Beauty!

It's a beautiful day here in the North Country!  Blue sky, colorful leaves, warm breezes...   it's our last hurrah before the cold blows in and settles down for 5 months. But today... we are in heaven.

But the real thing of beauty around here?   

The arctic entry floor!   

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!    

We have a few pieces in the corner that still need to be laid down, but it's so so SO beautiful!  

Come on over and gaze upon our Arctic Entry in all its glorious beauty.  You know you want to.   

Summer 2015

It's a hot, hazy mid-summer day in Northern New York!  We don't get too many, comparatively speaking, and so we love to hate these days.  The Hubs has been picking away at this and that on The Log House, completing little tasks, but his father is intent on finishing that arctic entry! 

He has started to put the hand-milled boards up on the walls:

 

It's hard to get a good angle for a picture

 

The FIL is itching to get the flooring down in there and for me to decide what I want to do with that end wall and whether to continue the boards all the way around.   Advice?  You know I'm not going to take it, what with being so contrary and all, but I do like to *hear* others' opinions.  Heh.

Since it's summer, and that means hosting many friends and family, not much work on The House gets done, but it's an embarrassment of riches of a kind, so we aren't upset!  We do, however, get the largess of my father's garden.  Which is getting largess-ter each year. 

The Girl wandering the garden looking for something to munch on in early July

Our little spinach thief

With the great blessing of living in the woods all hermit-style comes the trial of limited internet access.   *sigh*   SUCH a first-world problem, eh?   So, that has made my blogging even more haphazard.  And we all know it was straight-up iffy at the best of times.  

So, see you in...  what?  November?    

Heh.   You know I'm only half joking. 

It's May Already?

May?  It's approaching the middle of MAY?  Seems like just yesterday we moved into The Log House, but it's been 4 1/2 months already.   And yet, I'm still as goofy happy about it as ever. 

The progress on the house is now just a bunch of little finish work.  Well, I say "little", but every new door knob sends me into a squealing squealer of squealingness.  We have doors on the downstairs bathroom and the kids' room/spare 'oom and the artic entry is in process of having its walls and ceiling finished.... see?

 

That brown is just the primer, but it's a lovely chocolate color in person, and I don't mind lookin' at it while waiting for the boards to be applied!

 

 

What else have we been up to this last wee while?   Well, a little of this:

 

 

Bob and Jim enveloped in a cloud of sweet steam from the evaporator, boiling down sap into maple syrup.

 

 

 and a little of that....

 



The menfolk splitting wood for next winter.  Already.

and cuteness....

 

  KITTENS!!!  Yes, we have two sweet kittens now -- who love to climb The Boy like he's there just for that reason.  And he loves it.

I can't get a very good angle of the arctic entry to show you the work as it goes on, but I'll squish myself into a corner and try to get some good shots as the board walls go up and the floor goes down.

Roasty toasty 2

Long-time log devotees will remember that we are heating The Log House with wood in a gassification wood boiler.  Which, if you allow it to get cold, needs some coaxing to be roasty-toasty again.   Fortunately, The Husband loves this kind of nonsense   -- er...   necessary work.

Theeeere she goes

I love radiant floor heat.  It is SO! WARM!   Except, I have a sneaking suspicion that The Hubs will make me learn how to feed the boiler soon.  Ugh.  Sounds like work.  

Too many things

I discovered today that there are too many things left to do to move in to The Log House.  We're never moving in.  

Well, at least that's the way it feels today. 

Too much left to pack.  Too much left to clean.  Too much left to build/finish/paint.

I spent HOURS just vacuuming the first floor log walls and the rest of the dining room and kitchen ceilings and cleaning windows of accumulated grime and adhesive from those manufacturer stickers that we just never took off before.

But I am digging those double-hung windows!  

I might actually clean those windows again within the coming decade.  

Bob and his father built a temporary railing on the balcony.  Eventually it will be made of log and bent twig, but for now, it'll keep me from falling off the edge.  Temporary, but sturdy.  

But there's still so much left to do:  

• clean out the arctic entry
• prime and paint the arctic entry
• select, purchase and install flooring in the arctic entry
• install hooks for coats and hats and bins for gloves and tuques
• move all the construction materials to the basement or to the shop
• clean the upstairs -- floors, walls, ceilings
• prime and paint the master bedroom walls
• install the board ceiling in the master bedroom
• let's not even talk about the master bathroom
• install bedroom and bathroom doors on the first floor
• put several coats of poly on the bedroom and bathroom doors
• stair treads and risers
• hearth and stone facing on the chimney
• exterior door face casings and filling in that empty spot over those doors
• laundry room wall and door

I'm not even listing things like exterior window casings, baseboard, closet doors, laundry chute doors, the whole closet in the master bedroom....      okay, well, I guess I did list them.  But there's more!  I'm just getting too depressed thinking of them all. 

It doesn't all have to be done before we move our schtuff out of the house in town and out to The Lake and start sleeping in logness and telling the post office to deliver our bills out there....   but a good bit of it does.   And now that I can see the move on the horizon, I feel impatient.  

There's the real problem:  I am impatient.  I want to live in my hand-crafted, lovely, perfect, beautiful log home NOW and I don't want to have to vacuum more sawdust to do it.  What an ungrateful whiner I am.  But, there you have it.  Warts and all.  

It's a work in progress, but I suppose so am I.  And if this house doesn't kill me, I sure will love living there.   *grumble*   You know:  in three more years.  

Just kidding.  

Not really.  

*Harumph*

The end.

First the floor, next: the world!

I feel a bit like I'm Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic with the wind in my hair!   Except... not just before a disaster and a frozen iceberg death.  Just the happy exhilaration part.  Yeah, that.   Maybe I need to rethink my simile here..

Here's the takeaway:   Squeeeeeeeee!!!!!   The floor is done!  Time to move in!

Bob, FIL Jim and friend Dave install the last few rows of flooring in the dining room

The Boy and his Grandpa, working on the edge of the floor in the living room today.

I vacuumed up years' worth of accumulated sawdust from window sills, walls and ceilings today.  And I'm not even close to being done.  Whose idea were those exposed log joists anyway?  Too many dusty surfaces!

  

That strip of bare floor is where the half-wall will be built, separating the living room and dining room.  Squint your eyes and turn your head *like this* and imagine the wall for now.  

The Hubs at the end of the work day today, pondering the great mysteries of our age.  

And noticing how dirty the windows are.... in our dining room with a new floor!!   Wooo!!  

Sorry.

Just for some perspective, here's a picture from June 2012 side-by-side with one from Saturday:

Time to get packing in earnest!

More! Floor!

Look at all the floor that has gone in the last few days!

That full-length poster of Chris Hemsworth to cover up that door is on order...

Thanks to a generous helping of... help by FIL Jim and friend Dave, Bob has been able to lay down a ton of flooring yesterday and today.  I'm so grateful, I had to clap a hand over my mouth to stop from gushing so effusively as to send Dave running for the door.  

But, I may have squealed very loudly at one point accidentally.  

Their poor knees took a beating as they measured and cut and laid floor boards all day today.  

note the snowy trees outside the window...   

My role today was twofold:  clean the construction materials out of the first floor (and vacuum up the piles of sawdust and dead bugs and cobwebs) and be a dead weight.  

I'm really good at holding the floor down. 

We're making progress!! 

A floor! A Thor?

 

Bob and FIL Jim are installing the floor in the hall, living room and dining room!

Yeah... I've got to do something about that door.  How about a life-size poster of Chris Hemsworth?   

I'm sorry... what were we talking about?    Floor!  Yes, heylookit!

[insert door metaphor here]

Today is the start of fall.  Yes, I know that the weather is still as summery as yesterday.  AND that autumn doesn't technically start for weeks.   But for those of us whose employment follows the traditional American school year?   The first day back to school = fall.  The bairns don't return to the rigor of formal education until Thursday, but for me, it's today.   Sooooo...  I was going to whip up some sort of fab-O metaphor about portals to new....   this -- or doorways to the future.... blah.....   but it's 6:00am and I should actually be gathering myself to go to work, so cook it up yourself.

And furthermore, get off my lawn!

[ahem.  sorry.]

The good news is: we spent yesterday afternoon up at The Log House.  The BETTER news is that we put in the new front door.  YES WE DID!!   (and by "we," as always, I mean Bob and FIL Jim)

Sometimes, what makes it possible to build your own home ... er... freehand ...  is that you use "found" materials as you go along.  In this case, the found material is the front door we've been using for a few years.

Hey, it was free.

 
I asked The Hubs last night how we came to have a random extra old steel door lying around.  Apparently, a family friend got it from a store that was replacing it and gave it to my Father-in-Law Jim.  Thus -- free door.

But, rusty old free steel door NO MORE!   Okay, well, not on the front entrance.  It's just getting moved around to the rear entrance for the musicians and vagrants to use.   No, sorry.  That can't be right.  I mean for dashing out in the freezing cold winter to feed the wood boiler.   At least, it'll grace the back door until we can convince the children to give us all their lemonade stand earnings so we can afford another door.  Do you KNOW how expensive quality exterior doors are?   I nigh unto had a stroke when we priced them.  

But I digress.

Here's the old door gone:

Looking out

With a really handsome dude

Sorry, kids.  No college.  We got ourselves a nice front door.

So, usually, when there's work going on up at The Log House, I either hear about it after it's done and run up and take pictures, or take some before and after shots and in the meantime, go about my business.  

But in this case, I stayed for the whole thing.  Because -- well, how long can it take to put in a new door?

Hour ONE.

Apparently, I forgot that it was being installed in a hand-hewn log home.  AND that I have no concept of such things.  Because:  dang.

Four hours later, it's in.  Well, no casing.  And there's an area over the door that needs to be filled in....  but whatever.

Look who's being helpful!  That's right:  me.  

Nice door, eh?

The time we waited while the sausage was being made...  er... I mean, the door was being installed, wasn't entirely wasted though:

The Girl made good use of the new carpet.

Wanna come knock on our new door and pretend like we live there NOW?   'Cause I'm pretending that, too.  

Well, after I pretend that I'm ready for a new school year.  Yeah.  Pretending that too.