Benjamin Scribner's Blog, page 11

The weeks news. The cabin build is finished for the winter, and some memories of fall as a child.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain. My little slice of heaven.

It’s late October and the leaves are falling now. The air is crisp and cool, ducks and geese are flying south for the winter, chipmunks and squirrels are out and about looking for last minute nuts or seeds to hide away for the winter.  The lovely wife and I were up in the city today and saw pumpkins being sold in a straw-covered lot surrounded by hay bales, next to the supermarket. I remember as a kid, growing up in rural New England, going to a local farm in the fall for apple picking and gathering pumpkins from the farmer’s field. There would be hay rides, with either a horse or an old tractor pulling a wagon filled with hay. Children would be making scarecrows from old jeans and shirts provided by the farm. There would be late fall crops for sale as well, and possibly even a local band to perform while everyone enjoyed the day. I think those days are over, at least out here. There might be a few farms back east, or the mid-west that still do this, but in today’s hurry up world, I would be surprised to find one that anyone has the time to visit. That’s a shame really, we could all use a day on a farm, picking apples or finding just the right pumpkin to carve for the Halloween Jack-O-Lantern to set on the front porch. Later on, this Jack-O-Lantern would become a good old-fashioned pumpkin pie, while the seeds were roasted and salted for a snack. I don’t even think anyone makes homemade pumpkin pies anymore, it’s faster from a can these days.

We have finished drying-in my son’s cabin, putting on the last of the metal roofing a couple of days ago. He is now busy moving his family into it and out of the old trailer they have been staying in since they arrived in June. He fired up his pellet stove for the first time today, warming up the cabin in short order, though it has been rather warm during the day around here, and the fall rains that normally start at the end of September haven’t arrived yet. This is troubling to me, because there was a fall like this four years ago. That winter, we had very little snowfall and that summer was the driest, hottest, and the worst fire season on record. I am not looking forward to another year like that.

Since the cabin build is finished, I have started going back to my normal routine starting this past Friday. I spent the day in town doing laundry and bothering Sam at Always Grounded.  The old loggers have been hunting, or preparing for winter, so I haven’t seen any of them at the diner.  I know that will change once winter is here, and I will be seeing them on Friday mornings once again.

I’m happy to be able to start writing again, and I have a few short stories to finish for a book as well as a few more children’s books to write.  They are all in my head for now, as I still have work to do around my cabin before snow flies. I’m sure I will have a few books finished and ready for the editor by next spring.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

This weeks news. The cabin gets closer to being done for the year, and some folks from town.

 

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

We are almost finished drying-in my son’s cabin.  We finished putting metal roofing on the south side earlier in the week, and now all that’s left is the north side of the roof. Things have gone a little slower than I wished, in large part due to my health issues. However, I am seeing the end of it now, and am looking forward to a relaxing winter of writing. I have tow books to finish and a third one I have been trying to finish for years now. The fall rains have been holding off this year, which is a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because it is allowing us to get the roof finished. A curse, because it could be a sign of a very mild winter, which means a dangerous fire season next summer. Though I’m not a fan of a hard winter, the alternative is much worse. I remember a fall like this a few years ago, and the following summer the temperatures climbed into the triple digits, while most of the states of Washington and Idaho were on fire. I would not want a repeat.

It’s definitely autumn up here; the days are warm and the nights are cold. Leaves are turning from green to gold, or in some cases, brown. The lovely wife and I went apple picking yesterday. There are many apple trees in and around town that nobody seems to bother with, so we take a few hours and pick what we can. The fruit is very good, and the lovely wife is in the kitchen now, cutting them up and planning some sweet treat that we will enjoy later today or tomorrow.

Due to my failing health, and building another cabin, I didn’t think it wise to take half my summer searching for fire wood, which I would then have to cut, split and stack before the winter snows prevent gathering it in. So, this year, we acquired an off grid pellet stove which we completed installing last week. Though I don’t relish having to buy pellets, life will be easier this way. We have had to start it up earlier than I had anticipated this year, and have discovered that it required some tinkering to get it to work just right. It takes no electricity to operate, using gravity to bring the pellets to the burn chamber, rather than the traditional auger which is prone to braking when you least expect it. So far, I am happy with the way it’s working. The best part is that it will burn for up to 34 hours on a full hopper of pellets. We can go north to the city, now, for a day and come home to a warm cabin.

I stopped in at the diner the other day to see some of the old loggers. However, nobody was there. Hunting season is almost here, and most of them were either preparing for it or getting ready for winter. I will try to catch up with them later this month.  I ended up at Always Grounded, our one and only espresso shop with sit down service. Regulars came and went as the day went on. I know most of them, and we chat when they show up. There’s Shelly, a single mom who was excited about a new job she applied for, and I listened intently as she went on about it. Then there’s Bill, a Navy vet like myself, who served on an aircraft carrier during Vietnam. He fought an unpopular conflict and only now, after much time has passed and people’s attitudes about those serving has changed, he proudly displays his service on a vest and accompanying ball cap that he wears. We talk about our service, embellishing our deeds as necessary; we both know it but tall tales are a part of the fun. There’s Rose, a true farm gal; she often comes in right off the field smelling of fresh cut hay, her boots dusty and her braid and hat covered with the chattel from the bails she has thrown onto the trailer or into the loft. She also supplies the coffee shop with fresh baked goods.  I call her my second favorite baker, the lovely wife being my first as It should be.  There are others that wander in during the day I only know by sight, and they tend to come and go quickly, heading to the city or their job depending on the day. We wave, or otherwise acknowledge each other, then go about our lives.

My writing has taken a rear seat to building this summer, and I am itching to get back to it. Even though I don’t care much for the snow, I am looking forward to having nothing to do except take care of the cabin and write, when it covers the ground.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

This weeks news. Or Yankee ingenuity gone wrong.

 

It’s been an interesting week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Work is progressing on my sons’ cabin, though slower than I would like. Any progress is good progress, however, and I can at least see an end now.  We started putting on the roof this week, but without a safety harness, things weren’t going as planned. We were having to bring the plywood in and feed it through the rafters from the inside. That worked fine at the start, but the further we went up, the harder it became. I wasn’t sure just how we would finish the south facing roof, let alone the north facing one, it being higher off the ground and shorter than the south facing roof since this is a New England Saltbox. As luck would have it, I know a guy. I am vice president of the local rifle and archery range, and at a recent meeting I was explaining the problem. One of the guys there, a regular at the meetings, said he had two safety harnesses he would loan me. I made arrangements to pick them up the following day around noon.  I wanted to finish up the plywood on the west wall and figured we could get that done by noon, then run into town and grab the harnesses.

While doing the east wall, we set the scaffolding up in my son’s pickup bed, placed a couple of planks on top, nailing them together, and put an extension ladder on top of the whole thing. This is called “Yankee ingenuity”, something Yankee farmers have done for many years. Have a problem with not much money for renting expensive forklifts? Then use a little ingenuity and get the job done. (My Yankee ancestors would be proud.)  We thought the same approach would work for the west side, and set it up accordingly. My son cut the first piece of plywood and, since there was an eighteen-inch window opening right next to where I was on the ladder, brought it upstairs so he could help hold it in place. I climbed the ladder and leaned in to take the piece from him. That is when everything went wrong. The pickup wasn’t on very level ground, thus neither was the scaffolding. It was leaning away from the wall, and the ladder acted as a lever pushing against planks below, which caused the scaffolding to tip and start to fall away from me.  I learned two things at that moment. First, I still have cat-like reflexes and can jump almost three feet to one side. Second, I can fit through an eighteen-inch window opening with a full tool belt on.

I did manage to pull, or bruise, almost every muscle in my body achieving this great feat, and decided it was time to quit for the day, even though we’d only just gotten started. I went home, drank tea the rest of the morning, and relaxed a very sore body.  I do now have the harnesses, so when we start again, I will be safely tied into something.

There is a gal that owns the land next to mine, and last week, she asked me if we could make a few repairs to a shelter she threw together a couple of summers ago. The heavy snow last winter had split some of the wood.  She is, due to health reasons, retiring from her job, and wants to move up here permanently next spring. In the meantime, she needed a few things fixed she hasn’t had time or skill to do. So, my son and I spent this morning tearing down most of what she had built and starting over. We still have a couple of hours of work to do, but will finish up next weekend, as I want to get back to work on the cabin here.

There’s a mill in town that gives away free sawdust once a week. You bring whatever you want to fill, and they will fill it. Since we have a compost toilet, whish uses sawdust to cover the waste, this seemed like a good idea. Prior to this, we had been going to a sawdust pile from another mill near where there is bridge work being done, and fill four five gallon buckets. These would last us about a month. We took both pickups down on Wednesday and loaded them up. I believe we now have enough sawdust to last us until next fall. If you’re not familiar with a compost toilet, our homemade one consists of a five-gallon bucket surrounded by a wooden frame with a seat that, then, uses sawdust to cover the waste and eliminates odors. We empty the bucket about once a week, more if necessary, in the outhouse. It’s cheaper than those sold commercially and works just as well.

The stove I removed from my old 5th-wheel trailer when I first moved up here died this week, at least the oven did. It refused to light on its own, and when it shut off after it reached temperature, refused to relight. Luckily, there was a working stove in the trailer my son and family are staying in right now.  They can’t use it because the gas line that went to the refrigerator isn’t caped off (we have that fridge in our kitchen), and the pressure regulator has been removed and hooked up to their fridge, which is sitting on our porch. So, we removed the stove as well and now have a working stove again. My son comes over to do any major cooking anyway, so it works out.

My lovely wife has wanted a craft bench next to her sewing cabinet for quite some time now. While I was taking it easy, and my son and family were taking a day at the lake, I built her one. Now, she has more room for her sewing and craft work when she needs it. I just need to wire in a light for that corner of the room, since it’s dark there most of the time. A project for this winter when I can’t work outside.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

The weeks news. Building continues, and I brag on my kid a bit.

 

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

We built the stairs to the second floor of my son’s cabin this week, since we were both tired of the ladder which was needed elsewhere.  The rafters have also started going up. We got all of them up on the north side, and started putting up the south side ones. Since they all have to be secured at the tops with plywood as well as a cross piece tying the set of two rafters together, these have taken the most time. We ran into a slight problem and had to quit before we could finish them by the end of this week. I had a dental appointment Friday and won’t be back to work on anything until Monday at the earliest. Meanwhile, my son is doing what he can without me. So far, he has finished another interior wall, put in some more bracing where needed, and started on the vapor barrier on the first floor.

Building this cabin has been a challenge, both mentally and physically. It has also been a joy.

Physically, my body is breaking down, so there are times when I can’t do things I could have done just a year ago. Mentally, it has been a challenge because pretty much everything I know is in my head, from how it will look to building codes I know from years past. I draw nothing out, and the times I have, things get messed up because I’m thinking something different than what’s in my head. (Don’t dwell on it, it will hurt your brain.)

The joy has come from teaching my son skills he never had the opportunity to learn growing up, since my mother raised him from the time he was nine months old until he got married some ten years ago. He lived with my mother in New Hampshire, and then in Florida, when she moved there. It was the best thing for him since I was in a bad marriage and gone on the road all the time.  So, watching him pick things up and come up with his own ideas has been fun, and helps me improve on my own ideas as well.

This will, most likely, be my last major build, as I don’t think my body will take another pounding like it has. Next summer I will be relying on my son to do most of the heavy work that I will no longer be able to do, and there’s nothing wrong with that, since he will have learned what he needs to know from this build.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. Building, campers, and a family reunion

 

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain. My little slice of heaven.

You’re getting an unedited version this week, as the lovely wife  and editor has been spending time with her family.

The lovely wife is a bit of a novelty in her family, city girl from Iowa, who moved to a mountain top in Northern Idaho. So, this week, most of her family came from near (Oregon) and far (Iowa) for a visit. The lovely wife has spent most of the week in town with them, even bringing them up to see her cozy home. There have been a few late nights catching up on the family news, and we, those times I go into town after work is done, haven’t gotten to bed before eleven, making the next day a long one, since I am up with the sun to get to work on my son’s cabin while it’s still relatively cool.

The cabin build is coming along, still slowly at times. We are about to start the rafters, and hopefully will have them in place in a few days. Then comes the plywood, which is going to take time, as the roof is steep and a long way off the ground.

The only injury so far has been myself. Last Wednesday, while pitting a 100 year old barn beam into place on the ceiling on the first floor, the support beam slipped out and caught me in the side of the head, causing a mild concussion. My left eye was fuzzy and I was sick to my stomach for the rest of the day, so we called it quits early. Temperatures have been high and no rain in site, so we start early and work until noon to avoid the heat of the day. So far, this summer is turning out to be another dry hot one. Rain clouds are seen off to the west, but seem to jump over us and dump their rain in the state of Montana instead.

A guy I served with back in the Navy reserves asked me last weekend if I wanted his old popup camper. Well, he isn’t online, but his wife is, and she made the contact. I had been looking for just such a camper because, right now, my son and his wife are sleeping on the floor in the (very) old camping trailer we got last summer. I had intended to use the camper as a guest cabin, but it turned out to need much more work than we wanted to put into it, so I planned to get rid of it this summer. But my son and his family needed some place to stay while we were building their cabin.  The popup is in great shape, and now they can sleep off the floor at least. It also makes a good place for his boys to play in while his wife is at work and he and I are busy building. They can play in it and not risk getting hurt near the building site.

I don’t know if I mentioned this in an earlier post, but we have an off grid pellet stove that has been sitting on our porch for over a month now. The wood stove is too heavy for us to lift and we haven’t had enough people around to move it without risk of injury. While the lovely wife’s family was up, her two brothers helped move out the old and bring in the new, along with the help of my son. Now all I need to do is run the chimney pipe up to the roof. This stove takes a three inch pipe instead of the typical six inch, so I have to buy an adapter for it to fit the double wall pipe going through the roof. I have found them online, but just haven’t ordered one yet.  We also need to purchase three tons of pellets for the coming winter.  Glad I haven’t had to go searching for firewood this summer, which takes half my summer and would take away from the cabin build.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

 

 

 

This weeks news. A teaching moment

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Work on my son’s cabin came to a halt this week, since we were waiting for scaffolding pins to arrive. We weren’t slowed down though, as we had plenty of other work around here that needed to be done. I had built a shed out of pallets a couple of years ago as a place to store our snowmobiles during the summer. It turned out to be in the way more than it was useful, making it impossible in the winter to do a turnaround on the snowmobiles.  In the spring, pulling them in to store them was also a pain. So, rather than tear it down, we decided to move it and turn it into a chicken coop.  We have wanted to raise our own chickens up here for fresh eggs. Moving it without the aid of heavy equipment wasn’t as bad as we had anticipated. A jack, some well placed logs, and the pickup with a strap, made the move fairly easy. After a couple of hours, the shed now sits next to the workshop where the old truck body used to sit.  We even managed to turn it 180 degrees during the move.

We also started cleaning up down on our lower building site, near where we are building my son’s cabin. We had a few large, old windows sitting down there that I had intended to use when I build the lovely wife a greenhouse, but the weight of winter snow broke most of them, even though they were standing upright. We managed to salvage two out of the six. This meant there was a lot of broken glass on the ground and we didn’t want the grandkids getting into any of it. We spent the better part of a day raking it up and dumping it into the truck bed, then hauling it to the dumpsters at the bottom of the mountain. We were pretty much covered in dust and exhausted by the time this was finished, so we took the rest of the day off to get showered and relax. There’s still a lot of things left to clean up down on that site, as I have been using it as my storage for whatever I hauled in to use in future projects. A lot of what’s down there will be hauled off now, since we have gone a different way or just don’t have the time to mess with it.

The other couple that moved up here this spring wanted to rent a mini excavator for some work around their property and asked if we needed anything.  We went in half on the rental cost, since we had a few things we could use it for as well. There is a spot down near my son’s cabin that has stayed wet even though we haven’t had rain in a few weeks.  Using the excavator to dig a hole there, we hoped to see if there was a spring attempting to break through to the surface. Instead, all we found was lots of wet earth. We will wait to see if that changes before filling in the hole again.

During this process of digging the hole, I had my oldest grandson sitting in my lap, letting him dump the bucket after I had pulled it up from the hole. Afterwards, I showed him how to use the controls for the steering and let him drive it back up to our cabin, sitting in my lap, of course. Later on, when I had to take it over to the other couples’ cabin, I let him steer it all the way over, about a mile. He thought that was just the greatest thing, and before his mother could get out of her car after work, he was telling her all about it. He had just turned eight, and this was the best birthday present a kid could have asked for.

With the scaffolding pins delivered, we will start the building once again on Monday, as I am hoping to have the roof up and ready for the metal roofing by the end of the week. Then, we can start working on the inside, framing interior walls and generally getting things ready for my son and his family to move into it soon.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

The weeks news. A short trip on the Lewis and Clark trail.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

We are getting close to putting the rafters up on my son’s cabin. We modified the design a little from a traditional New England Saltbox by adding a five-foot-high wall on the steep sloping side to add more room to the upstairs. I like it better, as does my son and his wife.

My son picked up the insulation needed to do the first floor, as we are waiting on pins to arrive for scaffolding we purchased earlier in the week. Someone had quite few sections of scaffolding for sale, and we grabbed enough to reach nearly the top of the roof.  However, none of it had the required pins to hold each section together. An internet search later, and pins are on their way.  They should be here early next week. In the meantime, I will be building the stairs, so we can stop using the ladder.  We still have plywood to nail in place as well as the front door to install.  I believe we can install the door now since we are done bringing in materials for the first floor.

I had the occasion recently to drive part of the Lewis and Clark trail, part of which runs through two small cities bearing their names. I followed the river route for quite some ways before it turned and the road continued in a relatively straight line.  I wondered what Merriweather Lewis and William Clark would think if they could see the country now. Small farms and towns dot the route they traveled over two hundred years ago. Winter wheat and other grain crops have taken the place of the native grasses, and cattle roam where the natives once trod. They were the first white men to lay eyes on this land; braving numerous hardships, including one death, by the time they arrived in these parts. They still had many miles, and many days, to travel before looking out over the Pacific Ocean for the first time.  Now, the trip takes a few days by car, less by plane, and the country they crossed looks vastly different than it did back then.

I wonder if they would be amazed or saddened by what the once unspoiled land they crossed has become. Would they regret their trek, or would they understand the march of time and progress? Could any of those men, now long dead, have imagined the world we live in today? I have lived through some monumental changes, several large leaps forward in progress; from watching Neal Armstrong take his first step on the moon, to laptop computers with which I can write my stories. There have been many advances and will likely be many more before I am just a memory. I can only dream of the future and hope it brings welcome change as it comes.  I ask myself, what sort of dreams did these two explorers entertain for the future?  What did they hope would come about?

I will be getting back to building again this coming week, as winter waits for no one.

That’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

 

This weeks news. The build goes on.

It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

Building is still going on; though, instead of dealing with the rainy days that stopped us before, now, it’s hot days. We are only working until around noon, when it starts getting too hot to continue. After that, I find something else to work on.

This morning, I put the first coat of paint on the front kitchen wall, and now, I am waiting for it to dry so I can add a second coat.  After that, I will frame around the window, add the wainscoting, and clean everything up.  We will then be able to move the Hoosier cupboard back into it’s spot. There will then be curtains to go up over the window.  The lovely wife is currently working on those as well as revitalizing the curtains she made to go in front of the shelving under the kitchen counters.  Next, I need to replace the insulation in the ceiling. It was soaked repeatedly before I could fix the roof on the west side of the cabin last fall. For those of you who might not be up to speed, the original builder of this cabin had no clue what he was doing and didn’t put plywood down on the rafters first before putting down the metal roofing. As a result, the roof leaked into the front wall of the kitchen as well as the entire ceiling, soaking the wall and insulation. I fixed the issue with the roof last fall, and now need to finish the kitchen. It was the first room I built when I bought the cabin, and now, it will be the first room completely finished. I am looking forward to seeing it finally complete.

Down in town, Always Grounded was closed for part of the week due to the 4th.  Sam is always there and finally got a much-deserved break. She was back behind the counter this morning when the lovely wife and I went into town to get the painting supplies I needed.  It sounds like she and her family had a fun time near the water.  We were happy she was back but glad she was able to get some down time as well.

I haven’t seen the old loggers lately; I’ve been far too busy up here to go into town that early to enjoy coffee and conversation with them.

The new couple that moved up here back in May were having problems getting their cabin delivered. They ordered a manufactured one that had a delivery date set at around six weeks out, but when the truck driver came up to scope out the road, he told them there was no way he could haul in the cabin on these roads.  It was coming on a semi and these roads have too many places where the trailer could get hung up the deep dips in the road.  So, now, they are having it built on site, costing them a couple thousand dollars more, and a couple more weeks before the builders can get up here to build it. They will be pushing to have everything complete before the fall rains hit and the snow flies. They also bought my old wood stove, since we now have an off grid pellet stove. They hope to pick it up soon, though they have no place to put it right now. It’s still sitting in my living room, I have seen no need to move it yet, but will most likely be taking it out at the end of the month when the lovely wife’s family comes for a visit. I will have a few strong backs to help with the move as well as to move the new one into place.

Not much else going on this week, so I will say that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.

 

This weeks news. Or, how not to haul lumber up a logging road

It’s been an interesting week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven.

I had made a grievous error while drawing up the plans for the second floor of my son’s cabin. I don’t normally draw anything out, since I can picture what something will look like and build it. But, this is a New England Saltbox style cabin, and I needed to see how the bedrooms would be laid out.  I drew everything up and showed it to my son and his wife; yet, I was troubled enough that it kept me awake that night.  The next day, though sleep-deprived, I figured out my screw up on the layout for my son’s cabin and made the appropriate changes.  When I was figuring the plan in my head, I had drawn everything up using the outside dimensions of the cabin, not the inside, which would have made the kids’ room about the size of a closet, that would not do.  I figured out how much more lumber we would need to finish the framing, and my son and I set off to purchase it.

Now, I had built a rack on the bed of my pickup for hauling the canoe, and maybe a few long pieces of lumber I might need for projects around here. It was never intended to haul much weight. We purchased 26- 2-ft x 6-ft x 20-ft timbers, and 11 more 2x6x16’s to finish the framing for the second floor. That’s quite a bit of weight.  We strapped everything down and headed home.

All went well until we began the climb up the old logging road towards the cabin. Things soon began to head south, as the saying goes.  About 3/4 of a mile up, the rear support, only made for the weight of the canoe, came crashing down and caused the bulk of the lumber to slide backwards at an accelerated rate; the longer pieces came to rest on the tailgate and road, while the shorter ones skidded down a bit further and came to rest some ten feet from the rear of the pickup.  We assessed the situation and decided to unload half of it right there, since it was already pretty much unloaded anyway. The rest we pushed as far forward as we could on the rack (no longer having the use of the rearmost support), tied everything down once again, and resumed the climb, a bit slower this time.

After many stops to push escaping lumber forward, we finally made it to the driveway into the lower building pad where Son’s cabin is being built. By this time, most of the lumber was hanging precariously balanced on just one support with a strap that was being stressed to its limit.  Well, as you can probably guess, the strap had had enough and parted ways, unloading the lumber right there in the driveway.  Luckily, I still had an old livestock rack that had fit my previous pickup but turned out to not fit the new one.  I had used it many times, in the past, for hauling lumber and other items too long for the bed of the pickup. It turned out, however, to fit Son’s pickup.  With a few minutes work (more like a half hour of cussing and much lifting), we had the rack secured to his truck bed, and back down the mountain we went to collect the remaining lumber.  From now on, my pickup’s rack is ONLY hauling a canoe and, maybe, a few (small) pieces of lumber.

Stress levels have been going through the roof with me. There are five adults living here; one is a good friend we are helping out of a bad situation, the others are myself, the lovely wife, my son, and my daughter-in-law.  Out of all of these adults, I am the only one that knows how to build, work on the pickups, repair the snowmobiles and get them ready for winter, plus a list of other things that need our attention before the snow flies again. There aren’t enough hours in the day, nor weeks in the summer, to get all this done, since rain has slowed us down on the building or any work outside, for that matter. My son, to his credit, is picking up the building concepts pretty fast, which is taking some of the load off of me, but he still requires some supervision. The lovely wife has offered to tear into our pickup (she figures she can do that much), let me fix what needs to be fixed, and let her figure out how to put everything back together. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or not, but I will let her at least tear down what needs to be torn down, and I will take it from there. I’m not sure which frightens me more, the wife turning wrenches, or winter hitting before things are ready.  To top it all off, I have major dental surgery coming up next Friday, which will put me out of action for a few days.  With all of this, my already gray hair is turning a lovely shade of white.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now. If I’m not six feet under by next weekend, I will post another update. If I am, well, the lovely wife will take over.

This weeks news. It’s a mad house up here. Or what to do when the outhouse isn’t finished

It’s been another hectic week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven (slowly turning into a mad house).

Late again this week because I couldn’t find my laptop. It’s become a game of “Honey, where did I put thus and so?” Mostly because, while building my son a cabin, I am also trying to finish my kitchen which, as some of you may know, was the first room I added to the original cabin when I moved up to my little slice of heaven.  After all these years, one thing or another has kept me from getting it done; so, this summer, I am determined to finish it come hell or high water. I really want to move in the antique cook stove before it sits much longer on my porch and something dreadful happens to it.

So now, the Hoosier cupboard is sitting at the foot of our bed so I can easily access the front wall of the kitchen which, besides the ceiling, is the only wall left to finish.  This is much to the inconvenience of my lovely wife, who has taken over the cooking duties since I am busy pounding nails and cutting boards.  She has to haul everything she needs from the Hoosier into the kitchen and, using the way too small counter space which is cluttered with dishes (did I mention she is also doing the dishes?), somehow produce a meal. Add to that, our St. Bernard loves to use this particular time to take a nap right in the doorway, and my faithful dog Kiyo chooses to run under the stove and hide.  I swear, there’s been a few times I have caught her looking longingly at the door wondering if it’s too late to run screaming down the mountain. (Sorry, honey, you made it through the first winter up here, you’re trapped now!) So much for her summer break.  I will say this though, at least we aren’t having to hunt down firewood this year, so I call it an even trade.

Between rain and running to grab windows listed online, we have only managed to get two walls framed and up on my son’s cabin. Today, I was hoping to frame the other two walls and have the first floor all framed and up.  However, my daughter-in-law wanted us to do something about the outhouse.  A little back story on it before I go any further. I had had a new hole dug for the outhouse, since the old one was full; add to that, I wanted to build a much smaller one that was easier to move. So, I tore the old one down and commenced building. We no longer really need the outhouse, since we have a compost toilet inside, but we do need somewhere to dump the bucket when it’s full; also, when people come to visit, like her family is this summer, we need extra facilities for the crowd.  Before I could complete the construction of the new outhouse, we had a major wind storm come through and knock it on its side and tore off the door. We tried to lift it back up with the help of Allen but were not successful. It ended up staying on it’s side for the winter, with me going out and digging out around it so I could dump the bucket from the house. When my son arrived, we managed to get it upright and moved back over the hole, and even secured it from future wind storms.; but with the building of his cabin started, I had not finished the seating in it yet.  This morning, my daughter-in-law told my son she wanted it finished so they wouldn’t have to disturb us every time they needed to use the toilet.  Seating was built, and the door was rehung. By the time that was complete, it was too hot to do any framing on their cabin.  Tomorrow, we will start early and, hopefully, have the last two walls framed and up. From there, it’s on to the second floor.

I mentioned windows listed online. Yes, I hunt the online sites for bargains. I’ve been doing it since I moved up here and see no reason to stop now. The trouble is everything is so far away, when you do find something, you have to drop what you’re doing and run to grab it before it disappears. Most of the time I am successful but I have missed out on a few things by just minutes. We have been lucky so far, and, yesterday, were able to pick up six more windows for his cabin. Now I just need to find one more exterior door with a frame. Haven’t had any luck as of this writing but I am still hopeful. If nothing comes up in time, I will frame for one and we will board over it until one can be located.

We met some of the weekend neighbors today. The lovely wife found a phone lying in the road down near the bottom of the main logging road, Monarch; it had been run over in the gravel a few times, and as you all know, cell phones don’t stand up well to that kind of abuse. Well, we decided to see if we could find the owner and took a trip around to sites we know people have been building cabins on (the phone was locked so we could not get any identifying information from it). We eventually found them and it turn out to be the same folks who groomed the road last winter when they would come up for a weekend. Nice folks.  We chatted for a bit and then left to go back to finish up the outhouse. Later in the afternoon, we heard a 4-wheeler coming up the road. It was a couple of the weekenders in search of jumper cables.  One of the pickups didn’t want to start, and none of the other friends who had joined them for the weekend had any. I loaned them mine, and not long after, they returned them with many thanks. I hope next time they remember to bring some, as the mountain is pretty unforgiving at times. They also said they would be back again this winter and would be more than happy to groom our section of road. I might take them up on that, though they probably won’t be coming up often.

Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.