After almost 3 years we have almost finished our 2 bedrooms downstairs. Some small details to do and maybe some furniture to add but IT IS DONE ! Living in the building site on top of boxes and furniture from other rooms with a small baby was not something I would recommend for others, but I am glad we survived and now I get to share it with you.

In retrospect the hardest job was digging up the floors, which was full of dirt, rocks the size of my dog, old fireplace bricks, broken glass, old boots, lots of metal horseshoes,,, you name it it was all there. But it needed to be done in order for us to put in an air-water pump floor heating so we would not have to heat our house with fireplaces during the cold winters.

But the smartest idea for us was to call in a sand blaster guy who helped clean up our old log walls. I know people who have sanded and cleaned the walls by hand to save money but honestly I find it to be dumb. It would take weeks of man power to do the walls by hand when you could sand blast them for 2 hours and save your arms. It only cost us about 400€ for the entire house. Some things are worth your time and money. I also did not want to paint the walls and only oiled them with Saunasup to help keep the dirt off and the logs looking fresh. I think the result gives off a cozy cabin in the woods feel that I was going for.

I absolutely hated the old red brick fireplace we had in our current bedroom and wanted something more suiting to our old cottage. The first thought was to paint it white,, but that would still look like a brick fireplace which i did not like,, thankfully I have an amazing dad who suggested we plaster it and add the same small bricks as decoration as we did with the warm wall of our kitchen fireplace. I thought it would be too hard to do but turns out is is quite simple, just time consuming. Having to do multiple layers of glue, plaster, mesh sheet and another plaster layer with a final layer of white paint. Each layer taking 24 hours to dry before the next layer could be added. But i dare say the few days of work was absolutely worth it. The fireplace looks so much fresher and I cannot wait to find a perfect door or a mesh protection to finish it off. If you have any ideas on that department then let me know !

Now that the messier jobs are finally done our little Lara Lumme can have her own space to play with her toys and me and my husband can finally have an adult space around the house again. All the curtains have been sewn and windowsills added but there are still a few things to do like cover some cracks and edges of the flooring with rope and finish the last wall with electrical covers but I just could not wait to share it with everyone who have been waiting so patiently for the results.

So here it is,, our cozy family cottage.

Next jobs in the spring are to finish up the walls outside the house and plant new trees to our forest and garden that we had to take down, start work on the shed and garage, fix up the old sauna house and hopefully we will have the time and money to start our homesteading journey by planting a food garden and getting chickens and ducks as well.

Fingers crossed and see you soon !

Love,

Brita