Our constantly shifting project has definitely been our outdoor spaces. From adding patio space in front and in back to our little stock tank pool... we've expanded gardens and shifted hedges. The gardens here are becoming the cornerstone of our landscape. Mostly, mature shrubs keep any wild plants down, and we have lots of opportunities to include native plants and edible ones. Raspberries have taken over a huge section of the front yard, and will eventually be moved to the former "chicken corner" of the back yard. Herbs and native plants surround our crabapple tree, and elderberries dominate one side of our back yard. Still: we have plenty of usable space too.

On the house, we're working toward restoring the original green color. The stucco is done, and we are getting ready to overhaul the wood shakes, return the attic window, and refresh the trim. We'll bring the porch in line with salvaged wood windows to replace the broken triple tracks. I have enough glass to fill in where salvaged sash are missing too. But nothing has changed this exterior quite like the metal roof and solar array. It's truly a huge difference inside and out.

There are no stories in my mind quite like the ones we've built making this basement work for us. When we bought this house, I had a vision for how half of the basement could work with a bathroom and two bedrooms. The bedrooms were constructed as planned... during the beginnings of Covid shut downs... while I was pregnant.

We got both rooms constructed, prepped, and ready to bring the beds downstairs. One bedroom was set up as an office ready for work, and as I was prepping to paint the stairs and banish some of the creepiness of the basement while waiting for egress windows... the babies came. I was discharged the day before the egress window install began, and for three more weeks we split our life between home and the NICU. I did get the stairs painted and the windows cased out before the year was done.

We elected to do the bathroom in a different corner of the basement when the time came, and it's provided an efficient and lovely layout for us to use this little basement. And with both bedrooms being bedrooms now, the back corner has become a nice nook of an office.  The main portion of the basement has ever-expanded by moving walls on multiple occasions, and we're filling in a basement library that is the perfect cozy spot for a book or a nap... the whole basement gives us almost 700 additional square feet, enough for our family of six to feel very comfortable.

As much as the main floor has stayed the same... it's changed too! We worked hard to keep as much of the remaining original features as we could. Crown molding, usable picture rail, the oak buffet... these were all details that made me fall for this house. I will forever thank the previous owners for leaving the woodwork unpainted in most of this floor.

But the kitchen and bathroom were both falling apart, and a gas leak prompted us to start the switch away from natural gas everywhere in the house. Both rooms were remade in a style fitting our bungalow instead of mid-1980s modernization. My one functional heartbreak was deciding to move the attic access from the kids' bedroom into the dining room. It is a much better place for this doorway! But I definitely agonized over cutting through the plaster wall and baseboard. The new door and casings match the originals well, and I restored the cased opening between the living and dining rooms at the same time.

As much as we have accomplished in this house, it has provided us with something that takes more than a structure to provide. It's truly a home. We have a community surrounding us in a place where we know and celebrate our neighbors. We've had some big challenges here, and I'm sure more are coming. But it doesn't escape me how lucky we are to have a place to call our own and the stark privilege we had on the path to getting here.

In all my research on this house, I found that the first 42-49 years (depending on the record, the house was built sometime between 1914 and 1921) it was owned and lived in by immigrants. For more than 100 years, this has been a home to folks from different backgrounds with different ideas about life, liberty, and finding their “American dream.” Our road here was never ours alone, and I hope we can be part of opening pathways to others too.

We encountered more than a few issues getting this little floating deck set up, none of them were quite as frustrating as finding the railings on our main deck had been installed without long enough lag bolts. Since the pool deck is a step down from the main deck, we decided to take out one railing and move it along side the new decking. But once one side was out, it was clear the adjacent attached side was depending on it for structural integrity.

So, we took out and replaced all the railings. I didn't want to use a composite system, as I'm adamant that natural materials wear better in our yard, so I went with a combination of wooden railing with aluminum spindles. The finish ties in well with the greenhouse, and the look opens up the yard in ways we hadn't considered. I got enough to line the main deck and the pool deck in the new material.  The new railing on the pool deck will do a couple things for us: give us a spot to hang some towels and we can roll the pool cover between it and the fence when we're using the pool. The hardcover has been great, but it needs somewhere to go when we swim.

The general construction of the deck was fairly standard: I used TuffBlock foundation blocks instead of footings, wanting to make this a reversible process should the need ever arise, and employing the existing concrete walkway that is under where this floating deck is now. I tied the new framing into old with structural screws to help keep everything connected.

I added a trap door as well, so we can tuck the pool equipment underneath. Keeping it tucked away gives us easy access without making any additional work for us! There is also plenty of space to access all the parts and do any maintenance required.

The stairs were the real challenge in this one. I had considered wrapping the stairs around the corner opposite the pool, but once we knew we needed four steps instead of three (the grading where the steps landed was an additional challenge) a handrail becomes necessary by code. I decided this was a better way to manage it than to leave a full, open corner. That did give us another place to add a railing, which turned out to be the biggest surprise of the build.

The stairs are my favorite part of the whole deck! When I designed the unique shape of the deck, I wanted the stairs to float into the deck by the pool instead of wrapping the corner. It makes this the perfect spot to sit next to the pool. Floating the two bottom steps under the deck also fills the space well, so curious kids and dogs are less tempted to wedge their way underneath, though I'll likely add some screening down the line.

The deck angling to meet the edge of the pool gives the whole deck a presence that reminds me of my grandparent's cabin: Like it just fits into the landscape. I'm planning to help it continue fitting in with more plants and some dirt-free walkways that will help us in the winter too. For now, we're enjoying the extra usable space.

In keeping with a plastic-free deck, I remembered using conventional stains on the deck right before we got our stock tank pool in 2021. They always seem to fail quickly in our mixed climate. Hot summers and brutal winters pull plasticizers off of wood, and stain never seems to last. This time, I opted for a natural, tung oil finish. I went with "Dark Half" from RMP Finishes. It's a beautiful, natural material that should wear well! After several days of splashing, water has been beading off the deck beautifully.

Overall, this project was a bit of a bear to finish! But I'm already seeing how much better it is making our lives here: we can see the pool clearly from the kitchen, it's easier to get in and out, and the existing deck has better access to our bench seating. It's a great change.

Planning ahead of time helped us get set up with where to open the ceiling, and since I built a lot of access panels into the work areas, this process was a lot simpler than it could have been: the majority of our main was already below the library ceilings or behind an access, and the soffit around the new hall storage opens as well. Overall, I only had to remove 7 of the bead board planks. And all but one were reusable!  I disassembled the soffit under the upstairs bathroom, and the plumber tucked the cold line for the tub inside.

The hardest part of the prep was figuring out where to store the things we needed to move: our climate-controlled storage closet was emptied for replacing the vertical section of our main next to the meter, and with plumbing running through the office the kid's room and bathroom had to absorb some temporary storage. Mostly paint! It did give me the opportunity to weed out our old colors for recycling.

The aftermath is great! Our plumbing is in better shape than it's been in years, and this project gave us yet another excuse to clean the often neglected areas of our house. The inspection did reveal one other issue that’s been nagging our house for a long time: our incoming water pressure was too high.  So, we needed to add a pressure regulator valve (PRV).

Residential water pressure should max out at 80 psi, and ours was at 96 psi. I didn’t think it was a huge issue… until it was fixed.  Now, we don’t have water coming at us so fast we have to turn service valves down… and the bidets are a lot more comfortable.  The tub doesn’t have a stubborn drip only fixed when the diverter is engaged, and gaskets and O-rings in our faucets should last a lot longer.  The only downside is the stock tank pool will take a bit longer to fill.  We can make that work!

There are a few parts to the set up that we did in stages (since it arrived in August when the pool was quite full).  The first summer, we filled it using the provided hand pump to around 2 psi -it maxes out at 4 psi.  There were absolutely no issues there!  The hand pump took a bit, and I enlisted the help of our pre-teens to do some of the work.  The hardest part was finding a second 8’ circle that was free of dog debris.

It also came with a set of straps to secure the top to the pool.  We waited until early spring to add these, and with our young pool-loving kids, they were definitely needed!  The cover is easy enough for them to remove alone.  So adding the straps under the pool and around the sides has helped with keeping them from sneaking a swim when no adult is around.

The cover sure seems to be sturdy!  While keeping the kids from swimming solo is our main goal… we now need to keep one of the little kids from using it as an impromptu trampoline.  So far, there have been no problems with his precocious bouncing, but neither a pop nor a fall would be good either!  Still, that review with the dog lounging on top has put my mind at ease on more than one occasion.

If that didn’t stop my brain from racing, snow management should!  After a few bigger snowfalls this year, I can definitely attest to its weight-bearing capabilities.  Eventually though, the top starts to invert with the weight of the snow, and I worry about a collapse... Though that is after at least 100 lbs. of snow on top.  Since this is made from the same material as inflatable kayaks, I'm not shocked. I started brushing the top off the pool as part of my shoveling maintenance.  It's very small price to pay for keeping the pool empty and ready for next season.

Overall, this has been one of the best pool accessories we’ve purchased. From simplifying maintenance (no pool-flipping here!), to keeping the little kids and any backyard critters safe, this has been a major stress-reliever among the tools we have for our yard.  It's definitely a splurge!  But they've designed something worthwhile for what we need here.

(As always, this is a review from an item I purchased!  The cowboy pool people have no idea who I am or that I'm using their equipment in the upper midwest... Unless they audit their shipping from last year.  These opinions and experiences -all good things here!- are all mine.)

Thankfully, I planned around accessing almost everything: the main line is hanging under the ceiling, the soffits mostly open up, and with the exception of around the spigot shut off, I may not have to remove the main portions of the ceilings at all.  Fingers are crossed.

Magnets have been a huge benefit for us in this house: creating magnetic soffits really have given us the ability to sneak access panels in where no one would be the wiser.  It makes me a lot less worried about needing to fully backslide and pull our bead board ceilings entirely, because just about everything can be popped off for work.

This is one that I should have considered swapping a while ago!  I was tripped up by gravity, even though I’d been doing all the maintenance necessary.  In the autumn, I’d turn the hose off at the interior valve, and I’d open the valve outside to eliminate cracking from pressure changes and allow the spigot to drain.  Without a bleed valve on the inside, that was the best, if only, way to allow water to escape or expand with freezes.

Theoretically, I was okay!  But our spigot didn’t go straight out the side wall.  It went into the drywall (the one basement wall we haven’t opened), turns up for about 6”, and turns again to exit through the rim joist.  Those two extra turns are what killed us.  Water was never able to drain fully beyond the interior shut off valve.  It stayed in the pipe before the turn, and when exposed to the sub-zero air from the open spigot, it froze and cracked the PVC valve.

Naturally, I cannot keep plumbing that isn’t safe for potable water.  This was a DIY likely from the 80s or 90s, and it’s showing its age now.  I’m going to swap from PVC to PEX.  I already hired plumbers to replace the PVC, and they start next week!

While we’re at it, I’m treating my husband cold-water-drinking kids to a fridge line.  The automatic ice machine will make our lives a teeny bit easier… and I’ll add a Moen leak sensor there too.  Luckily, the ceilings to remove are pretty minimal, and I’ll have a handful of access panels to add for the new hose spigot and fridge water line.