Time for an update.

It had been quite some time since my last update on the progress of the cottage. I apologize for the large gap between posts, but I did not want to have post after post entitled "more about walls" and "even more about walls".

It is now the beginning of April, and we are still working on the walls. We have finished the removal of the old drywall, and the fiberboard insulation that was on the outer walls. Seizing the opportunity, I replaced all of the older style wire and added new outlets, switches, and breakers. The new insulation is in place and we are in the process of hanging the drywall.




This picture shows the west wall of the house. we had just disconnected the propane and removed the wall mounted heater. In the next step, we added the insulation in the wall section that was behind the heater, and removed the air conditioner.

Day Trip 12/16

I left Indianapolis about 10:30 and walked into the cottage a little before 1:00 on Saturday. We (CMV and I) made a decision to eventually remove all of the drywall in the house. The exterior walls are moldy, damp and poorly insulated, and the interior walls are not much better. I want as much of this completed before springtime comes, so I decided to remove the rest of the drywall in the bedroom.

I first removed the remaining pieces of trim molding and set them aside to take with me when I return home. I next, removed the electrical outlets and fixtures and pulled the carpet out of the room. Lastly, I went at the drywall with the pry bar and a hammer. My goal was to get as much drywall out of the house as I could and still leave that night. In the end, I cleared the remaining four room surfaces, and one wall in the other bedroom.





Once the bedrooms are stripped of drywall, we can make any necessary repairs and add insulation to the outer walls. We will also be able to hang the drywall because there will not be any need for plumber access.

In the wall cavity, I found a large abandoned wasps nest. I was very thankful it was not active, as I disturbed it quite a bit while pulling on the old drywall. If it had been active, I would have suffered from the encounter.

Little Jobs 12/09

This weekend, my friend JSE and I went up to the cottage on Friday night. We didn't expect to get much done that night, but wanted to be there in the morning to get working.


We went up without an agenda, and did not know what we were going to get accomplished. The first task we decided to tackle was to rebuild the corner cabinet in the kitchen. In order to do this, we first needed to buy a roll of insulation and a sheet of drywall. The rest of the kitchen drywall will wait for the plumber to install the pipes in the spring.





With the Insulation cut and in place, we hung the drywall and secured it in place with screws. The cabinet was rebuilt and attached to the wall. In order to clear up some space, we moved all of the cabinets back into the kitchen and set them in their approximate final location.




It was now time to repair the frame on the bathroom/ bedroom border wall. Two studs were removed and replaced, as well as a section of the bottom plate. There was no way to remove the studs without damaging the drywall on the bedroom side of the wall, so we completely removed it ahead of time. After cleaning up the pieces of drywall and almost filling the back of the truck, we could finally repair the wall section.




CMV requested that we bring her as many pieces of trim that we could, so she can work on them over the winter. I removed and labeled them (to ease the re-installation) and loaded them into the truck.