Monday, June 8, 2015

Moving

The big news in this episode of the scary cabin is that we’ve moved our sleeping arrangements to the downstairs bedroom. This is big news because it means that we’ve mostly finished the downstairs and have started work on the upstairs. There are still a few small things to finish up downstairs like baseboards and a few moldings and, of course, the utility room (it’s a small room….).

The major accomplishments that led up to the move were installing the TV. Yes, that’s right, we now have a TV in the living room. Of course we had nothing buts setup screens to watch, but we do have a TV. Also the face frame for the built-in bookcase was built, installed, and painted. Genny did a bit more paint touch-up too.

Before we could move into the downstairs bedroom it had to be cleaned out. We’ve been using that room for storage and construction (that’s where the table saw and miter saw lived). Once cleaned out, the beds were moved downstairs and the sheets washed (another milestone, we used the washer and dryer for the first time). We then realized how much stuff we had stashed away in the upstairs bedroom.

Big T’s Trees was out and trimmed all the dead wood out of the various pine trees. They also cut down a couple of stumps and ground down a couple of stumps. Besides making it a bit more open, we did get a small pile of chips out of the deal.

Monday, June 1, 2015

Let there be … dark?

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.