The Cellar

What a crazy week! The days are seriously flyyyyying by! Things are still moving ahead at the house, slowly but surely. We're pretty much done all the ripping down that we're going to do. We discovered some rot on one side of the big dormer in the second floor. We knew the front wall had rot but we were expecting it to be mostly in the first floor. We weren't expecting so much in the second floor. But we WERE expecting the unexpected. Cause that's how it is with old houses. So even though we weren't totally expecting it, we weren't surprised either.

 So even though our pine floors look really good, we thought it would be a good idea to remove the first 4 or 5 floorboards along that rotten wall to see if it has gone into the floor beams. After the unexpected rot in the front wall upstairs, I was totally expecting to see rot in the floor beams. But nope! It looks great! Which was unexpected. Which goes to prove that if you've got an 85 year old farmhouse, expect the unexpected, whether that be positive or negative.

But on to our stone cellar. We're not entirely sure but we're pretty positive that the basement  is from the house that stood there before. The walls are made of big chunks of stone. Which make very thick walls and really deep window sills.

We love it! It's absolutely rustic and charming. The walls will be whitewashed so they'll be bright white. And of course new windows. We'll also be jackhammering up the very uneven basement floor, digging down another 10 cm to give us a little extra ceiling height, and then putting in floor heating and a proper floor. But this will be sometime after we've moved in. Our main priority is getting the main part of the house finished so we CAN move in. The basement will be our first project after that (along with a looong list of other things we want to do). This farm is definitely going to be a lifetime project. Which is exactly what we want. We've got so many possibilities with this property that we can dream our way into the next 2 decades at least!

In the basement is an old kitchen from the house that stood there previously. So it's probably from the early 18th century. Back in the day, the family moved down into the basement in the summer as it was much cooler. So a little kitchen was handy. We love it and we're going to use it to store craft supplies, puzzles, games etc...

There are a few 18th century doors from the previous house as well. Can't wait to get that paint off and expose the iron hinges.

There's also something called a "takke". It's what they used to make large, round flat bread called "lefse". This is coming out though and we'll be putting in a little wood stove instead.

And that's our basement! We'll be having a large guest room down there and a tv/craft/games room. It's a full size basement plus we're putting in a basement under the build-on on the back. That will be our "technical" space for the hot water heater, central vac, freezer, etc..

At this point we can't really do any more major work until the contractor comes and jacks up our rotten wall and does all the exterior work. I'm soooooo excited for that to happen. I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. I can hardly wait!! But there's still lots to do in the meantime. Today I started sanding doors to be repainted and rehung. Thank the Lord for power sanders!!