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!

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