In my previous posts and daily pictures there have been mentions about renovating my house. So maybe it is time to take a look at the whole process for this year. I've been doing number of things in the previous years, but for now I'll skip them and focus on the current project.

It all started with a bad corner. For couple of years I didn't think that much about it - I just knew that there is a hole or two in that corner, and I had stuffed old woolen socks into the holes. A temporary solution which made me through some pretty cold winters. To get a better picture I'll attach a quick drawing of my house. Generally speaking, my house consists of two sections. The main section is made of logs, and has two rooms. And then the entrance hall is made of boards and insulation material. The entrance hall was already in rather bad condition, most of the insulation materials destroyed by ants, mice and birds. Oh, and the door - yes I could close it, but there was always a strong current of cold air running in between the door and its frame. Then, the bad corner was in between the smaller room and the entrance hall. So, I knew that to properly fix it I first have to tear down some structures of the entrance hall. It was some point in the spring when I finally decided that this year I'm going to work with it.

I thought that if I have to tear down a part of the entrance hall, I might as well tear down nearly everything, leaving just the supporting structure. Then I could fix the bad corner first, and then rebuild the entrance hall with new materials. Thinking of this, in the early summer I realized that there are electric cables running inside the walls of the entrance hall. So, I wanted to be sure that all the cables are dead before I start to tear down anything. I called the electric company, and asked them to unplug all the cables that go into the house. As a side-effect I was left without an electric stove. Then the summer went, mostly relaxing, eating, drinking, dancing and meeting friends. That was extremely good, as it washed away a lot of chronical stress I've been carrying. Towards the autumn I slowly started to get serious about renovating.

I started to tear down the old materials of the entrance hall. I installed a wood burning stove. And finally when I got the bad corner properly inspected, I realized that it was worse than I thought. First, some logs were nearly completely destroyed. Then, the ceiling rests on two wooden beams, and the other of those beams was resting on bad log. So, it was not enough to just fix the corner, I had also think about how to secure the beam. Luckily I have some books about renovating an old log house. I browsed through the books but when they were talking about replacing bad logs, it was always about the lowest pieces of a wall - that I've already done with my friend. But I found some instructions about working with logs higher in the wall. It said: "Generally speaking the procedure is the same as with the lower logs, it just becomes far more difficult with higher ones. Therefore it is advisable to just secure the wall in any other way and then fix the bad parts in other ways." - Yes, now that is a good advice!

So there I was. Wind blowing in through the holes in the wall, the ceiling about to collapse down. And outdoor temperatures already below freezing. Apparently, I really have to do something about this - I don't quite know what, but maybe I'll figure out something. No they didn't teach this kind of stuff at the university. When I was kid, we did some simple wood works, but I didn't learn anything about renovating a log house. After the university I spent nine years living in kind of a hippie collective in the countryside, and there I got more experience about traditional building. Oh, and I especially remember one spring - I was all the time heavily depressed and felt that anything I try to do will fail. I went to therapy for that, and we tried hypnosis. The therapist guided my journey, first suggesting me to imagine a place which is all for myself, all private, all safe. Well, there were some obstacles in getting there, but the therapist found ways to guide me over those obstacles. Finally I saw an image of an old log house on a tiny island. As guided, I went in and took a look at all the stuff there was. The therapist suggested me to pick one object and bring it with me to my waking consciousness. I chose a necklace - still in my hypnosis journey I wore the necklace and felt like light shining inside my chest. After the hypnosis I felt confident - after that I just wielded an axe and a hammer and started to learn building by doing. Well, later on I fell back into the depression, but at least I had learned a lot, and had a good experience that it indeed is possible to recover.

This autumn I've been rather peaceful. I know that any rational house owner would first inspect everything, gather all the materials and information needed and then work in a well planned manner. But I'm not like that. I just throw myself into the action and see what comes out of it. Each and every day when I get to renovate my house I'm also learning how to do it. So, it was one morning I sat on my sofa sipping strong black coffee and slowly thinking about ways to fix the bad corner. I already had a general idea in my mind, but I knew that a general idea is never enough - I also need to figure out all the details. I drank two mugs of coffee, and a detailed plan was ready: I'll need two pairs of planks; one goes to the inner side of the wall, the other to the outer side. And one pair goes to the south wall, and the other pair goes to east wall. Then I'll drill holes through the planks and the log wall, and put threaded rods through those holes. Fastening nuts on the rods I'll practically have both walls secured in between a pair of planks. And the inner plank on the south wall will also be supporting the beam which carries the ceiling. As the planks inside the room will be next to each other, I can also connect them with some L-shaped pieces of metal, that way making the structure even more solid.

Well, for the weekend I'd like to go meet Sami, and I wanted to get that corner fixed before that. So, thursday after my work I continued with renovation. It was 4 AM when I got the last nut fastened. At that point I thought that I'm anyway going to be tired the coming day, so instead of collapsing to bed I decided to write this blog entry. And now I only have one more thing to say; the entrance hall still need to be done, but that can wait for later. And then, generally speaking, the logs of the main part are rather thin - only something like 12,5 centimetres, which means that they offer only sub-medium insulation. I'd like to add an extra layer of insulation, at least on the outer side of the log walls. It will be two layers; first fiberboard and then outer panelling. But maybe I can do that only the next summer. Getting the entrance hall rebuilt seems like enough work for the rest of this year.

EDIT: I just added the daily picture for today which shows the bad corner from outer side.