Scary Cabin

We’re now fully committed to working on the living area. There are a lot of areas that need attention. One that’s going to take some trial-and-error is the stairway up to the second floor. We had knocked out the half wall that made up the railing so we need something to replace that and make it safe. We want to use a fairly standard banister with some type of spindled railing. Started building some bits and prototyping how things will fit together. This will need to tie in with the cubby area and the fireplace framing. We drywalled around the fireplace and inside the cubby. There’s a vision forming around how this area will look, but we’re not quite sure of the final outcome yet.

Before everything is fully enclosed, added the electrical above the fireplace and inside the cubby to handle TV and associated equipment.

The hot water heater is finally installed back in the understair pantry area. Yes, we have hot water. That means we’ll be able to shower! It’s quite a milestone. Painted and installed a bi-fold door on the pantry.

Steve came up and helped with some of the heavy lifting. Well not so much lifting, but we removed the air-conditioning unit that was mounted in the wall between the kitchen/dining area. To remove it, it needs to slide out of the mount. Because we didn’t want to drop it on new kitchen tile, we stacked up bags of insulation on top of the wheelbarrow so that we could slide it out and onto the insulation. From there we were able to maneuver it outside where it proceeded to roll down the deck stairs, puncturing the freon line and venting to the atmosphere. We then patched up the hole with some left over siding from the new window install. No more head banger out on the deck!

Steve, along with Ben and Larry helped install the new insulation in the living area. We’re using rock wool instead of fiberglass. The rock wool bats are cut with a bread knife so you can carve out slots for wires and areas for electrical boxes, etc. The stuff is rigid enough that it stays in place between the studs without any staples or other fasteners. Cutting it does create a lot of dust, but at least it’s not fiberglass strands and it’s not itchy. Maybe it’s just because we’ve had bare un-insulated walls for so long, but it sure is quiet in there now.

As the month winds down, we finish up by putting up drywall on the freshly insulated walls. The room takes on a whole new look with new drywall. It looks more like new construction. A clean slate.

Time to take care of some details.

We hang the shower curtain rod along with a shower curtain. Genny has had this curtain for many months just waiting for the day when it could be hung and admired. Well, July 5th was that day. This means that the bathroom is fully functioning.

We also finish the backsplash tile in the kitchen. The tile looks great, but would I use the adhesive mat instead of a mastic? Not sure. It is a lot less messy. We’ll see how it holds up over time.

Genny’s folks gave us their old cordless phone. In reality, it’s not that old and will be more than adaquate for the cabin. However, it needs power. Back when the cabin was built and phone jacks were installed, phones didn’t need power, they got all the power they needed from the phone line. With our new fancy cordless phone/answering machines, the phone line power just isn’t enough. What this all means is that we now need a power outlet near the phone jack in the kitchen. If we had though about this when that wall was open and electrical work was being done for the light switches, it would have been an easy addition. But now, with the kitchen done with nicely textured and painted walls, it’s a bit more difficult. Well, more difficult to install it and make the surrounding wall look good again. It’s not perfect, but it will have to do and we now have a nice cordless phone and answering machine. So we can now get all the messages from debt collectors trying to get a hold of the previous owner of the phone number. Yes, even though we’ve had the number for a year with no answering machine, we still get multiple messages a week.

The upstairs bathroom vanity was a bit worn (OK, worn and ugly). It was also leaking. The hot water line to the faucet split so we have no hot water up there. Now that we’ve started sleeping upstairs, it would be nice to have a working sink. We found a new vanity that fits our style and was reasonably priced at Lowes. So out with the old and in with the new. It really makes that half bath much more pleasant to use.

Needing to do some demo to keep in shape, we start ripping down the drywall in the downstairs bedroom. We know we’ll need to have this done before we can start working on the upstairs so it’s time. We only pull down the drywall on the outside wall and the wall shared with the utility room. These will get new insulation. The shared wall will also have the swinging door replaced with a pocket door eventually. But for now, we just make a mess. Since we were using this room as storage, we needed to clean up the utility room and move some stuff to the shed and get it cleared out.

June 1st 2014

Starting to tile the kitchen floor. We get the bulk of the kitchen and hallway dry fitted.

June 7th 8th 2014

With all the dry fitting done, we can start installing the tile. The kitchen and hallway are finished.

June 21st, 22nd 2014

The bathroom floor tile in installed along with the pantry.

June 24th 2014

The fireplace is installed.

June 29th 30th 2014

The floor tile is grouted. The garbage disposal is wired up. The toilet is installed. The kitchen backsplash tile is started.

May 24th 2014

Grouting the tile tub surround in the bathroom.

May 26th 2014

Laying down heating element in the bathroom along with ditra as we get ready to start tiling the floor.

May 31st June 1st 2014

Laying down heating element and ditra in the kitchen.

April 6th 2014

Genny works hard to remove the firebrick from the cubby. Sheetrock is removed to open up walls where new windows will go.

April 10th 2014

Decided to remove the sheetrock in the living room. Found one electrical wire that was spliced with wirenuts behind the wall. Now that it’s open, let’s also replace the insulation here. This will make some of the electrical work easier.

April 13th 2014

Ben and Steve help with the sheetrock removal.