Howell Cabin

  Remember the electrical pits we covered up with the excavator a couple weeks ago? First order of business was to uncover the one at the top of the hill. Turns out our ridiculous 36kW water heater will dim the lights less if we pay the power company to install bigger wires from the transformer to the house. So we have to uncover our conduit so they can pull the new wires through. Eliot and I dug down to the existing wires, then along the conduit. Neither conduit had bellends at the end, which seemed wrong. Mabye we lost track of how they'd been installed a couple years ago? Concerned that there was a gap in the conduit a little farther away from the transformer, we dug and dug six feet along the conduits, and didn't find the gap. Eliot had a brilliant idea: if the conduit had a gap filled with dirt, sound wouldn't travel through the pipe. We remembered you could slap the pipes to make cool echo noises. So I went down to the other end, pulled the tape off, dug out the mud t...

  To get our electricity hooked up, we need to lay conduit in a trench from the meter base on the wall to the existing pit where the power company's wire pops out of conduit and connects to the temporary power pole. We rented a toddler-sized excavator for a day. Jon dug the conduit trench while Christina measured. Siggy cleaned up the lumpy bits in the bottom with a shovel. While we had the machine, we dug another short trench to bring the water pipes over to where we'll install a reservoir tank. Siobhan did most of that digging and backfilling with the excavator (see top picture). Since we had it anyway, Jon drove the excavator around attacking vine maple roots and smoothing out pits left over from electrical installation a couple years ago up at the shedlet. Then we did a few odds and ends, like covering the vent holes with plywood blocks and cleaning up more low branches from the trees in the woods.

 (Some exclusions apply.) Eliot and I replaced our plywood front door with a cheap interior door from home depot, in an attempt to reduce the number of new mouse-shaped occupants. We got the range wiring installed. Next, we went after wiring the furnace. The good news was that we needed only a single run of 6awg wire -- we only needed a modest electric backup heater. The bad news was that the HVAC folks installed the furnace so that the electric supply input was 1.5" from a triple stud that we're not allowed to drill. We gave up at dinnertime. Saturday Eliot and Christina installed window trim legs on the laundry room window. Siobhan and Eliot installed more legs on the kitchen windows. A little caulking got astray. Siobhan shot a few bullseyes. This is Isaac and Jennifer, the couple that designed the building last year. Eliot thought this looked like a stock photo architect meeting, so I made Isaac wear a hardhat. Christina and Jon made the last few windowsills, and she paint...

  We attached about seven pieces to the house this weekend. Fancy trim is hard work. We installed this second diagonal trim board. We put up vertical trim on either side of the doors so we could get on to putting in fiber cement siding panels. Siggy made a sign for the archery range and a model house. Guinivere made some of the diagonal trim that will go in the middle of the design. Siobhan is priming one of the upper diagonal trims that we need in place before installing siding panels.   Siggy, Guinivere and Siobhan slept at the shedlet with dad. Sunday Christina and Eliot installed the two lower siding panels. Eliot flashed the seam. Jon and Christina manufactured more of the middle trim panels. These panels took a lot  of test fitting and trim cycles. After that, they each get a dozen rip cuts to make reliefs to go around the window edge profiles and nailing flanges. Then more hand-cut reliefs for lumpy sections of waterproofing tape. Once the thing finally fits in pla...

Eliot and I were back up at the cabin this weekend. We made and installed two more pieces of the tricky trim on the front of the house. Getting these to fit right takes a surprising amount of test fitting and adjustment. There's getting the visible dimensions correct, then removing material on the back to clear various lumps from the nailing flanges. Then we use Bondo to fill gaps on the surface, sand, and prime the board. Finally, we have to mask the windows and caulk them on the way in. We also installed ledger boards under all the doors; this is what the decks will mount to. These need metal flashing to keep water out of the gap between the board and the house. Siggy did a little of his own construction. We also worked on some of the electrical branch circuits. Eliot's cutting a hole in a shear wall for the range outlet. Punching out holes for the water heater cables to enter the panel. Fitting the water heater to the wall in the closet. We have a 36kW tankless electric heat...