How to Begin Again....

Like an overgrown garden...not sure where to start, but the longer you leave it the worse it gets.  I've made a couple of failed attempts in the past 18 months or so to restart this, but...well like they say, sometimes life gets in the way....

So to those who may wish to see just what went down...

2011
When we last left Peter and the cabin it was Thanksgiving weekend 2011.  Insulation was the latest rage.   30 Rock was the #6 rated show,  the economy was still in the tank, Pope Benedict XVI was head of the church and Facebook was still a private company.

I'd been training for the California Marathon held in Sacramento in early December.  Training had been going well.  I had great expectations..as we all do going into these things.  The week before the race I'd been getting some significant pains in my left quad.  I wrote it off as tight IT band or sore quads..I'd trained pretty hard for this.  So off I went to catch a plane to San Francisco.
You know, it's not everything they say.  I saw no hippies, very few people with flowers in their hair and almost no Rice a Roni.

But long story short...tough race, leg bothered me the entire day only to find that I had a stress fracture the length of my femur.  Over the years I've had countless physio and massage appointments, not to mention chiropractic, homeopathic, acupuncture, etc..etc..  All these educated sources have always said to me "If you can still run on it, it isn't a stress fracture."  I guess they just know how dumb I am.

So 2011 is winding down and I'm still limping around, picking away at the cabin in anyway I can.  Then we get the phone call.  "Hi, Lara and Peter...you're baby is ready.  Can you come get him right away?"  It was really like that and we welcomed Patrick to our little home.

 Of course that put Ace at #2, a position that she has gladly accepted given the food that has since come her way.

So that basically wrapped up 2011.  I exited the year with a broken leg and a 2-week old kid.  I won't go into the other details of the final month of that year but we did say goodbye to Foolish, some deer on the highway just outside of Golden and the left marker light and grill of my truck.

Foolish Cat

2012
So bring on 2012...what is in store...I promise here to get back to more cabin-y stuff.
Not much I can remember about the first 6 months of 2012.  Lara had been trying to finish her masters, so she had school/work 2-3 days a week, I was working full time and we juggled Paddy between nanny, relatives, Lara's off days and my vacation days.  We did ok, but not much progress in Golden.  By now it was May and we were all just a bit burnt out.  The cabin had some small, but great advances in the few weekends I'd been there over the winter.
1. an indoor shower.  I've raved of the milestone of indoor plumbing in the past, but an indoor shower....now we're talking luxury.
2. Walls.  Walls are good, especially when you have a 6 month old.  The windows in the loft bedroom were a great addition.  Not a small task to install, but a great finish product and resulting view from our bedroom out through the front of the house.

That's about it.  I generally picked at stuff inside the place for 6 months until it was fit to generally go out there with a baby...so looking back at where we were in October '11, by the time May came about, we were actually in pretty good shape.  There was a fair number of baseboard heaters and more and more comforts of home with every visit.

I guess the next step change came in the fall of  2012 when Paddy started really crawling around.  At this point I realized that the plywood floors just weren't going to cut it.  Off to my favorite store (Kijiji) to round up some carpet.  New/used/roll ends...whatever I could scrape up.   I must admit it turned out pretty good for the sake of a couple of hundred bucks.

By the end of summer we were kinda cozy at the place.  I managed to pull of Ironman Canada and life seemed to be getting back to normal.

Of course the biggest move of the 2012 season was the purchase of the Kubota L2350.  25HP of Asian Orange.

Priceless piece of kit for the acreage owner.  Especially for plowing snow.

The fall came and went with minimal progress and we looked forward to spending our first Christmas out there with our cross country skis.  And ski we did, 8 of 10 days.  Awesome spot for that and the labor of the previous two years finally bears fruit.

Paddy has a certain fondness for XC skiing in the chariot.

 Not to mention the tractor....

2013
So here we are.. .the abbreviated version.
In March, we got proper cabinets.  The full place is insulated and vapor barrier around the windows and doors, the inside front wall is stained, the outside back of the cabin has been roughly landscaped and I promised myself that before the summer is out I'd have the front deck finished.

Back yard leveled

Started with the pillars

 Then some cedar posts to give it that log feel

Then my joists.

August long weekend and I'm still on track.  Just the decking to put up there, and it's beers on the deck.

Next up...the garage....

All the best.
Peter

Thanksgiving....It's all about the stuffing

Yup it was all stuffing all weekend long.  Not the kind of stuffing that makes one's appetite satiated, more the kind that makes your skin itch, your shoulders sore and likely clogs your lungs with little pink pieces of some sort of polystyrene.

But the place is mostly warm now, practically livable even though it went to the low single digits in the night time out there.  There's no longer a slow wave of cold air pouring in from the rafters, but I still have some work to do, especially with vapor barrier that will close out the remaining drafts.

It's not so much the insulating that is a struggle, it's the fact that the main ridge beam sits roughly 25ft off the floor.  That's 4 layers of scaffolding to build.  lots of lifting and make sure you keep your balance.....it's kind of scary up there.

Cheers
Peter

Milestones...not the restaurant

Major Milestones:


So I put all this insulation in the place, but it didn't seem any warmer. 

"There must be more to it." I thought....Then I read the instructions.  Oooh..

So another progressive weekend in Golden.  A few major milestones hit:
  
1. Pulled another U-Haul load   out.  As you can see lots of insulation in this load.  A little over 1000 square feet of R40.  Weighs about 1000lbs, basically a pound a foot, or 50lbs a bag.  21 bags in all.  Bags are awkward to lug around.  Not the 1st one, but 15-16 trips up the stairs and it gets a bit fatiguing.

2. We got door locks now.  Not that the place is really hard to break into out in the middle of nowhere, but if someone does go   in we can tell.  I went with the combination lock since we have a   bad habit of continually having to cut keys we arbitrarily distribute to friends and neighbours.    It's way easier to send people a code if folks want to use the place.

  

3. Got the final 2 basement windows in.  Not that this was a big  chore, but taking away 12 square feet of openness and eliminating the draft that goes with it makes a huge difference on the ability for the  place to retain heat.  It's still pretty cool in there right now....  need to spread out the insulation a bit more before it gets really liveable.

4. And most importantly, I went for a run.  While this may seem to be the most trivial of what I've listed as major milestones, it is, for me, by far the most important.  After roughly 4 months of driving back and forth over the highway, sleeping in a tent pitched in the living  room, dealing with rain, construction delays, scaffolding, digging,  chopping, raking, framing, plumbing, wiring, cutting, pulling, lifting, climbing, staining,  and generally seriously   blitzing construction there for the past 6 weeks, I've finally gotten to a point where I can take a couple of hours and go do something else.  It marks the turn in process where I start to move off the "100% work" aspect of spending   time there.  Don't get me wrong, there is still about 2 years of work to do, but since getting the place heated and more or less sealed up for the winter, the sense of urgency is beginning to fade.  I'm thinking the next major milestone in this arena will be my first mountain bike ride.  If things go well I'm targeting sometime in October.
     
  Watch for these upcoming milestones in our next episode:
    1.       Deck soffit finished
    2.       Insulation completed
    3.       Outside staining finished.
    4.       Maybe a roof on the mudroom

Cheers

Peter

What I Did On My Summer Vacation....

The topic often chosen by the lazy teacher who has no imagination after two months off sipping crantinies on some cheesy restaurant patio.  Thought I'd carry on the tradition for a bit.

Most years, of late anyway, the last week and weekend of August finds me heading to Penticton to suffer it out on the IMC course.  By the way, congrats to Kona Johnny, Kyle, Johnny G, Cory and Campbell on their race this weekend.  Looked like an awfully hot day.  At least it was smoking in Golden.

The parallels between my typical circumstances this time of the year and what I did this year are not lost on me.  At the end of the weekend I find myself looking back at my accomplishment saying to myself in some mix of astonishment and pride "I did that!!??  Wow.  I've done some crazy sh!t in my day, but that time I really pushed myself to get here.  I really didn't think I could pull it off."

When I left last weekend, my goals were high as was my level of ignorance.  So here we go..
Saturday August 20:
 Run around a lot Saturday morning, get all the stuff I think I need and pack the truck.  Get to site pretty late.  John Gillis is with me, on his way from Halifax to aforementioned IMC.  Great to have the help.   When I get there I find John (log-builder not triathlete) has done a great job on the stairs.  First time he's ever tried this he tells me.  Fine hand with a chainsaw.

Unpack truck.  Break out few beers and Q some steaks.

Sunday:
Up pretty early.  Start out by realizing I forgot my runners, which means no run training for me for 8 days.  That shoots big holes in my October marathon hopes.  I start by attacking the wiring for the doors and John gets on stain duty.  By end of day we got patio lights, a dining room light and all the doors in.  John has stained a good chunk of the left hand side of the cabin.

Monday:
We decide we should tackle the sofift.  It's a task I know is a two man job and I only have help for a couple of days.

Tuesday:
Soffit most of the day.  Finally get outside the deck done.  This was no small job and could not have been accomplished alone.  Many thanks to JG for the help here.

Wednesday:
John heads off to IMC leaving me alone to finish what soffit I can.  Given the difficulty of the outside piece, I am skeptical I can get any done alone.  I am happily mistaken as I find when on a solid level surface you can move pretty fast with this, even on your own.  My happiness however soon turns to upset as I find I'm out of wood and HomeHardware in Golden no longer carries the brand I am using.  Matching two different t&g boards is no fun at all and nothing I wanted to attempt on my own.  So I turn to staining.  Start around 4pm on Wednesday where John left off.

Thursday:
Stain.  Staging.  Stain.

Friday:
Stain. Staging. Stain.

Saturday
Stain.  Stain.  Stain.    There are those who read this blog and would say that I am not a patient person.  I think the evidence of my activity over the past 3 days speaks to the contrary.  We now have a stained cabin.  Nothing 14hrs a day for three straight days, working on ladders and scaffolding in 28 degrees wouldn't fix.

Sunday:
Now is the point in the blog where I hope my mother has lost interest and stopped reading....if she ever reads it at all.

Having run out of stain Saturday afternoon, besides, all the hard bits were done, I look to the next opportunistic task.  More wiring???...not urgent.  Some plumbing.???...not really necessary.  Windows in the basement would be nice....didn't bring them.  Sure is cool here in the mornings.  Could use the fireplace.  I guess I'll tackle the chimney.  After climbing up and down the scaffolding to stain the place could this possibly be more challenging.

Builder Dave suggested I put a chimney chase on the top of the roof, which is essentially a box that has a flat roof.   This played a big role in my ability to even attempt the installation.

My roof has a 10/12 pitch.  That is about 40 degrees.  I can say that, with an eave around 26ft in the air, 40degrees is a bit steep, and slipping would be unforgiving.  From the inside, the roof is about 22 ft above the living room floor.  My task, was to drag a ladder out on the roof and fix it to the chase from the peak, set staging in the house and climb to the roof from there to cut a hole that would fit a 10" dia. cylinder at the box, between the rafters,  (by the way this creates an oval for which I can find no equation that would help me simply draw a line to cut it...it was all trial and error) push 3 sections of chimney up there (about 50lbs each), attach a supporting plate to the rafter, scramble to the roof, drop the pipe back down onto the supporting plate, stack and join each pipe so that they are vertical, put the cover back on the chase, put in the interior black pipe, drag the 400lb stove into place and fix the black pipe to the stove.  Of course I'm paraphrasing here.  14 hours later, I'd lost count of how many times I'd scurried on all fours up and down the roof, thinking each time, "If you start sliding....".  And in the end...."I did that!!??  Wow.  I've done some crazy sh!t in my day, but that time I really pushed myself to get here.  I really didn't think I could pull it off."

 I think I pulled 8 straight 12-14 hour days last week.  I'm thinking IMC would have felt better...nahhhh.

I hope my fall vacation is a bit easier.

Cheers
Peter

What's Cool

So what is cool?

I'm sure this is a question that has stymied the masses since the days of Plato.

sure Fonzie is cool.

But he is a person.  "Who is cool?" is a totally different question than "What?".

Few could argue the "coolness" of some things.  The Mazaratti,  for example ranks up there.  Hard to deny the wow factor as one streams by you almost silently on the TCH doing 140 in the 100 zone, as your '96 GMC 1500  plods along pulling the little U-Haul trailer full of used cabinets, and an oven you scored on Kijiji.

Perhaps for me the cool factor has deteriorated.  What I am convinced is awesome now is plumbing.  Yes.  indoor running hot and cold water.  I've mentioned on this website before the step change in civilization development with the introduction of indoor plumbing, and now that I can brush my teeth indoors I'm blown away at just how cool it is.  Never mind not having to tramp into the woods with a roll of TP late at night to go #2.

So the cabin advances.  Most of the progress just can't be readily seen.  I't electrical, plumbing, stairs etc..  All in all it's starting to turn into a place that's great to visit.

John only has the stairs left to do.  He is trying out a new plan that will hopefully appear as though the treads are floating.  can't wait to see the final product.  No doubt he did a great job on the mud room addition at the end of the deck.  I like the scallop he has done so tall folks like jill, Don and Hoop don't hit their head.

The mud room looks ok.

Oh... and I got the first set of french doors in.

these lead out to the deck....but more importantly they keep the mosquitos out.

Cheers
Peter

Construction Zone

Been spending a lot of time in Golden these days.  Lots of nights camping, which leads to long work days of raking, digging, splitting wood, and of course firing up the Husquavarna 20" Rancher to chuck up some of those big log ends for firewood later this winter.  I haven't had the chance to use my compound mitre saw that was my birthday gift, but looking forward to it....my life has become an homage to Tim the Toolman.

10 things I've learned over the past 3 weeks:
1. you will sleep better with $25 worth of beer than a $25 air mattresses from Superstore.  Mostly cause the beer will stay in your body longer than the air in the mattress.
2. Owls make a lot of noise.  Sure they are wise, but do they have to be so Whooo Whooo in the middle of the night just outside your yet to be installed front window.
3. Sawdust in your rubber boots is really irritating, but taping up the tops with duct tape makes your feet sweat a lot.
4. It's funny how when you are at a campsite you don't smell smokey, but 5 minutes in the Sobey's and you can't get far enough away from yourself.  You could swear I smoked a pack of Export Plain in the truck on the way there.
5. I could sleep on bare plywood after 12 hours of hard labor and a nice bottle of red wine emptied  30 minutes prior.
6.  Contractors will only do work at the last minute.  They should give a course in procrastination.
7.  I'm a fan of CBC, but CBC BC on a weekend morning is likely the worst radio I have ever listened to.  It is driving me to buy Sirius.  Of course CBC owns a big chunk of Sirius, so maybe their plan is working.
8. Civilization can be broken into three stages, 1. running water 2. central heat, 3. Refrigeration.   You can have your cell phone, iPod or laptop...I'll put you in the cold with no running water and souring milk for a cuople of days, then come talk to me.
9. Toasting a bagel on an open fire with only a stick as a utensil is a learnable act.
10.  When you buy a $4 pillow at Fields, you get a $4 pillow...no more, no less.

So this weekend I had company at the shed.  After spending 3 weekends out there on my own, Lara decided to join me and "rough" it for a couple of nights.  We are still in construction mode, so the place is pretty messy.  Lara did a great job staining the back wall and as compensation I agreed not to put the pics of her peeing the woods on my blog.  I will add this one though:

Finally got a shot of the interior now that they have dragged the scaffolding out of there.  It still looks like a construction zone....probably cause it is one and I'm just living in denial.  I do like the log purlins and posts.  The cathedral ceiling looks really good.  I don't want to have to get up there to stain though.

It's not pretty, but at least the roof doesn't leak anymore. It's a slow go, but I refer to thing I learned #6.

First Night Camping at the Cabin

Well I finally stayed at the cabin my first night...and wasn't eaten by a bear.

Although Boo was out, he didn't bother to come to my side of the valley.  And, although there were some blacks around, I actually captured these shots just west of Lake Louise on the drive home.



So claiming I was camping is kind of stretching it a bit, as I set the tent up in the living room...but there are no windows in the house and I had to boil water on the fire...so it was like "Camping 1.0 Lite".

Mike was right, coffee from a french press in the woods is likely the best coffee you can make.

As for the cabin itself, well I have a roof now, and that really helps keep the rain off..albeit not quite waterproof yet, we still got some shingles and the like to get there.

So every week it appears progress is being made.  My only fear now is the volume of work that has to be done by myself when these guys leave in a few weeks.  I know it's the program I signed up for, but right now it appears a bit daunting. 

So I head out there again this weekend, but two nights camping in the living room this time....and I expect I'll have running water this time.  That will be a real treat.

Cheers
Peter