, and rinse basin with a touch of bleach. A satisfying short term solution but we're jonesing for a functional kitchen and today's efforts brought us one small giant step closer to that glorious dream. The once and future sink. This house is on a community well, water main connected to a pumphouse down the road. But it used to be on its own well out back, and so there were not one but two defunct pressure tanks cluttering the crawlspace under the kitchen. This is a concern beca