Actual Coffee Table

In the end, price wins! My mom found this baby at a yard sale for $10. I love it! Coffee table for the mill office: check!

Coffee Table?

This wasn't my original plan for a coffee table, but seriously, how cool is this?!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Suitcase-Picnic-Table-and-Speaker-System/

Spending and Saving

I spend a lot of time day-dreaming about my Mill Office, getting lost in my own thoughts on how to solve various issues. And there are a lot of issues! Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), we've saved and accumulated a lot of materials over the years - leftovers from various home improvement projects or (Mark's favorite) finding free stuff at the dump or on the side of the road. Our goal is to reuse as much as we can in order to (a) save money, (b) help clear out our junk collections and (c) give it an authentic, rustic feel.

So given all that, here's some of the issues/todos/plans:

• replace roof - it's 325 sq ft (including 10% for waste), and we just happen to have 328 sq ft of architectural shingles sitting in our shed at home that Mark found free on the side of the road last year.
• replace windows - we have several windows that we saved out of my old camp that we're hoping to use
• rewire electric - we have an electrical box we saved out my old camp, as well as many outlets and a ceiling fan
• seasonal brook water - we have a pitcher pump saved from my old camp, and hopefully enough water line laying around
• insulation - we will probably need to buy this new, rolled fiberglass for the walls (assuming we find that the studs are evenly spaced) and we plan to add insulation and new sub-floor on top of the existing one
• furniture & appliances - we have the sink, propane range and table from my old camp, a nice futon and shelf unit that my mother found at a yard sale for me, a breakfast bar with two benches, a coffee maker and a chair we no longer use in the house, a small fridge that my father doesn't use, a microwave that our neighbor got rid of
• flooring - we will likely buy this new as well, unless we happen to stumble upon something else before then. I'm thinking floating vinyl planks, like Allure from Home Depot.
• heat - this is a tough one because we have an older, Kozy propane heater that was given to us, and feel like we should use it to save $. But, it will require quite a bit of valuable floor space and we do have an alternate use for it at home. So, one of the major "splurges" might be made on one of these Dickinson propane heaters made for boat cabins (more on this later).
  
  

The Mill Office

Time for a new blog to document a new project - one I'm *very* excited about! If all goes well, by the end of the month we will be the new owners of a piece of property in the NEK, upon which sits an antique saw mill and (more excitingly) an old shed, which we plan to transform into a year-round functional office, for me! Soon-to-be known as, The Mill Office.

My inspiration: http://www.shedworking.co.uk/, http://tinyhouseblog.com/, and http://www.amazon.com/Shed-Chic-Outdoor-Buildings-Work/dp/0789318601

We have permission from the current owner to start cleaning out the shed while the lawyers continue working on the closing docs, so I plan to document our progress here.