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.