Howell Cabin

Jeff came out again for some carpentry instruction: We installed the doors that I applied finish to last week. We got the upstairs three doors installed. That nasty discoloration on the left door is where I was sanding out some factory damage when I discovered that these doors are "solid wood VG fir", not "solid VG fir". That is, there's only a paper-thin veneer of VG fir on the center panels. Sigh.   I put another coat of finish on the closet floor.

The big goal for today was to meet the county fire marshal and get our WUIC final inspection. We had fuel removal work done last year, and then some tree thinning over the last few weeks, to try to get things ready. Dan showed up and signed us off. Hooray! Only one empty space left on the permit card. Christina and I moved the doors inside to let them acclimate to indoor humidity before installation Thursday. I sanded the utility closet floor. I did it with a hand sander, which would be silly, except it's only about 33 square feet. After the dust settled, I applied the first layer of urethane floor finish. I split a bunch of firewood, took down the wood finish tent, tidied up the outside work area, and counted up leftover nails and lumber in hopes of finding good homes for it.

Saturday Christina and I came up Saturday. I built a second door-finishing stand so I can have all eight doors dry in parallel: once again, we're racing against the fall weather. I added more shop lights to make it easier to see the finish to reduce sags and drips. Christina helped me stack all the finished trim wood inside the cabin and move all the doors out of the cabin into the shed. She laid down the last layer of trim finish and installed some receptacles. Sunday Jon came up and got started sanding doors. The fall mountain sunsets are gorgeous. Monday More door sanding and finishing. Tuesday More coats of finish. Friday Escalating the battle against fall, I deployed propane to heat the finish tent. While I waited for paint to dry, I split some more firewood. I also got the rest of the wood flooring installed in the closet, using up all the leftover milled fir from the bedroom floors. Saturday Celebration! I put the last coats of finish on doors today. It was a sunny day, so...

I took this week off to make progress on pre-finishing the trim boards. Monday began with a lot of sanding and a lot of finishing The tree removal crew is up here, as well. We're thinning trees to help make the house safer with respect to forest fires, to make the remaining trees grow bigger, and perhaps to make room for a few different species. We really like the dark forest, but it'll be a better dark forest in a few years with fewer, bigger trees. Tuesday meant more sanding and more finishing. Siobhan came along. She split some firewood and kept her archery skills sharp. Wednesday Would you believe it? More sanding. More finishing. I finished the last of the sanding today. The sanding would have been much faster -- this wood left the mill beautiful -- except that, in shipping and handling, the wood took on a bunch of gravel, scratches, staples and forklift abuse. It was really frustrating cleaning up unnecessary damage. Thursday Three more finish applications. With the free...

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.