A Log Home Picnic

The boy is on Christmas vacation, the girl is sick (poor thing) and the Hubs is up working on the log house today, so we decided to have a nice picnic of turkey soup, cheese curds, and apples with caramel dip.  And some chocolates and toffees that we were gifted by friends. 

Bob set up a little table of plywood and sawhorses in the basement and the boy dispensed with a recently deceased mouse that got in, but finding no food, decently decided to expire. 

I took the opportunity to snap some new pictures of the house on this beautiful and cold North Country day. 

Version 1:  The kids and I went home for naps and left poor Bob to work on the house by himself. 
Version 2:  I had to bundle up a sick and crying 4-yr old and the remnants of lunch and drive back to town, while Bob got to commune with his beloved logs in silence.

Hmmmm.

Tour

So, I feel like giving a wee tour.   Probably long overdue.    Although, the Hubs just walked by and said, "Great!  Now everyone will walk right in our house and say, 'oh, I know where the bathroom is!'"   Exactly.  When you come to our house (you ARE coming to visit our house, aren't you?), don't expect me to show you to the can.  Find it yourself, folks.   ANYWAY...

Please forgive my crude floorplan.  It's totally NOT to scale. 

So, when you walk through the front door, you'll be in our arctic entryway.  Please shut the door behind you.  It's cold out.  Yes, even in July. 

As you walk through to the living room, the stairs to go up will be on your right.  You can't go up there; it's my bedroom, and it SO isn't clean.  Well, it's quite clean now, considering there's no floor, but I'd imagine I won't be breaking 35 years of habit and be keeping my bedroom spotless in this house either.  But I digress.

This picture is a view from the kitchen looking toward the living room and dining room.  Bob is standing roughly to the left of the dividing wall.  The stairs (!) to go down to the basement are at left in the foreground.  Again, the chimney and fireplace are blocked by the boards standing up against them (at left).

This next picture is taken from the far corner of the spare bedroom, looking diagonally across the house toward the front door:

 


This picture is taken from the hallway, with the back door at my back.  I am looking down the hall with the kitchen at my left and the dining room at my right.  That saw in the hall has gotta go. 

And this last one is of The Hubs sanding boards.  He's standing right where the half-wall will be between the living and dining rooms.  You can see the wall between the dining room and spare bedroom framed up in the background. 

So there.  Now when you come to visit (you ARE coming to visit, aren't you?) you can help yourself and I won't have to get up from my permanent place in front of the fire. 

The end.



More of the arctic entryway

Just a picture, really:

Or two:

This was taken with my back to the front door, looking out through the door (and wall) of the arctic entryway into the living room.  The fireplace is at left, where those long boards are standing up.  The ladder is leaning against the edge of the upstairs floor.  (That is not where the stairs will go up to the second floor.  Those will be in the foreground, which is currently blocked up.)

Okay, now you've got me in tour guide mode.  More of that tomorrow. 



A snowy, loggy world

The kids and I spent some time "helping" Bob up at the log house this afternoon.  I swept up about a hundred pounds of sawdust and we picked up a gazillion little odds and end of wood.  Bob (and FIL Jim, of course) are working on a super-duper-top-secret project that I've been sworn to secrecy about until it's done.   In the meantime, here are some cool pix of the snowy outside, from the inside.

It was a beautiful day in the North Country today:  snowy but not inconveniently so, and not too cold.  Our little brigands enjoyed racing down from our [future] house to see Grandma. 

Running through the snow, a race to see Grandma
Hope she has some snacks, I know she'll melt like wax
I'll track in lots of wet, in haste to win the bet,
We'll fight and whine and yell and fuss, but Grandma still loves us!
Oh.....  

Er...  nevermind.  Bob's the better lyricist anyway.  No, really.  It's weird.

Closet

And NEXT to the stairs.... oh, by the way...  did I mention that I have some

STAIRS?!!!!!

Oh, I have?  Well then. 

And now, I also have a {large} closet framed in at the bottom of the stairs.   

Yes, it is already full of schtuff. 

Please don't remind me.



Arctic Entryway

Our friend Alaska Dave (that's Cale to you) said in his neck of the woods they call our entry room/mud room/front hall/foy-aaaaay an "arctic entryway."   SOLD!   I like it. 

Here's The Intrepid Stair-Building Husband posing (to his intense discomfort) for a quick photo in the doorway between the arctic entryway and the living room. 

Hello, Husband.

Are those....  stairs just off to the left of the photo by any chance?  Yes, they are?  Mmmmm....   wonderful.   



Squeeeeeeeeeeal!!!!!

So, I get a text from The Husband this morning that says, "Today's series is called 'Bye Bye Ladder.'"
Accompanied by this picture:

So I asks myself, I does:  "why would a ladder need to go away?"  Could it be?  COULD IT BE?!

And then a little later, I get this picture:

IT IS!!!!   Well, at this point in the picture, it will be. 

And a little later, I was dancing about and having to explain my odd, nearly fey behavior:

Oh, it gets better:

So I had to go to The Lake to see this wonder for myself.  And I arrived, just as the last two screws were being put in.  To our STAIRS.  That's right, baby:  stairs.  From the main floor down to the basement. 

STAIRS. 

Stairs. 

They still need some bracing and such, but I walked 'em.  They're stairs all right.  And I love them.  *sniff*