Project make our home year round livable 😅

Welcome to our newest construction project. We call it “make our house year-round livable”😅

In Estonia, it’s pretty normal for families to have what they call “summer homes” or “garden cottages”. These are often tiny places (think 20-30m2 / 200-300ft2) with maybe a sauna and a front room and a wood burning stove. No running water. Dry toilet (outhouse). But usually electricity. Estonian families spend weekends or the summer months in these tiny homes in the countryside, tending to gardens and fruit trees, using the sauna, and generally living at a slower pace. Some of these homes have stayed in families for generations.

Our house that we bought 5 years ago was all that we could afford on the terms that were available to us as foreigners. It was built in the 1970s or 1960s as one of these summer places. The original part was just a sauna. Then they added a front room to rest in after sauna. Then owners kept building on and building on (we counted at least 6 distinct builds).

The problem is that most of the house was never meant for people to live in it over the cold months. So there’s no foundation. Essentially no insulation. And there was no reliable heating or cooling. (Luckily water and electricity and a real toilet had been added long before we arrived.) It gets VERY cold in the winter.

We bought a fixer upper when we weren’t sure we could ever have kids — it was going to be the project we worked on together. But then Eloise came and at first we thought we might even need to sell it and get something more accessible for her. But we realized there was probably a way to renovate it into something we loved AND make it accessible for Eloise.

We also have discovered that while always living in a construction zone brings chaos and mess, it also is a stress relief to Brian and I to collaborate and imagine and work together to find economical and smart ways forward.

We have done a lot and still have so much left to do (including some big decisions soon.)

What are you curious about in this process?

(P.S. We are lucky enough to have a builder we like and trust to do the construction— there’s no way we could do it ourselves with our lives as they are.)