Here We Are - Moving and Renovating Our Own Home

Wow, it seems a month has flown by since my last entry. The thought of writing has crossed my mind often, but time hasn’t been on my side. It’s relentless, as you know.

But for a good reason. We’ve moved into our dream house! Up on the fell, overlooking the lake, sheltered by the creaking log walls of an old home. Here we are.

May has shown its claws—those northern claws. A cold wind blows from the north, and almost every day, it snows. Not much accumulates, and the northern wind carries it away wherever it pleases, but summer vibes are still far off on this fell. A few chaffinches have dared to chirp their first notes, but that quickly silences with the next snowstorm.

It’s wonderful to be able to write and do my own things. During the day, I mostly look like this:

We’re renovating the house’s bathroom—if you can even call it that, as it’s less than three square meters. The plumbers nearly burst out laughing when they saw how the house’s plumbing was originally installed, and that was the first thing we had to fix. In addition, we’ve had a house full of various workers since early morning, including a carpenter and a sheet metal worker from the electrical side.

We're not doing a lot of renovations at this stage. The plan isn’t to tear open every surface of the house from floor to ceiling and renovate everything at once. We’re trying to keep everything at a calm pace and tackle one thing at a time. But I’m beginning to understand why it’s rarely practical to do so.

When the carpenter opens up the wall, he finds an interesting electrical installation that leads nowhere. It definitely needs attention, and while the electrician is fixing it, he might as well take a look at the half-done wiring from the late 1980s in the attic and make some adjustments to prevent short circuits or other safety hazards.

The bathroom needs to be ventilated as effectively as possible to ensure that the nearly 200-year-old wooden structure remains dry and free from moisture. For that, we need to run a couple of air ducts to the roof so that the water vapor and humidity are intentionally directed outside. The sheet metal worker will come to attach roof hoods that match the character of the house for the air ducts and will also check the condition of the roof while he’s at it.

After opening the bathroom floor, we discover that all the insulation in the house has been done with plastic-based wool, which is not breathable and very unsuitable for a wooden house. If moisture gets in somewhere, it will stay there and may slowly begin to rot the valuable logs. Should we replace the insulation now in the bathroom or maybe also in the entryway, which could almost be opened up at the same time?

Phew. There’s enough material here to last a while. In a couple of weeks, I’ve learned new things about compressed air valves for drain ventilation and ventilation for a log house.

But.

Everything in its time. That’s our theme in this project.

Since (surprisingly) the renovation budget is limited, we’re doing as much as we can ourselves. The carpenter leaves us to tackle everything possible after his workday: clearing out the moss found under the bathroom floor, removing old insulation from the wall cracks, carrying old tiles outside, and dismantling this and that.

That’s when the harshness of time hits.

Every evening, I watch the most beautiful sunset behind the line of fells, feeling a bit wistful as I look at my camera, which leans quietly against the log wall of the cabin, resigned to its fate and growing bored from inaction.

Time doesn’t allow for my own creative projects at this point.

In the mornings, I manage to sit for a moment with a cup of coffee before the day fills up with questions from the workers, order lists, and plans.

After they leave, we start our own workday. By ten in the evening, we both collapse into bed, exhausted, and begin everything anew in the morning.

But here we are, in the best of health and in the happiest of mindsets. Amid all the hustle and bustle, I feel small sparks that this is the right place to be. The right place for me, the eternal wanderer, to finally set down roots in this cold and frost-laden northern land, among these old trees and stunted bushes.

Here we are.

I’m glad you’re here too. I’ll update you on our activities here and on Instagram, and as we approach the threshold of summer (ha, which summer?), things will calm down, allowing me to give space to my creativity again. It’s patiently waiting in its own corner, perhaps even brewing more ideas for the future.

♥ Sanna