Coming together

I have some more pictures of the entry, concrete foundations and bathroom today. I think the pics show how fast things are coming together up at Dougs. The bathroom is now closed in and has a nice insulated floor. The styrofoam is just one layer of insulation and will also be spray foamed underneath the cabin to fill any gaps and add some "R" factor. While Doug has been working on the bathroom i have installed the wall on the back side of the shower to close off the house. There was some serious scribing to do on the outside wall and against the cabin logs but the finished product turned out great! In the photos i show the wall with and with out a crawl space door installed. I also have pic of the bathroom with it's new plywood floor and showing where the toilet will end up. Included today is also a couple photos of the built up concrete foundations for the addition. Lots of digging and hauling sand from the river has lead up to this point. The goal for the season is to get the concrete poured and the big 8X8 timbers attached so next year Doug can go right into putting up the walls.

Progress on the bathroom/entry retrofit

Since cutting the hole for the door into the bathroom Doug and i have been focusing on closing in the bathroom. Right now we just have an old plastic covered door leaned up against the bathroom door opening, not really sealing up the cabin. Doug wants to get the cabin sealed back up so the ferrets can come in and run around and also to keep the bugs out. The last couple days i have been working on re-leveling the deck and constructing a new step into the front door. Doug has continued framing in the bathroom and getting it ready for electrical/plumbing rough in. Since most all of the steps in the cabin have some kind of taper or angle to the treads we decided we will follow suit and do that at the entry to the house and the step down into the bathroom. Any other steps we make will have that same feature. Doug really likes that look and i'd have to agree with him. A have been taking pictures along the way, some of them don't have the right lighting to see all the fine detail i apologize for that. The first one is of the deck after i leveled it with big 2X lumber i cut into giant 8 foot long tapered shims and installed new 12 inch wide planks i cut from that 22inch diameter long at the mill. The second is from standing on the deck with the floor planks laid up to the soon to be step. The third, a look at the bathroom progress a day ago. After that i have a pic of a view out the bathroom door, through the shower onto the deck. If you look closely you can see the taper from the cabin front door to the outside wall where i shimmed up the floor to get it level. The next picture is of the bathroom with insulation laid on the floor, ready for plywood sub-floor. And you can also see that Doug has connected the wood floor from the living room to the entry of the bathroom and continued it on the steep down. The last pic i have is the deck with the railing and roof support re-installed. And in the back ground the angled step into the cabin is completed. I'll get some better pictures of the entry way when the light is a little more cooperative.

Working at the saw mill II

Here is the second half of the video from the mill. I also have a few pictures from my work down there today. I worked on cutting up a huge 22 inch wide 9 foot long log! Luckily it has been sitting cut to length for a year so it was nice and dried out. To get that one up on the mill i had to use a come-along for a little pulling assistance. It was a great log to cut up with very little waste and took the saw mill to its limits as far diameter goes. The first pic today is of the logs ready to cut up on the mill, the one huge log on the right is the one i cut up today. The other huge log to the left is even bigger! The second pic shows that huge log i cut up today in the process of being rolled over. And the final pic is of the 4 wheeler and trailer loaded up with all the lumber from the big log. Doug and i are heading into town for a couple days so i'll try to get some footage of what the ride out of the valley is like.

More from the saw mill

A couple days ago i was able to take some video while working at the saw mill. One of the logs i cut up before the one in the video was a 14 foot long, 14 inch diameter monster. It took a lot of levering and elbow grease to move that baby. I ended up getting some great lumber out of that log that will most likely be new steps coming off of the atrium and also up to the green house. The video i shot is broken up into two parts, so today i'll show the first part and the second will follow in a day or two. In the video i show how everything cut from a log is used somehow. I don't mention it in the video but the saw dust i also saved for animal bedding. I hope my explanation for milling a log is interesting so enjoy.

Update on the little black bear

Unfortunately that little black bear that had been coming around is no longer with us. Someone in the valley thought it would be a good idea to get rid the only bear that had been seen this year. He claims it was getting in his root cellar and causing problems but we are sceptical of that explanation. I myself did shoot at the bear, with no intention of killing it. I just aimed over it's head and it got the message. It's too bad some people feel the need to kill all of the animals in this valley.

Freight in, work continues

Now that we have all the goods Doug bought in town, we're back to work. The first project that we're taking on is the bathroom. Doug has continued to frame in the room with lumber from the mill and i have been installing a couple new doors, both in the atrium, one going outside and one leading into the soon to be bathroom. Today Doug worked up the guts to cut a doorway into the bathroom from the living room. I was down at the mill when he started but when i got back up the the cabin i was able to shoot a little video of the progress. He was on to the last log when i showed up and i had to eventually put down the camera and help out. I took a few pictures of the new doors i installed as well. Two are a before and after of the exterior door to the atrium and the other is the access door to the bathroom from the atrium. The meaning behind having the two doors to the bathroom is to promote air movement through the bathroom during the winter months. When you walk into the bathroom from the living room you will be continually be stepping down until you reach the exterior door of the the atrium. This will hopefully make all the cold air stay at the level of the atrium door.

Not your average daily grind

I stitched together a video of what i've been doing the last couple days. Yesterday i fired up the chainsaw and went to town on the tree that fell on the cabin and a couple other leaning trees on the lake property. That was a full days work and i still have lots to do. And the second part of the video is about what it takes to get loads across the river. I meant to shoot some video of the transport across the river but i got wrapped up in the work at hand. We had so much stuff to haul up the hill that we decided to bring the other 4 wheeler back to our side of the river to double team the load hauling up to the cabin. The water level in the river is the lowest it's been this season so i decided to just drive it across. We'll probably take the Honda back across the river soon so i'll try to get video of that trip. Both of us we're busy at the time, Doug was pulling the raft over full of plywood and styrofoam while i was on the machine. I also took a couple pictures loading up the machine with Sammie as my helper. She didn't seem to help too much but she's always a great companion. She stood an the raft for about 5 minutes hoping to go for a ride while i was loading up!

Friends on the Chatanika/Cabin repair

When Doug returned from town a couple days ago, i met him down at the river crossing and we went to visit one of his friends, down for the weekend. So i finally i have a picture of Doug! The friend of Doug is Rick and he is in the left of the pic, Doug is in the middle. Rick had come down to his cabin for the weekend with his girl friend Eileen, she is the one that took the picture. Jumping ahead a couple days, I spent the day repairing the cabin. I took some pics along the way to show how i, temporarily, fixed the roof. I will replace all the broken boards and torn roofing when i add the new addition off the front of the cabin. I had to first chainsaw the downed tree into about 4 sections to get it all of the roof. Then i used a bottle jack and a 4X4 timber to jack up the ridge pole to where it should be. After it was back at the right height, i screwed a couple 2X4's to the sides of the pole to give it some type rigidity. Should hold for a while, until i get the addition built. I look at it this way, now i have my logs to get the foundation built.

Finished floor/lake cabin disaster

After many hours of hard labor i got the final coat of urethane on the wood floor in Dougs cabin. It looks pretty sharp and now were taking our shoes off in the cabin! While Doug was in town i was spending very little time at the lake cabin. Last night i made my way back to the cabin and as i approached the property i noticed something was wrong. I got closer and realized a tree had fallen on the roof right where a tree had fallen on it one time before. A you can see from the picture Doug had repaired the spine of the cabin and braced it with some lumber. Now that is totally destroyed. The tree fell due to very high winds not typical for the interior of Alaska. Doug and i were just surveying the area to determine what trees we needed to removed and that one wasn't even on the list. For the time being i am going to remove the tree and jack up the roof to temporally fix it. I have been planning to add an enclosed porch off the front of the cabin so when the time comes we'll remove the whole roof and continue the roof line over the new room. I'm just glad i wasn't in the cabin when that happened.

A good day to play in the water

After wrapping up my work for the day i decided it'd be a nice day to take a dip in the river. Doug has been in town for the last couple days picking up supplies and essential goods so i have been watching his place and the lake cabin. After doing some concrete work today the sun really started to heat things up and i needed to cool down. I had to pick up some dog food at the lake cabin so i thought it would be a perfect time to take a detour to the river and get wet. So i took Sammie along and we had a nice refreshing swim. I shot a little video of Sammie swimming in the current and took a couple pics. The area that we were at is the same place that i get sand for our concrete mix.

Current projects

I have some pictures today of the latest work Doug and i doing. The first one is of the side of the cabin where the living room addition is going. A few of the footings are poured and we're continuing to pour the remaining ones. The next pics are of the living room floor. Doug had started to lay a tongue and groove floor over the original log floor before i came out this spring. Since then we have finished laying the rest of the floor and now i'm sanding, cleaning and prepping it for stain and urethane. And the last pics are of the beginning of the bathroom. Once we got some cut from the mill Doug jumped right into framing it up. I also have installed a vinyl floor in the kitchen. I don't have a pic of that because all of the stuff from the living room is in the kitchen right now. As well as those jobs i've been spending a lot of time at the mill cutting lumber.

Found my camera/Enjoying the luxury of 120volts

Yesterday, my camera fell out from the back of a chair in the living room! As i figured one of the ferrets took and stashed it. Glad to have it back! Today i have a video about the latest look at my electrical system at the lake cabin. Over the last few weeks i have been collecting additional power production and power consumption items. I've added 3 new fairly large deep cycle batteries, good for long consistent power drains and charging. And i've installed a 2nd solar panel on the roof of the out-house. With that additional power i bought an audio system for my i-pod. Along with the solar panels i also charge the batteries with my gas generator. There is another form of generating electricity that i may look into called Thermo-Electric-Generator (TEG). It uses heat from a stove and turns it into power. A good power generator for winter. Now that i have my camera back i'll get some pics of all the work Doug and i have been doing.

Working hard

Sorry i haven't put up a post but i seem to have misplaced my camera, i believe the ferrets have run off with it and stashed it somewhere in Dougs cabin. Sounds like Doug has an extra camera i can use so i'm back in business. For the last couple of weeks we have been getting lots of started projects finished. We also have some foundations in for the cabin addition. Right now when the weather permits i have been working at the saw mill cutting lots of lumber for the cabin projects. I love the mill. It's so much fun to take a log and turn it into a whole bunch of usable lumber. Starting to plan my own addition to the lake cabin. I feel it needs an enclosed porch of some sort and i think i will have lots of fun building it, not to mention learn a whole lot too. I'll get some pics up soon now that i have a camera to use. Check back soon.