Friday, June 20, 2014

Our Building Story Part 6 - The End Of The 2012 Season

2012 was a year of progress for us. We made 6 trips to our land from spring to fall, spending over 8 weeks there. We thought we would be moving there that year...but that just did not come together for us. That time away had huge ramifications on Steve's cabinet business. Work almost completely dried up as people thought we were moving or had moved. We were so thankful for our church, for friends and for new customers that helped get us through the winter of 2012/13!

Before I go on, I wanted to mention how Steve had designed and built this little place to be ready for an addition if we ever moved here. There were headers pre-built into the walls to open up later between the old and the new parts. He had plumbing ready to patch into and coils of wire in the walls ready to string into the new rooms. So, when we move and start building on, everything is ready for the addition. 

We made two trips in the fall of 2012. The first was the beginning of September and we wanted to get the chimney put in for the wood stove and drywall. Steve had pre-built a hearth for the stove but our stove had not been delivered yet. The big job of the week was making insulated skirting for the cabin. 

Steve working on the skirting. He used treated 2x4's, treated plywood and 4" foam insulation.


Whoever was free kept the grass cut...still all with our little Husqvarna weed whip. 
This little machine has worked for hours and hours and never given us a moment of trouble. 
Our oldest daughter won "hill-billy outfit of the week award" with this get-up! :)

The chimney is on. Steve did this work on a HOT sunny day and was he ever dancing on that hot, black tin!


Our boys laid huge tarps under cabin. This will help with ground moisture and give us a clean surface for storage. The toads loved the space under the cabin and I'm sure they laid tarp over quite a few. They even found a burrow that the toads made for winter that was over 7' deep! I really hope they were all able to burrow out in the spring!

Working together on drywall. 

The skirting puzzle getting done. Steve left vent openings that can be opened in summer for ventilation and closed in winter. There are two on the south end and two on the north. 

Treated plywood going over the insulation.

Kids dishing up breakfast. 

Our niece came to stay with Emily for a few days and this is their hair washing station. :)

Our bath station. :) After supper I put a big canner of water on the camp stove to heat for bathing. 
We put at least 2 people through each batch...maybe not nice to think about but it worked and we got clean.

The end of the rainbow....

The men got the downstairs drywalled. :)
You can see a little deep freezer open in the back corner. That is what we use for a fridge for now. We have the generator going for several hours a day while we are working so we plug in the freezer for several hours and then it keeps our food cold until the next day when we start the generator again. It has worked for us and has made food storage much easier. Once we get our solar hooked up, we will put a thermometer switch on the plug in for the freezer to keep it at an even 2-4 degree temperature for fridge use. 

Our kitchen. You can see the water bottle stacked. We are able to fill those for free at a filling station about 5 miles from our place. In the long-term, we will put in  a cistern for water. We will haul water to fill this from the same filling station we fill our jugs from and the cost is quite reasonable. Wells are scarce in this area and most folks rely on a dug-out or a cistern for water. We chose to go with a cistern as it was the cheaper option and there is a water line planed for our area in the next 5 years. We did not want to get a whole dug-out system in place and then have to pay for town water later. 

It looked so bright and clean with the wall-board up. That is all our lawn chairs piled in the corner. 

Looking up the stairs.

Looking down - that stained plywood flooring is works and looks fine!

The skirting on and dirt burmed for drainage.

Ready to leave and head for home...but we felt we were leaving home at the same time!

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In the middle of October we made one last trip for the season. We had our wood stove along this time but we arrived late and only carried it inside. We were thankful that the weather was unseasonably warm and we didn't need a fire that first night!

We chose a lovely red model which I thought was SO pretty! It is a fairly small stove, but we didn't want to cook ourselves out of our little place! It has really small tolerances to the wall which we liked as space was at a premium.


Cutting tin to case the chimney holes. 


Enjoying the first fire in our little home!

The fall colours were so beautiful this trip and we just got in on it.  The leaves were still a bit green when we came, they turned like this almost overnight, but were almost totally gone by the end of the week!


Fire wood ready for winter.


Our older kids were spending most days helping Steve's niece and her husband who had bought land and were building a house about 4 miles down the road. So Steve and I and the younger kids decided to build a deck since we had spare time. 




I loved taking morning walks around the land. You can see our place from across the field. 

I saw these two young moose near our relative's cabin on the other side of the quarter.




Our new front deck and view. 

Our cozy stove ready for cold weather. We temporarily put cement board on the hearth and wall till we decide what we will do for tile or stone.  

And this is how we left our house at the end of the year. All drywalled, new deck, a stove to heat with and lots of ideas and dreams about what we would do next. 

To be Continued....




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