Demo diva

For today’s workout I decided to move the material I pulled out of the bathroom from the upstairs hallway to the barn. Along the way I got distracted though, and ended up going from this:

To this:

The shelves and built-in were massive and awkward and I hit my head on the decorative cabinet in the stairwell one too many times (okay, once, but it hurt; it will eventually find a new home). They all had to go. Not sure what to do with the space, but to my eye it looks much better open.

Obviously I’m itching to expose the rest of the wood floors here too but it will definitely have to wait. There is a lot more heavy work to do upstairs and I don’t want to damage them, so this (along with the entryway) will be the last floor I pull up before sanding and oiling the floors throughout the whole house.

Demolishing that built-in was a real challenge, so I didn’t actually have the energy to haul everything out to the barn. For this reason, my entryway currently looks like this:

If I get a second wind later today I’ll haul it out. It’s beautiful outside and a little warmer, so it would be a good afternoon project.

ETA: I did actually wind up moving everything out to the barn!

Success!

I’m exhausted, but so thrilled that I was able to pull all the vinyl and subflooring out of the office. Here’s the reveal, after having given the floor a good washing with pine oil soap:

Eventually I will want to refinish it, but for now it’s a million times better than the old vinyl. It’s not even really all that much darker than the living room:

There was a scary moment when I found a huge dark spot on the subflooring after tearing off the vinyl:

There’s something wrong with the chimney and I was worried the floor underneath would be totally rotted out.

Turns out it was in relatively okay shape:

While there’s a little discoloration, there doesn’t seem to be any rot. I think a lot of the discoloration was just soot, since much of it came off when I washed the floor (I had to change the water so many times!).

This was physically exhausting work, but the result is incredibly satisfying. I feel like it’s my first real success at the farmlet. And it only took me a day of hard labor!

Since there’s a farm supply store that sells paint in the village, I’m really hoping to paint the walls and ceiling (white!) once I’m out of quarantine and can go shopping again. Of course that depends on whether the store is allowed to remain open, so I’ll just have to see come Saturday when I’m allowed out in the world.

One last picture of the office floor!

Office floor

It was too cold to work outside or in the unheated bathroom, so I accidentally started a new project in what will be the office:

Unfortunately, this is where I have been sleeping and storing my clothes. I’m going to have to drag the mattress and suitcases into the kitchen (the only other heated room right now) so that I can work on the rest.

There are just SO many nails in the subfloor. Clearly the person who installed the vinyl was completely sick of these sweet old softwood floors. It almost seems manic!

Snow patches

The weather is glorious today but still quite cold. It seemed like a good idea to walk around the property and document the last patches of snow on the ground, especially since they don’t all correspond to where you might think they would be.

In the shadows on the north side of the house makes sense:

This sunny east-facing slope makes less sense, but I’m guessing it’s because of cold wind:

A friend on the internet confirmed that those are most likely two apple trees, by the way—yay! The apple trees and lake behind make a lovely view out the kitchen window.

Much of the big field behind the barn is still covered in snow and ice too:

In the areas where there isn’t snow I’m testing out options for where to place three small raised beds. This appears to have the best sun for the largest part of the day, even with all the trees:

I pulled the cardboard out of the chicken coop in the barn. Someone suggested doing hügelkultur raised beds so I covered the cardboard with a bunch of rotting branches that had been cut and dumped in this thicket next to the barn:

The thicket looks a lot better and that stone wall to the right is where the pinks will go.

Once I’ve figured out where to put the beds, I’ll prep them with compost and hay and wait for planting time.

 

 

 

Quick and dirty

Still no internet in the house and it’s hard to write blog posts on the phone, so this will be brief. On Wednesday the five cubic meters of compost that I ordered arrived:

Maybe I should have held off on this because I’m feeling paralyzed about where to place the beds. I’ve been watching the sun and shadows throughout each day and there is no ideal spot because of all the trees. I also discovered that the tire on the wheelbarrow is completely rotted. I found another smaller wheel in the barn that might work, but the old wheel is rusted in place. I may try again today to replace it.

Since I couldn’t figure out what to do with the compost, I did some cleaning up outside instead. There was a big roll of wire fencing stuck in a bunch of brush next to the barn that I pulled out (had to use a hacksaw!):

It’s now in the barn. I also moved a big ugly pile of old roof tiles from a highly visible place in the yard into the barn:

Much better!

Bathroom demo, take 1

Since I don’t quite have the mental bandwidth to dive back into work just yet, I decided to start in on the bathroom right away. It felt really good to tear into something. Usually most of the things I do with my hands require careful attention and precision, so it was kind of weird to just willfully destroy stuff.

I pulled out some shelves and the framing for the shower, as well as the cabinet over the sink:

 

Gruesome mold, no? I wore a mask! Here’s what it looked liked before:

And yes, before anyone freaks out, I did cut the power while I was working. It would have been a total bummer to electrocute myself on the first day of renovating.

It probably doesn’t look like much, but it was a solid two hours of hard work for me using hand tools. Here is what I pulled out:

I’m not really using the upstairs, so it can all stay there for now.

The wall panels seem really difficult to remove. I’ll give them a go another day. For now it’s a late lunch and then maybe a nap for me!

Edited to add: I just measured the wall on either side of the door. The side where the shower is now is 786mm while the side where the sink is is 817mm. I had been thinking I wanted to switch the shower and sink, so this is an argument in favor of doing that. Here’s the layout I have in my head:

 

 

Getting started

After an unexpectedly quick evacuation from my sabbatical in the US, I now find myself camped out at the farmlet and under a two-week quarantine. I’ve spent two nights here and today is the first day where I can just hang out and start to regroup and take stock.

My ex let me borrow his car, so I was able to raid the stuff I have in storage, score a used table and chairs, and stock up on food.  My ex also lent me a mini fridge. Unfortunately I set the temperature too low and froze all my eggs:

It was possible to salvage about half of them.

Someone local dropped off a stove he was giving away, but it needs to be repaired. I bought the missing part and will do some research and try to work up the nerve to fix it. In the meantime I bought a single hot plate so I can do basic cooking. I can’t really bathe or do laundry here yet, but I’m incredibly grateful just to have a place to stay. It was so fortuitous that I stumbled across this place and was actually able to buy it.

Today I think I’m going to start demo-ing the bathroom. For that I need some tools, so I went out to the barn to get some, along with a box to keep them in:

I only took things that looked newish—none of the antiques or handmade tools. Still pretty cool! I should add that I already have a crowbar and the bigger things I need for actual demo. These are more for unscrewing hooks and other things I want to repurpose.

 

Change of plans, again

The COVID-19 pandemic (which I always want to call “Corvid”-19; caw, caw!) has caused me to change plans a bit. I had expected to return to Norway after my sabbatical ended in June, but my employer is calling everyone back, so I’m flying back (Inshallah) tomorrow instead. I’ll have to “camp” out at the farmlet during the mandatory quarantine period, which will be challenging, but ok. Couple of things:

• someone local is willing to sell me their used stove and refrigerator; they will be able to deliver around 1 April, so I’ll have a week or two without.
• My ex is going to lend me a foam mattress and some kitchen things, since most of what I own is being used by the renter in the apartment.
• There is a (relatively) local source for compost-based garden soil, Øras IKS. Since I’ll be there for the full growing season, it makes sense to try to establish a few beds right away, so the plan is to put in an order for a big delivery of soil.
• If I can get the soil, I’m thinking I’ll just follow Huw Richards’ instructions for making a “lazy bed.” I want to keep my expectations low; it seems important to just jump into it. I’d like to at the very least put in a perennial bed with asparagus and rhubarb, since they take a while to get established. Maybe some strawberries and potatoes too?
• I may also try to build some easy cold frames using the windows and wood lying around in the barn.
• It will be important to get the bathroom renovation started, so I’ll put a request up on MittAnbud on Finn.no (the Norwegian equivalent of CraigsList; I’ve had good luck there in the past) for bids from local contractors soon after arriving.
• I will need to join Norsk permakulturforening right away. All their permaculture courses this spring will probably be canceled, but it will still be a good way  of connecting with experienced people.
• Realistically speaking, I’m going to need to set up internet service.
• ETA: The work boots I ordered just arrived; I’m guessing I’m going to need that composite toe, given all the heavy work I have ahead of me!

This should be plenty to keep me busy during quarantine and self isolation. Now I just have to make it across the Atlantic!

Solar power, again

A recent discussion in an online forum I belong to has me rethinking the whole solar power thing. I realized I had a serious misunderstanding of how it works when a person has a solar power system connected to the grid. I had mistakenly assumed that you could continue to produce power on your own if the grid goes out, but just learned that this is not the case. If the grid goes down, your power shuts down too, unless you have battery storage. And even so, they don’t want you connected and producing power since that would be dangerous (a little handwaving here, as I’m not exactly sure how that works).

The guy from Onovo I’ve been emailing with recommended that I look into the off-grid systems currently available for cabins in Norway. He recommended a place called Hyttetorget (“the cabin marketplace”) and a place called Sunwind. These are totally off-grid systems with battery banks that come in complete packages according to anticipated usage. This may be a better option for me.

This all has me thinking about how much electricity I really need. Certainly I want to live comfortably and use modern conveniences, but at the same time it would be interesting to see how little I would actually need. I recently listened to an extended interview with David Holmgren, one of the originators of permaculture practices on a show called The Permaculture Podcast; in the interview, Holmgren said something I think is really important. He said that households of just one person are not very productive and not very resilient. It’s sobering for me as a single person and soon-to-be empty nester to hear that, but I found his solution to that challenge to be pretty inspiring: “The only way to respond to that is to minimalize what one is doing–sort of live more like a monk; absolute frugality, simplicity.” He went on to say that “If we are by ourselves, the adaptive strategy is just to simplify.” While that may sound harsh, it does really ring true.

Pine floors, again

This is a continuation of last month’s post about the pine floors in the house. Here’s a close-up of the living room floor:

As far as I’m concerned, it’s absolutely perfect. I see no need to change it at all. I wonder if it would be possible to recreate this look in the other rooms? Sadly, I imagine I’ll end up re-doing this one too so that they all match. There is clear evidence of similar flooring upstairs as well, though with a completely different finish:

This is from the closet in the south bedroom (the one with oddly-shaped door). It gives me hope that I can remove the closet and the gray vinyl flooring. There is also wood flooring visible in the closet in the upstairs hallway:

Again, I would be tearing out the poorly-constructed and impractical closet and ripping up the vinyl flooring to expose the pine boards. So far so good, right? But then the north bedroom closets inexplicably revealed yet another layer of vinyl:

It’s actually really pretty and looks like authentic linoleum. If that turns out to be the case, I would strongly consider keeping it. I love real linoleum; it’s a wonderful, natural product. My concern is that there would be lots of glue and holes from newer layers, so it might not be salvageable. In that case, I would just have to strip down to the floorboards here too. By the way, the flooring in the room is not real cork; it’s just a vinyl with a cork pattern. Cork I would love.

The other rooms downstairs are going to be a real challenge. The kitchen has some kind of very worn vinyl, with what looks like at least one or two more layers underneath (you can’t see that in the picture, but I peeled some back in a corner and it looked nasty):

The office floor is relatively new and looks to be vinyl with an oak pattern or maybe some kind of laminate flooring (though to me that seam screams vinyl):

It definitely has to go. Then finally, the entry has the same kind of garish vinyl as the upstairs hall:

Ugly as it is, I plan to keep it in place as long as possible because of the high traffic in the area. It will be the last room stripped before renting a sander and doing the refinishing.

I don’t know why mismatched flooring bothers me so much, but it really does. It’s a complete first world problem, but I find it really disturbing in the same way that I find a lot of background noise disturbing. It literally stresses me out. I can’t wait to tear into all of this, even though it will be a huge and physically tiring job. I just have to keep focused on the living room floor and how lovely the house will be when it all looks like that.