Carpet for the Loft

Hello friends,

Last weekend I took a solo trip out to Camp Freedom to keep chipping away at the interior of the cabin. My sister came down from her neck of the woods to join me, and it was a good thing. I don't think that I would have managed to get much done without that extra set of hands.

As soon as we finished paneling the ceiling over the loft (woohoo! ceiling is finished!), we hauled up the carpet. You remember the carpet - that incredible Craigslist find of a whole house full of carpet for free? Great stuff. As it turns out the largest piece just about completely fills out entire floor of the loft. How much does a 20x14 feet roll of carpet weigh? Just about enough to make you cry. But we don't cry at Camp Freedom just because something is heavy. No! We make harnesses and loops for our hands! We make all kinds of guttural roars, and sweat until our glands beg for mercy! With the rope, and more than a fistful of moxie we hauled the shaggy behemoth straight up the ladder, folded at the center, flipped the top half onto the loft, and inchwormed the rest of it up from the floor below. (It would have been fun to take pictures of that, but we had our hands full...)

It was a mighty struggle, but the end result made it totally worth it. The loft is now the Relaxation Capital of the cabin.

Somehow Monique ended up much more relaxed than me.

We still have a few spots to fill in. That will be the project for this weekend.

And while the carpet was non-stop fun, we did manage to get the wall at the front of the loft closed off with paneling. Well, about 90% closed off.... This never-ending task is a little bit further along. I'm sure someday soon we'll be working on another never-ending task, and will think back fondly, "Remember when we put up the paneling in the cabin? That sure went up quick, didn't it?"

Happy Easter

We spent the last weekend of the kid's spring break up at the cabin. The weather has turned cool and Saturday was rainy, so it was nice to have a roof over our heads and an indoor project to work on. We got a large delivery of paneling on Saturday morning and spent the rest of the weekend putting up the walls for the kitchen and setting the cabinets. We have a rustic but working kitchen now and all we are missing is one counter top. Ray cut a piece of plywood to serve as a temporary counter so we can start using the kitchen next time we're there. It was really fun to put the paneling up on the walls. I love the way it looks and I finally feel confident that we made the right choice on that material.

Happy Birthday Guthrie!

Please indulge this post. I wanted to share some videos of Guthrie's big birthday present with some family but I couldn't attach the videos to an email. The easiest solution was to just put them up here. I'm not sure who's having more fun, Guthrie or Ray! We brought the bike up to C.F. last weekend and it handled the rough terrain and hills way better than I expected!

Updates

Don't let the lack of posts fool you - there's been plenty of activity up at Camp Freedom lately. The past two weekends have been spent putting a window into the loft. It looks great, lets some fresh air in and makes the space up there a touch less claustrophobic. We are waiting on a big delivery of paneling that may arrive this weekend so there should be a flurry of walls going up very soon. We have been busy with several great Craigslist scores lately. We got a pair of cute twin bed frames that will be perfect for the kids and fit really well in the loft. We also got hundreds of square feet of carpeting out of a cute bungalow in South Minneapolis. A young couple had just closed on the house and immediately pulled out all the carpeting to expose the wood floors. The carpet is so new though, that my suspicion is that the previous owner had just installed the carpeting before listing the house. At any rate we scored more than enough new-ish, neutral carpeting for the entire loft and both bedrooms. Cost of carpeting and bedframes = nothing!