October 4th

Here is an update on our progress at the Cabin in MI. We have been up there for three weekends in a row, feverishly working on preparing for cold weather. That includes Insulation in the ceilings and walls, installing Electric Baseboard Heaters, and finally installing a Wood Burning Stove. It took 2/1/2 weekends of working all day Saturday and half days on Sunday to complete the Insulation. Sue Ann did most of the outside walls with R-19 batting insulation and I put up the R-38 batting insulation in the ceilings. The Cathedral ceiling was a real challenge. We put in over 3,000 staples by hand. I estimate that I climbed and 8 foot ladder 250 times, just for the ceiling in the great room. Talk about leg cramps at night, I sympathize with my Mom. She suffers from leg cramps and now I realize how painful they are. Anyway, we finished up the last section of ceiling this past Friday night. We did this after driving 5 hours. We arrived at 10pm and it was already 34 degrees outside. So the decision to close up the ceiling before we went to bed was easy to make. We used a kerosene heater that night, and it was quite warm inside. The next morning (Saturday) I wired up the baseboard electric heaters that we had purchased. They fired right up and brought the temperature inside to 72 degrees with ease. We are very happy about that. Next project, install a chimney through the roof and build a raised hearth to set the wood stove on. We had made a decision a week earlier to put the wood burner in the corner of the main room. This seems to be a nice fit that does not rob us of valuable floor space for furniture. Anyway, Saturday was a long day of planning and measuring and cutting holes and installing chimney sections and roof flashing. What an ordeal.  I got it finished at about 4pm in the afternoon. After a short nap it was on to the Hearth. I made it using 2 x 6 lumber, ¾” OSB board and ½” thick Concrete Board. The last material is for fireproofing under the stove itself. After nailing all this together we called it a night. While I was doing that chore, Sue Ann was laying out a very nice Natural Slate Tile arrangement on the floor. She did this in advance so that the actual setting of the tiles would go smoothly.Sunday morning and we did some last minute preparations to the hearth deck prior to mixing up a batch of floor adhesive. We stopped long enough to cook eggs ands cornbread on our new Electric Range! Yum.It took us 30 minutes to set the tiles and clean up the mess. We did great. At 2: oo we headed for Indiana. We are very excited about our next trip up in two weeks to finish the woodstove and fire it up.An update on my Dad: After 13 days in Intensive Care, he was released on Sunday afternoon. It was a very tough surgery for him and he is pretty weak, but he is looking forward to building energy up so that he can get down to Florida before it freezes here! 

Here are some photos taken in the last few weeks. Hope you enjoy reading this. (I think I am rambling too much.)

Bye,

Randy