18. Stairs, Floors, and More!

We’re about 3 months out from the end of our construction loan, and we still have a lot to accomplish! Things haven’t been moving as quickly as we might hope and a lot of that is due to slow supplies. For instance, it took about three weeks longer than it should have to get our windows delivered, and we still haven’t gotten our stairs from the log provider which should have been here a looooooong time ago.

Although the pressure is on to get this project done in the 12-month period we were granted by the bank, we are, nevertheless,  very much enjoying the process and realize that these little “hiccups” are a blessing because it means we’re ACTUALLY building the custom cabin of our dreams.

The half-log stairs we’re waiting on were recently constructed in Canada. We did finally receive a picture this week of the finished product. Now we’re just awaiting delivery and installation. From the picture, they look very beautiful!!! I can’t wait to see them in person!

The guys were hard at work installing the windows when we were up there this Wednesday. Everything is complicated by the fact that log homes shift over time as the logs settle. You’ll notice there are large gaps that have to be left at the top of the window openings to allow the logs room to settle over time. This gap is filled with insulation and covered with ice and water shield. It’s weird to think just how much our home will move over the next few years!

The chimney and fireplace were also framed out since the last time we posted a blog.

Speaking of rock, we did order the rock we’ll be using throughout the entire project. The first floor exterior will all be rock (everywhere you see black paper on the exterior of the cabin will be rock eventually). The fireplace, chimney, kitchen island, two walls in the main floor bathroom, and the master bathtub will all be decorated in rock!! Here is a picture from the website of what it will look like:

We also got some of our siding and fascia delivered. We’ll be doing a live-edge pine fascia which I think is going to look incredible! Below is a picture of some of it.

This week we picked out our exterior doors. We went with solid alder for most and cedar for the garage doors. We’re doing something pretty cute with the garage doors. They’ll look something like this:

We also looked at some different flooring. We still haven’t decided exactly what type of flooring we want. Below are a few pictures of some of the examples we considered.

The rest of the back deck was framed. It’s a small addition we added late in the game mostly due to the fact that we weren’t able to dig the walk-out basement as deep into the mountain side as we hoped and unintentionally had a lot of extra exposed basement on the backside of the house. The deck covers most of that, and I think we’ll really enjoy having it!

Meanwhile, Kit and I have been working on little side projects back at the ranch. Kit started a half log cedar bench which he is making out of one of the pieces of scrap from the cabin.

He got some free live-edge slabs from his laser engraving team in Boulder. The pieces were old and pretty badly warped. He soaked them in the pond this week and put about a 1,000 lbs of tractor weights on one of the pieces to see if he could straighten it out enough to make it usable for our dining room table. I helped him carry about 400 lbs of that from the shop to the horse barn. I’m still sore from it as I type!

The plan is to create a river effect with the two live edge pieces with river rock from the stream near our cabin. He’ll use epoxy to create the river and give the whole table a nice shiny finish that’ll be water resistant. It will essentially look like this coffee table he already made for us. It’s very cool!!

Here are some of the carvings I’ve been working on:

I made a sea turtle bowl for a friend of mine at work. She’ll be surprised when she reads this because I haven’t told her yet. That’s right, Ms. Audrey Minchin, this is for YOU!

I’m also working on a fancy fruit bowl for our cabin made out of a scrap western red cedar log.

I started to hand-sand the bowl and brought it into the warmth of our house. It didn’t really like that. It developed a huge crack down the center I now have to figure out how to fix.

Luckily my husband is awesome and tells me he knows how we might fix it! I love having such a smart, handy man in my life!

Lastly, my illustrator and I are making great progress on my children’s picture book which is inspired by my love of woodland creatures, particularly foxes. It should be done in about a month, and I’m BEYOND EXCITED to publish it!!

As always, thank you for taking the time to read about our lives here. We love sharing our experiences with others!

Blessings!
Becky