Stain!

My beautiful raw, lovely, virgin logs are all growed up!  They have a pretty new brown stain.  

I will go on record as admitting that I was wrong.  I did not want to stain the logs.  Yes, I understand that they need some protection from the elements.  Yes, I understand that they were weathering gray.  THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS BABY LOGS!  Leave 'em alone, I said.  

The Hubs didn't listen.  But, he was right.

We are using a semi-transparent stain and the unique character of each log is still very apparent.  The color is a gorgeous light chocolate.  I was wrong.  It is BEAUTIFUL!

F-I-L Jim lovingly brushes on the stain

The Hubs and The Boy are on the other side of the house using the sprayer.  The race is on!

The darker logs now show off the light stones of the chimney even better!

A close up of the raw logs and the newly stained logs

We are now at-home-in-brown-logs!

Hang your hat

That arctic entry is almost ready for prime time!   And even this manual labor-phobic blogger has been pitching in.  I helped shellac the vertical wall boards and sanded and shellacked and polyurethaned the horizontal cherry boards that the coat hooks will be mounted on!  Yes, I did!  I can prove it:

Me, shellacking the wall boards.  

Me, sanding the cherry coat rack boards

Okay, this one is The Husband, removing the loose bark from the edges of the coat rack boards.

Well, that doesn't really prove I helped.  But it's hard to take a selfie AND actually do some real work.  I tried.  No can do.  So, you get my weird-looking hands and the opportunity to trust me on this.  You're welcome.   

This is the before picture of the cherry coat rack boards:  

  

This is the after:

Yes, it looks like bacon to me, too.  I ain't got noooo problem with that!

I imagine we'll discover at some point that we'll need more than one hook.

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.  

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!! 

And this:

After I let Dr. Dentist McDreamy work on my teeth this afternoon, I ran out to the lake to see this here progress with mine own two eyes.

I may have caressed the new wall and whimpered a bit.  But you can't prove it.

The Hubs and I also hashed over the configuration of the basement laundry room... again, lamented a poor choice on our part in the kitchen, and discussed what the shelves built into the half-wall between living and dining rooms will be like.  Even at this late stage, we're still designing the house!   I have a feeling we'll be making design decisions until we die.  

In that house.

Because:  once I move in, I am NEVER EVER moving out.  Of my own accord.  I may never even leave.  Consider this my two-week notice.

Just kidding.  Kind of.

Here's a shot of The Lake to distract you from my obvious lack of sanity:

And The House wanted to play peek-a-boo:

I see you!

Hello, beauty

And This:

Stairs from first floor to the second floor.  The wall/railing/awesomeness is new!  

Eventually, we will add risers and permanent treads. 

Walls, vents and other stuff

It's hard to report on some of the house progress.  Like the aforementioned sealing of the basement floor, some of it is relayed in a few words -- and no pictures -- despite representing hours or days of work.  Some things are cool, but hard to take pictures of...  like duct work.

Bob works on ventilation duct from the master shower vent/fan

 But, here, devoted log-ees, are some pictures of a beautiful wall my FIL Jim is finishing.  The beautiful wide boards were milled by The Hubs from trees he felled on or near our property.  To me, that makes them all the more beautiful.

To give you some perspective on where the wall is...  

at the top of the stairs, to the right of the pocket doors that lead into the master bedroom.

Some walls aren't as pretty, but I'm still happy to see them going up!   This one is on the bedroom side of the master bath:

And this one is -- clearly -- behind the main floor toilet:  

Now there's just a bit of trim work left to do in that bathroom!  

*Sigh*  I love spending time in the new house.  

Bathroom walls, vents and all.

Fireplace photos

So...  Joe commented on yesterday's post that he hadn't seen a picture of the fireplace and the inside of the chimney.   And I don't know if I've ever posted one.   You should know by now that I'm waaaaay too lazy to go back and look, but I did notice that there are a couple in my Flikr stream.  The inside of the chimney is not yet faced (stay tuned, however, my intrepid log-lovers!), and is currently totally hidden by a mass of construction materials, including some gazillion-foot-long boards that The Husband milled himself.  So, taking a photo right now is not going to help the situation.  Instead, I send you over to espy the photos in Flikr.  Be gone with you!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/athomeinlogs/

Old Mother Hubbard ...

... went to her cupboard to fetch her poor boiler some wood.   But when she got there....

... her cupboard was bare, and so her poor boiler got none.


But then her husband fetched some wood from the big woodshed and made her help unload and stack it.

And this old mother remembered why there were no treadmills necessary 100 years ago.  And that she hates manual labor.  And is lazy.

The end.