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@thebirchlands
It was a hot, humid weekend at the cabin, but I guess the butterflies are into that sort of thing, because they were out in force. So were the mosquitos, but they can go to hell.
I got a lot done. The forest walkway has extended by another 25 feet, and I'm about to get to a point where it will run straight for long time. I also finally finished all the tile in the shower, so next time is all about grout.
I did a little work at the cabin this weekend. I mostly built more walkway until I ran out of lumber. There's still a long way to go before I hit the goal of running this path the entire 1/4 mile length of the property, and I'm already having a little trouble finding the path I cleared and marked with stakes and flags two years ago.
I also put up some more tile in the shower surround. Making these two patterns meet up with each other is a very fiddly process and I don't recommend it.
In other wonderful news, the 3000w inverter I bought a year ago crapped out yesterday. I had to borrow the smaller 2500w one from my studio just to finish up. If you've got a 3000w pure sine wave 12vDC to 120vAC inverter gathering dust in your basement, let me know. I'll wait while you go check.
I put a lot of hours in at the cabin this weekend, building more forest walkway and putting up tile in the bathroom. It was all brought to a forcible end when I ran out of both lumber and tile mortar. I also used up some spare concrete trying to make more footings for the walkway, but I'm guessing one of the bags of concrete was too old because, well, just look at the finished results of the last batch I poured.
There was a huge army of very large bumblebees out, and I ran across this enormous spider. It was a magical weekend until I drove home and the check engine light on my truck started flashing
Another beautiful weekend at the cabin. I finally tiled the floor in the new bathroom, which means I can finally finish everything else in the new bathroom. Since I had to let that dry, I went out into the mosquito and tick infested woods to build some more of the raised walkway that will allow for someone to go for a walk without walking through the tick-infested portion. The mosquitos are another matter altogether.
For various reasons, it's been quite a while since I've been up to the cabin, but I finally made it back for this gorgeous weekend. I spent nearly the entire time splitting cedar, and now, at long last, the siding on the new addition is done. There's still plenty left to do, but, holy hell, splitting shingles is time consuming, and I am overjoyed that this phase is finally past.
Siding is coming along on the new cabin addition. I went up there this weekend, because I glanced at the daily forecast and saw today listed as "sunny with a high of 50". That looked good to me, but I should have looked at the fine print. The "sunny" part didn't start until the afternoon, and the "high of 50" didn't hit until, oh, right about now. This morning I woke up to 10 degrees, windy and overcast, which made the first five hours of my day on a ladder just a super joy. Sorry, that was a typo. Instead of "super joy", that should have read "miserable slog". At least I got to spend last night in front of a fire indulging in a nerdy book about the history of map-making.
But I put up shingles until I ran out of them. As you can see, I'm only about 2/3 of the way through it, so the next time I go up, it will be an entire day of splitting cedar for more shingles. Hopefully, spring will firmly be in place by then.
It's been a while since I've posted an update on the cabin, because this thing called Winter was going on. But I did get back up there this weekend. I had intended to work on tiling the new bathroom floor, but I forgot that my water tanks were drained due to the aforementioned Winter, so I couldn't mix up any mortar or run a tile saw.
So, instead I finished the demolition of the old bathroom underneath the cabin, and spent most of the beautiful, sunny 70 degree Saturday processing down all the materials I salvaged from it. That pile of lumber under the cabin is my ever-growing supply of cedar to split for more shingles.
Speaking of shingles, I spent most of this dreary, wet, cold Sunday on a ladder beginning the process of covering the new bathroom addition. I made it through what you see here before I ran out of nails, and I will definitely need to split some more of that cedar before this part of the project can continue much further.
I had one day at the cabin this weekend, mostly to winterize everything. The water tanks are drained, there's antifreeze in the drain, and anything that could freeze is hauled out.
I did have some time to finally finish this wall. I bought a huge bundle of these trim pieces thinking there were enough for the whole thing and came up about 5 inches short of the ceiling, so I had to mill a bunch of matching pieces (which was a huge pain in the ass). Sure, the color doesn't quite match, but it's done.
And since it's not going to freeze overnight, I started in on the tile for the shower surround. I like the look of these hexagons tiles, but they are also a huge pain in the ass. Rectangles are so much easier to align.
Our alarmingly warm November continues, and so does construction at the cabin. Saturday was a beautiful, sunny day, so of course I had to climb up to the top of the new extension and put the new steel roofing on before the inevitable Minnesota snow makes that impossible.
On Sunday, I woke up with the first light on the horizon and got to work inside. I installed the wood flooring in the extension, finished some trim work, and assembled the new shelves. There's still a lot of trim left to do, but I need to mill some pieces to do that, and I didn't bring my table saw. I guess there's next weekend, where, once again, it will be warmer than it has any right to be in Minnesota this close to December 1.
For you battery-loving freaks out there, I am glad to report that the new lithium batteries powering the cabin are working wonderfully. I didn't even turn the system off overnight to conserve electricity like I normally would, and after two full days of work, my batteries still showed 80% capacity! The fact that this is very exciting for me is definite proof that I am a middle aged man.
It was a very exciting day at the cabin! I finally took the plunge and upgraded to lithium batteries on my solar setup. My old lead acid batteries have been warhorses for these past several years, but it was time to retire them. My wife doesn't seem to share my enthusiasm for this much-needed change and doesn't understand why I'm so excited about these batteries. "They have onboard BMS!", I told her. "They have both hot and cold temperature protection systems! They have Bluetooth connection! I can monitor the system from my phone! SEE?!" She just smiled and nodded like she was listening to an 8-year-old telling her facts about dinosaurs.
I put all that new power to use finishing up the wood paneling in the new bathroom. I was able to run a 17 amp saw without the batteries cutting out! I vacuumed the whole cabin with a shop vac! I ran the water pump and the refrigerator AT THE SAME TIME! And still, none of this impresses my wife. How can she not see the raw beauty of 300 amp hours of reliable electricity that was originally stolen from the sun?
At least I've got those hexagons around the toilet. She seems to like those.
I had just enough time yesterday to sneak up to the cabin for about five hours of work. Of course, I ran out of the paneling material I spent the last few days staining and varnishing before I finished the walls, but that's life.
I had the day free, so I popped up to the cabin to do some more work on the new extension. After some experimentation, I determined that I was never going to be able to recreate the machine-cut hexagons I already put up on the wall with enough accuracy to maintain the pattern. Thankfully, I found some more of them at the Habitat for Humanities ReStore. Not enough to finish the toilet surround, but enough to make where I stopped look intentional. I was going to put up more of the beadboard that I salvaged from the old bathroom, but it was overcast all day, and my poor, aging battery bank just can't hold much of a charge anymore. I'm hopefully investing in some better batteries soon, but for now I will just have to be judicious about my electricity usage after dark. Just like in the pioneer days.
This weekend at the cabin, I passed a critical point: the composting toilet is now installed in the new bathroom. I know it doesn't look like much but this is an entire day of work sitting here in front of you. So, my wife finally has her cabin dream of not having to go outside to poop.
It was hot and windy at the cabin this weekend, so I opted to work inside the entire time. The incremental demolition of the old bathroom continues apace, revealing the full extent of the rodent invasion. I reclaimed enough paneling there to install the ceiling of the new bathroom, hopefully not bringing any new mice in with me.
This bizarre October weather (90 degree high on Saturday) is coupled with a confused changing of the seasons. Half of the trees have started dropping leaves while the other half haven't even changed colors. The cabin has been overrun with ladybugs looking for winter quarters. And I found a large, fat porcupine who was looking for a new place to burrow and briefly thought under the decking of my raised path through the woods was a good enough place. Sadly, I couldn't get any pictures of him, since it was getting dark, and I wasn't going to stick my face into an ambulatory ball of sharp spikes.
I got a lot done at the cabin this weekend. It's completely insulated and sealed now, and I was able to put up enough soffit venting to keep critters from getting into the ceiling, so it was time to finally cut the doorway between the old space and the new. There was already a window there (which I have been crawling through to access the space), so I thought I would just take out the window (which has been the one leaky window in the place anyway) and cut below it so that I wouldn't have to do any massive reframing. Sounds pretty straightforward, right?
Well, it wasn't. I cut open the wall paneling and discovered that I had run four different electrical circuits through the wall under the window. I lost half a day just figuring out how to reroute the damn things. Fortunately, it only took one trip to the hardware store to get it done.
In a flurry of work, I put in the shower pan, framed and rocked the shower surround, and mostly built the wall between the actual bathroom and the other half of the extension. To do that, I began the process of cannibalizing the old bathroom for parts. From here on out, the bathroom downstairs is going to disappear at pretty much the same rate as the new one appears. Magic!
Another day at the cabin stuffing insulation in the walls of the new extension. I know it's working, because I am sweating like I'm in a sauna.
I came up to the cabin again for what I planned to be one kind of short day. I got the windows installed in the extension and knocked out the electrical. I was feeling pretty good about my progress when I headed back home for a meeting I needed to get to. Then the low tire pressure light came on in my truck, and I found a screw in my tire. The one auto shop in Hinckley that was still open was just about to close and couldn't fit me in until this morning. So, I missed my meeting, but I did use the extra time I was stuck here to start putting up insulation, and it was cold enough at night that I fired up the wood stove for the first time this season.