Misc Small Projects

July was insanely busy for me!  I was gone more than I was home.  I wish it were all one big vacation, but to be honest, little vacations tucked in between work at the cabin.

We are still making great progress, but I'll save one of the biggest changes for next post.  Check back again soon!

This post is all about the little changes taking place...

Like Garage (or basement in our case) storage and organization.  As many times as we've moved, Eric has always told me that he can't do any work until he organized his garage.  I used to roll my eyes, but truth be told, he's got to know where the tools are at.

New toilet...  This wasn't a must, but the old one used like 4 gallons per flush.  Little excessive, don't you think?

Wood burners cleaned...

Attic access...

Smoke detectors throughout the house.

Drywall

Drywall is one of those things that you just don't want to do yourself.  Could we?  Yes, but it would have taken all summer for us to do it ourselves.  Not to mention, the angry words Eric and I would have expressed toward each other wasn't worth it.

So, we hired a professional!

Here are some before pictures...

Bad attempt by a DIYer!

Bathroom was professionally mudded.

The one bedroom that was actually completed.  Don't you love that mural?

Lovely textured ceiling!  NOT!  At least it was only down the hallway.

We call this Gran's room.  Love the furniture they left us!  This will be refinished at a later date!

Notice how non of the drywall was actually finished.  So, every time we added heat to the place, the bugs would come out of the attic.  GROSS!

Closet by front door.

And the after...

Living room ceiling!

Hallway, with NO popcorn ceiling!

Bedroom with mural has been removed, along with all the fake beams!  It really brightens up the place!

Gran's room.

Stairwell.

Full wall in basement was finished off.

The mighty wall comes down

Once upon a time, there was a wall between a kitchen and a living room.  The wall really served no purpose.  It was not structural and was not a load bearing wall.  So, the wall decided it needed to be removed!

We saved the paneling.  The plan is to use it on some of the walls that needed repair that were not being drywalled.

Here, the paneling was removed.  Barb is working on removing some of the electrical that ran through the wall.  We had to relocate a light switch.

Sorry for the dark picture, but you can see the studs were removed and we were working on removing the top and the bottom of the wall.  What's that called?  I can't remember.

Done!  View from the kitchen.

Done!  View from the living room!

Fire Pit

One of the tasks that we wanted to get done was to install a fire pit.  this first task was to determine its location.  We knew that we didn't want it too close to the cabin, but we also didn't want it too far either.  Right out the back door, there is a couple of hills, so we decided to place the pit in the valley of these two hills.  We are hoping that the hills will block some of the wind.

We knew that there would be things to burn instead of filling up our dumpster.  We were right on the money with that.  The boys managed to demolish some dressers and bookcases and one VERY solid wood table.

For those that know me well, you know I like to refinish furniture and give it new life, so it pained me to destroy some of these pieces.  But, in the end, they just were not going to make the cut.

The first step was of installing the fire pit was to clear a space...  Of course, this was Eric's favorite part because he got to use the new toy!

Thanks to a friend that Eric works with, we have this brush hog (for free)!  Eric took down all the sumac trees in the area that we wanted to put the pit!

This thing is dangerous!  The boys and I were watching and a stick flew across the field and landed at our feet.  We were a good 20 yards from Eric.  Wow!  This thing cuts through just about everything!

This is the part of the property that is somewhat clear.  The pines in the upper right corner of the picture is were the woods start.  There is about 70 acres of woods.

Eric loves his new tractor!  The pictures are a bit far away, but he was smiling from ear to ear the entire time!

I put the boys in charge of moving the fire ring to the right location.  They were kind of like hamsters... running in their wheel.

They showed good teamwork!

Up over the hill!

Eric used the tractor to dig the whole and then the boys used shovels to fill back in around the edges of the pit!  They did a great job!

They filled it with cardboard to get a fire started!

After a hard days work, Sawyer had to take a nap.  He told me he wanted to rest and read for a little bit, but when I checked on him 20 minutes later, he was out like a light!

Thanks for stopping by!

Lisa

Dumpster

So, we headed up to the cabin over Memorial Day weekend with a long list of things to accomplish.  One of the most important things on our list was to clean out the cabin of the unwanted items.  The previous owners left quite a bit of furniture.  Use your imagination to smell the mold and mildew in these.  To be honest, I was almost afraid to touch them...  just didn't know what would come out of a sleeper sofa that has been left in a basement for 20 years!  Yikes!

Thankfully, I didn't see any critters living in them.

All of the wood items were dragged into the yard for the boys to destroy.  They managed to smash a changing table, two bookcases and a dresser.  They managed all this without smashing themselves!  Thank goodness because I am not sure where the closest hospital is at!

We had a 20 yard dumpster delivered on Friday morning and to be honest, I didn't think that we would fill the think up.  To my surprise, I was wrong!

Check out those gorgeous plaid couches!

All in a days work!

Eric was able to go to the cabin last weekend with Sawyer.  I wasn't sure what 1 man (and an 8 year old) could do, but Eric really surprised me!

First of all, he hauled our new tractor up there!  It's like a new toy for Eric and he loves it!

He got up there late on Friday night and discovered that our new well had been dug!  Woo hoo!  You know how much easier it is to work on things when you have running water?  Needless to say, Eric had to turn on the water and verify that there were no leaks...

So Saturday morning, he got up to discover that the water heater had taken a crap.  I guess when it sits there for 20 years, there are going to be issues.  So guess what?  He replaced it!  Now we are able to take hot showers, which is a good thing since we are planning to be there for a 4 day weekend over Memorial Day!

He was also able to rake the yard... mow the lawn... replace kitchen faucet... replace bathroom faucet... and took old furnace out.

Not too bad for a days work!

I'll take pictures when I head up next weekend!