Joe and i spent the better part of our weekend working away at our tiny cottage in pentwater. it’s a little hard to see from this picture how steep these steps are but… trust me it was bad. you can see how uneven they are and kind of crooked. i’m not sure who built them as there was a family that shared the cottage before us and then a older man who lived here for a long time before the addition was built (part where the ceiling fan is). this house is actually three parts pushed together. to the left is the first part of an old house and then the bedroom and loft is technically a second house that was pushed together. the historical society thinks it might have been the barns to the larger houses on either side of us. when we are finished with the house we are going to have them come through and do some research on the house and figure out just what exactly it was. most of the houses in pentwater were built around the mid to late 1800’s. the cemetery is kind of cool to walk through because some of the graves are so old. but that is neither here nor there we are talking about steps today. more so the non existence of them now.
an hour of work with a crowbar and a sledge hammer did the trick and the steps of death were completely removed. once we had them taken out we decided to “do things the right way” and take down the paneling we hunt to match the old steps and made it go all the way to the ground making a solid wall. now just to paint that. (along with giving pretty much everything else a second coat.
you can see in the picture below that when we had the door way fixed the two different walls pushed up together. i wish there was some way we could have showed off the neat siding but unfortunately it was mostly on the insides of the walls and we needed to insulate the exterior walls. (btw makes a HUGE difference). the room looks so nice and big without the step wall there but truth be told the bedroom is big enough already for a tiny cottage and we need steps to the upstairs.
we thought about putting in a cool old spiral staircase but that was just not practical and it was too wide. we also thought about just installing an attic ladder but we wanted the privacy of the wall when we have guests over. you know because we have so many over to this little shack of ours. it seems like we are further behind than where we started at the begining of the weekend but that is what happens when you demo and don’t put it back together. we hired a handyman to come and put the steps back in for us because 1.) not sure when we are going to be able to get back up there again and 2.) we don’t want to. we want to finish painting the trim at home so our next step is floor and trim… paint and maybe a new shower. we are so close!
we realized that this has been about a 5 – 6 year project for us. sure we could have dedicated an entire summer and just finished it but we have had a great time slowly fixing it up and enjoying the beaches and town and new friends we’ve made. we both say every time we leave that this might not have been our most profitable financial investment but it sure is our most valuable.
