November 20, 2019 by Jamie Siebens

Our Schoolhouse Reno: Temporary

Ready for the next installment of our Schoolhouse Reno?

If you noticed, in the last photos of my last post, the camper is nowhere to be seen. That’s because rather suddenly, in mid-September, my family decided that they were DONE living in the camper.

We were also running very close to the end of our budget, and we knew that any further renovations would be happening slowly, as we could afford it. So we moved some furniture into the house, set up a temporary kitchen, and moved back in.

Since then, we’ve been moving forward, ever so slowly. Ed has installed drywall for all four bedrooms, and the room that is functioning as my office is completely finished except for flooring and trim.

We’ll finish the other bedroom, move the girls in, and then finish the room their currently in.

Our house isn’t pretty or picture-perfect yet, but it’s warm (thank you spray foam insulation) and cozy, and really, we have everything we need.

Here’s what our house looks like these days:

And that’s it, folks! Well, at least for now. Can you believe that we accomplished all of this on evenings, weekends, and days off in less than four months?

While I wish we were finished now, I am super proud of what we’ve done so far, and I have no regrets.

Thanks so much for following along with our Schoolhouse Reno!

Want to see the transformation? Here’s the rest of the series:

Would you take on a project like this? Even if you knew you might have to move back into an unfinished house? Would it be worth it?

November 20, 2019 by Jamie Siebens

Our Schoolhouse Reno: Siding

It’s been so much fun sharing our Schoolhouse Renovation project.

So far, we’ve covered Demolition and Framing, and today I’m sharing pictures of my FAVORITE part of the project so far: siding!

When we bought the house in September of 2018, the previous owners had started a siding project but never finished it, and they left us with boxes of brand new tan siding so that we could finish. And that was our original plan – in fact, that fall we completely re-sided the front of the house.

Our first reno of the front. November 2018

But I honestly was never happy with the color or quality of that siding, and once I realized that we would have to tear off the existing siding, cut in windows, and then re-install it, I started lobbying hard for new siding.

I couldn’t imagine going to all of that work to re-install a product that I absolutely hated.

After much discussion, including my (strangely prophetic) declaration that I’d “be willing to live without kitchen cabinets for a while” in order to fit the new siding into our (tight) budget, Ed finally agreed to go with new siding.

Then I promptly fell in love with vinyl board-and-batten siding, which is nearly double the cost of the vinyl lap siding we had been looking at.

Me: “If we have to, I guess we can wait on flooring too.” #priorities

Things I love about the following pictures:

You can see the outline of the original 4 tall windows on the long sides of the house — total one-room-schoolhouse vibes!
Shiplap!!! <3
All the windows we put in ~ swoon.

As you can see, we pulled some late nights working on the siding.

The thicker board-and-batten style vinyl siding could only be installed at temps of 58° F or higher, any lower and it was too stiff to maneuver into position and it would crack and chip when we had to cut it. With cooler temps upon us, we were in a race against time, and we literally finished on the last warm-enough day!

Isn’t she pretty?

You may have noticed that we took off the little enclosed porch we had added last fall. There were some underlying issues with the cement slab causing rainwater to pool inside the porch, and it ended up being smaller than what we needed. We now have the framework in place for a larger, lean-to style porch which we’ll hopefully install next summer.

Just as a reminder – here’s what the house looked like the day we bought it, after adding the porch last fall, and a current “after.”

That’s it for the exterior! Next up, I’ll be sharing our current digs. (Notice there’s no camper in the final pic?)

Thanks so much for following along with our Schoolhouse Reno!

Want to see the transformation? Here’s the rest of the series:

November 20, 2019 by Jamie Siebens

Our Schoolhouse Reno: Framing

Four months ago we moved out of our fixer-upper and into a 24′ camper so that we could gut our house (a former 1895 one-room-schoolhouse and town hall turned home) from the rafters to the crawlspace.

In my previous post, I shared photos of our demolition process. Today I’m sharing the transformation from a cavernous empty space to framed up rooms.

In real life, the demolition and framing timelines overlap.

Ed framed in the center load-bearing wall, new windows, and the bumped-in kitchen wall before we had fully torn out the subfloor. You’ll see this in some of the photos. We also stopped framing for a while so that we could button up the exterior before winter – so we didn’t fully finish framing until mid-September.

Once again, I’ll let the pictures tell the story. Enjoy!

The most significant thing about this part of the reno is that we took our house from two bedrooms/one bathroom to four bedrooms/two bathrooms, and we nearly doubled the square footage.

We also hired a contractor to finish spray-foam insulating the rest of the house. It worked out to the same price per linear foot as the DIY version, with a better quality product – and most importantly we didn’t have to do it! You can see the finished ceiling in the last photo.

That’s it for now.

Thanks so much for following along with our Schoolhouse Reno!

Want to see the transformation? Here’s the rest of the series:

November 20, 2019 by Jamie Siebens

Our Schoolhouse Reno: Demolition

Four months ago I announced that we’d be living in a camper (again). While I intended to update regularly on our process, I slightly underestimated how busy and crazy our life would be. It turns out that completely gutting and rebuilding the inside of your house, while living in a 24′ camper with a spouse, two kids, and a cat is actually kindof crazy.

But you probably knew that.

It was quite the adventure.

Looking back, it’s amazing to see just how far we’d come. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

This update covers demolition, which took basically every evening and weekend from July 14 to July 26, and includes tearing out walls and ceilings, painstakingly removing the original schoolhouse flooring (with the hopes of salvaging to reinstall) and pulling up the original 14″ rough sawn board subflooring.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll stop trying to describe the process, and simply leave you with these:

It’s amazing, isn’t it?

Thanks so much for following along with our Schoolhouse Reno!

Want to see the transformation? Here’s the rest of the series:

November 19, 2019 by Jamie Siebens

Our Schoolhouse Reno: First Fixes

It’s been so fun to share the story of our Schoolhouse Reno with you! After a miraculous answer to prayer (and some heavy-duty cleaning) we were able to move into our still very rough fixer-upper.

After the sale of our house in Florida went through, we were able to close out the land contract and pay cash for this place. We had a good budget left over for renovations… but then this happened:

We had the opportunity to buy this huge pole building on land adjoining our property. In fact, these used to be one piece of land, when the house was the town hall, this garage was used to store and repair vehicles owned by the township.

It took a big chunk out of the cash we had left to finish the house, but we knew that we’d never regret owning that garage and property. So we plunked down the cash, knowing that whatever renovations we’d be making on the house would be moved further out into the future.

There were, however, a few things that needed to be done right away.

The first thing we did, was to move the entrance door from the corner of the house towards the center – we felt like this was a cosmetic issue, but would also affect our future floor plan.

The other thing that needed to be done asap, was moving the water line from the well under the foundation and into the main part of the house. When they initially dug the well, they set up the pressure tank in the ugly lean-to that originally housed the well and pump when the building was a one-room-school. But the lean-to was poorly insulated, disgusting, and prone to freezing pipes.

Taking down the lean-to (a.k.a. ‘The wart’) was a huge deal, with some big surprises!

Remember the major flooring issues in the house? When we bought it, we knew that these could be an indication of foundation issues. Or it could just be the floor buckling. We were willing to deal with either option, but obviously hoping it was not a structural problem.

Well, when the contractors came to work on moving the waterline, we discovered that the foundation is one of the best features of this property. It’s thick, strong, and deep. So deep, that it was too far to safely dig under, so they had to bring in a special machine to “mole” under the foundation. This made moving the waterline more expensive, but we were relieved to know the foundation was so deep and strong.

Part of moving the waterline and door also included some MAJOR renovations to the entryway and furnace rooms. It was our first round of gutting the place from the ceiling to the crawlspace and a huge mess!

We were hoping to salvage the gorgeous beadboard that covered the walls and ceiling in this part of the house, but it ended up being covered in crumbling lead paint – something we definitely did not want to keep around. Removing or encapsulating the lead paint wasn’t something we were willing to deal with, so the beadboard had to go.

We also ended up needing to insulate as part of our first fixes. Once the cooler temps of October hit, we realized just how poorly the house was insulated. We ended up spending about $5,000 on spray foam insulation that Ed installed, which sealed up the attic and the northwest corner of the house. We were super impressed a the difference that made!

Other first fixes we did included tearing out the (unsafe) existing second story — just a bedroom built into the attic — and cleaning out the dirt that had been used to insulate the original schoolhouse ceiling. (Yes, they actually used sand/gravel to insulate!)

We had hoped that we could use the original chimney, but it was structurally unsound so we had to remove that as well, while living in the house. It was a HUGE mess.

Last but not least, this spring we removed the original ceiling and drop ceiling, in preparation for the big renovations we had planned.

This is what our house looked like for the majority of the winter, though. Notice the washer/dryer in the tiny bedroom the girls were sharing. It was a cozy COZY winter in our drafty little house.