Scary Cabin

If you’ve been following along, you know that we had a goal to spend Christmas at the cabin. Well, we did it! Everything we wanted to have done wasn’t but we have 2 separate bedrooms and a working toilet upstairs. Good enough for us and Genny’s folks.

Leading up to Christmas, the 10 day weather forecast showed snow on 3 of the 5 days before Christmas, including on Christmas eve. Looked like we’d have a white Christmas. As it got closer, the forecast called for less snow but still some on Christmas eve. Christmas eve morning, it was showing snow with an estimate of up to 8 inches at the cabin’s elevation. By the time we arrived in the late afternoon, the snow has mostly stopped and there was about 3 inches on the ground. So we did have a white Christmas! I found out that Genny, being a California girl, had never experienced a white Christmas before. So this was an extra special Christmas!

After a leisurely morning with a good breakfast and opening presents we made a trip up to Laporte. Laporte is about 20 miles away and another 1500 feet higher. There a s good bit more snow up there. At least a foot. Not much was open so we just drove around and checked out the snow covered sights.

Is is possible to spend time up there and not continue with the remodel? I don’t think so. After installing the bedroom doors the one to the back bedroom just didn’t look right. We had moved that door when we expended the bathroom and had basically must moved the rough opening the 9 1/2 inches over. The top of the opening was left open in the bedroom to be used as a shelf. Once the door was installed, it became apparent that there was no way the door could be trimmed on the hallway side since we basically had ceiling right above the door frame. This small bit of ceiling also intersected half way over the bathroom door so we wouldn’t be able to put trim there either. After a bit of thought, I realized that this little bit of ceiling really should have been at least 5 inches higher. This leaves a bit of “wall” above the door frames so that they can have trim installed. Nothing like taking a hammer to new, textured, and painted drywall. We knocked out that bit of ceiling and re-framed it about 5 inches higher. This also meant that the shelf like structure in the back bedroom had to be raised about 5 inches. We got the framing and drywall done, now it’s just a matter of texture and paint. It looks more correct now. So I guess the lesson here is try to do things right the second time.

We spent some time thinking about and finalizing the trim along the stairway. This is another case of not really knowing how everything should fit together when starting out. Long ago the bit for railing was built, at the time, we weren’t thinking about adding trim to the stairway. The trim was added because the wall wasn’t in good enough shape to provide a clean joint for the laminate. Well, the railing mount doesn’t line up with the trim and it’s a little late to be re-building the railing mount. I think we came up with an acceptable solution and are now working to implement that.

We brought up most of the wood needed to build the upstairs bedroom window cases. Turns out I was short by one 1×4. What we had was cut and painted so at least the back bedroom inside window casing is ready to be installed. In addition, the bedroom doors were painted and one door frame painted. With the upstairs hovering at about 63/64 degrees, it takes a while for paint, wood filler, joint compound, etc. to dry.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet (paint, tile, and electrical finished)
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing (laminate installed (most)
weekend n+6 - install laminate (laminate finished and stair trim)
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (grout, toilet, doors, stair trim)
weekend n+8 - break
weekend n+9 - break
weekend n+10 - Christmas!

Well, there’s still a lot of work to do upstairs so my estimates on how long it would take were, once again, way off. Even though the upstairs looks like a construction zone, it’s mostly finish type work that needs to be done.

It made sense at the time. We needed to get a bed for the cabin so that we could sleep more than the two of us. With the goal to have Genny’s folks spend Christmas there with us, we were running out of time. Genny said, how old is our current bed at home? Maybe we should get a new bed at home and take the old one up to the cabin. We estimated that our bed was a bit over 10 years old, so yeah, it probably was about time to think about getting a new one. Our bed was still in good shape and it’s comfortable so why not. With all the Thanksgiving sales, we hit the stores and bought both a new bed and a new fridge. Old cal-king bed (mattress, box springs and frame), refrigerator, and the 3 doors made for a full trailer full of stuff to haul up to the cabin.

The one question marks was could we get the cal-king mattress up the stairs? Will it bend enough? The answer is a resounding NO. There is no way to manhandle it and squeeze it up there. So on to plan B. Yes, we had a plan B and our friend, Ben, had the same though and brought up some supplies specifically for plan B. Plan B involved cutting out part of the railing for the balcony off the front bedroom and hauling the mattress up onto the balcony and in through the door there. Ben had brought some nylon rope that we used to tie up the mattress, and haul it up using the main roof beam. It was not easy to lift it up there, but the plan worked. After that, it was much less effort to lift up each of the box springs and bring them in the same way. In retrospect, why didn’t we tie the rope to the hitch of the truck and use that to hoist it up? What could have possibly gone wrong? Maybe we need to install a block and tackle up there specifically for hauling things up that way?

Now that the bed is up there, it’s likely a permanent fixture in the cabin. No one wants to try and do that again. But we did get to sleep in our own bed!

The loading, driving, unloading took most of the day but we did manage to get a few other things accomplished over the weekend.

The upstairs bathroom floor tile was grouted, finally. Again, the goal is to have a working bathroom upstairs by Christmas and this gets us a step closer. The toilet was installed, twice. The addition of sub-floor and tile means you need an extra thick wax ring for the toilet. So that what we used. But it wasn’t thick enough. We really needed an extra, extra thick wax ring. The first installation leaked, and leaked bad, we had a small flood in the bathroom. Adding an additional 1” wax ring seems to have done the trick, we’ll see. The vanity is in place, but because we moved it over about 6 to 8 inches, the water lines for the faucet don’t reach so we need longer ones. Did we determine this before making the 45 minute trip to the hardware store for the wax ring? No we did not. The water lines will have to wait.

The bedroom doors were installed. We’ve been using a door installation kit from Home Depot - Installation kit This kit makes it easy to install a plum door. However, it does have some limitations. For instance, you need to have more than an inch of wall space on either side of the door. For the front bedroom door, we don’t have that inch+. The doorway is in what is basically a small hall which is about 2 inches wider than the door frame. We’re using the existing rough opening here and didn’t really want to go with a narrower door. (Is narrower even a word, maybe that should be more narrow?) This door took more time to install than the others because of hacking out bits of rough opening that were in the way and modifying the brackets to need less space. But it’s in and very close to plum. Trim around these doors is going to be an interesting challenge.

We made some progress with the stair trim as well. The trim boards are install and a lot of wood filler was used to fill in the big gaps. With some sanding and painting, it should be almost ready for the laminate install on the stairs.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet (paint, tile, and electrical finished)
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing (laminate installed (most)
weekend n+6 - install laminate (laminate finished and stair trim)
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (grout, toilet, doors, stair trim)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

We give thanks to our wonderful family and friends for all the help we’ve had during this remodel!

With the goal to spend Christmas at the cabin looming large in our minds, we managed to spend a couple of days of the 4 day weekend checking a couple more things off the list. We also did some major shopping. A new mattress set was purchased for our main home, freeing up the existing mattress set for the cabin. It was about time for a new mattress anyway so this works out well. We also purchased a new refrigerator because the free one (Thanks Kevin!) is starting to make very bad sounds when the compressor starts up. The bed, refrigerator, and the upstairs doors will make the trip up next weekend.

As soon as we got to Clipper Mills, there was some snow on the side of the road. As we entered Merry Mountain Village, there was even more. Everything at the cabin was covered in a light dusting of snow. This is really the first time we’ve seen it like this. It was cold enough for the whole time we were there that it never melted.

Checked off the task list was the upstairs laminate. The last few rows in each bedroom were placed and the closet was finished. Then it was all about the stairs. To prep the stairs for laminate, any bullnose overhang on the steps needs to be removed. We need a nice square edge on each step. A few of them had enough of a lip that most of it could be cut off with the jig saw. But for most of the steps the best method seemed to be a hand plane. After many hours of planing, the steps were ready. Then trim pieces needed to be added to the sides both to finish off the steps and to make a nice clean transition for the laminate. These were made from 1 x 12 pine boards cut to fit over the stairs. Getting those cut and fitted took most of a day. But they’re primed, ready for paint and installation.

The grout did not arrive on time (one day late) so the bathroom floor will wait until next weekend.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet (paint, tile, and electrical finished)
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing (laminate installed (most)
weekend n+6 - install laminate (laminate finished and stair trim)
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (baseboard & casing?)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

Schedules need to be flexible right? The original plan for the weekend was to start off grouting the bathroom floor. Then the toilet and vanity could be installed and we’d again have a working bathroom upstairs. And more importantly, the toilet and vanity would be out of the way when doing the flooring. Well, we manged to pick a grout from a manufacturer that Lowes doesn’t want to stock anymore. At least not the Lowes in our area. This particular grout is also not available via Amazon Prime. If there are no issues with the shipping, we should have it for the next trip up so a little schedule re-arranging was needed.

Instead of grout, we installed most of the laminate floor upstairs and moved things around so we could install the floor. But mostly the laminate kicked our butts this weekend. This is not our first time installing this stuff, we did the whole downstairs living area and downstairs bedroom with the same flooring. But this time it decided to bring it’s A game and really provided a challenge.

First, we thought it would look better if the planks flowed lengthwise through the small hallway between the bedrooms. To make this work, it means installing the floor in the front bedroom until it starts flowing down the hall. Then move to the back bed and install it until it aligns with the planks flowing through the hall. We measured it all out and surprisingly, it actually worked. Everything mostly aligned and we had a nice continuous flow of flooring between the bedrooms. The hallway presented a couple of challenges because of all the cuts to go around the door frames and because it was hard to support it while clicking and taping it together. But by the end of day 1 we had a couple of rows spanning the two bedrooms.

Day 2 is where things started to go wrong. We were almost done with the long runs through the hallway and one piece would not snap in. Usually, it it’s a bit stubborn, a couple of taps with the hammer will click it into place. Well not this time. Two pieces of flooring were destroying from hitting them too hard with the hammer without them clicking in to place. So something had to be wrong. Feeling underneath the board that was already in place, something didn’t feel right. Of course to remove that board meant removing almost all the boards in that row (i.e. the row that spans both bedrooms and hallway). And yes, something was wrong with that piece. There’s supposed to be grove that the next board clicks into, this piece had no grove. Once replaced with a good board, things snapped in place as they should, util we got a little farther and encountered the same thing again. So rip up the same row again and replace another board. I think we did that one row 3 times. We also noticed that a number of boards from that box were defective and started setting those aside. We finish the rows that span the hallway and move into the back bedroom and go until we’re blocked by the toilet sitting in the way (see above). Our next step is to clear out the other half of the front bedroom (the one we’re using as a work area with the saw and other misc. stuff) and start working on that. Well, what’s the first thing we encounter? We had used another of those defective boards at the start of the last row that spans the hallway. Now to pull everything part to get this one out would mean undoing all the work we just did in the back bedroom. We really, *really* didn’t want to do that. Since it was the end piece, there was just enough space to wiggle it out and get a new board in. After that, thins went pretty smooth until the boxes of remaining flooring were in the way. We’re about two rows from finished each bedroom so that should go pretty quick once we get everything out of the way.

We bought all the flooring in one large batch but it seems like we encountered a lot more “bad” boards while working on the upstairs. We had the defective, non-grooved boards, boards with scratches, one board with a bubble or finish blob, a couple of boards where the foam backing was not attached and many boards that have what appears to be melted foam backing stuck to the finished side of the plank. Our pile of “bad” boards is quite large.

The back bedroom had a couple of built-in drawer units that fit nicely in the eave area. We had kept these with the idea that maybe we could freshen up the face frame/drawer faces and re-use them. But then Genny said she wanted the built-in drawers to be wider than these. Since they’re made of particle board, there’s not really any way to widen them, I guess we won’t be using them. So the two custom built build in drawer units were disassembled and hauled down. In some ways, this is a bit sad as they were well made. Someone had put a bit of time and effort into making those.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet (paint, tile, and electrical finished)
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing (November 21-22nd Installing laminate)
weekend n+6 - install laminate
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (baseboard & casing?)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

Snow! we saw some snow finally. It was only some flurries and nothing stuck on the ground, but it was real snowflakes falling from the sky. Maybe we’ll get to experience a white Christmas this year. The colder temperatures (Sunday’s high was in the upper 30’s) were a good test of the fireplace. It takes a while for the cabin to warm up but once it does, it stays pretty comfortable.

Good progress this weekend. Barbara and Larry showed up for the first time in a couple of month. I think the last time they saw the upstairs was during demolition. Larry jumped in and finished up all the painting in the bedrooms, hall and stairway. He also unmasked and cleaned up the back bedroom. We pretty much stuck to the plan. Iced Latte on all the walls. Genny has been rigorously inspecting the paint work and has found many spots that need touch up, a majority of the work is done. We even painted the dog/equipment cubby downstairs.

The electrical work was finished. Basically, this means all the new electrical for the bathroom (and a couple of outlets in the bedrooms) was hooked up and the outlets/switches installed. The bathroom light fixture was installed and hooked up so we have actual light in there now and that made the next task a lot easier.

The bathroom tile is down. After verifying that we had enough of the large 18” tiles left to fill the room, we started dry fitting them. Genny wanted them on a 45 instead of square so more cuts on the tile saw, but it does look better this way. I think it only took about 5 hours to tile the 4ft. x 5ft. bathroom.

Once we were done with the tile saw we took down all the plastic and masking in the front bedroom Having everything covered was beneficial to catch all the flying tile shards and spraying water.

Where are we now?
weekend n+0 - drywall prep (October 17/18th did some, not as much as planned)
weekend n+1 - finish drywall prep for texture (October 23/24/25 - texturing started)
weekend n+2 - texture & prime (October 31st / November 1st - prepping for texture)
weekend n+3 - paint & start bathroom floor tile & finish bathroom electrical (textured and prime)
weekend n+4 - finish bathroom tile & re-install vanity & toilet (paint, tile, and electrical finished)
weekend n+5 - install doors & start knee wall framing
weekend n+6 - install laminate
weekend n+7 - finish laminate (baseboard & casing?)
weekend n+8 - knee wall work
weekend n+9 - knee wall work
weekend n+10 - knee wall work

So still about a week behind, but it’s been pretty consistent since the septic issue.