Mid-May 2011

Pictures from the 'big push' weekend. We didn't quite finish the bathroom, but a lot more drywall went up than anticipated, so it all balances out...

Insulating is a terrible job. It seems easy enough, but somehow you end up feeling dirty and itchy. You can get rid of the dirty with a shower, but about 20% of the itchy lasts for the next week. We finished almost 50% of the walls, though, so at least the end is already in sight.

My friend Nick showed up unexpectedly on Saturday and offered to lend a hand. This was our first 'drop-in' visitor, and - given that he lives 3 hours away - was much appreciated. He claimed to have no building experience at all, but then proceeded to help my father drywall all of the bath and part of the kitchen.

My father - like my sister - can be a real slave driver. Once he starts he doesn't stop, and somehow he kept us working until 6 PM on Monday even though I was ready to leave at noon. Getting home at after 9 PM after 3 solid days of work really sucks when you know you've got to get up at 5:30 AM to get to work on Tuesday, but be damned if we didn't get a whole lot more done than if I had been there myself!

The crew - dad, The Boy, me and Nick. The shower is in, the tile is down, the insulation and wallboard are up and *most* of the plumbing is in place.

Tile is easier than it looks! (Although this is easy for me to say as my father and the LSW did all the work while I ran the PEX.)

Once you get the drywall up, you can really begin to imagine the place done...

...until you turn and face the opposite direction. *sigh*

The solution: Just don't turn around!

It's hard to see, but this pic differs from the one about in that the vanity plumbing is in place, as is the diverter valve and the shower head in the tub. The day we get water from something other than a hose will be celebrated with champagne, believe you me.

So, in summary, the 'big push' weekend resulted in:
A bathtub
Bath insulation
Bath wallboard
Bath tile
90% of the waste plumbing
90% of the inlet plumbing
40% of the total wall insulation
40% of the wall sheetrock

Do we have a bathroom? Not yet. Are we close? Hell yeah!

April 30, 2011

First 2011 overnight with the family; looking to install the backer board for the bath tile in advance of my father's visit in May.
Friday, 8:30 AM - we hit the road in two cars. I give the LSW the option of a quiet ride in the truck, but she opts for time with The Boy to keep her awake on the road. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
10:00 AM - jumping jacks by the LSW and The Boy at a scenic overlook in MA. The boy is just having fun; the LSW is trying to summon enough adrenaline to stop weaving all over the road.
11:45 AM - Shangri-la is about 2 weeks behind Trumbull in terms of spring foliage, but at least the snow is gone. I brought the lawn mower, but there's really no need. We move the dining room table inside, and find we have a place to sit after almost 2 years. Celebrate with roast beef sandwiches and chips.

3:00 PM - the tile backer board is down, with seams taped and mortared. I was afraid that this would be more complicated than it seemed, but - honestly - it wasn't. The LSW scooped the thinset mortar onto the floor, I troweled it, and down went the backer board. Screwing the backer board down took longer than laying it.

5:30 PM - the first two rows of shingles are up on the left side of the gable above the porch, and the porch floor is sealed. We retire to a cottage at the KOA in Dummerston, and then head into Brattleboro for dinner.


















Saturday, 8:00AM - breakfast at the Putney Diner. Excellent spinach, mushroom and Swiss omelet. We indulge the boy in a piece of apple pie for breakfast, and the waitress scowls at our parenting skills. The Boy, however, cleans his plate for once, so its not for nothing.
11:00 AM - the only thing on the agenda is the front siding, so the LSW wears herself out in endless games of hide-and-seek with The Boy. When he decides to play whatever this game is, she is disturbed enough to begin placing a second coat of paint on all of the trim work...


















2:00 PM - the front siding isn't done, but its damn close. I've spent more than 5 hours working on an incline, and my muscles are voicing their disapproval. The weather has cycled from between sunny and 65, raining and 40 and overcast and 50 about three times. The Jehovah's Witnesses have shown up to share the good new with us, and all of the trim has a second coat of paint. Not a bad half-day's work.

 

 I'd like to say that exterior is finally done, but we've still got to paint the front door, seal the eaves, and build the front steps, not to mention the rear deck, pergola, shutters and window boxes...

The Opening of the Season 2011

Today was the first working day trip of 2011. The goal was to clean the place up, take some plumbing-related measurements, and work on...whatever.

Sifting through the remains of last year, I had enough materials to finally finish the shiplap siding on the South and North sides of the cabin, and so I got to work. Finally - FINALLY - I can say they are finished. Now I just have to finish the shingles on the front.

The North Side

The South Side

While I was at it, I cleaned the cabin of dust, debris, scrap wood and mouse droppings. The furry little bastards apparently decided to nest in my electrical supplies box and shredded my bath vent/light wiring diagrams for good measure. Just the English ones, though, so I'll be in good shape after my 'Spanish for Electricians' class.

Living / Dining

Kitchen / Bath

Spring cleaning over, we're ready to hit the ground running. My father has offered help in getting the plumbing installed in May, and I'm hard at work researching and accumulating PEX fittings for intake and PVC for discharge. Estimates for the plumbing (bath/shower, vanity, toilet, sink and external spigot) came in at about $1,300, and I was sorely tempted to farm the work out. The nagging thought, however, that I can save $500 - 800 doing it myself finally became overwhelming. Everyone says PEX is as easy as wiring, so we'll see.

Odds and Ends 2010

Happy holidays, everyone! (Or Merry Christmas/Happy New Year, if you prefer; I'm a practicing Buddhist, so I don't have a dog in the 'Christmas Wars' fight.) The holiday festivities in the Vermonster household began with a day trip to Shangri-La to make sure the cabin was still standing and that the crawlspace wasn't flooded. It was and wasn't, respectively. I drained the pressure tank last time we were up and shut off the pump, so there was nothing to freeze. I'm new to this game, though, so it seemed prudent to check.
 

Someday that Tyvek will finally be completely covered. Probably on the same day I finally haul away those pallets...

There was just a dusting of snow on the ground, and - with the exception of some new mouse droppings - everything was just as we left it. I took detailed measurements of the kitchen and bath for cabinets and fittings, and then an inventoried the remaining materials before locking up. It seemed a shame to drive all that way for 30 minutes' work, though, so I walked the perimeter of the property to stretch the time. Turns out I have parts from an old car on one end of the property, and some old cans and buckets on the other. Everything I found looked to be from the 30's or 40's, so at least it was 'historic' garbage. CVPS also cut a lot of hardwood installing the new poles in the right-of-way this year; I'll have to cut and stack it in the spring in preparation for the wood stove.

Looking over the posts to date, I found a few 'holes' in my documentation of this cabin-building journey. Here's a modest attempt to fill them:

Q: You spent a lot of time talking about prefab and kit options - any regrets not going that route?
A: Not really. During the research stage, they all seemed to be at least 1/3 more than framing the place myself. In the end, this was mitigated somewhat by paying a contractor to do the roof sheathing/shingles, and the additional time it took to do it all 'from scratch'. In the end, thought, I got valuable experience in framing that I can use for outbuildings and additions, the pride of saying we did it ourselves, and a little extra money to put toward finishing. As we're doing everything with cash, spending more up front to get the structure in place wouldn't have bought any time, as we would have just run out of money quicker and spent more time staring at the place rather than working on it.

Q: You neglected the blog through almost the entire framing process. What gives?
A: The framing work was intense and exhausting, and it was hard to spend time writing about it after 3-4 days of working. With the exception of the hipped porch roof, however, it really wasn't all that hard. Building the walls was relatively easy, and the sheathing was only difficult in that it was awkward to work with on ladders on the South side. The hardest thing about framing the roof was the sheathing and shingling - something that I would have done myself anyway had I not opted for a 45-degree angle. I knew very little about framing when I started, but two books gave me everything I needed:

• The Ultimate Guide to House Framing by John D. Wagner
• Working Alone: Tips and Techniques for Solo Building by John Carroll.

Q: When you were planning the electrical, did you consider going solar and staying 'off the grid'?
A: I did, but the fact that I had a CVPS pole less than 100' from the cabin made it just too easy to go conventional. Again - we're doing everything with cash, so a big outlay for solar now would just mean that the rest of the work gets done much later in the future, preventing us from actually using the place. My current plan is to add solar panels after we've finished to feed power back to CVPS. Vermont does net metering, so this should offset the cost of electrical significantly. Not quite 'off the grid', but arguably the next best thing. The other thing that worked against solar was the fact that it seemed to require a different well setup - low flow pump and underground storage reservoir - that would also make the well installation more expensive.

Q: No that the market has recovered, any regrets about cashing out the 401(k) during the panic?
A: Ah, yeah, well...you have to be philosophical about this kind of thing. The story I tell myself these days is that I converted a stock investment into a real estate investment. Yes, the cost of land and materials dropped in the same time frame, but the truth is that I still lost more by cashing out than I gained in lower prices. No one was sure what was going to happen in those dark, post-crash days, though, so I rolled my dice and moved my mice. And now I own a place outright that I was forced to build myself to save money; I'm proud of both, and that's worth something.

Q: What's next?
A: Our goal for 2011 is to get the place to a point where we can use it. That will mean insulation, the primary heat (as opposed to the woodstove, which will come later), plumbing, and the bathroom. Stay tuned.

Holy Shizz! Look what happened to the cabin while we were gone

Apparently some squatters have moved into our cabin. They were sweet enough, so we're giving them until the New Year to get the hell out.