Howell Cabin

Christina did some careful shopping and bought appliances before the new year brought price increases. The appliance store is going to deliver most of them in April (no pressure!), but the fridge we had to take in January. So we trucked it up there together. Christina did a little verification of the drawer pulls. And changed out the wildlife cameras.

Thursday Jeff came up to work on trim. Here's the upstairs vestibule, all trimmed out.   Lovely day for some sawdust.  After Jeff went home, I dragged the trailer into town to retrieve two sleds from the snowmobile hospital.   Friday We got through the last of the downstairs trim (except some special fillers I need to make at home), including a couple long-neglected strips at the big french doors. After Jeff left, I moved the wifi repeater outside to where I'd had another radio mounted. As luck would have it, it had a perfect view of the shed radio, except for a line of three trees in the way.

Christina installed the front deck lights and switch. We ran into town for errands, including snowmobile helmets. Siggy and Jon installed receptacles, lights, and a smoke detector in the high loft. Jon mudded and sanded a few more booboos and stained the edges of some of the trim boards we cut last time. Christina cleaned up weeks of accumulated mess and disorder.

I got three lights hung downstairs.       I fought the stove receptacle and eventually won. I had to tear out the original rough-in box because our rough-in electrician (that was also me) put the wrong one in there. Oops.   I got the over-sink light installed. It matches our sketch, or at least it will once I bring up some screw eyes to suspend the chain and wire.   I also met with a metalworker to discuss a railing correction. He liked the idea of a 1:1 scale plan, so I came home and printed out forty feet of paper.

Christina and I installed a few switches and sconces. We have most of the downstairs lights together now. Here we are with the new sconces and chandelier lit up. We got far enough down the branch that we could light up the porch. Christina sorted out which lights in which boxes go where. Siggy and his cousin played around in the snow while we worked.

Sunday   Jon brought Siobhan and her friends up for a snowy visit and campfire.   I didn't get much done, but I did install this brown 3D printed box to cover the rough-in box for the balcony receptacle.   Tuesday Jeff came up and we got to work on the door trims. We got the legs put in all the upstairs doors and got a start on the downstairs cabinet area. One of the things I failed to do on Sunday was diagnose why the wifi repeater wasn't working. I spent another hour failing to figure it out today. Thursday I came across a herd of about 20 elk when I dropped the sleds off for service in town.   Jeff and I got through some of the tough scribed pieces in the very tight space around the linen cabinet downstairs. I finally diagnosed the WiFi problem. It turned out that I was trying to point the directional antenna through the window, and I think the window has a metallic coating to improve infrared efficiency. Moving the antenna a couple feet to the left, so it was onl...