The Birch Lands

This weekend, the dog and I went up to the cabin to get away from all the big sky explosions. The forecast originally said it was going to rain all day on Saturday, but it turned out to be a gorgeous day. We got some more work done on the walkway, though the dog was not actually all that helpful. Then it stormed all night, and he was terrified.

It was plumbing weekend at the cabin. I only had one leak, and, yes I did have to take a trip into town for parts, because that is just how plumbing works. But it's all set now, and I have a fully functional bathroom again.

I wasn't able to make it up to the cabin last weekend due to vehicle issues. That sucked, because last weekend would have been absolutely perfect weather to be up there. Fortunately, this weekend was also absolutely perfect.

It was a hot, humid weekend at the cabin, but I guess the butterflies are into that sort of thing, because they were out in force. So were the mosquitos, but they can go to hell.

I did a little work at the cabin this weekend. I mostly built more walkway until I ran out of lumber. There's still a long way to go before I hit the goal of running this path the entire 1/4 mile length of the property, and I'm already having a little trouble finding the path I cleared and marked with stakes and flags two years ago.

I also put up some more tile in the shower surround. Making these two patterns meet up with each other is a very fiddly process and I don't recommend it.

I put a lot of hours in at the cabin this weekend, building more forest walkway and putting up tile in the bathroom. It was all brought to a forcible end when I ran out of both lumber and tile mortar. I also used up some spare concrete trying to make more footings for the walkway, but I'm guessing one of the bags of concrete was too old because, well, just look at the finished results of the last batch I poured.

Siding is coming along on the new cabin addition. I went up there this weekend, because I glanced at the daily forecast and saw today listed as "sunny with a high of 50". That looked good to me, but I should have looked at the fine print. The "sunny" part didn't start until the afternoon, and the "high of 50" didn't hit until, oh, right about now. This morning I woke up to 10 degrees, windy and overcast, which made the first five hours of my day on a ladder just a super joy. Sorry, that was a typo. Instead of "super joy", that should have read "miserable slog". At least I got to spend last night in front of a fire indulging in a nerdy book about the history of map-making.

It's been a while since I've posted an update on the cabin, because this thing called Winter was going on. But I did get back up there this weekend. I had intended to work on tiling the new bathroom floor, but I forgot that my water tanks were drained due to the aforementioned Winter, so I couldn't mix up any mortar or run a tile saw.

So, instead I finished the demolition of the old bathroom underneath the cabin, and spent most of the beautiful, sunny 70 degree Saturday processing down all the materials I salvaged from it. That pile of lumber under the cabin is my ever-growing supply of cedar to split for more shingles.

I had one day at the cabin this weekend, mostly to winterize everything. The water tanks are drained, there's antifreeze in the drain, and anything that could freeze is hauled out.

I did have some time to finally finish this wall. I bought a huge bundle of these trim pieces thinking there were enough for the whole thing and came up about 5 inches short of the ceiling, so I had to mill a bunch of matching pieces (which was a huge pain in the ass). Sure, the color doesn't quite match, but it's done.

Our alarmingly warm November continues, and so does construction at the cabin. Saturday was a beautiful, sunny day, so of course I had to climb up to the top of the new extension and put the new steel roofing on before the inevitable Minnesota snow makes that impossible.

On Sunday, I woke up with the first light on the horizon and got to work inside. I installed the wood flooring in the extension, finished some trim work, and assembled the new shelves. There's still a lot of trim left to do, but I need to mill some pieces to do that, and I didn't bring my table saw. I guess there's next weekend, where, once again, it will be warmer than it has any right to be in Minnesota this close to December 1.

It was a very exciting day at the cabin! I finally took the plunge and upgraded to lithium batteries on my solar setup. My old lead acid batteries have been warhorses for these past several years, but it was time to retire them. My wife doesn't seem to share my enthusiasm for this much-needed change and doesn't understand why I'm so excited about these batteries. "They have onboard BMS!", I told her. "They have both hot and cold temperature protection systems! They have Bluetooth connection! I can monitor the system from my phone! SEE?!" She just smiled and nodded like she was listening to an 8-year-old telling her facts about dinosaurs.

I put all that new power to use finishing up the wood paneling in the new bathroom. I was able to run a 17 amp saw without the batteries cutting out! I vacuumed the whole cabin with a shop vac! I ran the water pump and the refrigerator AT THE SAME TIME! And still, none of this impresses my wife. How can she not see the raw beauty of 300 amp hours of reliable electricity that was originally stolen from the sun?

It was hot and windy at the cabin this weekend, so I opted to work inside the entire time. The incremental demolition of the old bathroom continues apace, revealing the full extent of the rodent invasion. I reclaimed enough paneling there to install the ceiling of the new bathroom, hopefully not bringing any new mice in with me.