Happy Thanksgiving

We spent the long holiday weekend eating leftover turkey and pie in front of the fire.  (The stone work was finally finished last week - yay!)  I hope everyone else had a peaceful and delicious holiday.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Wood Stove

We had the wood stove installed earlier this week.  The stove will serve as the furnace for the cabin and will be the main source of heat up there this winter and for many, many winters to come.  We are going to have a stone wall installed behind the stove, and we were hoping all of the work would be done at the same time, but the stone was back ordered, or the mason was on vacation, or possibly some combination of the two stories.  At any rate, the wall should be finished sometime before the end of the month, hopefully.  I think the stove is really beautiful and a perfect centerpiece for the cabin.  It is made of cast iron so it is quite a bit heavier and more substantial than many stoves on the market, most of which are made of steel.  We haven't fired it up yet, but I can't wait.  Having so much chimney on the inside of the house is a real advantage because that gives off heat as well as the stove itself.  I have a feeling it is going to be really warm in there this winter. 

I also scored a really sweet set of furniture for the porch on Craigslist last week and after doing a little repair work on the cushions, it is all ready for serious relaxing! 

Hoodie Weather

When we last saw our heroes, they were waiting to hear the demands from the evil Building Inspector...  As it turns out, the inspector was not so evil, and not so demanding.  There were a couple of small changes he asked us to make, a couple of which were for the electrical permit, which does not list him as the inspector, but I suppose we'll do them anyway.

The family visited Camp Freedom this weekend and did a couple of things to finish things up.  Katie found a storm door on Craigslist that was in perfect shape, and fit perfectly into the space available:

I should probably mention, in order to pass the inspection, we also had to build up the front porch a bit, and add some railings.  It's a little narrow, but I think we will probably end up leaving it this way.   As it turns out, having railings on the steps does make it feel more stable going in and out of the cabin.

Now we just need to add another railing on the stairs coming off the back porch (one of the inspector's demands), and we'll be set!

We also took advantage of the beautiful fall weather this weekend and took care of a lot of outside chores.  We took down Fort Awesome for the season and packed it away.  To be honest I'm not sure if it will be coming back out.  We used it once over the summer, and I don't see it getting a lot of heavy usage again.  Maybe if we know that we will be having a large number of visitors we might put it up, but I don't think I want to automatically put it up in the spring next year.

On top of that,the boys spent a long time chopping and stacking firewood.  Between the two of them, they managed to put up about half of a cord of firewood!  Not quite enough to pass muster on Frontier House, but fortunately our firewood stack isn't going to make the difference between surviving the winter or dying off like ill-prepared pioneers.  It doesn't take much to make a cabin extremely cozy.  On Saturday, on of the errands we ran was a visit to the fireplace store in town.  We are having a wood stove installed, and having the wall behind the stove mortared up with a stone veneer in a couple of weeks.  Can't wait to have that done so we can start making fires inside the cabin!  Just in time for sweater weather :)

Thor and Guthrie Working Together on Their Log-Splitting Operation

Judgement Day

The building inspector is scheduled to visit the cabin today and decide if it passes or not.  Nerves are high!  If he finds anything that needs work, we will have 30 days to address it.  Once this is over, we still have an outstanding electrical permit that needs to be closed.  Ray and I are both really looking forward to getting the inspections over with and the inspectors out of our lives.  Fingers crossed today, everybody!

Standing at the Finish Line

The family packed up for the holiday weekend and headed off to CF, as we normally do.  This time there was some tension in the air as we were wondering what the results of the siding job that was supposed to have happened while we were gone.  Would it be done at all?  Would it be really bad?  Maybe it would be great?

The pictures speak for themselves, but we are very pleased!

It looks so nice - and so finished!  We've been anticipating this moment for so long, it's hard to believe that it's finally here.  The inside of the porch is especially nice.  We put a cot out there and it was hard not to just lie down and nap the day away.  Someday, soon, but for now we have a few finishing details that we have to attend to before we can call it "done".  But we're happy to bask in the glory of a sided cabin, at least until next weekend.  

As an  added bonus, we used leftover siding to to finish the long-neglected Fort Necessity.  After nearly 2 years of looking like a ramshackle tarpaper shack, our little privy finally has it's dignity back.

First wall going up

All Done!

Open for Business?

Finishing Touches

Ray and I spent the weekend all by ourselves at the cabin.  The kids are at camp until Friday.  We took advantage of the lack of distractions to finish several projects.  We installed a floor on the porch.  We ended up just installing a plywood floor and painted it with a porch and floor paint..  It was cheap, easy to install and should be very functional.  We finished the stairs on the outside and installed some lights. 

 With the porch done, we turned our attention back inside.  The only room that still needed some attention is the small room that will one day be our bathroom.  We paneled the walls, added the ceiling laid down a sheet vinyl floor and hung the door.  Eventually, we will put in a composting toilet, but that will most likely have to wait until next summer.  For now, it is a useful storage area. 

Ray took a few moments to do a bit of decorating.

When we got home on Monday, Ray talked to the contractor who is supposed to be installing our siding.  He claims he is going to start this week, so hopefully, by the next time we're up there, the outside will start to look as finished as the inside!

Birthday Season

We are all struggling a bit to pick up the pieces and move on with life after our loss.  Honestly, it has been harder than I ever would have guessed, but time has started to heal and we are still managing to enjoy each other and the rest of our summer.  Both Thor and Ray's birthdays fall in the same week at the end of July and we had lots of fun celebrating both of them.  Thor took a few friends up to the cabin for an overnight.  Ray was brave enough to chaperone them and managed to find a bit of time to continue working on the porch.

Ray added the stairs and now we just need to add a railing.

Here are the boys reproducing the 4th of July "prop shot" although this one has a little more of a Reservoir Dogs feel to it than the original.

For his birthday this year, the thing Thor wanted more than anything was to take a Segway tour.  As it was Ray's birthday too, Guthrie and I sent them both out for the adventure.

They said it was a blast and highly recommend Segway-ing to anyone who has the opportunity to try it.  This weekend Ray and I packed both boys off to Camp Warren in Eveleth, MN.  They have both been campers up there for a while, but this is the first time they have gone to the same session.  The house is unbelievably quiet.  They will be gone for 2 weeks.  Guthrie is doing horse camp which means he will spend half his day riding and caring for the horses and the other half of his day doing traditional camp activities.  Thor is going on a 5 day Boundary Waters canoe trip.  He will spend a few days in camp working on trail skills and preparing for the trip, 5 days on the trail, and the remainder of his time doing activities back at camp.  They were both so excited to go and I am proud of their independence and adventurous spirits.  Here they are getting on the bus that takes them up there.

  
  The camp bus leaves early on Sunday morning, so after they took off, Ray and I hightailed it up to the cabin for the day.  He had to be at work on Monday, but we were able to put in a full days work on the porch before heading home.  Without the kids in tow, we were able to work until about 10pm and made it home by midnight.  We finished all the trim on the outside of the porch that actually keeps the screens tacked down.  We also added the cross bracing "x" detail.  It adds more stability and good looks to the design and should also make it much harder to accidentely kick the screen out.  All that is left is to finish the outside railing on the stairs, add flooring and light fixtures and the porch is done.  It turned out beautifully and honestly, I think it is the best part of the cabin. 

 We finally pulled the trigger on the siding for the exterior.  We wanted to go with an engineered Hardie Board product, but once we got a price quote, we realized it was a bit of a stretch for the budget.  We manged to find a special order vinyl product in a color we liked, so that's what we went with.  It was delivered last week and is sitting in a pile outside the cabin.  Hopefully, the guy we hired to install it will show up sometime this week to start putting it up. 

On the way home from the cabin late last night, our little red trailer finally quit.  We blew a tire and pulled over to check it out.  It was really late and there was no way to change it as we don't have a spare for it.  The trailer itself had recently acquired a kind of death stink that we could only attribute to some kind of fungus or rot that had gotten into the plywood that made up the box.  Between the stink and the blown tire, we decided to just abandon it.  Luckily, we were on the way home and it was only loaded with trash that we were taking home to throw away.  For a little trailer that I pulled out of the garbage 3 years ago and we have abused just about every weekend since then, I'd say we pretty good use out of it.  Ray and I should be heading out next weekend by ourselves and I am excited to put the finishing touches on the porch and hopefully check on the progress on the siding. 

It is with such a heavy heart that I write this post.  We had to say good-bye to our Georgia at the end of last week after receiving a devastating cancer diagnosis.  She was such an amazing companion and to say that we miss her is painfully inadequate.  In so many ways, she was the very center of our family and her passing has left an enormous hole in our hearts.  As difficult as it is, it felt appropriate to eulogize her here on this blog.  She was a huge reason that we took on this project in the first place.  We hated leaving her behind any time we traveled, even just for a weekend camping trip, and that was a big part of our decision to try and have a place of our own, so she could always be with us.  Having a large dog in the city is a challenge, and we were always sad that she didn't have more chances to be off leash and explore the world.  Camp Freedom gave her that opportunity and was one of the main reasons behind the name.  She got to have a kind of freedom up there that she could never have at home and she loved it so much.  Seeing her play and explore the woods was one of the most gratifying things for me about spending time up there.  Whenever it was time to go home, Georgia would try to hide under the bed and would make us drag her to the car.  She always wanted to stay just a little bit longer.  Camp Freedom will be her final resting place and it is a comfort to know she will always be there with us.

Mancation 2012

Ray just got back from his annual reunion with his high school buddies.  It sounded like a hot, sweaty weekend at C.F., but they managed to get a good start on screening the porch as well as enjoy many uninterrupted hours of gaming.  This weekend was a really nice bookend to last year's reunion, when the guys built the porch floor.  If anyone has the right to kick back and play D&D all night on this porch, it's this group!  Here are a few photos of the progress.

 

We also took further advantage of the raw muscle power of this group by having them help move up the stone that our wood stove will eventually sit on.  We scored this slab of cultured stone for free off of Craigslist over a year ago and it's been living in our garage ever since.  It is extremely heavy and awkward to move and we really appreciate the help with getting it up there!

Ray has a few days to cool off and rest up before another Mancation of sorts.  Thor is turning 13 in a few days (I know, can you believe it???) and he is taking a couple buddies up for an overnight.  Ray may be able to get the stairs added to the outside of the porch while the kids are hanging out.  Great to see everyone from Lincoln and THANK YOU!!!!

More Reunion Pictures

Claudia and Max take their freedom seriously.

I'm really glad Auggie decided the whale was a nice guy and not a threat.

Thanks for the floaties, Phoebe!

Phoebe and Guthrie enjoyed harvesting some of the wild ramps that grow at C.F.  Phoebe made sure to leave her mark on our picnic table!

Canoe adventure on Mighty Mud Lake

Snuggling by the campfire

Phoebe got a chainsaw lesson from Ray and took to it right away!

Who trusted this guy with the babies?

We were so excited to host Auggie's third birthday.  Great job finding a letter flavored cake, Mom and Dad!

Loved the loft, but no gross stuff in the bucket, please!