Friday was our ninth day and, except for cleanup and hauling off the tool trailer, we’re finished. Insulated, vapor barrier, accoustical sealant, and installed door and lock set. Short day and now we’re off to the cabin.
Yesterday’s field trip was amazing! I have a ton of pictures to sort through in order to make a blog post. But all fun times end and it’s back to work!
A glimpse of the ride out.
Today we finished standing trusses. Put the lookouts up. Cut truss tails, installed bird blocking. House wrapped the front gable and picked up a few more supplies for putting the metal roof on next week.
I think we made 8,000 trips up and down the ladders.
Like this week, next week will be a day short, this time for the holiday.
Started the day off with getting our electric service hooked up. Dean worked on sizing joists while I set up our rain shelter and hooked up our temp power outlets.
The mill broke down so Sheldon showed up on the job site to give us a hand. We sailed through setting the floor system and in no time the sheeting was down and BAM!
No rest for the weary. Finished one cabin yesterday and rolled into the new job site this morning. This is a 12′ x 24′ cabin, dry in only. (No interior or finish work!!)
We spent half a day gathering supplies. The rest of the day we set our paver/pier foundation & brackets.
Ready for the floor system.
Then we sized our rough sawn beams and set them into place. Leveled and squared them and cut our rim joist and laid out our joist placement.
Time flies when you’re having fun. Time to clean up and stow our tools. Monday we will knock out the floor joists and blocking. Hopefully getting some sheeting down for the floor too.
We’re almost done with this little log tiny house build.
280′ square feet of interior living space. Equal storage space below. 4′ x 14′ of covered front porch. Full service kitchen and 3/4 bath. The customer will be doing the shower at a later date
So much finish work. The bathroom pocket door trim consists of 12 components! All custom made trim, nothing store bought. It’s all Alaskan white spruce. Local logs milled at SND’s sawmill. You can’t get more “Alaskan Made”.
Where has the time gone? Between working snow removal (Dean) and running the sawmill for a month we’ve kept busy. A month ago we were riding snow machines and wearing the warm clothes. Now we’re digging drainage ditches, jumping on the trampoline and wearing summer attire.
Training the new guy. Feels like summer.
Also last month I started experimenting with oyster mushroom cultivation and started my first tote of substrate. I had started with a grow kit from Home Depot. I grew one out last year and we enjoyed the ‘shrooms so much I thought why not grow more?
Growing kit.
I pulled a bit of the grow block off and used it to innoculate some straw and coffee grounds. I let it sit and grow mycelium until today when I checked it and I had pinning!! Woo hoo!
Lil baby oyster mushrooms!!
Can’t wait to eat them in about 10 days or so.
The kiddos set up the trampoline today, with some difficulty. But it’s up and ready for high energy kids. While we were out a large flock of sandhill cranes flew over chattering steadily. We’ve seen several geese flocks over the last few days but these were the first cranes. Summer is here.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
Dean has been in the boat every available moment. He’s so excited about the prospect of halibut fishing at will. To be honest, so am I. But I still do have a house that needs finishing…
Future mushroom bed.
The kids helped me prep our wine cap mushroom bed today. We raked it out, layered cardboard first, then straw. We added our spawn and then top coated it with sawdust. Over that I put some wood mulch to keep the sawdust in place.
Straw layer with spawn scattered about.
Next on the list is an outdoor oyster mushroom bed. Maybe next weekend? And I’ve got to get another tote started indoors. I’ve got pearl and phoenix varieties for indoors.
The Oldest has plans for gardening this year, so a few more raised beds and updating our current hillside beds.
Back to work on the rec cabin build tomorrow. Another day another dollar.
During March and April we spent three weekends going back and forth to the cabin, when we could actually drive a vehicle out! We spent lots of time working on the outhouse and have very little left to do. We added bats to finish out the front and sides, only have about 3 more to add to the back (we ran out!). We also put shingles on the roof and insulated the inside roof and walls. It is nice a cozy inside!
Adding bats to the door.
I think Dad would be pleased!
The last weekend out we started sanding on the cabin. The kids helped and actually did most of the sanding.
Thing 1 and Thing 2 sanding the logs.
Then together we put a coat of sealer on. Wow, what a difference!
A fresh coat of sealer!
Dad had started the front of the cabin so we only have to finish the gable end on the front, then the rest. One side down, the second side started sanding (we started putting sealer on the porch/sunroom part) and then the back-end to do.
And for our valiant efforts (mostly on the kid’s part) we had some awesome pizza for supper!
Alaska on my mind... 