Continuing Our Cottage Renovations and Lessons Learned Along the Way

Continuing our cottage renovations and lessons learned along the way have inadvertently helped us to gain additional skills!

LITTLE PINE COTTAGE

We are so glad to have you join us as we continue with our crazy renovations on this tiny fixer upper little cottage. We’re going to be calling it our Little Pine Cottage!

We were trying to come up with a name for our little cottage and because it’s like an off white color, we thought of the Little White Cottage. But that sounded a bit common and maybe a little cliche.

Nate came up with a great idea. To start calling our cottage, the Little Pine Cottage. And the reason is because when you look around at all the salvaged wood that we have throughout the house, a lot of it is pine. So it’s very fitting for us to call it the Little Pine Cottage. Not to mention that the old original siding on the outside of the house is also pine.

NEW OFFICE IN CONSTRUCTION ZONE

I’m excited to share my new office space right in the midst of the construction zone that we are living in. I used to have my work station set up in our bedroom as it was the only room that was not being renovated when we first moved in the house.

office work station in fixer upper cottage bedroom

Nate pretty much got that one room semi move in ready so we had one space for everything like sleeping, working, and watching movies as if you were in a living room. My desk was tucked away in a little corner of the bedroom right next to the bed.

But then, when we finally were able to get the drywall up in the office, Nate set up my temporary workstation for me. Which is actually still my work from home office to this very day. We are still working on the final touches in our office so more to come on that one!

computer monitors with large colonial windows in background

The new workstation space is so much more awesome despite still being in a construction zone. Ignore all the mess behind my desk full of tools and construction materials and it’s the perfect work from home office. Now I have a window view with my new set up! Much better than being tucked away in a dark corner.

I had everything I needed including a handmade sit/stand desk that Nate made me with butcher block wood. It’s large enough for everything to fit on it such as my monitors, laptop, headset, and much more. I also had a floor mat that I could stand on when I decided to stand and work.

office with desk and computer and construction materials in fixer upper

However, I actually came up with something more comfortable than standing on the mat, which is standing on my small trampoline whenever I’m ready to stand and work. I try to balance out my time from sitting and standing. For me, it’s not comfortable to sit all day long.

LAUNDRY ROOM – DRYWALL FINISHED

After Nate finished the drywall mudding in the laundry room, it was time for him to sand. He would sand right over where the drywall mud was placed on the wall. Then he feels it and looks it over to make sure all the ridges and edges are sanded down smooth.

He was using two different hand sanders for the job. One of them was angled and worked really well for corners.

man holding up sander with drywall in background

After the drywall mudding and sanding, Nate finished off the laundry room with a fresh coat of primer for now. Until we decide if we will paint it or also put some salvaged wood over it. We still haven’t figured that out yet.

CHALLENGES DESIGNING AS WE GO

Continuing our cottage renovations and the lessons we learned along the way have taught us many things.

We have done a lot of work on drywall. However, as we keep changing things around, we end up going backwards a lot of times. The reason is because we’ll spend all this time on the drywall mudding, but then we’ll end up putting in built-ins on top of it. Or we’ll end up covering the drywall with our salvaged pine.

When we cover up the drywall with salvaged wood like shiplap or beadboard or anything like that, then we are just double working the situation. If we had known in advance that we were going to do that then we wouldn’t have to go through that whole mudding process. We have gone backwards a few times because we have put shiplap on like the wall in our kitchen and living room. So some of the work we did to mud it, may have just been a little frivolous or fruitless.

reclaimed beadboard and shiplap over drywall in fixer upper

But, we have been kind of designing this little fixer upper as we’re going. We’re not very good at making these plans ahead and remember we’ve been also working full time jobs at the same time. Trying to do everything all at once has been a little hectic.

If you are doing your own renovations like we are, my advice would be to plan ahead a little bit. But, I’m sure you’re not like us and doing exactly that! I guess if you do have to go back, you at least learned those skills along the way.

That’s one good way to look at it and see the sliver lining in the situation! This has definitely been one of those challenges that has made our projects go a lot slower.

WE HAVE “REAL” WALLS FINALLY!

In any case, whether we were mudding or getting the drywall prepped and ready for a real wall or we were covering it with salvaged wood, it was so exciting to finally have “real” walls in our home.

Especially because I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a house where we were just living in drywall and not real walls. So this was pretty exciting.

GARAGE SIDING – WINDOW TO DOOR

Nate also worked on the garage siding where there was once a window. We planned to place another window there at a later time. So Nate was working on prepping the area to make it look better before we actually got to it.

Now, remember how I said that we seem to find ourselves working backwards? Well, we later decided to place a door on the side of the garage instead of a window. That way we have another entrance into the garage besides the regular garage door entrance.

We also had to go through our local heritage commission for approval on it and it was granted. We’ll share more about that coming up.

Continuing our cottage renovations and the lessons we learned were invaluable!

2 Corinthians 5:1

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

man spraying primer on white cottage and sanding drywall

CHECK OUT OUR VIDEOS

Thanks for joining us on this journey! We hope that you will find inspiration watching us learn as we go while we’re attempting to renovate and rebuild this old small historic cottage mostly on our own. Stay tuned for more progress updates ahead!

You can also watch a video about this here.