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