Scary Cabin

After a couple of weeks hiatus, we spent black Friday and Saturday getting quite a bit done. We were joined by Barbara and Larry. This is the first time they’ve seen the place since we finished the walls in the living area.

Over the past couple of weeks, Bob has been building a fireplace mantel. Originally we were thinking of using a slab of something as the mantel but the cost and availability of nice slabs of wood and the need to have something in place before installing the stone around the fireplace dictated something a bit quicker. We brought up the in-progress walnut mantel for a test fit. After some trimming it fit quite well and really snug. We were able to leave it just press fit on the wall for a couple of hours. It’s now back home for final assembly and finish.

In addition to the mantel, we brought up wood for the inside window trim and shelving for the pantry. The pantry shelving is Rubbermaid FastTrack. This system uses a rail with uprights that hang from the rail, shelf brackets and wire mesh shelves. Lowes was able to cut the shelves to the size we needed. The rails are supposed to be attached to a minimum of 3 studs. First problem, the one wall only has one stud in the middle (it’s only 31” wide) and it doesn’t line up with any of the holes in the rail. The hardware kit came with sheet rock anchors, let’s try those! Well, one of the 4 seemed to work. One broke off in the wall, two pulled through the sheet rock. This is not a good start. Plan B, dill new holes in the rail and try and hit the studs in the corner and get use 3 screws in 3 studs. Yeah for plan B.

For the second rail on the other wall we just drilled new holes in the rail to line up with the studs and boom, second rail installed. next step, hang the uprights on the rails and it looks like they need to be attached to the wall too. For the second rail, we can line up the uprights with the studs and made quick work of those. For the other wall, the one with only a single stud in the middle, we’re back to using the sheet rock anchors. Here we have better luck and they seem to hold. Installing the shelves should be easy, right? Nope, you need to get everything lined up just right and apply the right amount pressure down and back to get the shelves to snap into the brackets. After getting 2 shelves installed, we called it for the night. The following day Larry spent a couple of hours getting the remaining 8 shelves installed. I think the “fast” in FastTrack refers to how quickly you become frustrated, it certainly isn’t for how fast you can get them installed!

The inside window trim went pretty well. I had ripped all the pieces on the table saw at home so we only needed to cut them to length and cut out the notches in the stoops. Only issue was that we ran out of wood and couldn’t finish one window. Most of the wood was bare douglas fir so Genny then spent some time putting a coat of primer on all the pieces. Next time we’ll paint and install them.

The last project was to finish framing out the built-in bookcase. That was done and a plywood back was installed.

So a fair amount accomplished given that we were only there for about 24 hours.

This will likely be the last update this year.