Driveway

We got the good news over the weekend that the driveway was in! The contractor actually made it out last week and put in the driveway, cleared a few trees from the building site and dug the pit for the outhouse. We took a trip up there yesterday to check it out. The town of Cumberland was all decorated for Christmas and looked charming. Having a driveway really changes the whole place. Now we can actually pull in and park the car. That is a far cry from pulling off the road into the woods. Now it actually feels like a destination. It was really pretty out there with snow on the ground. We don't have any snow yet at home so that was kind of a surprise. The place looks really different without all the leaf cover. We do lose some of the privacy. The two neighboring houses are more visible. But we also gain a much better view of the lake. There is thick tree cover at the edge of the wetland that blocks the view in the summer. Eventually, we will thin those trees a bit so we have a nice view from the cabin, but for now when the leaves are in, it is hard to see the water. This time, though, the water was easy to see. The lakes are not iced over yet, so there were still plenty of birds to watch. It is hunting season up there now. The deer tracks were quite visible in the snow and there were gunshots audible all afternoon. That might be the last time we make it up there this winter. Now we turn our attention to finishing the outhouse, which Ray moved into the garage last night, and planning the cabin!

Excavation Update

We seem to be slowly moving forward with our excavation contractor. I have been frustrated with him because we hired him almost a month ago and he still hasn't done the work. The weather has been more than perfect - highs in the 50's, sunny and dry. Unheard of for November. He keeps saying he's busy with other jobs but I think it may have something to do with the fact that it's now deer hunting season. After several phone calls this week, Ray got him to commit to doing the work on Monday. We'll see. The weather for next week is cold with rain and snow. We haven't paid him anything yet, which is possibly why he doesn't feel obliged to do any work for us. But that means the worst case scenario is that we get someone else to do the job and all we've wasted is time. The township finally cashed the $25 check we wrote a month ago for the permit fee. I still don't have a permit in my hands or a driveway on my land but it feels like we're inching closer to getting something accomplished. If this gets done before the holiday next week, I know what I'll be thankful for this year!

Fort Necessity

We have started building the outhouse! In our backyard. We are using the same kind of plan that we used to construct the tent platform. We designed the privy to be built in four panels and then hauled out to the site. We got a good start on the walls last weekend. I found a website from some university agricultural extension service that allows you to download free building plans. The available plans are mostly for agricultural buildings such as chicken coops and slaughter houses. I downloaded outhouse plans as well as the blueprints for a bomb shelter. Guess which one Ray wanted to work on first. The plans called for a 4x4 foot building. We wanted to make sure that was roomy enough so we used this system to check the dimensions. We taped a square on the deck and determined the outhouse should be roomy enough for both a person and a dog to use comfortably. We went on to frame up all three of the side walls. Eventually, they will be insulated and paneled. This is what they look like right now. It will have a translucent corrugated fiberglass roof and of course, a crescent moon on the door.I did not want to use or maintain an outhouse with a gross plywood bench so I have been doing research on what is politely called an outhouse pedestal. I found a Canadian company that makes a very nice fiberglass model that should be able to withstand our temperature extremes as well as being very easy to keep clean. This is a picture of that pedestal.We will not have a concrete slab as pictured here. Our plans call for a plywood floor assembly that will be covered with a nice, easy to clean linoleum. I don't want to sound like too much of a princess, but if the plan is to build an outhouse, I would like it to be the cleanest, most pleasant outhouse possible.

Waiting Game

I have to apologize for my lack of recent posts. Between work and school, I haven't had a chance to update. It seems like every year the kids get busier and busier, which only reaffirms my thought that we need a place to get away! I can't wait until we can just throw a backpack in the car and disappear together for the whole weekend. We are in a holding pattern as far as our progress is concerned. We hired an excavator to put in a driveway, clear the building site and dig a pit for the privy. We had to get a permit for the driveway which required a township inspector to take a look at the site. The man responsible for that task is a long haul trucker who is only in town from time to time. Ray talked to him last night and apparently he has been out to the site and declared that everything looked great. They have yet to cash the check for the permit fee or actually issue a written permit, but those seem to be insignificant details that only I am concerned about. Now that we have his blessing, our contractor can go ahead and bulldoze his heart out as soon as the weather cooperates. We are looking forward to at least one more trip out this winter to inspect his work. Once he is done, we will have Fort Awesome ready to go up, a nice gravel driveway, a building site graded and clear of trees and a place to go to the bathroom. I'm proud of all we've accomplished in under 3 months. We should be in great shape to start building the actual cabin in the spring!

Country Life

We had planned to go up to Camp Freedom last week since the kids had Thursday and Friday off from school. I was picturing a few perfect Indian summer days with gorgeous fall colors and just enough bite in the air to make the campfire feel delicious. Because we could go up mid-week, Ray and I thought it would be a perfect chance to meet with some contractors. Then we checked the weather. The forecast for the planned trip was high in the 40's and a rain/snow mix. Cold and wet - not ideal camping weather for even the heartiest Northerner. Ray had made appointments with two excavators, one well digger and the electric co-op that services our area. He was able to reschedule everything for Thursday and just drove up for the day by himself. Two of the meetings were with men named Jeff. We joked that they were probably the same person. Well, they were two different people but two of the contractors did have a connection. The well digger sheepishly admitted that he was the cousin of one of the excavators that had come out that morning. The admission went something like this, " Yeah, he's my cousin. But I don't want you to think that we're all related up here."

Rationale

Since outlining the scope of the project in more detail, I feel like I have to remind myself why I am doing this. The end result seems obvious. We want a little cabin in the woods to spend our weekends and summer vacations with friends and family. But in our part of the world, cabins in the woods are a dime a dozen. If we had saved a little longer, and looked a little harder, we probably could have found one. But we never set out to buy someone else's cabin. What we really set out to find was a project. We have set what seems like an impossible goal and it will be great fun to see if we can accomplish it. We are also doing this with our kids in mind. We have two very modern children who are growing up in an increasingly virtual world. They love the computer, video games, television and desperately want cell phones. I want them to grow up knowing how to make something with their own two hands. I am also hoping they will learn that with hard work and ingenuity, they can accomplish anything they can dream up. If throughout the course of this project, they absorb these lessons, I will feel a huge sense of accomplishment. Some people use sports or religion, but in our family, we've chosen to use construction as the vehicle to teach our boys how to be strong, capable men. So in that sense, this is really much more than a cabin. Now I just need to remind myself of that this weekend while I'm standing out in the rain and snow waiting for the excavation contractor to show up!

The Nitty Gritty

The planning stages of this project are starting to get complicated. Ray spent last week on the phone with many of the different people we are going to need to get this thing underway. He called two excavators, the electric company, and a well digger. We are going to be out there next week and plan to meet with them then to get some bids on the work. It is difficult to make appointments with them because, not only do we not have a phone number to give them, we don't have an address. We need a fire number and it costs $25 dollars to get one. Once you pay your money, the city then posts a sign near your driveway, which we don't have yet. The excavator will clear the driveway. As long as he's there with a bulldozer, it makes sense to have him clear the building site and possibly dig the pit for the privy. That means that before we have him do the work, we have a lot of big questions to answer. The well digger can't do his job until we have the building site as well as the privy site settled either. He also needs a soil test to be done before he'll do anything. The electric is also crazy complicated. They will come in and run a line out to our building site and install a temporary meter so we have power to run our tools. That would be very good. They bury the cables out there so the trees don't continually knock out power. We have to provide them with a trench to run the cables in. Sounds like a job for the guy with the bulldozer, right? The only problem with that is they have to bury the cables before November 1, because of the weather. They will also charge us a minimum monthly charge for the power whether we are there using it or not. That makes us think we should wait and get the power drop done in the spring and save a few bucks. This doesn't even begin to address the issue of permits. (Yes, we're pulling permits. . .) Everyone wants their own permit pulled, township, country, state, etc. They weren't kidding when they call this raw land. We are literally starting from scratch and the reality of that is setting in slowly but surely!