Weekend Two

Weekend Two consisted of more tear down. Stripping the layers off of the log walls and removing the interior walls. Our main goal is to get all the stuff we want removed in the cabin done before we get a big dumpster rented and maybe even some machinery to get the addition out of here. While working on the walls, we’ve found lots of fun and weird things (vines/plants growing in between layers, the layers themselves, swarms of ladybugs, etc.), but finding the little snippets of newspapers that are still legible is really amazing. We’ve also found that for the knots in the wood planks that have fallen out and left a hole, the builders used the tops/bottoms of tin cans to cover them. I’ll have to remember to get some pictures of those! Another thing we had to get done was cutting a hole in the floor to see underneath the cabin and find out what kind of damage there is (or hopefully lack there of!).

Pretty amazingly, the underside of this nearly century and a half old cabin seems to be in awesome shape! We decided to put this hole where the bathroom will be, so that if the flooring we put back in to fill the hole doesn’t match exactly, it’ll be covered by tile anyhow :). I will be continuously excited about how quickly progress goes. It seemed like a daunting task to get ourselves a way to see under the cabin, but it proved to be easier than anticipated! You can see Maverick (our german shepherd/lab mix) can’t be too far away from any of the excitement. We often have to kick him out so he doesn’t get himself injured or get under foot. He’s so sweet and just wants to be part of everything!

We were able to get the rest of the West and South facing walls all the way down to the logs, and half of the East facing wall is done as well! The amount of clean up as we go is astounding. We are trying to save as much of the wood as we can so we can hopefully reuse it, but as we weren’t terribly careful while pulling things out, a lot of it will go into the burn pile as well. I’m hoping to get enough shiplap saved to be able to make a wall in the bathroom or kitchen (which will probably painted a light color to brighten up the small space!).

One of the cooler things we have found is a step that had hidden hinges. We were all excited to open it, thinking there might be some old treasures or money, some sort of hidden stash that had been stowed away and forgotten about. But alas, when we opened it up, there was nothing hidden at all. It looked like it was the only access to the storage that was cut off from the children’s room closet.

We also got a portion of the wall dividing the old children’s room from the main living space off which opened up under the staircase! It was fun to be able to visualize the breakdown of the space for the bathroom. The whole cabin is only going to be about 770 square feet when we’re done, so it’s going to be quite small until we get a new addition on. But as it’s just the two of us and our dogs for the time being, that’ll be plenty of space; and none of it will be wasted!

The last bit we got out was the wall that separated the little (tiny) room that split off from the main living space with the door to the staircase. The funny thing is, that as we took down more walls and were able to see all the space, it didn’t really start to feel any larger. Throughout I just kept thinking about all the things that were going to have to go into the space and how it is going to be quite small until we have the means to put the addition on. Regardless, it is going to feel ENORMOUS compared to the RV we are currently living in. Next weekend we should be able to get the rest of the downstairs cleared out! Soon we will be ripping that addition off and then the real fun will start.