Home for a Spell
When I came back from Montreal in the summer of 2012, I was pretty unsure of what I was doing. I was certain that I was done living in a city and that I wanted my life to ‘look’ as little like it had as possible. Having done home renovations before, I knew that I could accomplish at least that. Budding interests in gardening and sustainability were paramount so I knew it had to be with some land. A lifetime of building sort of ruled out any sort of ‘apartment’. But that was about all I knew.
My family owned some land in Stafford, CT since 1961. Roughly 4 acres right near Soapstone MT. It was a pretty piece of land that had never been built on but for a scrappy barn, cobbled together from found wood and a trailer home that was condemned. I liked the area but had no money to build on that land. Nextdoor, however, sat this little 650 sq. ft. cabin. It looked rough but straight and as many times as I’d seen it, I saw no one leave or arrive. On a whim, I dropped a note in the mailbox to see what the scoop was.
As Found
As it turned out, the son of the people who lived there (one passed, one in assisted living) was trying to figure out what to do with it. Clearly, he wasn’t ready to sell, though at the time I’d have been able to fund the purchase so, after looking it over, he offered to rent it to me at a really reasonable price and in return, I’d fix up some things that were problematic .. of which, there were many.
The Clean Out and Interior Renovation.
The house had oil fired hot water heat but since its construction in the 70’s, it had been heated by two wood stoves that had been in poor working condition for a very long time. The walls were covered in soot, as were the floors and trim, the toilet appeared to be mostly clogged with some sort of congealed fat, there was a tub but no shower, the window panes were barely in the frames and/or had rotten sills, the back door was nailed shut inside and out and filled with insulation which was in turn filled with mice, the roof was well done… etc.
A number of these things were out of my budget and interest as a renter. Had I owned it, first thing would have been the roof, windows, and doors. Instead, as I needed a place to live, I started cleaning it out and up.
The cleaning took a few weeks between the walls and the knotty pine trim. The floor was another question altogether. There was linoleum laid on most of it, though not adhered, with carpets here and there. The subfloor was particle board, which thankfully didn’t get any water. Again, had I owned it, I might have done something more permanent … at the time though, affordable, durable options were few. So I opted to clean it as best as I could and seal it with primer, then lay several coats of Acrylic floor paint and use rugs over that.
The place had one closet in the bedroom (which had no door … more on that later) so I built a number of wall mounted storage solutions. One, a true to aesthetic coat rack for the entryway to the dining room of pine board and doweling matching the existing trim. Two, a set of bookshelves for over the desk in the living room, fantastically overbuilt as I was working on a metal production floor at the time with access to steel that was, just SO over the top. The steel brackets bolted straight into the studs of the outside wall of the place. Real pretty … heavy … but real pretty.
The bathroom needed a shower. After cleaning it up, replacing the toilet, and painting it (duh) I decided to rip the tub tile surround out, plumb a shower head and hook ups for a washer dryer in the space behind the stall. I simply rebuilt the valves though that left me with some finish work beyond the tile as the space between the knob and the wall was too big. I built some bushings out of Black Palm Wood and sealed them in epoxy resin. Again with the heavy steel stuff, I’d been carrying around these spalted maple blanks for a few years and they made nice little over the toilet shelves which was nice as there was no medicine cabinet.
Exterior Work.
The windows and doors were pretty bad. I didn’t really have a way to deal with them properly as that would have been dumping tens of thousands of dollars into a place I didn’t own. So, it was replacing panes, reglazing, replacing sills, replacing seals, and painting.
The main door was in good enough shape overall. It was painted and sealed before installing a new storm door. The back door was another issue. It had been closed up for a long time with insulation between the inner and outer doors. Whatever structure it led to was long since gone leaving a good 5 foot drop outside. I opened it up and cleaned it out saving the inner door for refinishing and use elsewhere. Pulled the frame and trim and replaced it with a new half glass door and a new storm door. The original inner door was cut and refinished in order to put a door on the bedroom from the kitchen. The following summer, after pressure washing the place (the P.O. USED ENGINE OIL TO PROTECT THE WOOD SIDING… ah …) I put a little deck out there which I was scarcely able to use.
Odds and Ends.
The end of my time at that cabin came way quicker than I’d anticipated. First punch was a tree falling on my truck. A general air of crappiness from the landlord was another. But I kept building in and for it the whole time. I restored an old barn light for use as a shop light over the door. I spent a summer growing a 75′ x 75′ garden on my land which was only a few steps from the cabin. In the end though, the landlord wasn’t going to sell and I needed to get on with it. No promises … No regrets. I scraped out some pretty good work and memories from that time.
Custom Job 