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!