Solo Stay

The knee walls - much scaled back from the original idea - almost done...

Now that most of the heavy construction is done - and the cabin season is almost over - it was time to take the truck up to clear out the scraps and cart home the tools. There is a growing list of 'primary house' work that needs doing but has been neglected because the tools are a few hours north.

The truck doesn't fit 3, however, and the LSW has developed the alarming habit of falling asleep at the wheel when she drives solo for any length of time, so the solution was for me to do an overnight trip after work coupled with a final day working the 'punch list'.

As we're going up one more weekend later this month, my original goal was to finish the drywall work so we could finish priming next time. Looking at the remaining 2x4s and bead board pine scraps, however, I opted to finish the knee walls in the lofts.

The original idea for the knee walls was essentially custom cabinetry for storing clothes. Over time, this scaled back to simply running the bead board ceilings to the floor, and evolved to foot-high walls faced with bead board to both make cleaning easier and use up the bead board scraps.

I figured I could knock these off in the morning and spend a few hours in the afternoon with the drywall, but - as always - it took longer than expected. In the end, I finished them and most of the trim around the bathroom ceilings before packing up all of the tools, paints, stains, and scraps, draining the plumbing (just in case - we had sub-freezing temps one night last week) and giving the place a good cleaning.

1x4 pine trim to finish the ceilings in the bath.

This is the first time I was in the cabin alone for the evening, and it felt odd. I'm basically a homebody so being alone was a little unnerving, but a call to the LSW and a good book got me through. I woke up at 7, got up to turn up the heat, and then climbed back into the sleeping bag to lay around for about an hour thinking about the work. This is one of the best things about life in Shangri-La - wake up whenever and then get up when you feel like it. No clocks, and nothing that has to be done. Suddenly I'm really looking forward to retirement