preparing (in actuality) part 2

June 22, 2022

✅. Camper purchased and interior decore change completed.

House renovation to do.

We've done alot of this sort of thing before. We've added a bath and we move walls around like most people change wall paper. All this to try and meet the needs of our growing family. But, for those of you who are clever, you may have picked up on something … our family has long grown and left the nest, so we haven't done a major interior house project in 15 years and what used to be relatively easy and quick … wasn't anymore. 🤔 We got it done … but it all took much longer than we anticipated and hoped. Ah, hope does indeed spring eternal in the breast of man.

We never would have finished without Ben, major Sherpa duties, and Grace doing all they could as time (and Covid) would allow. Ethan and Stephanie who came for a farewell/send-off vacation which turned into a priming, painting, scraping, cleaning, buffing, more sherpaing, demoing and tiling vacation and of course to Josh and Camryn who thought they were moving from Florida to a lovely downstairs master suite. Instead, they found an unfinished project with stuff everywhere. I'm sure it looked like a total disaster area and I'm surprised they didn't just turn the U-Haul around and head back south right then! I had the vison and in my mind it was close, just a bit more to do. (Read that as "it's a bit chilly" when it's actually 20° below. Sometimes we Vermonters are prone to under-exaggeration 😂). They worked very hard scraping, painting, putting up a ceiling, putting up shelving and more cleaning. All sorts of finishing tasks and finally … moving in!!! By the time it was done Josh was quite "handy"! A skill set he will need maintaining our old house. (Don't tell anyone but that was the plan all along, a chance for some hands on training! jk Josh 😂). As I said earlier, we never could have finished this "project" without all their work.

Love you guys for helping to make our dream possible ❤️❤️❤️

The new bathroom. It may not look like much of a change but, the lath and plaster walls have been replaced with sheetrock and the stacked bricks used as insulation (I'm sure it was all the rage in the 1860's) have been replaced with a more up to date version. I prefer to leave the old materials in place when it's possible, but sometimes it's better to take it out and start with new.

The shower. It took us 4 weekends to complete the tiling. Martin did the cutting and I did the placing . Trying to keep straight lines while everything else in the house has settled to some other angle made it a bit of a challenge.