Cabin Trip and More

View from the porch.

The back porch.

Before I get into blogging about the latest trip to the cabin, I have to add an "I told you so" from my post last week regarding alligators and other animals.  A 12 foot 4 inch long, 800 pound alligator was run over on the road this week in North Carolina near Manteo.  Click here to read the news article.  http://wavy.com/2014/05/26/800-pound-gator-killed-by-vehicle-in-dare-county/   Apparently, people fed it because they had nicknamed it Cheeseburger after its favorite food.  I admit I don't know a lot about alligators, but I question the wisdom of feeding a large free roaming reptile.  It gets the reptile used to being around people and expecting food.  What happens when a gator shows up and you don't have any?  And what happens when you show up somewhere not expecting alligators?

Anyway, on to a more pleasant topic: the cabin.  I visited with family and made a trip up to the cabin for a few days.  When I was there a few weeks ago, it was still winter cold and most trees had not yet leafed out.  It is now well into the blooming season.  The stream and river is still running high from the spring run off. 

It was still cool up there, at least until the last day.  The mornings were in the forties (Fahrenheit).  We slept under blankets.  It is a wonderful feeling to wake up in the morning and snuggle down under the blankets for a few minutes longer rather than having to jump up and get started on the day.  Most days were in the upper sixties to low seventies.  There was a chill wind, so we were wearing long sleeves and flannel shirts.  It was a bit of a shock to the system when we came down off the mountain and it was ninety degrees down below.

The old ceiling.

Aside from mowing and weed whacking, we worked a little bit on the ceiling.  We have decided to revisit our plan for the ceiling.  We are going to try to put up V groove strips on the ceiling.  The individual strips are flexible enough that they should be able to conform to our ceiling which is not level.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  No matter what, it has to be an improvement over they way the ceiling looks now.  Our plan is to finish the boards with a clear polyurethane here at home and then bring them up to the cabin.  That way we will be able to immediately get to work on putting the boards on the ceiling.  We are hoping that the changes in the height of the ceiling won't be too noticeable. 

No leaves in April.

We only had a few furring strips up there, so that part of the work is not finished.  We should complete that section on our next trip.  Then our plan is to paint and re-stain the wood wall before we actually put the ceiling up.  We don't want to mess up our nice new ceiling with splotches of paint. 

A good part of the trip was spent sitting on the porch.  We really needed a break since we have been working so hard to repair the damage to our home from the plumbing disaster.  We have completed the den and hallway, installed new dry wall in the large and small bedroom, and painted the large bedroom and both closets.  The new flooring has been laid in the large bedroom closet and the trim has been installed.  This coming weekend, we are ready to lay the floor in the larger bedroom.  All this time we have been sleeping on the floor on air mattresses.  We are now only two weekends out from putting  furniture back in the bedroom. 

One of the small jobs we did up at the cabin was to repair the screen on the porch door.  It has had a hole in the screen for some time.  We had wanted to replace the door, but could not find a wooden screen door that seemed to go with the cabin.  The style of doors that we saw at the home stores just looked wrong with the style of the cabin.  I think that if it ever breaks, we will have to build one ourselves.

While I was visiting with my family, I was gifted an interesting piece of art by my step-father.  My next blog post will be about that art piece.  We just came back from the cabin, and I need some time to research the artist.  Check back on Sunday.