Scary Cabin

Picked up where we left off last weekend working on the dog cubby walls. They needed another coat of mud at the seam to get them mostly flat, then some texture. The prep work masking off the ceiling, floor, and the rest of the room took almost as much time as spraying on the texture. For smaller areas, and this was about as large of a small area that’s practical, a hand pump texture spray gun works pretty good. Certainly, it’s a lot less messy than the big compressor powered hopper. The results are between acceptable and decent. After drying overnight, the walls were primed and painted.

We built some framing for the drawer units so that there’s a platform for them to sit on. Also worked on framing the front edge of the kneewalls so that the 5.5” baseboard trim will align flush. To get everything at the right height required 29 3.5” long 2×4 blocks. The vision is starting to take shape. I need more 2×4’s.

We picked up, what should be, the last of the window/door casing. One piece was needed to finish off the bedroom side of the pocket door. That’s done and it turned out really nice. The rest is needed for the doors and window in the utility room. So we’ll be storing that for a while. All the casing was painted so it’s ready to be cut and installed.

To be filed in the should’ve planned that a bit better file. When ever anyone walks into the upstairs bath, they reach to the right for the light switch, only to be disappointed when it’s not there. The switch is located on left, mostly hidden by the door as you open it. Why is it there? When running the wire for the light, it seemed like the best spot. For some reason, which I can no longer remember, we didn’t put it on the right. Some combination of thinking it would be hard to get power there and not sure how it would fit with vanity, backsplash, and mirror. But whatever, it’s not there now and I’m not ripping down the walls to add one. Enter Insteon to the rescue. Insteon makes a single switch remote and a wall mounting bracket that looks just like a normal decora light switch. It only require two screws to mount it to the wall. So that along with a micro module in the real switch and we have a working light switch on the right. The only downside, since it’s battery operated, it will need to be recharged every 6-8 months or so.

The final bit of electrical work was to add an Insteon dimmer switch in the back bedroom box. This box will have the light switch and fan controller. With an Insteon lamp dimmer attached to the one table lamp in the room, we can now enter the dark room, it the switch and have light. No more fumbling for the ceiling fan/light pull chain. Ain’t technology great!

Where are we now? Last year we had a goal to get most of the upstairs done before Christmas. Well, we got far enough that we can sleep upstairs, but done? Not even close. Seems like there’s always a few things that take much longer than anticipated (stairs anyone?). At this point, there’s light at the end of tunnel, but I’m trying not to underestimate the amount of work still needed. So maybe it’s time to start up a new ToDo list for the upstairs.

Back bedroom

1. Dog cubby baseboard
2. Dog cubby outside trim
3. Figure out kneewall design
4. Kneewall door trim
5. Build/install bookcase
6. Install hangers for clothes
7. Install drawer carcasses
8. Install drawer boxes
9. Install drawer trim
10. Install baseboard
11. Trim wall to ceiling corners
12. Install conduit for ceiling fan
13. Build new ceiling fan mount
14. Install new ceiling fan

Front bedroom

1. Paint balcony door
2. Frame kneewalls
3. Trim knewalls
4. Door for closet
5. Drawers and doors for kneewalls
6. Install baseboard
7. Install wall to ceiling corner trim
8. Install conduit for ceiling fan
9. Build new ceiling fan mount
10. Install new ceiling fan
11. Install grill cover for vent fan
12. Install window blind

As the main living areas of the cabin enter the final stages, there aren’t the “BIG” projects happening to report on. Instead we’ve been doing a lot of smaller details.

The junk pile was getting large so we took half a day to load up the trailer and make a dump run. With Barbara and Larry’s help we managed to get almost all the junk (with the exception of the metal pile) gone. Since the trailer was hooked up we also filled it up with yard rakings. Larry dug out the remaining cement blocks that made up the ugly garden.

Inside, the door hardware was installed in the upstairs doors so we can now actually close the bathroom door. The bathroom got a towel bar and a shiny tile backsplash. More caulk was applied on various door trim and baseboards around the cabin. Seem like the cabin is being held together with caulk given how many tubes we’ve used so far.

Started work on trimming the pocket door in the down stairs bedroom, but ran out of door casing before it was completed. Since the utility room still needs to be gutted, no trim work on that side of the door can be installed yet.

Started on the kneewalls in the back bedroom upstairs. We did some of the internal framing and put some drywall up for the dog cubbies. Yes, the dogs get their own bedrooms upstairs. Each will be about 10 sq. ft. and finished to match the rest of the room. We may utilize some of the upper space for a drawer. We know Sandie likes enclosed areas, but Duke seems a little leary of them. Hopefully once they’re all set up with comfy beds he’ll want to make use of it.

Or maybe he’s in the trim work. I don’t know, but this past weekend was pretty much nothing but trim/detail work and it’s not even close to being done.

We started with baseboards. Since the pocket door trim in the back bedroom isn’t done, we can’t do baseboard yet on that wall, but the other three walls of the back bedroom have no such restriction. Since two of the walls need more than 8 ft. of baseboard, the 16 footers needed to be cut down to size. Probably should have moved the saw to the deck, but instead moved the 16 ft. boards to the upstairs front bedroom and cut them there, then carefully moved them downstairs without scraping too much paint off the walls. The next room to get some baseboard love was the upstairs bathroom. That’s small enough to use 8 ft boards, but because of how the vanity is placed and the fact that the vanity has a low drawer, the baseboards needed to be trimmed by about 1/4” so cut to size, haul them down to the utility room, trim off the 1/4”, haul them back up and install. By install, I mean nail them to the wall. Making it look nice is a long processes. Next all the nail holes need to be filled, then sanded, and finally painted. Once all that is done, the top and edged get caulked. All in it was probably 4 -5 hours of work just for the baseboard in those two rooms.

While waiting for filler and/or paint to dry we did more detail work in the upstairs bath. The towel bar was installed. We had installed blocking in the wall so it went on pretty easy and is nice and sturdy. Genny wanted to use the same tile that we used for the kitchen back-splash to make a back-splash for the vanity, so we dug out some of that and made a back-splash. This highlights one of the big problems with a remodel, the existing walls in the bathroom are not square, not even close. The vanity fits in the corner (barely) and the corner has a gap of at least 3/4”. We’re talking 3/4” out of square over 18” of wall. Yeah, I would think you could eyeball it closer than that. We needed to fill that with something or the tile would just slide down the wall. Not wanting to break out the tile saw, the pieces were all trimmed using the tile nips. Other than the gap (mind the gap!) it looks pretty good but still needs grout. The last detail in the bathroom was the transition strip between the bathroom tile floor and the laminate in the hall.

Finding the right ceiling fans for the cabin involved quite a search. We found one at HomeDepot and bought it for the downstairs. Then decided that we wanted the same fan for each upstairs bedroom. Of course the local HD didn’t have any more and no due date for any to arrive. We managed to fine one HD in the area that still had some… Lucky! The only issue with these ceiling fans is that they come with a cheap-ass remote as the only way to control them. It has issues like a single button that controls the light. Pressing the light button will toggle the light on or off. But holding it will dim and brighten the light. It makes getting the light level you want a challenge. There is an easy fix for this minor issue. Replace the fan/light controller with something better. Lutron makes a fairly nice in-wall switch that has separate switches for the fan and light. It also has a dim/bright rocker to adjust the brightness and has a high/low rocker to adjust the fan speed. As a bonus, it has 7 fan speeds instead of the normal 3. It requires a normal 12/2 or 14/2 wire between the switch and the fan so it will work with most installations. We installed this in place of the original fan controller this weekend. As a bonus, this fixed a problem with the original controller where it would flash the fan’s light when there was Insteon traffic on the power line. Unfortunately, this controller won’t work in the bedrooms because we don’t have a wire from the switch location to the fan. But an Insteon FanLinc will work up there and should provide for better control than the original.

We also attempted to re-wire the dinning table light. The original wire/chain is too short which leaves the light a bit too high. W thought that we could use a replacement chain/wire kit but turns out the wires are permanently attached to the light socket which means some soldering will be required. Also, the chain in the kit was lighter duty than the original so we opted to skip it for now and look for something better.

The shed has become home to some furry creatures. They were making nests in the cabinet drawers. Most had some insulation and what looked like raccoon droppings. One has a mouse that scurried away, not to be seen again and what looked like a squirrel carcass. Fun times cleaning that up.

While the egg laying rabbits hopped around hiding Easter eggs, we continued to work on the upstairs. The focus was on the window and door casings. More filler was used to get them looking better and touch up painting to cover all the nail holes and filled seams. Once the paint was dry, caulk was applied to give them a finished look. It makes quite a difference seeing all the casings finished.

With the window casing finished in the back bedroom, it was time to install the window covering. We’re holding off on the window covering installation in the front bedroom because we’re using that area for construction still and there’s lots of dust. Genny’s looking forward to not getting woke up at the crack of dawn when the sun starts shining in the bedroom window.

We framed the area in the back bedroom where the built-in bookcase will go. Now we’ll need to get some material and build a bookcase.

We didn’t work too hard this weekend and instead took some time to enjoy the cabin. Our neighbor, Robyn was also in town so we invited her over for desert and got to hear some stories about the beginnings of Merry Mountain. Her folks bought one of the first lots back in 1966 and they finished constructing the cabin in 1970. Her mom designed our cabin.

Easter morning we had brunch at One Eyed Jacks. They had a large buffet with all kinds of fresh baked/cooked goodies.

OK, maybe not killer ants but they were big! While cleaning up in the utility room we spotted a few carpenter ants and with further inspection, we found a few more. This isn’t the first time (or even the second time) that we’ve found carpenter ants so we’re somewhat prepared for them. The first time was right at the start of this project when we opened up the wall around around the tub. The tub surround had been leaking for years and the ants loved it. The second time was when we opened up the wall upstairs above the bathroom. It looked like the old window there had been leaking a bit and thus, some of the survivors from below had found a new home. The latest incident has them in the same general area between the two floors but next to the bathroom. Looks like the caulking on the flashing on the roof of the utility room had failed and possibly some water was getting in there. It’s been freshly caulked and the ants have been sprayed so we expect to find a pile of dead ants when we get back up there. We cut out some of the utility room ceiling to get a better look at what was happening and found that the insulation up there has pretty much turned to dust. So we’ll be pulling the entire ceiling along with the walls when we start working on that room.

Another interesting note, the ceiling joist for the utility room are real 2×8’s, not dimensional 2×8 that are really 1 1/2” x 7 1/2”, but rough cut 2” x 8” boards. They had to cut them down on the ends to fit in the joist hangers.

When we weren’t battling ants, we were working on the upstairs. We finished up installing flooring in the area under eaves behind the kneewalls. It looks more finished, even without the kneewalls built. We also installed a lot of window and door casing. All the casings are installed now. But there still some filling, painting and calking to get them looking nice. The non-flat walls made it challenging to get the casing to lay flat to the door/window frames. But when it’s all done and painted it should look pretty good. Many of the doors are too close to walls so that a full piece of casing is too wide. In fact, I think there were only 6 out of 14 that didn’t need to be trimmed. Some of the walls were so far out that we needed to cut some of the drywall out of the way to make the casing lay flat.

When I can summarize the work we did over the weekend in a couple of sentences, it seems like we didn’t get much done. It’s hard to convey how much work is involved sometimes. When dealing with this finish type work, I don’t trust that I can get things cut to the right size in one go, so I almost always cut big, take the piece to the location where it will go, mark, cut again, check and sometimes there’s a third or fourth cut before it’s right.