Scary Cabin

With 3 days and 4 people (and 4 dogs), a lot of cabin renovation labor was done over Labor Day weekend. Sometimes it’s hard for me, personally, to see how much was really accomplished. I focus on the details of what I was working on and it doesn’t seem like much. But with everyone working on something and moving around to help each other out the transformation over 3 days was quite significant.

When we started there were large areas that still needed insulation and only a few bits had drywall. When we left all insulation was finished, all the drywall (but one piece) was hung, a fair amount of drywall tape happened and a lot of sub-floor was installed. Given that a lot of this required, measuring, cutting, fitting, trimming, and hauling it was not a vacation at the beach.

I had underestimated the amount of drywall needed and we were 4 sheets short. So some time was spent hooking up the trailer and making the 20+ minute drive to the nearest hardware/lumber store for drywall.

We started off with insulation and drywall. We decided to insulate the bathroom walls just because we could. Larry and Barbara started off cutting and fitting the insulation in the bathroom walls. Genny and I followed behind cutting and hanging the drywall. At least until we ran out. While the drywall hanging continued, Larry moved on to taping and mudding the bathroom walls. Once that was done, Larry also cut and installed the sub-floor and cement board in the bathroom. Then there was the clean up. With the drywall hung we had a big mess of drywall scraps, sub-floor scraps, cement board scraps and other junk that needed to be cleared out.

Now even with all the scrap cleared out, it doesn’t mean we have a nice big, open area to work. The back bedroom is the storage area. It has all the remaining laminate flooring, all of the sub-flooring, a toilet, a vanity, a couple of drawer units, a pile of tools and hardware. So basically, it’s full of stuff. We had to work around that and move what we could. The boxes of laminate are the reason there’s still one piece of drywall to hang. We can’t get to that corner until we move those boxes. We did manage to get everything out of the front bedroom.

With the front bedroom cleared out, we were able to make pretty quick work of installing the sub-floor. The only tricky bit was all the cuts needed for the hallway where the one piece flows into 4 openings (think jigsaw puzzle piece).

We’ve started on the wall with some joints taped and most screw holes covered. Holes are patched and most of the paneling glue has been scraped off.

Stay tuned next time for drywall mudding and sanding, sanding and mudding …..

And the four dogs? Well, they were well fed with bacon and egg scraps and lots of cuddling.