In a week from now it will be one year since I started working in earnest on the farm. Before that it was mostly just rearranging rusty deckchairs on a tree covered titanic. It meant that maybe a I was getting a day of work done, which was mostly making sure the weeds didn’t get too out of control, and some of junk was leaving occasionally. The first 18 months were pretty much grief, massive probate delays tying up everything, grief, massive feeling of being overwhelmed by the task, grief, and not even being sure I wanted to keep it. Throw in this health ‘hiccups’, some family troubles, and a cost of living crisis and it really did take almost two years to get to swinging a sledgehammer stage. In march last year the demolition of the cabin interior had not even started. I was still clearing the last of my father’s possessions at that point after basically not being able to be inside for more than 20mins before the PTSD would hit.

12 months after the cabin renovation started I am not as far along as I would wish to be because it’s still easier to work outside. It’s amazing how distracting it can be to have acres of trees and plants to tidy up after decades of neglect. Somedays it just felt like I had a job mowing lawns all day instead of making cabin progress, especially over spring and summer.

I am pinning my hopes on autumn allowing me to get the cabin bathroom and bedroom finished so I can move in. Autumn weather is more conducive to working inside and once all the leaves drop there isn’t much to do in the gardens for months.

There is also the fact that I underestimated how long it would take to learn how to do building stuff, my previous renovation DIY projects were all mostly cosmetic and not structural. Replacing joists, reframing walls, leveling floors etc is all “proper” building stuff that requires knowing what you are doing, and for me that meant trial and error, getting advice from professionals, and watching many many YouTube tutorials for each new skill. Something that will be happening again multiple times as I tile bathrooms, lay wood floors, install a kitchen, etc.

The design faze also taken a while, partly because I don’t have the budget to do things twice, so all the design decisions I make I will be living with till I die. Window in the wrong place? Tough. Door widths too narrow for future needs? Tough. And so on and so on for a 1000 other decisions that have seen the blank slate stage last a bit longer than expected.

I don’t want to jinx it but I feel like there will be a moderate leap forward before winter comes.