Cottage Renovations and Learning How to Garden Locally

Cottage renovations and learning how to garden locally was a lot to take on all at once, but we were super ambitious!

woman turning faucet on antique cast iron sink

One of the things that really helped me out when I was doing research to start my own little garden for the first time. Total noob here. Besides watching YouTube videos of how to start a garden or people that are gardening.

BEGINNER GARDENING

Or reading blogs about others starting their gardens and different tips and tricks. Not to mention the different methods. There are so many ways to even start a garden and even ways to garden. There is just a whole world of different gardening methods out there!

We have a good sized yard to start off with a small scale garden. Since we have a pretty large front and backyard, I wanted to just turn everything into a food forest. That way I could plant fruit trees and like garden everywhere possible all over our yards!

But, Nate was like, let me just build you some garden beds and we’ll just start small.

Then I could test it out and see how I liked it. And see if I would even devote time to working on it. Then we could expand from there. That was like the greatest advice ever! And it seems like a lot of other gardeners say the same thing, especially if you are just starting out like me. I totally agree with that now whole heartedly!

In fact, I did start out pretty small, but I think that we could’ve even started out smaller. There is a lot to learn and a lot of work that is involved.

LOCAL GARDENING WEBINARS

One of the things that was beneficial for me was to sign up for local webinars offered through a city program and other non-profits. They were usually hosted by master gardeners in the area. These were people that really knew the type of soil that we were dealing with here. The types of produce that grows the best. Whether you were planning on having a vegetable garden or you wanted to plant pollinators.

There were so many topics of webinars to join and I tried to sign up for as much as possible and for as many topics as I could. This way I could learn about what grows the best here in our area. What pollinators are in our area and what do they like to munch on and how could I grow those plants and flowers.

I also joined webinars that talked about composting, vermicomposting, where to get your worms and how to take care of them. How to compost and what to compost. There were an endless amount of topics and knowledge to glean from.

I even emailed some of the master gardeners and called them. We also have a master gardener in our neighborhood so I would also pick her brain on some things too. I really made an effort to just get out there to gather as much information locally as possible and that was very beneficial.

Throughout some of the webinars they did recommend a place where you could pick up and purchase your soil and compost locally. We wanted to try it out to see if we liked it. The quality seemed really great and same with the price. It even seemed a bit cheaper than buying some of the same items at the local hardware store.

This was a great way to support local. And sometimes when you put out your yard waste, they are the ones that collect it and turn it into the compost.

MOUNTING ANTIQUE CAST IRON SINK

We have posted a few blogs and videos about our antique cast iron sink, but it was not completely set up yet. So at this point in our renovation journey, we were finally getting it set up. It’s quite heavy and I tried to lift it and help Nate with it and that just did not happen unfortunately.

woman standing next to antique cast iron sink

But, now he was getting ready to mount it up onto the wall because it’s so heavy with these brackets and kind of test it out. And then get the plumbing going so that we could actually finally have running water in our kitchen! Because we were running into the bathroom to use the sink in there to do the dishes or to wash produce. It was the only place that we had running water in the house.

Now it was time to put all of his work to the test to see if the plumbing was actually right and if the mounted cast iron was secure enough for us to be able to use. Yes, I can’t believe it. It’s such a beautiful sink and we finally had a working sink with running water! And finally able to use this wonderful cast iron sink that we had purchased months prior and not sure when we’d even be able to get to it and actually be able to use it. So this was a huge accomplishment! We certainly were making progress along the way.

STORAGE FOR SALVAGED WOOD

Since Nate was salvaging all this old wood, he needed a place to store it as we were running out of room. We have a tiny little attached cottage garage, but that just wasn’t enough. So he built these storage boxes in our backyard to house all of this salvaged wood.

He went through the wood to clean, restore, remove nails, and organize it. What an amazing job he did at all this. It’s pretty spectacular!

We were not only preserving our original 1930’s wood, but there was also other wood probably from the addition to our house. That might have been around the 1950’s or 1960’s. It was really just a little time capsule and trip down memory lane of history that we were able to uncover, salvage, and hopefully reuse.

We have been reusing some of it, but we still have quite a bit of wood to use and to design our space with. So it’s very exciting to see how this is all going to unfold as we continue to get creative and build ourselves pretty much a little handmade home!

Isaiah 65:21

They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

man working on cast iron sink plumbing and woman testing out antique cast iron sink faucet

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.