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

We've been going pretty hard lately but today Sarah and I both ran out of gas and lethargy overtook us. Didn't do much except burn the brushpile that's been accumulating in the driveway over the past few weeks of yard work. We'd prefer to compost it, either here or municipally, but a lot of it was invasive plants that nobody would take. As a human, I'm genetically predisposed to find fire alluring, fascinating, and hypnotic. As a child pyromaniac, I narrowly avoided burning down our garage, and more than once melted my sneakers stomping out runaway fires my friends and I had started in the name of science. I'm more careful now. Today's burn was difficult to start as the pile consisted mostly of blackberry vines, alder roots and shoots, wild rose (sounds charming but isn't), and scotch broom, much of it still green and none of it what you might call "dry." But all it took was a cardboard box, some kindling, and a blowtorch . Strategy was to conc

Woke up unsure about what to do today, ended up taking apart the old goat pen and chicken coop.  It was a well-constructed enclosure, about 20x40 feet, but of no use to us. It could have been the basis of a deer-proof garden--a good start with 6' high hog wire firmly stapled to 13 evenly spaced pressure treated 4x4 posts, 10-footers dug two feet deep, set in concrete. All sturdy and straight, it was almost a pity to dismantle but it's the shadiest part of the yard and it was best to open up the space. With Dogyu bar (aka whaletail), hammer, and end nips, I removed the staples. At first I did each individually, using cat's paw to pry them out one by one. Then I realized it went quicker levering the hammer claw under the wire; this method worked on all but the largest, stoutest staples. I did it carefully because the wire will be reused to protect the hugel beds and trees Sarah is planting. I considered digging out the posts, but that seemed too hard and possibly bonkers. I

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

Things get pretty random around here...   Hood Canal is not a canal; it is a fjord.   And canoeing its shores at golden hour does evoke a distinctly Scandinavian vibe, like a 1960s postcard.

Today felt like remodel whack-a-mole. A more methodical approach is theoretically possible, but in reality our priorities change with the weather--quite literally. Clear days trigger a move to outdoor work, and last week's cold snap really brought home the urgency of the need to seal all the air gaps in the place. This house is a sieve, and to make matters worse it is heated inefficiently with a mix of electric wallmount blowers and random plug-in space heaters which have led to jawdropping electricity bills. The walls and attic are nominally insulated (to varying degrees of R-value ), but most of the crawlspace is not. Pulling the subfloor and remedying that is a job for summertime. But even more important than insulating is sealing air leaks. Where to begin? There are small gaps everywhere--doors, windows, floors, baseboard... As I sat on the saggy couch contemplating this conundrum, I felt drafts like icy daggers emanating from the cold fireplace. We haven't used it yet, wil

Back in our Kalakala foundry days , I was often the dummy. No shade. When you pour molten metal, a red hot crucible (kind of like a fondu pot but full of bronze instead of cheese) is held above the mold in a shank, a long bar with essentially a cupholder in the middle and two handles at one end, a single handle at the other. The person with two handles controls the pour by tilting the crucible, the other one is the dummy because all they do is hold up their end. It's an ingenious design because it eliminates the possibility of working against each other. It was nice having Frank here to lead the electrical work because I could revert to being the dummy, leaving him to do the brain work while I puttered around making dinky moves such as cross-bracing the attenuated carport or insulating between the as yet unheated den and barely heated dining room. I even had time to sneak a smoke in the woodshop.  Smoking is super dumb but I enjoy it every once in a long while because nicotine re

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