Howell Cabin

Wednesday Christina and I cut five hundred little plugs to fill the holes in the car decking floor before it gets finished.  

Friday Siggy installed pretty LEDs in the fixtures. Saturday Dump run! Siggy and Jon cleared out the storage container to make room for all the tools and materials left in the cabin.   Christina and Guinivere moved not-yet-installed light fixtures to the crawlspace.   Jon pulled the protective OSB off the balcony car-decking floor.   Christina cleaned up the subfloors.   Christina and Siggy began the work of finding and sinking screws that were standing proud of the subfloor surface.   Guinivere and Siggy touched up the paint in places where Jon had splattered finish while working on the collar ties. (Wish I'd masked.)  Sunday   Guinivere worked on cleaning the subfloors more, which involved cleaning the vacuum cleaner filter, too.     Jon and Guinivere cleaned the big windows.   Guinivere made dropcloth ballgowns for the chandeliers to protect them from sanding dust. She named them Chanderella.   We loaded all the tools and scaffo...

Tuesday   Jon came up alone on vacation to wrap up more stuff before clearing the building for flooring. I installed the ceiling trim strips Siggy and I made on the weekend:   Here's a finished product:    Wait, gotta stop and change the oil in the air compressor.      Oop, found some more blue tape still lurking in the upper loft. The last two pieces of exterior trim were lying around in the laundry room; I nailed those on next to the front door. Wednesday I cut this leftover bottom plate out of the bathroom door. The next big undertaking was wrapping up the exposed wood ceiling in the bathroom and vestibule upstairs. That involved applying a bunch of finish overhead, a task I detest. Lots of drips and finish running down the brush and down your arm. And it's really tricky getting the finish into that little gap between the collar ties. I had to make four pieces of blocking to complete the look. This little Douglas Squirrel considered paying us a vis...

  Saturday & Sunday   First task: Last weekend Siggy's rubber-band rifle managed to snag a projectile in the chain at the very top of the big chandelier, some 28 feet off the ground. Better get that out of there before we remove the personnel lift.   Siggy and Christina practiced with thinset and tile. Jon and Siggy sanded and stained some pine trim we needed to give the ceiling a finished look where it meets the walls.   Siggy installed the light switch by the front door. Then he installed the exterior fixtures   ...and turned them on. Celebration! Fresh off the thrill of that success, he wired up the 3-way switches for the entryway and got those fixtures running, too.