Creating the Lodge Room

The beginning of big transitions started at the very end of November in 2005. The crew came in to remove the old roof and install new scissor trusses to open up the middle section of the house. This was done in stages. They would tear off just what they could accomplish in one day, working their way across the length of the roof, starting Wednesday morning and finishing at the other end on Friday. We even had the first snow flurries of the season that week as we experienced a tiny taste of winter at the lake.

By the time we returned in January after the holidays, we found it all completed and loved the outcome. We were now ready to tackle all the changes we wanted to make on the inside the following spring.

Late April 2006 we were back to undertake one of the messiest jobs ever. When they replaced the roof, we had them leave the existing ceiling, insulation and rafters so the home would remain insulated for the winter. In the spring we had to remove the old paneled ceiling, the insulation and old rafters. What we found when cutting away the plastic vapor barrier was DIRTY old insulation and all the debris from them cutting out the old roof and rafters! It all came down on our heads as we began. We quickly devised ways to capture the debris before it came falling from the rafters. The pile of insulation on the front porch was twice the size by the time we were finished with it all. What a JOB!

It was during that week we dubbed it the "Lodge Room." With no insulation, it was quite chilly in that section of the house. One morning when Poppy came down to make his coffee, he returned to the bedroom to report "it feels like a fishing lodge down there, it is so cold!" The next day he had moved his coffee maker into the family room to avoid that chilly morning job in the kitchen. Thus our lake home was dubbed "Loon Lake Lodge."

Before our week of vacation ended, we had removed almost all of the ceiling, as well as drywall on the walls and the actual wall that closed off the kitchen. It was all so open with so much potential! We even got a warm afternoon to demolish the old front porch deck in preparation for the new deck. It was a one of the most exhausting but rewarding weeks of vacation!