Cutting in the first door

Until now, our front door has been a piece of OSB screwed in with eight deck screws, and our doorknob a battery drill with a T-25 bit. (Yes, we kept the T-25 in the keybox in case we forgot to bring one up.)

Today, we pulled off the blocking studs and put in our first door:

Things we learned:

We put the sealant on the house, estimating how far from the edge. Turns out we forgot to account for the 1/2" of gap between the door and the rough opening, so the sealant was all too far away from the actual door trim. We had to pull the door down and add another bead.
We should have put another strip of sill flashing in, along with a tapered shim, so that water leaking through the door's premade aluminum sill would definitely come out the front of the house. How could water leak through aluminum? For reasons unclear, this door's sill is two pieces that hinge together.
We plumbed the hinge side, then realized the door was an uncorrectable parallelogram. We had to undo than, then level the sill first, then plumb the hinge side, then shim the jamb side to be flat.
We looked all over the cabin for the deadbolt. I mean, there was the one box sitting there, but I knew that box had the one-sided (no key) deadbolt for the other door, so really no point in getting that out of the box. That's why there's tape over the hole. When we got home to Seattle, we found the one-sided deadbolt in a different box.

Ah well. Our new motto: "practice house."

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The trim finishing journey begins

The last time we installed wood trim (almost two years ago!), we sanded and cut the material inside the cabin (it was winter) and installed it unfinished. Finishing it meant taping everything off and applying three coats of finish in place. Removing the masking was frustrating (the finish glued it to the wall in places), and in other places the finish still got where it didn't belong. Now the cabin is full of nice, finished floors, cabinets, and counters. It's not a shop. So this time, I'm sanding and pre-finishing all the boards outdoors. Thankfully, there's still pretty nice weather; that black tarp garage heats up pretty well when the sun's out. Today I got the first batch of wood sanded and a coat of finish applied. Christina installed eight receptacles in the kitchen and great room. My mom came up to enjoy the warm ambiance of the not-yet-active wood stove.

Uncrating the wood stove

I drove up to the cabin today to meet a tree contractor. Since I was up there anyway, I took care of some other business. I got the wood stove out and ready to install on Monday. I vacuumed up the tiny particles of styrofoam packaging material from last year's roofing panels that would have been much easier to clean up last year. I put the bathroom outlet back into its adjusted place above the backsplash. I corrected my installation of the heat pump wiring with a pair of reducing washers. Now it's really done. I replaced the emergency brake battery system in the flatbed trailer. I bucked a bunch of old logs into rounds for firewood.

Odds and ends

I made progress on a bunch of little things today. I painted a fencepost in 12" segments and pounded it in at the property line, where the outdoor camera can see it. Now we can measure the snow accumulation. I worked on finishing up almost-complete receptacle branch circuits. The first one I worked on was a little mystery: all the receptacles were installed, but the power didn't reach past a certain point in the line. After some investigation with a wire tracer and watching through the videos we took before covering the walls, I worked out what had happened: two receptacles shared a stud bay, facing into opposite rooms. The plan had been to bring power up to one box, jump over to the other box, and continue back down to the crawlspace to the next box. We forgot the jumper. I couldn't fish a wire between the boxes myself, so that repair waits. Upstairs, installing two receptacles completed the branch. The bathroom vent hole in the tile backer board was a skosh too small. ...

Howell Cabin

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