September came with its own routine around here. It was a routine of exhaustion and learning to balance so many different projects.

Plans had to shift a little, as they always do when you have a full plate of work.

Martin and I have great dreams for the hangar space where we are not building the loft home – research space for greener aviation, airplane storage, and soo many mechanical and electrical things. (aka “thingies”) We thought we’d build the hangar loft, and then Martin would start working on growing his dreams in the rest of the hangar while juggling school. But a few problems-turned-opportunities came to him. We will not be moving into the hangar as soon as we dreamed. Instead I have a guy who’s challenging himself and daring to see what he can become.

I think that’s a good thing.

I made this page of the {Taste : of food, of life} journal last night. It summed up September busyness here:

I used: The macaroni and cheese box from dinner, hole punched and adhered to the page with double-sided tape. It’s embellished  just a little with decorative tape from Etsy. And of course, there a date stamp. I didn’t do any journaling on this food and recipe journal page.

The first thing I learned about rural life: the pizza boy doesn’t deliver, and it takes longer to drive to town to go out to eat. Emergency macaroni and cheese is a must.

Thanks for celebrating September with me. Next week, let’s celebrate a little blog’s birthday and tackle some more of those questions you’ve been asking…

At some point, I’m sure you’ve all wondered, “When’s Katie going to start talking about the decor of the hangar loft she’s remodeling?!”

And that’s a pretty darn good question! It is the good stuff after all.

So here’s the truth: I haven’t started thinking about it yet. I’m thinking so structurally.  (Now don’t you go thinking that I sound like an engineer. I’m still the family doodler. I just have to make sure not to doodle the cart in front of the horse if you catch my drift.)

Here’s a fun book I was asked to review:

The color schemes and furniture arrangements are awesome in New Decorating Book. The iconic book from BHG is on its 10 edition, and it shows. It’s so cool! I swear I keep seeing stuff I’ve only ever seen in German homes even though this book is so obviously American with all the bright colors and accessories.

When Martin and I were trying to figure out how to set up home in Germany, it was so hard for me. I was thinking like an American, but there weren’t really American decor items available. Or I didn’t know where to find supplies to DIY a thing. I remember chatting with Holly from Decor8 when she was in Berlin. She’s an American who moved to Germany at the same time as me, and she said, “I just need a Target for like one day.”

It’s true.

I haven’t studied decorating since then. When it’s time, I seriously cannot wait to study this book. It sounds so much less stressful! Right now? It’s really useful for figuring out where to place fun stuff like the toilet versus the tub versus the washing machine (while following code, of course).

When the loft remodel is all said and done, we’ll have to play a game. Call it “Name that American Influence and Name that German One!”

Here’s one to get the ball rolling (in front of the horse and cart, mind you)…

We’re putting the washing machine in the bathroom. American? German?

I started one of the {Taste} journals from the shop this weekend. My goal is to add a lot of texture and photographs in this book of food stories over the year. Autumn’s the perfect time to start with all the new flavors and smells, don’t you think?

Thanks to the invitation of a couple friends, I knew just how to start…

Journaling reads: We picked apples all morning. Kelley and shawn invited us to get away. They’re good at that! The You-Pick farm had their own cider press to squeeze all of our apples. 5 gallons of fresh apples later, we had a gallon of cider. I dropped a cinnamon stick and some spices into each jug when we got home. It’s so tasty. Welcome autumn!

I used: My texture experiment on this spread involved old fabric scraps (they’re from the quilt on our bed), brown thread, and a date stamp.

1. Cut out fabric scraps and a photo (2.3 x 3.5 inches)
2. Tape or paste pieces onto journal
3. Use a dull needle to sew brown thread back and forth with a sewing machine
4. Journal
5. Add the date*

*I covered the original date space on the journal with the piece of fabric in the lower right. That extra bit of fabric really helps the two pages flow together more.  I’m such a fan of using a date stamp, so I angled my stamp beside the photo.

Want to start using a {Taste} journal with me?

Next apple mission around here? Apple pie.

How is your autumn tasting?

It was pretty easy for us to figure out the type of layout we wanted our windows to have in the hangar loft. Big. Open. Breezy!

It was not so easy to figure out the exact dimensions. But we got ‘er done. I marked the last notes on our homemade blueprints while Martin… uh… proceeded to whiteout all of our not-so-perfect plans with a can of white spray paint.

You can get a pretty good idea of our wild idea from this angle (I’m standing at the front of the hangar). Imagine taking our spray painted windows and flipping them right where the framing still stands. We’ll have eight big picture windows across the living room/kitchen. The total size of the space? 12 x 24 feet (3.6 x 7 meters)

It’s going to feel like a mansion to us.

We decided not to get a little window over the kitchen counter. We’ll be pulling some tricks from the kitchen remodel we did in Germany, so I’ll share that plan just as soon as we get it worked out.

Someone recently asked me, “So your passion is small space living, right?”

It’s true I love having a smaller space to clean, heat, pay for, and clutter. But I never really find myself thinking about how big peoples’ homes are or wondering about how big they need to be. For us, having a small space to live is an enabler. It enables us to do more things and go new places.

It means we might just be able to splurge on some huge ol’ windows because it’s only one room.

(But we’ll see! The gal at the window shop calls with the bid this afternoon, and we’re chewing our nails.)

Today’s post is a project that’s been ongoing since the moment we yanked everything out of the back of the airplane hangar where we plan to build our home. I’ve started calling the space the loft, because it sounds less like a bunch of propellers and oil cans than saying, “Oh yes, the hangar house!”

But you know me. Late to the fashion party, I also just discovered that Ann Taylor Loft is now just “Loft” as well. (Don’t tell me its been that way for years. The No New Clothes Challenge has me ignorant on more levels than a bowl of Neapolitan ice cream.)

Here we are with the next phase of our remodel: deciding on windows in the loft. Our space is long and narrow (only 12 feet deep!), so we feel like it makes sense to be really strategic about windows and skylights. We uncovered a window during all of our decluttering in the former attic. There’s another in the old guest room. We want more.

A little mental furniture arranging is pretty important right now. We need to decide where the walls will be dividing each space. Remember this old drawing below?

It’s time to get more exact.

Martin’s just as eager as me to move on from the tire house. I watched him push aside his breakfast dishes and jump right into plans. Do you recognize his pencil? So awesome.

Also with him is Modern Hydronic Heating. I swear he’s read that book more times than you and I have read Little House on the Prairie. Combined. His drawings are always precise. He always seems to have a scale or ruler on hand. In this case, he also has a tape measurer (the little brown box).

Not me.

My drawings are not so scientific… even when I use some basic cad drawings Martin built on the computer. I guess I’m too eccentric for that! :)

In the end, we’re able to come together. I can just look at Martin’s detailed drawings and understand what he’s envisioning. Meanwhile, I have to talk him through my wiggly lines and remind him: I did not measure. (I learned to clarify my non-mathematical approach the hard way in our German kitchen remodel. I doodled an idea for some shelves on graph paper. Martin grabbed the saw and applied the spacing exactly how I drew it. It still cracks us up!)

From there, we head to the hangar and start talking about windows.

Before I dive into the plans here, I thought I should pause and note. We got this space as is. The junk, the dirt, the possible vintage photos and possible treasures – they all came with the package. I do not like going through people’s things and deciding what is worth keeping or not. Having the guys at the dump know you – BY NAME – is not something worth boasting. Yet the truth is that some people just can’t do it themselves for whatever reason. Martin and I have been lucky to have the former owner as a mentor… a friend. We are thankful Every Single Day.

We couldn’t afford to buy a clean, empty hangar like our friends down the way. We certainly couldn’t afford new construction. By quitting our 9 to 5 jobs to live the way we want, DIY has been a serious means of financial survival around here. So my sleeves are rolled up. I want to build a house. No scratch that. A loft!

Here are the window ideas we’re considering for the living room/kitchen:

The kitchen will be on the right end. Do we want a window above the sink on the far side there? We stuck it in to see.

Here’s that first picture again just to give you a perspective of what we’re thinking:

We still have to tear down the old framing one of these days. We want the ceiling of the house to match the roofline.

Then Martin got a great idea. What if we spray painted our window idea right onto the insulation walls? (For those of you who asked – that white wall around the entire hangar with metal bars going across them is actually insulation. It’s about 6 inches deep, an R-value of around 24. Scroll up to where I’m gesturing about windows (aka giving a big TIME OUT sign). You can see some ripped insulation bursting at the seam there.)

Some lines were painted. And that’s about as far as we got. We had to stop because of YOU GUYS. I had baby books and travel journals to take to the post office. (thank you)

Hopefully we can get all the details figured out in the next few days (by we, I primarily mean Mister Measures, of course). Then it’s off to town to meet with the local window shop. That gal and I are already on a first name basis just like the dump dudes and me. Oh but this time, it’s a good thing.

Cutting windows out of a hangar? That’s going to be interesting.

Any of you always doodle out all of your ideas like me? Or are you more like Martin – dotting every i and erasing every line that extends .001 millimeters too far?

We can’t quite put a barn up in a day. Not even close. Yet as it turns out, we are pretty darn good at gutting our entire future home in a day.

Tuesday morning. 8:00. The sky was calm. The hangar smelled slightly like exhaust as our good friend backed his dump truck into the hangar.

Yes. We have a friend with a dump truck. And we’re so thankful to him.

The first order of business was to remove anything that could be reused by us or anyone else. Shelving, electric outlets, doors, trim…

Then my father-in-law started attacking the walls.

Yes. My father-in-law came all the way out here to help us. He even biked the last couple hundred miles just to get here. He’s borrowing Martin’s shirt, so I think I mixed the two of them up a dozen times as we were hauling stuff and ripping everything apart. Only the bright bandage on the knee allowed me to know who was who under those masks and hats.

And we were so thankful for him.

But there was no time to be thankful! In fact, I barely had time to grab the camera before my father-in-law was ready to bust down the walls between the old attic and the pilot training room. I’d ripped off the trim and paneling, pulled back the carpet, and ran to get the camera. Boom. The wall was already down.

We were all pulling out walls and insulation like a kid gone wild over a pile of leaves. The dust in the air was obvious, but 3M dust masks made all the difference.

And we were so thankful for them.

Faster than you can say sheep shaped soap, the attic and old pilot training room were one. It was the first time I could visualize what our house just might look like. I think Martin felt the same. That’s when Muscle Martin exploded into action. (Being an electrical engineer, he’d managed all the outlets, lights, and other safety issues between the walls first.)

He decided we needed a little light. Who am I to argue with brutal strength like this? I was totally the weak one of the bunch. But all someone had to do was mention “winter in the tire house” and all you’d see is this blur of motion (otherwise known as Katie and Martin).

The tire house is very cold and miserable in the winter. Plus paying rent there and paying a mortgage over here at the same time really stinks.

Bang. Smash. Chisel, chisel.

By 11:00 that morning, the four of us had eliminated the pilot training room. We sat down. We took off our masks, and we exhaled.

But not very long.

Nobody ever noticed me taking pictures. It was the hardest photo taking I’ve ever done. Not because of the dust; it was the constant change. The second I put down my crowbar and grabbed the camera, I’d feel instantly behind everyone else.

The energy was awesome!

By the end of the morning, I could barely lift most tools. But there was no way I was stopping. No way any of us would.

I didn’t even notice that Martin picked up the camera and snapped a few pictures of me.

I’m so glad he did! I think this part of the job is one of the most rewarding. When the drywall on your side of the wall and all of the insulation are pulled out, you swing the hammer end of this long (CRAZY HEAVY) bar. You’re basically punching the other piece of drywall along the 2x4s to pop out the nails.

We are so thankful this drywall was installed with nails, not screws.

By 2:00, the dump truck was full.

The walls were stripped to the studs.

And we went home for a late lunch and nap because the day was half over.