Scary Cabin

Ok, maybe not pitch black, but now that we have binds in the main living areas, it is possible to make the rooms darker. More importantly, it allows for some security by obscurity by not allowing anyone to just peek in and see what treasures lurk in our scary cabin.

Getting to the point where the blinds could be installed took a bit of work as all the window trim needed to have the gaps caulked. While the caulk gun was out, we also caulked the walls around the beams and the ragged wall to ceiling joints. So lots of caulking and then lots of paint touch-up to cover all that caulk.

A few other minor tasks were completed as well, like adding inside casing to the front door.

Surprisingly difficult was adding the “T” molding to cover the gap between the hallway tile and the bedroom laminate. The gap had a lot of thinset in it that first needed to be ground out to create a consistent width/depth channel. Then a piece of wood needed to cut and fit in that gap so that the “T” molding channel had something to sit on. Turns out that the channel has very little tolerance with respect to it’s height. Too low and the “T” molding doesn’t seat well and stay put, too high and the “T” molding doesn’t sit flush to the floor. We’re talking 1/16” or less tolerance here. It took a couple of tries to get it right.

A 3 day weekend.

We pick up the action right where we left off, working on the ceiling beams. There was still a bit of paint stripping and wood filler work to do so we got right on that. While the paint stripper worked it’s magic, Genny started sanding down all the filler and basically smoothing out the beams. Then the ceiling got a final cleaning with Murphy’s Oil soap. We blue-taped the ceiling & walls and put the first (primer) coat of paint on the beams. Even with just primer, they look so much better. That, along with some time visiting took a whole day. It doesn’t sound like much when written out like this. Of course we also hung the new ceiling fan (sans blades). Yeah, that’s what took all the time.

The next morning a fresh coat of white trim paint was applied to the beams and now it looks really good. After lunch, the masking tape comes down, and a bit of touch up and the ceiling is done (by some definition of done anyway, there’s still some caulking to do). We start the afternoon with a new project, the floor. After a couple of false starts we get the first couple of rows of laminate down and from there, it gets a bit easier. When we stop, we have about 7 1/2 rows down and it’s starting to look like a floor.

But you can’t guess what we’re doing the next morning. Yup, that’s right, more laminate. It takes most of the day, but the floor is down. It’s really amazing how a bit of paint and floor transforms the room. There’s still a lot of finish trim work to do (casings, baseboards, caulking, etc.) but the downstairs is really starting to feel finished and not like a construction zone.

That’s what we did Saturday. Work started on the the living area ceiling. This is mainly just a clean it up and make it look nice activity, but that makes it sound like less work than it really is. First, the structural elements are primarily make up of 2×10’s running the length of the room. To make these look better than raw 2×10’s, they’re organized into pairs each pair has about 4” gap between them. Then some 1×4 boards are nailed to the bottom to make each pair look like a solid 9×7 wood beam. There are 2 of these 9×7 “beams”. Because they are hollow, it provides a bit of a channel to run wires and mount ceiling fans. The one fan that was over the dinning area was removed months ago, the plan is to reuse that electrical box for a new chandelier so no issue, it works as is. The second ceiling fan location doesn’t work. The fan blades hit the new fireplace sofit so it’s been without fan blades since that sofit was built. It needs to be relocated.

The fan was removed and the “beam” with fan box was opened up. It was pretty easy to pull the wire back out, open up the other beam and re-run the wire. The new fan mount will be centered between the beams and centered on the fireplace to give it some kind of symmetry. The new mount is now ready for the fan to be hung. This task was easy.

By pulling down the bottom of the “beams” and putting them back up, we created a lot of nail holes and caused a lot of previous filler to fall out. Thus, the “beams” now need a lot filler to hide the nails and seams. Not to mention some filler to hide the hole where the old fan once was. Genny spent hours on the ladder filling seams and nail holes.

At some point, someone thought that the transition between the beam and pine ceiling needed molding so there was a nice 1/4 round molding there. It really didn’t improve the look and, in fact, seemed to make it look dated. So it was removed leaving behind a nice thin line of paint on the ceiling, about 1” away from the beams. Getting that off means paint stripper and elbow grease.

In addition to the 1/4 round molding, there was also a sofit that ran around the outside walls. Again, it looks better with this removed but now there’s also a thin line of paint on the ceiling from that.

After one day, most of the paint has been stripped and most of the beams have been filled. That’s one full day of looking up and we’re still not ready to paint the beams.

Took a bit of break from all the construction to do a ranger led hike at the North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve. If you’re there at the right time of the year (we weren’t), the table is supposed to be a mosaic of color from the wild flowers. This year, they bloomed early and mid March would have been ideal. However, the hike is still interesting and there are some vernal pool areas that aren’t completely dried up and still have flowers blooming. The grasshoppers are out in force, every step would sends dozens hoping out of the way. There are also canyons with small streams sill running. Those are filled with tadpoles and a few aquatic gardner snakes. The landscape is quite interesting and the result of a large lava flow millions of years ago. The area is open to the public so you can hike on your own. The best trail maps are available from the Chico Hiking Assoc. . Pictures from our hike are available in the photo section.

On the road to the hike trail-head we spotted a sign for a covered bridge. Turns out there’s a covered bridge just down the road from the trail-head in Oregon City. Given how rare covered bridges are in California, finding one is an unexpected pleasure.

Being able to explore new and interesting locations was one of the main reasons for purchasing the cabin. As the cabin becomes a more comfortable place to stay, we plan to do more of these explorations and less construction.

Hiking wasn’t all we were up to this weekend. The main goal for the weekend was to put down the laminate flooring in the downstairs bedroom. Once we got the hang of it, it went pretty fast. Finished, it does look nice but we won’t get to really see it for a while. We covered it up to prevent any damage since we’re still using that room as part of the construction site.

In addition to the floor, we were able to install the inside trim on the bedroom door and install baseboard in the hallway. We also turned a lot of good wood (OK, maybe not good) into sawdust.

A quick day trip to the cabin to get the downstairs bedroom one step closer to done. The height difference between the hallway floor, with it’s in-floor heating, Ditra, and tile was at least 3/4” higher than the bedroom sub-floor. To correct this, we wanted to add another 1/2” to the bedroom sub-floor. So hook up the trailer, take a trip to Ray’s Hardware to get some plywood and head back. With the 1/2” ply and the laminate, the height of the bedroom floor is very close to the hallway floor so mission accomplished!

With time to spare, we added some door trim to both the bedroom and bathroom doors on the hallway side. The bedroom door trim was a bit of a challenge. For some reason, the door frame was almost a 1/4” inset from the sheetrock at the top. Small gaps are easily filled by caulk, but not only did this leave a gap, but it also caused the top piece of trim to be about 1/4” proud of the side trim and that’s not acceptable. After hacking away some sheetrock under trim makes things line up nicely and all the hacked up sheetrock is hidden behind the trim. No one will even know. Given that no one reads this, I think our secret is safe.