TWO YEARS I spent my savings on this old Swedish cabin and did this...

two years ago I took all my savings hopped on a flight in London to a new country went on a wild Surge and ended up buying an old Swedish cabin on a small plot of land and I began to renovate without any actual DIY experience I didn't know anyone in Sweden I didn't have a car I didn't even have a driving license but I did buy a bike I was up for a challenge good thing is I'm still here after 2 years this is what it looks like now but let me take you back in time to the beginning and look at everything I've built so far it's time to show you my cabin in the woods when I first arrived my camera hands were still shaky it is so cute but this is the house a front entrance with two rooms and I de side many years ago two brothers lived here with their families each on their own side and now it's just me on the left is the biggest room which includes a defunct fireplace and leads to an old extension the blue room which is struggling a little bit because of a leak in the roof there's another door to the outside here on the right to the entrance is a smaller space and a kitchen with a countertop so low it hurts your back the stove is unfortunately not functional either and there is a third door leading outside from the front door you can also go upstairs which is built like a shed there are no actual walls but surprisingly there are no leaks in the main roof this is also where you can see the interesting chimney structure where the stove from the kitchen links to the main chimney and it's all crumbling a little bit outside I have a tiny Guest House a water pump house out house sheds outdoor shower and an apple tree I mean look at that the first thing I did after buying a bike was make plans for the house I wanted to take out the wall in between the blue room and the kitchen to create a proper back entrance and the bigger kitchen turn the smaller room into a study and keep the larger space as a living room the upstairs could one day be transformed into bedrooms and I decided to keep my bathroom situation simple and keep using the outdoor shower I might build a separate structure in the future so for now I'll just add a small room with a compost toilet next to the back entrance I also want to make lots of built-in Furniture but let's not get ahead of ourselves because most of my first to is not the photo to building anything pretty I had two big issues first first the house had a leak not the main roof but the metal roof on the extension to the back was too short and water had been seeping in over the years second the water supply wasn't winterpro the water pump in the garden ran above ground to the kitchen sink I got the keys to the house in July and I began the renovations in August I didn't start out completely alone my parents came over they're not Builders but having some extra hands when they didn't know how to deal or anything was pretty useful I began by taking out the interior wall in between the kitchen and the blue room and started to take this cardboard like Material off the walls this is when I first realized this is a log cabin I now know that all these old houses are claded log cabins but at the time this was quite a surprise after getting my feet wet a little bit it was time to start the real work and deal with the leak it was obvious that there was some water damage but when I began to expose the walls and ceiling I realized it was a lot worse than it had seemed the joists in the ceiling were rotting the entire back wall and window in the Blue Room needed to be ripped out and replaced after demolishing everything I used to Timber from the interior wall to build the back wall back up again and I realized for the first time that building something new is a lot faster than taking out something old the old window the jam and Molly and were completely gone but the sash windows were not in the worst state so I kept those separate and I decided to test my woodworking skills for the first time I built a new small glassless window with shutters instead because I was going to turn this into a toilet anyways I probably should have just bought a window but somehow in a moment sourcing a window just seemed too overwhelming and difficult the wall faces North and it's kind of sheltered from the wind and rain so I get away with it now remember the kitchen with the third exterior door well I don't need three doors and I would like a bigger countertop so I decided to replace a door for a window I made a new framework and inserted the old leftover Windows here we demolished the screen in porch but kept the roof so this will be a cute area when it get some love back to the L now the ceiling Droid needed replacing so I cut off the rotten parts and sistered the new joists at this point my dad was installing gutters extended the leaking roof by adding a narrow section of metal to the bottom and my mom was digging a trench to bury the water pipes yes my mom dug that entire trench she couldn't quite reach the frostfree depth that was required because of all the rocks in the ground so I got a heating cable to run the entire length from the kitchen all the way to the water pump we secured the cable with aluminum tape insulated everything carefully and ran the whole bunch through a giant yellow pipe by now it was late September it was getting cold and rainy my parents were miserable and before they left I quickly built this really wobbly kitchen counter with a little Handa I was so stressed for time I didn't even film it but I put in a new sink I got and we connected the water again then my parents left remember I mentioned I don't have a car so I rely on lots of planning and ordering in box so the cost of getting things SED by green truck is worth it so I spent some time designing calculating and ordered as much as I could and began work on my water pump house the new one needed to be insulated so it would last through the winter initially I wanted to build around the old structure and extended a little bit but soon I was taking the whole thing apart because it was in such a bad State I added Foundation blocks and made a new structure using mostly leftover materials from the house the old water pump house and leftover insulation I found in the Attic while I worked on this it was getting cold my first weest winter was coming up when I finished I bought a small radiator to add to the space and it began to snow insulated water pump house inside was still a construction zone I'd moved into the smallest room next to the kitchen where the living room had become storage for materials and tools I got an electrical radiator so I could heat just that one room I was living in and everything else stayed cold it was time to close all the holes I was left with first I closed the ceiling and moved on to the floor when I took out the first botton planks I quickly realized the water damage was much worse and I anticipate it remember when I said that if there was a lot more rotten parts to this then that would be an issue well that's where we're at I had to take out a much larger section including some of the floor joists the floor took a really really long time and honestly I wasn't having much fun this room was freezing cold i' would be cooking food in my winter coat on my wobbly kitchen en counter and because of all the holes I had mice running up and down the kitchen every night hey closing the floor up was a huge relief the next project was to create a little room for the toilet I use my new mitur for the first time wow oh my God I built a tiny Cellar for the Pea bucket then I built my first wall and this was fun because building is fun I insulated the walls covered them with plaster board which I quickly realized was not my favorite material to work with I taped and M the room I put in the floor stained a color I wasn't very excited about and also took some time to stain the wobbly kitchen counter up until then it had been covered with garbage bags while I was using it so I I finally stained and sealed it and also realized that mice had added their own stain as they do I was in the heart of Winter now everything was covered in dry snow and the temperatures were lower than I'd ever experienced if it was too cold for the outer shower I would fill up a bucket with warm water and sit inside of it inside I spent time exploring the forest around me and struggled to continue indoors but I moved on to finish the floor in this new B into Tre area because I'd only ordered a certain amount of materials and I had to tear out so much more than that I had to get creative with the new floor buildup and also deal with a level difference in between the old blue room and the kitchen I covered the floor and all the walls with tongue and groove and finally it was starting to look like it was going somewhere to finish the toilet I built a little MDF unit I didn't take long to come to the conclusion that I like MDF less than plastic board but the unit works it has space for sawdust toilet rolls a bin I painted Everything Green put in a DIY lampshade that's also a bit wobly and made a door which ended up also being wobly and then somehow it was May so I decided to do some gardening I never thought I would Garden but living Outdoors so this it seems to make sense to grow your own vegetables so I carried around some of the old logs lying around the property played with ants and made a few garden beds using logs and old pallets I was most excited about continuing indoors though I was done with my wobbly kitchen but before I could finish it I needed to pin in walls and flooring first then summer came I I got distracted by family visits and gardening and when I was on my own again I decided to First build an outdoor workbench I was getting tired of using this Left Behind outdoor table for everything I was doing so I built a little unit against the side of the house instead this was probably the most practical thing I've built and it's made the whole building process so much easier it's a really simple structure and didn't cost much in materials and I've used it almost every day set I really wanted to make a little Greenhouse I thought I could make a giant version of this little Greenhouse design but with plastic film instead of glass I place it behind the vegetable garden bed and when I finish putting up the skeleton frame a storm hits [Applause] oh I had never seen anything like it I watched trees bow all the way down to the ground in a wind and rain rise up again while some stayed down the ravage was enormous last night was the most intense storm that I have ever experienced it was kind of terrifying there was just this thunder that was like lightning just constant like flashing lights and it was like there was five planes just flying on top of me um the wind was wow outside something definitely happened a giant bir in the back of my blood had fallen and many trees along my road were destroyed look at that it just goes on and on and inside the forest it's just Madness all of these trees this was year one after 2 weeks of work in my Greenhouse I realized I had failed the plastic wasn't transparent enough and the surface areas were too big for the sheets to stay in place I'd try to make something on a small budget with only a materials and it hadn't worked out I spent 2 weeks working in the greenhouse and I failed I left the greenhous looking a little sad by that time I was drained after a year of renovating I was tired of living in the construction zone the good thing was that all of the real pressing issues with the house had been addressed and even though there were certainly things about the exterior and the roof that could be fixed and improved it was nothing that needed to be done imminently so it was time to make a space for myself and actually start on the interior so let's talk about this first my dreams were to create a Timber clat warm and minimal interior with perfectly executed built-in furniture that was until I realized that all I could afford was construction gray Timber and until I realized I wasn't a Master Carpenter so I skewed my dreams towards something I could attempt to achieve rustic and clad in the most affordable pine tongue and groove here's me hoping to make something beautiful out of cheap and depending on who you ask uncool materials a functional bootroom with wardrobe and shoe storage a kitchen with a large L-shaped counter and open shelfing that surround the fridge a Timber clat St study with deepened doorway a library desk and bunet seating so it can also be used as a dining room and a living room with more built-in seating and storage I put my plans to turn the attic into a bedroom on hold so all the Bonet seating will be built so they can be transformed into beds this is the approach for that it was time to actually continue the kitchen it was a huge relief after finishing the different trims I finally got to work on the units I use Simple materials construction Timber and exterior cladding for the shelving the idea was simple open shelving with Japanese inspired joinery details I made little doors underneath the sink and the best thing yet I fixed the countertop and legs to the floors and the walls and it was no longer wobbly I felt like I'd actually built something that worked and it was amazing the next project was a recess shelfing unit I wanted to place in the space underneath the staircase the plan was to create a smaller unit I could slide in and out so I would still have access to the remaining space in the old cupboard I would use it for shoe storage my little washing machine and small items like gloves I made it using Roofing tongue and groove some of the cheapest Timber and well I wasn't very impressed it it was pretty you know I have to say this unit is so much uglier than I imagined it to be I I like the design but the execution was certainly not what I had in mind I also did not manage to just slide it in you're not sliding you're not sliding I bashed it in and it is never coming out ever again after that I spend a surprising amount of time painting the ceiling okay not good and made it on a unit in my now least favorite material MDF I was going to wrap the shelving around the old brick wall I wanted to use ply but it was really expensive which is why I ended up opting for MDF and painting it I fixed framework to the floor and ceiling and then fixed the sheets of MDF to that framework which saved on materials I made shelving on the kitchen side a SP for my fridge and a wardrobe on the bootroom side for winter coats and some recycling bins when it was finally done it was January just like the year before I was only heating the smallest room with an electrical heater but because all the holes in the house were now closed it wasn't as cold as before but because the house was now better sealed I began to experience moisture issues in the cold rooms and I realized that I really needed to heat all of the house the coming winter which meant the fireplace needed to get fixed but it was still too cold to start that process so I tried to decide which room I would renovate next the study or the living room I was living in a study and it stored everything I owned the living room however had been turned into a work room it was bursting with materials tools my mitur and I didn't have anywhere else for those things to go so I went rogue and decided to spend a few weeks on the guest house instead this guest house is really small the ceiling is low and it's actually pretty cold and dark inside I wasn't planning on prioritizing it but I figured if I paint some walls and make it a little nicer it will be more comfortable to live in while I work on a study and I'll also have a nicer place for my family to stay when they visit but I clearly don't like taking the easy way out because instead of just painting I ripped out the ceiling instead two weeks of painting turned into almost 4 months of Renovations oh my goodness I ripped out the ceiling dealt with the rain of mice poo I kept the insulation that was still in good condition and exposed the roof structure after cleaning everything I made a bigger opening in the internal wall to create a brighter space the biggest job by far was to put a new ceiling not just fitting it but also getting the materials I only needed the tongue and groove and additional insulation but it wasn't worth the cost to get it delivered so I got myself something else instead I got a trailer the hardware store is more than 35 km from here and during my first trip up and down the roads for still icy I brought my tent in case I wouldn't make it back in time but I picked up the first lot and it was actually a really fun trip I spent hours cutting all the timber into smaller pieces at The Cutting station outside the shop the next time I added a batch of insulation and had to push my bike whenever I encountered a bit of a hill I picked everything up in three go and spent countless days working on this ceiling it was a lot more intricate than it seems it's done when that was finally done I made a pound out wall a desk with shelving a tiny sink area with a bucket underneath and I painted everything I used leftover materials for my shelving in a bedroom area and got shaker style pecks to line the top of the walls for more hanging space then I moved in it's something when spring came I wanted to work on my garden which was looking a bit wild I decided to grow wild flowers and spend a long time clearing patches for them I sewed seeds in three different spots and watered them every day spring was beautiful and dry but when summer came it began to rain and it didn't stop some flowers grew but most didn't so I think my flower experiment will have to continue next year it was time to work on a study I cleaned the ceiling filled up the grooves and took out the windows all the pain was flaking off so I sanded it the best I could replace the putty painted the base layer and put them back in I took out the old vinyl flooring and replaced it with the new tongue and groove creating a clean base but my parents came to visit so I moved on to another project the greenhouse light left looking a little sad and alone and unused it was time to spend some money on it and actually turn it into a little building my initial plans didn't work anymore so I changed the approach first I added to the framework to pin in a dormer created a front entrance I pushed out the middle section in the back and claded the entire unit with corrugated panels my parents had brought from the Netherlands because I struggled to find something similar in Sweden I made vegetable beds on the far end a workbench in the middle and a tiny table wall on top of a rock it turned into the cutest building I could have ever imagined and it got me excited to really build something from scratch one day but those are plans for the future we did some more work outside we planted a number of fruit trees in the back of the garden to hopefully turn it into a small Orchard besides my parents I got a little bit more help from a friendly Brit and I finally learned how to use a chainsaw a year after the birch tree fell in the storm we managed to clear the land and Cho this tree into smaller pieces it was time to go back inside I started the library and built the framework covering the entire wall on the kitchen side I added little accessory shelves in the doorway and make big shelves on either side of the door cladding everything in the same Timber I made a base unit by slotting several planks into each other and added doors I used cabinet pinches for the first time which worked out in the end then 2 years after moving in my chimney man came and fixed my disintegrating chimney we opted for the least intrusive and most budget friendly solution to get a fire going in this house so he inserted a pipe and now it's up to me to buy a wood stove this will be the start of year [Music] three [Music] [Music]

Channel: Roaming Wild Rosie

Views: 1,912,717

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Id: 6NOtKSx4ssk

Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 01 2023