Windows and More

The back wall.

Part of the east-side bedroom, the laundry room,
the bathroom, and the west-side bedroom.

The first window opening completed (in the living room).

Sunset on a nearby mountain peak.

Steve taking in the view and enjoying a much deserved rest.

Both Steve and I had plans for last weekend...he went to Hood Canal, WA to visit friends and I headed south to Eugene to visit friends and attend the very fun Oregon Country Fair (click on link in upper righthand corner of this page) so no work was completed at The Drunken Bear.

Steve and Yoey headed to the property on Saturday, July 18th to continue putting up the walls. When I got off work there was a message for me to pick up more caulking. By the time I picked up the caulking and got to the property Yoey was gone...but the evidence of his work was very evident. The front of the cabin was really taking shape.

Now that we had more caulking, Steve and I proceeded working into the early evening. It is really fun and exciting to see everything starting to come together. We called it quits around 7:30 p.m. and headed to our favorite place, the campfire. A margarita quenched our thirsts and then it was on to dinner. I swear I eat better while we are at The Drunken Bear than when I am at home. Steve had barbecued some chicken breasts the night before and he added them to a very good Caesar salad. By the way, Yoey, thank you for the extra chicken we each got since you did not stay for dinner.

We get up pretty early in the morning, but out of respect for our neighbors we do not start working until after 9:00 a.m. We have our coffee and usually our standard campfire toasted bagel with cream cheese. This time of year we get an extra treat to add to our bagels...fresh huckleberries from the many bushes around the property. It is a good time to also go over the plans and discuss what we will be doing the rest of the day.

We started adding logs right away. At this time of day it is really pleasant as we are in the shade, but come early afternoon we are hammered by the sun. We have discovered that we are having to make quite a few of our missing logs and connecting pieces from those interior logs we will not be using. Once again, thanks for power tools! Around 2:00 p.m. I asked Steve if he was ready to take a break and have a hamburger. I headed in to Highway 2 and the Mt. Index Cafe (a little over a mile and a half away) and ordered two of their delicious burgers and fries to go. While I was waiting, I came across a card that I have since checked out and it is loaded with information about Index. If you have some time check out "The peoples website to The Town of Index - Small Town - Big Website" (click on the link in the upper righthand corner of this page). Anyway, when I arrived back at the property, Steve was putting the first log over the window to see if everything fit. What a site to behold for us! It got us all the more excited. But, we had to stop work to enjoy our burgers. We sat in the campfire area looking out over the river and ate. It was really nice sitting in the shade with a nice breeze blowing. When we went back to try working it was just too hot in the afternoon sun, so we decided to go back to the river and take a break until the cabin was once again in the shade.

Once we got back to work we continued adding logs until we were at window heighth. We have changed some sizes of the windows in the plans, plus we have added a few windows. In one of the bedrooms we will be adding a 7 foot high by 2 foot wide stained glass that will be visible from the road and as you approach the house. We hope to backlight it. This came about as this was the wall where we were missing the logs. When we checked with Pan Abode we found out each log was going to cost us approximately $90.00. We were thinking of ways we could avoid this added cost and came up with the stained glass window. We will be designing and making the window ourselves. We will also put another stained glass on the west side wall where a second doorway to the living room was in the plans. We will still have the double Dutch doors in the living room and another door on the east side near the kitchen.

We were really happy with the efforts of our work and called it a day. Once again we retreated to a campfire and drinks...and another good meal. Steve barbecued sirloin steaks, zucchini and squash. Notice how Steve does most of the cooking too. Luckily he loves doing it and is always trying new recipes. The rest of us get to enjoy the results!

After dinner we sat around the fire, enjoying the evening and listening to each other's stories. A comment here, a comment there, and you would be into a whole new story. This little bit of heaven is quite amazing to us. Sitting around a crackling campfire, hearing the rushing of the river, smelling the oil of a burning cedar stump, listening to song birds give their evening goodnights, watching the sun set on the many mountain peaks...what a way to end a day. When I mentioned the song birds, Steve said it reminded him of the time when we were at the ocean with one of our dear friends who is no longer around, Brian Lee. Steve said Brian, upon hearing song birds broke into the Barbara Streisand's Song Bird. If you knew Brian, this would definitely bring a smile to your face.

When I mentioned smelling the oil of a burning stump, I wish each of you could have been there. I was showing Steve a huge rock which somehow had been cut exactly in half with a very flat surface. We were discussing what we could do with this. It was in an area where some of the remnants of the clearing of the land were in a depressed area of ground. Steve noticed this stump and said we might as well burn this. When he threw it on the fire it started giving off this very black smoke. We were thinking maybe it had deisel or grease on it from the equipment used during the land clearing, but all of a sudden you got this very pleasant smell of cedar. You could also hear the sizzling of the oil in the root. We decided to pull it out of the fire as we want to share this with others. Steve talked about a lumber yard which used to produce a cedar oil product and after smelling the odor we got from the cedar root I can see why. Of course maybe the next time it will not be the same...in keeping up the tradition of The Drunken Bear, we had finished off the gin that night...and the night before we had finished off the tequila.

Monday morning we got up early again. This is when we made some changes to the sizes of the windows. When it was time for us to work, we added caulking to the log over the first window and put it permanently in place, added a few more logs, took a bunch of measurements and determined what logs were needed where, and called it a day. We are so happy with the progress and feel we will have all the walls done by mid-August.