Scary Cabin

The weekend started with hooking up the trailer in preparation for a run to the dump. The pile of construction debris was getting a bit out of hand (well the mice seemed happy with it…). We’d been saving the old kitchen cabinets with the idea that they may prove useful or a the very least, may be donated to Habitat for Humanity. But they were taking up a lot of space in the shed and they’re not modular. So we made the decision to use what we could and dispose of the rest. We saved one upper and half of a lower. These were mounted in the shed to provide some much needed organized storage. The rest were loaded in to the trailer along with the debris pile and hauled off to the dump.

While we had the trailer hooked up it made sense to haul off some of the yard waste too. A month or so back, there was some pretty good wind that knocked a lot of branches out the trees. That along with leaves, pine cones, and pine needles makes for a lot of yard waste. Merry Mountain has an area set aside for dumping yard waste which is very convenient. So we did some additional raking and ended up with a trailer full of yard waste. Even with the help of Genny’s folks and our friend Ben, this yard cleanup activity took most of the day. Once it was done we were all ready for Barbara’s meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The after dinner activity was trimming out a couple of windows.

Sunday was spent cleaning and organizing the utility room. A lot of stuff in there was moved out to the shed where Larry worked some magic and organized it. This frees up space for the tools since we want to finish off the bedroom where we currently store a lot the larger tools.

Bob almost finished up the stairway trim. We’re building, from scratch, all the trim and support for a new railing where previously there was just a partial wall. One of the caps turned out a bit crooked and will need to be re-done, but it’s ready for a railing now. Now we need to learn how to make a stair rail with spindles. Genny did a lot of trim painting and we finished trimming out the windows in the living area.

We did make an attempt to remove the paint lines on the pine ceiling in the living area. The previous owner had installed round-over molding between the beams and the ceiling and when painting them, didn’t try too hard to not get paint on the ceiling. We’ve removed the molding and it does look better without it, but we now have these paint lines on the ceiling. We tried acetone and mineral spirits, neither did much so it’s on to more aggressive chemicals.

This weekend was about details. Nothing really big was accomplished but a lot of little items were either finished or started. For example, we finally got around to installing the toe kick trim in the kitchen and bathroom. The bedroom door now has a door handle. The final piece of baseboard was installed in the bathroom. We managed to get three windows fully trimmed before running out of trim boards.

Genny spent a lot of time painting trim board and filling holes in the ceiling beams. The beams are now one step closer to getting painted.

Bob spent a lot of time on the stair rail base. For some reason the angles needed for most of the railing base are ~41 ° It still needs the top piece and a bit more work before it’s finished but it is starting to looked finished.

On a side note, we may have finally figured out the remote for the fireplace. It actually ran for 12 hours holding a constant temperature. The key may be that you have to set the mode only when the fireplace is in standby. If you switch modes while it has flames, it seems to behave somewhat randomly. When it’s cold, the first thing we do is turn it on maximum. So if after turning it on, we then put it in standby and then set the mode, maybe it will work. We still need some time to experiment with it.