Original Builder Passes

The Secret Cabin in 2006 as it was originally built in the mid to late 1990's.

We received the sad news this morning that the former owner and original builder of The Secret Cabin passed away yesterday evening. When I reworked the floor plan and designed the additions to the cabin, Mike and I were anxious to do anything to the cabin for fear we would ruin it. Neil was last out to visit early this Spring. He gave me THE biggest compliment of any of my creative endeavors. He said that the cabin still looked like the cabin. I know he will be sorely missed by his family but Neil will always hold a special place in our hearts for building the special little cabin that swept Mike and I off our feet so much so that we pursued our wild, never-thought-we-could-actually-do-it dream of living in a cabin in the woods. Gratitude and sadness are walking hand in hand today.

Now what is she doing?

I'm cleaning the living room. With the break in the heat wave and having finished lining up materials, time to work on taking The Secret Cabin from construction zone to home. I feel like I got at least one layer of dust conquered. I know, I still owe pictures. Forthcoming sans heavy layer of dust.

I also met with Lonny of LR Construction, Hancock, Michigan. He's going to be cutting the concrete in the Lower Level floor to correct the location of the bathtub lines. He seems like a super nice guy. It's a little project and I think it sounds 100 percent NOT fun. If all goes well, I've got other, more fun, projects. I love Eric and Jake and they are truly AMAZING but they will be finishing the cabin soon and I'd like to have a local crew for the other work that needs to be done. Stuff like a patio, garden/green house/pergola, and the machine barn needs a concrete floor in the worse way. A bit of advice: Do NOT put sand in your machine shed AND if your contractor doesn't know what crushed and packed screenings are, fire his butt immediately - chase him off your property with a stick if you have to. I also would like to have another pole barn - a small one just for my horse and his little donkey friend. Oh, and the front porch. Here's HOPING I've got another good contractor! Let's all keep our fingers crossed.

View from the "nest"

This is what I look at when I lay down in bed. I'm thinking of calling the loft, which is our bedroom, The Nest. It's cozy which is the polite term for small. The bed is basically the only thing in the area. The paneling makes the bed feel wrapped in wood like the sticks used in a birds nest. I'm thinking the view is similar for a bird in its nest. Kinda cool.

More Shock and Awe

Ooooo.

Sink and counter in

I owe you a picture and it'll be worth the wait. The sink and counter were successfully installed yesterday. There is just so much going on right now I'm feeling overwhelmed. It's a good overwhelm though. Everything is getting all trimmed out and looking so amazing that I'm in a bit of a state of disbelief. I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around it all. I find myself just standing there staring at the counter, faucet, sink, cabinet, and window. Or the rake head windows and the wood paneling on the south wall. Or the ceiling. Or a door. My plumber buddy, Roger, is coming out tonight so we should all be able to stare at the toilet after tonight. I also promise to post my "Little Black Book of Fabulous Contractors" in the next week too. Here's to everything we've ever worked for and all the sacrifice paying off and our dreams becoming reality. Yep. Wow.

Abracadabra!

The amazing Eric and Jake got those big, heavy rake head windows installed in the south end gable. And, they trimmed them all out. AND they got all that paneling up on that wall too! Today! They did all that in one day! They also cleaned up so that when I walked in tonight I could really see their handiwork. I'm seriously feeling spoiled.

Let's review, shall we

Stairs going from Lower Level to Main Level. Before and Now. Oooo.

Peachy keen

Just been hanging out at the cabin with a paint brush.

Well, isn't that just Smurfy?

Ut, oh. I'm close to hitting the panic button here. I am holding out hope that everything else that goes into the bathroom will tone down the blue a bit. We'll have to wait and see....

Prepare to be dazzled

They came, they worked on the cabin, they used up all the materials, and they went back home. Now, it's time for me to paint and get the rest of the materials here so they can come back and finish. Here's a peak-see. Ooooo.

Spring fling

So, it's been Spring since March 20th and just today I finally ushered Spring in by removing my Winter wreath from the balcony (formerly a deer stand of sorts) and took a Spring picture of The Secret Cabin for the blog header. My plan is to take a new picture of The Secret Cabin at the beginning of each season and use it as the blog header. Should be fun to see the cabin change through the seasons and passage of time.

Progress Report Six

So, when you walk from the front porch into the cabin you're in the kitchen. To your left is the bathroom. Here's the bathroom so far. Now, the search for a shower that fits into a tiny bathroom and is just the right size to accommodate soap, shampoo, water, and the scrubbing, flailing arms and elbows of the 6' tall Husband without said 6' tall Husband having to shower with his nose pressed into one side of the shower and his buttocks pressed into the other side while getting tangled up in a shower curtain was a bit of a challenge. This shower is 35-1/4" x 42". Once we found the shower, then the distributer, we still needed a dealer to get it for us. Roger, our fabulous boiler professional from Bob's Sheet Metal, Hancock, Michigan was able to get this shower for us. The little empty space pictured to the left of the shower will have built in shelving.

Progress Report Two

Continuing right along with our tour through the drywall dust, from the porch we walk into the kitchen. This picture shows the kitchen after you've walked through the kitchen and look back. The door takes you back onto the front porch. That green board is where the sink cabinet is going. An island will be under the wires you see hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. Do not let the size of this space fool you into thinking I was really limited to what could be done here. I got myself into plenty of trouble with Theresa, Kitchen and Bath Specialist, at 41 Lumber, in Houghton. Check out some of the kitchen pretties for yourself. For this kitchen, you'll have to wait until the "Big Reveal" and we "move that bus" to see the "startling conclusion".

Progress Report One

I love my new general contractor crew. Hard workers, excellent craftsmen, and very nice. They needed to go back to Ohio for a few days. Meanwhile, I've been working on my To Do List: ordering more paneling, stairs, flooring, lighting, keeping the main level heater going and catching up a little here. So, without further ado, here's a few shots of the front porch interior. We have 6" tongue and groove cedar paneling from Keweenaw Specialty Woods, Mohawk, Michigan on the ceiling (the photo with the wire hanging); 4" tongue and groove cedar paneling on the north, east, and west walls (shown with the corner of the front door), also from Keweenaw Specialty Woods, and cedar shakes (shown with the corner of the window off the front of the kitchen) from 41 Lumber, Laurium, Michigan on the south wall. The original shakes on the south wall were oak (from an oak tree back in the woods near the cabin) but when the front gable end wall needed to be reworked because of the new door, we needed more shakes so the original oak shakes from the front porch were used.

Still kicking

Oh crap. I am convinced that if I were a man, I'd be dead. The sniffles put a man flat on his back in bed. A cold like this would definitely kill one. Good thing I'm a ROAR woman. Still, the germs found me even though I hid under the covers. I went to the grocery store and got the usual cold fighting supplies: echinacea tea, lemons, honey, whiskey, eucalyptus essential oil, and all the fixings for chicken soup. I wanted to get lemon juice so I didn't have to cut and squeeze lemons but there were some things listed on the label that were, well, I don't know what the heck they were. It's logical to me, Spock, that one should not eat something that one doesn't know what it is. Grocery shopping is pretty quick for me because more than half the store has weird science stuff on the label. As an aside note, if you saw how much they sprayed your fruit and vegetables, you wouldn't touch the non-organic stuff either. However, the trip to the grocery store completely wiped me out. I ended up free basing the honey. While it soothed my sore throat, I think I should have hit the whiskey harder as I'm definitely being overtaken by germs. I mixed the essential oil with some jojoba oil and spread that all over my neck and chest so the apartment still smelled like Vix only the natural version. Do NOT put but a tiny, tiny dab under your nose or your eyes will burn and water. I need to kick this thing. I've got work to do.

Can you believe it is the last day of February? Wow. I thought we'd take a little trip down memory lane seeing how this cold has my whole life flashing before me. Today's picture was taken by the previous owner and is the picture that started it all. The Man and I had just watched the movie, The Secret Window. The Secret Window was in a cabin. Well, we wanted the whole cabin and not just the window so we went in search of The Secret Cabin. This was the fall of 2005. We would look at a property, look at each other and ask, "Did we find The Secret Cabin?" "No." Then Winter set in. Now, it was January 2006. I was surfing the internet and looking at the MLS listings on our agent's website. I was scrolling through and when I saw this picture, the world stopped and I gasped, "The Secret Cabin, ooooo." I called the agent. He checked into it for us and it was still available, in the area we liked, and that he'd see us in the Spring. I wanted to see it now. While our agent sounded shocked because there was 300 inches of snow everywhere (no exaggeration), he happily obliged. We met him at the driveway with rented snowmobiles and he rode on the back of the snowmobile with Mike. The driveway is tree lined on both sides for awhile and then it opens into a big clearing and the cabin sits up on a little hill. It completely took my breath away. More so than the photograph. The Man and I looked at each other and said, "The Secret Cabin." The next day was Valentine's Day and we went back out, this time in snowshoes. and looked at the property again. That was our best Valentine's Day ever. And the rest, as they say, is history.