Gutting the tiny cabin (and what we found!)

WOW! We just started doing the demolition on our tiny cabin and were so excited to get going. But little did we know, we would find this hidden behind the walls… Let me show you!

Last month, I introduced our latest project to you: the Tiny Lake House renovation! A couple of weeks ago I answered some FAQs you had about the cabin, and this week I want to share our demolition progress.

We anticipated finding some less-than-perfect things behind the walls of the tiny cabin, but we didn’t expect to find what we did!

Watch my video to see what we found when gutting the tiny cabin:

What’s hiding behind the walls?

If you look on the right wall of the former bunk room, you can see that it’s packed with wasps nests. (There’s a better look at this in the video):

These were easily removed as they were empty, but we’re still getting wasps coming into the cabin looking for their old homes.

Sean also found a whole pile of carpenter ants in another corner of the house, but thankfully they hadn’t done any damage to the framing yet.

We also discovered that the old chimney was precariously perched on a couple pieces of lumber:

Sean had to remove the chimney brick-by-brick. I think I’ll use the bricks for some landscaping!

My favourite find

There wasn’t only bad things in the walls. My favourite find was the original 1957 wallpaper in the bunk room:

Not only is this red & turquoise wallpaper adorable, but it has mushrooms on it! This is significant because our oldest daughter wanted the cabin to have a “cottagecore” theme featuring mushroom accents. Now this theme is the perfect tribute to the cabin’s original decor!

I bought this mushroom-shaped mug for the cabin. (YES I’m already buying decor and we’re only at this stage… ) Isn’t it adorable?! You can find my mood board and layout ideas for the cabin in this post.

What do you think of what we found behind the walls of our tiny lake house?! Stay tuned as I continue to share our adventure as we go along.