Last Weekend Before Thanksgiving

Exciting news: we went to look at flooring and discuss the sequence of projects with Daniel Millican who supplied our siding. We chose 5" red oak planks. Russ is going to do an oil and wax finish. It should be beautiful! That floor has to go in before we do the hearth and wood burning stove, we found. So we will pick up 19 bundles of flooring on December 5th.

After a restful night at the Settlement at Monk's Cove (Carolyn's new favorite place) and a hearty breakfast, it was back to work on a rainy but not too cold Sunday. Fortunately, we were inside with lights and heaters on.

Carolyn started insulating around the windows. Wall is 2 x 6" studs so the windows will have to be built out on the inside to look good with our planned wall and trim (we are doing wavy board around the windows inside!) We are talking about pine plank wainscotting and chair rail, then dry wall above, painted an earthy sage green. And we have ivory beadboard ceiling we are about to put up. Won't that look good?

Meanwhile, Russ began installing the drop down stairs. We have a great shortage of storage space at Richmond Woods and a nice little attic space in this small cottage: 8 x 24' So it's plenty of room to put quite a few things away once we get the stairs in!

Above: Russ scoping it out from all angles. Below: He put up some support wood strips, set in the steps and temporarily screwed in on one side. Then lowered them part way to check the diagonals (to make sure they were square in the opening) and added shims til squareness achieved.

Finally he adjusted the length of the stair (had to cut off two steps) and put on the feet. It's very sturdy. Here's Carolyn, starting to put things away.

It was nice on this gloomy day (it actually was grayer than shown in this photo) to have on lights and heaters in the cabin, powered by Russ's large generator.

First Coat

Russ went up Nov 14-15 to put on the Olympic toner. It was a nice, sunny weekend. We had chosen "honey" for the shade. Decided to not go too dark. He masked all the windows and was assisted in the staining by our neighbor Rod. They just used an ordinary garden sprayer and it worked fine.

Below, left: pale bleached wood and initial application of honey stain. Below, right: finished wall

More work in progress pictures below. The honey stain looks good in the setting sun:

The finished job with the paper off the windows below:

the White Cabin

As mentioned in the last post, we only have rainwater and most of the barrels are near our bathhouse because that's the only building with gutters. Russ had to move water from those full barrels to an almost empty barrel near the cottage to have a water source for the bleaching and power washing planned for this weekend.

Solution: He took a shallow tray, siphoned water into it til the level got too low then poured it. He used a small generator to run a submersible pump in the tray, sending the water through several hundred feet of garden hose to the big barrel near the cottage. See last post for that whole setup!

Here's the dramatic before and after on the north end of the cottage.

If you don't like to camp and you want to come and visit, here is the place: The Settlement at Monk's Cove. About 15 minutes from us and they have cabins and rooms. Some of the cabins are quite large (and all are 2 bedroom, 2 bath) and as of now are $135/night. We stayed in a room Saturday night (last weekend stayed in a cabin when family came down).

Above, dining room left, living room right. You can even rent the whole thing for a big group, including the kitchen. Below, our room. All rooms and cabins have a fireplace.

Sunday the work continued. Beautiful weather.



Russ was getting sprayed with bleach water far too much when he was rinsing off with the power washer so he put on a face shield and slicker.

Above: part of Sunday lunch. Grilled country ribs, apples, turnips and greens. Sweet potato pie dessert. It was great! the apples and turnips from AL. Local.

As Russ drained the rain barrels, he took apart the whole system. I cleaned out gutters, camo-ed water tubes, etc to get ready for setting it up again with all the barrels connected and off the ground with taps. We wanted to get it set up before we left to capture new clean water from this week's predicted hurricane.

Below, left: Spraying the tubes (camo so they don't show up as much or look as dirty as white PVC) for our rainwater system; Right: the drying tubes.

Russ finished bleaching the sunny end of the house... his comment, "This is about the color the house will be when we stain it." But the difference is, it's dirt, mildew and old sawdust coming off. The new stain is a honey color.
Left: a before and after picture. End wall (on right) is done, back wall not done. Right: bleached!

Done! It's white and clean. Ready for staining next nice weekend.

Setting up the improved rainwater system: barrels off the ground on the shady end of the bathhouse (less algae), with taps for easy draining (no more siphon) and connected so all fill. Picture below is the work in progress. Neighbor Rod assisting.