Sanding and finishing all week

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 time I have now that sanding is done, I built racks to hold the doors and jambs, which I'll be finishing in the tent after the trim boards are complete.

The tree guys are wrapping up work around the cabin.

Friday

Finally! I put the first coat of finish on the last sawhorseful of trim wood.

I also cut up the last of the dry firewood from six years ago when the septic field was installed and trucked it over to the woodpile to keep Siggy and Siobhan busy.

The utility closet had a plywood subfloor which I hadn't seen for years while it was the home of the wood stove crate. Now I'm realizing that with the on-demand water heater it'll be mostly empty, and useful for things like a vacuum and brooms. I have a big pile of custom-milled fir flooring left over from the upstairs bedrooms, so I decided it wouldn't take long to scrap together a nicer floor for the closet.

Comments

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

Search This Blog